The Cottage Smallholder

  Danny and I went to London this afternoon to see an alternative healer. Diana Mossop  lives in Jersey and consults in London and Jersey. She is the founder of the Institute of Phytobiophysics and has a marvellous reputation for healing ailments and conditions that conventional medicine seems not to be able to help. Around Read More »

  Having failed to persuade my partner to share my bag of rope mussels I was determined to make a really great sauce. So I looked at a couple of good foodie blogs for inspiration. Veronica at La Recette du Jour had a great recipe  but I didn’t have curry powder. Joanna at Joanna’s Food Read More »

  Weeks of no rain have had a big impact on the herbaceous borders. So there are not many flowers and the few that are there are looking a bit stressed and tired. Can you guess what these flowers are? Hint I found them in the kitchen garden. A small insignificant prize will be sent Read More »

  Having bought a very smart pasta machine, I made my first pasta last night. It was a dismal flop. Instead of soft delicious ravioli I made nasty miniature chewy hot water bottles. The filling was tasty though. I tried making it using a 400g well of flour “00” on the worktop. I broke four Read More »

  I always thought that preserving funnels were the sort of dinky faddy things that Little Grey Rabbit might have had hanging in her kitchen. For years I’ve found that filling jars with hot jam, marmalade or chutney has been a messy business. My mum advised putting the jars on newspaper before filling – which Read More »

  “Why this is delicious.” Seraphina licked the spoon and examined the tasting pot. “You could add some to an ordinary apple pie and really make it special.” After the success of the pear butter I thought I’d try my hand at apple butter. Fruit butter contains no butter. It has a spreadable saucelike consistency Read More »

  “You have been very poorly so recovery will be slow. Eat well, rest a lot and try to do a little more each day without pushing yourself.” I like my doctor. She’s positive and pretty and laughs at my jokes. This is my eleventh week off work. I can do a little more each Read More »

  “I’d like a bottle of white wine please. I’m going to try and tempt Danny with mussels tonight.” “Does he have a problem with them?” Enquired John. “When we first met we overdosed on them. But it has been eleven years and I spotted rope mussels on offer today. They looked so enticing.” “Surely after Read More »

  Well the Westfalia Food Dehydrator finally arrived from Germany. It took two weeks rather than the ten days stipulated on the website but it is the cheapest dehydrator on the market and I’m thrilled with it. OK it’s a very basic model with no temperature control. It’s marketed as being perfect for the beginner. Read More »

  Danny took a week off work to tweak our site, give it a good polish and set up a forum. Although I’ll try to answer queries I don’t know all the answers. And sometimes I’d like to ask questions myself. At the moment there are quite a few people who respond to comments on Read More »