Flick's Writing

Masks, flour and gardening: such is life, these days

Sun, 03 May 2020 10:16:08 GMT

Things are starting to happen in the garden. The potatoes are sprouting, and the tomatoes are in the polytunnel. I planted out kohl rabi, and Bob promptly ran through the middle of the bed and snapped off a load of leaves....

We had an unexpected hail storm in the week, and it was only after watching it for a few minutes that I remembered the seedlings, hardening off on the patio. Fortunately very little damage done, although I got drenched.

We’ve had a fairly respectable amount of rain this week, which is good for the garden and the field. The horses are a lot happier now that there’s something for them to eat.

Given the way things seem to be going, I’ve started making face masks. I sent the first couple to my sister, as she’s out and about a lot working, and now I’m just waiting for some more hair bands to arrive in the post to make more. I’m using the Olson pattern, if anyone’s thinking of making some. I recommend writing the piece numbers on the fabric (wrong side) the first time, but once you’ve figured out the method they’re pretty simple.

Mike not only managed to buy yeast at the local hippy food shop but also placed an order online for flour delivery. The white flour will be fine where we normally keep it, but we’ll have to freeze most of the brown (which is why we don’t usually get brown by the sack, but there’s been none in the shops for weeks, and we’ve run out). I do wonder if it’s worth a post to the local Facebook group: “flour for sale, village hall car park from x-y pm tomorrow”.

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Several things make a post

Sun, 19 Apr 2020 14:22:40 GMT

As the garden centres are (mostly) closed, and the online suppliers are (mostly) falling over under the strain, I sent an email to the lady up the road who opens her garden under the National Garden Scheme and arranged to buy some plants from her. She had some alliums that she was going to have to plant out, so amongst other things I got a tray of 20 for £10.

We had a whole half inch of rain on Saturday. That’s all we’ve had so far this month, and we’re now back to sun and a dry wind for the foreseeable future. The garden’s getting very dry, but I’m more worried about the grass not growing; we shouldn’t be having to give the horses more hay at this time of year. We also had a frost, but fortunately it wasn’t bad enough to damage the wisteria flower buds (which are looking very promising this year).

Mike took out some of the overgrown beeches in the garden, and the tree surgeons came and took out some more (they were both more overgrown and had the phone line running through them, so it seemed safer to get the pros in). That should mean more light and less competition for the veg bed this year, which is good.

In what I doubt is an unusually occurrence right now, Mike went to do the weekly trip to the farm shop and found that the car battery was dead. Fortunately, I knew that the Up The Hills have a battery jump start thing, so we borrowed that and got the car going again. Mike has now ordered one of our own, just in case.

It’s become noteworthy to see an aircraft contrail. Starting to feel like a Pacific Island cargo cultist, next thing you know we’ll be worshipping Prince Phillip (or should that be Boris?)....

The swallows have arrived, and the early purple orchids are in bloom. The wild garlic is going over, but I did pick a bag to make experimental wild garlic jam. ( Jam-ish )

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Soggy

Tue, 22 Oct 2019 17:24:24 GMT

Even though we had another inch of rain yesterday (we kept the horses in. It's October, ffs!), today was nice and sunny so I managed to do some weeding for the first time in weeks. I could only do along the edge of the drive, as I don't dare walk on the flower beds and am dubious about walking on the edge of the lawn, but it's something at least.

The wet weather and warm nights seems to be suiting grass seedlings, as they're popping up everywhere (and are tricky to weed when they're in amongst the bulbs that are starting to come up). One end of one of the garden beds, that backs onto the field, looks like it will need mowing soon, so that's going to be tremendously fun if I can't get to it before spring. I did put bark down around the strawberries, to see if I could stop quite so much grass coming up, but it's not been tremendously successful.

We had the muck skip emptied last week, and when it came back it was a nice fancy new one, rather than the one we used to have with a partly rusted-out floor. We were initially pleased, but then it rained some more and now Mike can't empty wheelbarrows into it because his boots are only fully waterproof to about two inches....

(And I took that picture before yesterday's rain. Mmmm, soupy.)

Other things that I've been doing:
- getting my first flower delivery (they are lovely, I'm glad to be getting them again);
- partially putting the polytunnel to bed for the winter (still need to clear out the old grow bags, but everything else is done);
- making jam (we're growing a different variety of hot chilli this year. The first batch of chilli jelly was a bit too hot, but Mike says the second is more normal, so I'll have to poll the usual recipients and see which they'd prefer);
- going to London for lunch (and a check up) with my dentist;
- going to the Brogdale Apple Festival, which was much the same as usual. We did go on the walking tour this year, which we'd never done before as they don't allow dogs in the orchards and we always used to take Jo with us.

We also went to a local riding school and had a lesson on a couple of their horses: we're still struggling with Benny's canter, so we hatched the plan with our riding instructor to go and have a ride on a different horse to remind us what it should be like. It incidentally confirmed that it's trotting on Benny that's been causing me back pain for the last year or so: we gradually narrowed it down to riding (and fiddling with his saddle helped a lot) and then to trotting, but trotting the riding school horse didn't hurt.

Mike's having a second play of Red Dead Redemption 2 and we've just finished the first season of Stranger Things, so I've been getting quite a lot of sewing done. Progress remains very slow, but I think it's about half done now:

(And I've nearly finished the cherry since I did that.)

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Dreams...

Sat, 22 Dec 2018 20:11:51 GMT

I don't know what I dreamt about last night, but I woke up with a sore shoulder, experienced phantom-broken-nail sensations, was surprised to get dressed and find my jodhpurs didn't have tears in them, and, as I started to ride this morning, remembered that I'd made an inexplicable and unnecessary mental note to buy a new riding hat.

Also, Mike has a new sous vide machine. It does lovely things to rump steak.

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Minor mystery resolved

Sun, 18 Nov 2018 21:48:08 GMT

A couple of months ago, I made my usual apple and sloe jelly.

It took me three bloody goes to get a set: I ended up sticking pectin in it (FFS!), and that eventually did it.

Two days ago, my medlars were finally bletted:

(Crafty Day folks, I suspect that if I'd hunted around then I could have found a bletted one for you to try. You'll have to come back around the same time next year.)

So yesterday I boiled up the medlar jelly and this morning... no set.

Some experimentation with a pan of boiling water revealed that my jam thermometer is reading a degree too high.

All is now explained. Although I fear that, in my attempts to be over-cautious, extracting the re-boiled medlar jelly from the jar may need a sharp knife rather than a tea spoon. Especially as I've just seen in my diary that I didn't bother with pectin last time.

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Before and after

Sun, 29 Jul 2018 14:10:28 GMT

I've also been taking advantage of the Aga being back on to grill some courgette slices to go in the fridge and make some courgette goop.

It's mostly been raining here, today, just what the grass needs. I even put a jumper on for a little while this morning: bliss! I am a bit concerned about the wind, though. I've already picked up one blown-over tomato plant on the patio, and I had to do a lot of re-tying in the polytunnel last night, so we've closed it up for the first time in months.

GB's celebrating high summer by finally getting rid of his winter coat. I expect he'll start growing a new one in a couple of weeks.

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Things, unsuccessfully, attempted in the last week

Tue, 10 Jul 2018 19:46:36 GMT

1) Doing anything in the hot weather (today, gardening, horse-riding and dog-walking were done for the first time in a week).

Bob seemed utterly unconcerned by this, and didn't even run around the field more than usual in the evenings. Benny thought it was a marvellous idea, and was quite put out this morning when his tack made an appearance; the hot-foot thing seems to have been a red herring, and I now suspect that he caught it jumping into the field as it's not happened again since.

2) Growing asparagus peas (well, they actually grew just fine, it was the eating part that didn't work out: not a bad flavour, but an utterly horrible mouth-feel. Have pulled them up and put regular peas in their place. Which the rabbits ate the tops off. Sigh).

3) Eating all the courgettes (note to self: must start making courgette goop to freeze. We did try courgette fritters, as apparently you can freeze the grated courgette with no problems, but they were kind of bland in both taste and texture).

4) Making a tasty drink by putting cherries in white wine for a week, decanting and adding a splash of vodka (works wonderfully with cherry leaves in wine, or fruit in vodka; fruit in wine leaves both the liquid and the fruit almost entirely tasteless. Very pretty colour liquid, though).

5) Mike going to work (he Did Something to his back a few weeks ago, and it was a bit sore (physio said he'd strained a muscle and to give it time), but then last week he Did Something More and had to take to his bed for a couple of days. NHS Minor Injuries, in a fit of evidence-based medical advice, told him to go and see a chiropractor. He's much better now, though, so hopefully if he's careful then he'll be back to normal soon).

6) Eating the first tomato of the season (bah, blossom end rot. It doesn't seem to be too widespread, though, so I'll be making passata soon).

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Rain stopped play

Thu, 07 Dec 2017 20:13:03 GMT

Or at least, rain stopped riding lesson and meant that the horses only got a couple of hours in the stableyard, rather than going in the field.

To make up for it, I've been busy with Christmas-ish things.

I decanted the sloe gin:

(Good year for sloes, unlike last.)

Then as I'd done that I thought I may as well put some of the sloe gin, and a last few other bits, into the hampers and, then I thought I may as well box them up ready for couriering off. Then I thought I may as well get the other courier stuff ready, and if I was doing some Christmas wrapping then I may as well do all of it while I was at it.

Then I thought I'd take advantage of the Aga being hot, so I made sausage rolls and a cake for the Medium Quilt Club Christmas do.

Then Mike had a migraine, so I had to get my own tea.

And now I'm a bit tired!

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Horses

Sat, 30 Sep 2017 19:16:41 GMT

We were going to go and look at a very nice-sounding horse yesterday, but then the Riding Instructor Spy Network reported that the (devastated to be having to sell his beloved horse because of a relationship breakdown) 'owner' used to work for one of these lovely people, and that his former boss is out of jail and back living in the same village as the horse. So we cancelled. Sigh.

In better news, GB's been very awkward about taking his pills lately but a little juggling of how he has his feed seems to have fixed it: he's cleaned his feed bucket at both meals today. I'm a little worried about this year's hay, though: they've both been leaving a lot of it this week (two different bales of hay), which I had put down to there being plenty of grass. It was a different bale today, though, and they've eaten it all up. I hope we've not got many dodgy ones.

I've been doing a bit more of the hand quilted cushion, so I guess that I am going to finish it. Didn't manage very much today, because my hands are bad, but I *think* that's more because of using scissors to cut up an enormous pile of chillies to make jelly from rather than the sewing. I got Mike to do half the chillies, but probably should have had him do all of them.

(I've also made apple and sloe jelly: Mrs Farmer thrust a huge pile of apples on me last week when I was at the house, so we didn't even have to go scrumping on the common to get supplies. Gosh, you get a much better set with cooking apples than with random wild ones!)

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Definitely autumnal...

Sun, 10 Sep 2017 17:10:55 GMT

- fungi in the woods
- misty mornings
- light rugs on the boys overnight (and associated repeatedly checking the rain radar to see when we should bring them in to make sure they don't get caught in a shower just before the rugs go on them)
- no longer need to water the garden
- two evening haynets for the boys
- bringing them down the hill on my own when Mike's in London
- entrance to ex-Mrs Up The Hill's field turned into a swamp....

So, today we moved the boys back into our field. That meant a busy morning: leave the boys in the stableyard; go up the hill for a final poo pick and taking down the electric fence; put the electric fence back up in our field (the grass is still growing, so we'll put them in a small bit of it for a month or so and then start strip grazing for the winter); point out to the boys that the gate to the field is now open and watch them charge in to start noshing).

I've also started the sloe gin, which will be much more abundant than last year. It somehow seems wrong to be picking them so early, but some of the ones we picked today were almost over-ripe.

It's nearly time for jelly making, once we've fitted in a day scrumping on the common. The chilli one last year was quite a hit, and the patio chillis have done well (unlike the conservatory ones, which are pathetic), and I've not made a sloe one for a few years (and have plenty of sloes still in our hedge if needed). I probably want one more, suggestions welcome....

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Cherry surprise

Tue, 04 Jul 2017 19:24:45 GMT

After Little Quilt Club today, I headed cross-country to the big local farm shop: it's not the closest, but I wanted both flowers and cherries, and that rather limited my options. ("Are you going all that way?" the ladies at LQC asked, before conceding that they couldn't actually think of anywhere closer that sold both.)

About half way there, I passed a cherry stall at the side of the road, so I made a mental note and kept on going.

The farm shop provided a lovely bunch of flowers (for Mrs Farmer, as that was all the payment that Mr Farmer would take for doing the field at weekend), after which I headed back and (via an only-slightly-dodgy u-turn) stopped at the cherry stall.

Much to my surprise, it was being manned by the lady who I used to buy cherries from on the A2 on the way to Pilates. I hadn't realised that she had the stall in both places, and this one is much more convenient than the other. I realised later that I should have asked which locations she did on which days of the week....

There's now half a jar of cherries in booze in the cupboard, and a bowl of cherry pie filling* in the fridge. My new cherry pitter works well, although it's a bit of a squeeze to get the biggest ones into it and a couple of the stones got stuck and had to be bashed out. She also had the first English peaches of the year, so I bought a few to try: they're ready to eat and tasty, so I'll go back next Tuesday (presumably she'll be there again then, and I'll be in the area anyway) for more cherries and peaches, which I'll stick in jars as long as I can keep them away from Mike for long enough!

* looking online at cherry pie recipes, and having discounted the ones that include cherry jam in the list of ingredients, there seem to be two broad classes: ones where you cook the filling first and then thicken it with corn flour/starch; and ones where you cook it in the oven with the rest of the pie and include tapioca to thicken it. I'm unsure whether this just means that they are all based on one of two ur-recipes or whether there is some difference in the nature of corn flour and tapioca that makes the different methods better. Either way, a) I have corn flour in the house; b) I was brung up to blind bake my pies; c) I want to adapt the recipes to make smaller pies that I can cook in the Aga (which both make it tricky to reach the specific temperature and cooking time needed to set the tapioca-style filling); and d) I'd rather freeze prepared filling than raw cherries; so I've gone for the cook-it-first method. Anyone have strong opinions either way? I am wondering whether it would be better to freeze it pre-cornflour and then defrost and quickly boil it up to add that later.

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Possibly not my greatest success

Sat, 19 Nov 2016 15:42:46 GMT

When I made the juice for the medlar jelly, we didn't have any apples in so I thought I'd just slosh in a bit of bottle pectin when I boiled it up today.

(Medlars do have some pectin, but not much.)

Today, though, I realised I'd finished the pectin when I made chilli jelly the other week and not bought any more. Hrm.

I stuck a bit of citric acid in, and the jars are currently in the fridge in the hopes that that will trigger a change from 'faintly gloopy' to 'very soft set', but I'm not hopeful.

And the first storm of the season has just arrived. With amber wind warnings overnight, I hope that the phone and power stay up!

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Things

Fri, 18 Nov 2016 18:58:01 GMT

Novacon was mostly nice, and fairly quiet, but involved late nights (as ever).

I decided that I wasn't enjoying my pilates class enough to make up for the driving there and back in the dark part of the experience, so I've swapped to a different class (daytime), with a different instructor but at the same place. I had the first session yesterday and, even though the people in the class were generally creakier and less good, it was a much better workout. Fingers crossed.

TWWOTV is having various building work done. GB is unimpressed: he can hear it but not see it, so he's a bit stressed by it all, poor lad.

The house Up The Hill has finally completed on the sale, so we now have new Mr and Mrs Up The Hill, and two small girl children ditto. I'd better put together a little welcome hamper, though it's a shame the ducks are off lay.

I continue to be impressed with Freddie's Flowers. I've still got about half of the bunch from two weeks ago, and this is today's selection:

I've finished the little table runner I was making using English Paper Piecing. I enjoyed the actual EPP part of it but found hand quilting to be very tedious, fiddly, and hard on my hands; it is very lightly quilted as a result. Still, I'm quite pleased with it even if I did realise about three days ago that I'd cocked it up right at the beginning and have bought another pattern that I'd been vaguely admiring for some time.

For about six weeks now, I've had a plate full of this year's medlar crop sitting on a plate in the hall, bletting. Bletting is a bit like rotting only less so, and you have to let it happen for a couple of weeks in order to make the fruit usable. Today, I decided that they must have had long enough and took them to the kitchen to make jelly from. When I cut the fruit up, about a third of it looked like it was actually rotten, so I stuck that in the compost and put the rest on to simmer. An hour or so later, they were all still rock hard and the liquid was mostly colourless, which rang alarm bells: when I looked online, I discovered that actually my rotten ones were correct and the rest should have had longer to blet. Fortunately, they were only in the indoor compost bin, so I rinsed them off and stuck them in the pan with the rest and stuck them back in the Aga for another hour. The juice is draining off now, we'll see whether the jelly is actually usable tomorrow....

(Many of the recipes call for a mix of bletted and fresh medlars, if in the reverse of the proportions I ended up with, so it's hopefully not too much of a problem!)

It's definitely getting wintery, now, and we very much appreciated the fire this afternoon. On the other hand, my parents had about six inches of snow this morning, so it could be worse!

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Operation Fill The Freezer

Sun, 30 Oct 2016 15:17:10 GMT

Last weekend, we were given a bucket of cooking apples, and today I peeled and chopped and lightly cooked them before putting four big bags in the freezer, ready for making crumble latter in the year.

We've also put down a new section of heavy-duty grass matting (the kind of stuff they put down on when people will be parking on grass), on a patch that got very churned up last winter where we were leading the boys across it: hopefully it'll be less horrible this year, although I'm not sure what the boys will make of it tomorrow when they encounter it for the first time as it'll be rather slippery until the grass grows up through it!

It's probably just a coincidence of the weather and the clocks changing, but it's feeling very gosh-aren't-the-days-getting-short today. We're going to move the electric fence for the first time this evening, as well....

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Bye bye, craze horse

Sat, 29 Oct 2016 17:58:23 GMT

The Horse Next Door is gone, so I suspect that that means Mrs Next Door is gone as well.

This afternoon, I have mostly been making chilli jelly with the majority of the remaining home-grown chillis. Chopping the chillis took as long as the actual jelly making part, but I think it's going to be ok. The jars look pretty, at any rate.

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Where did the time go?

Tue, 25 Oct 2016 10:53:47 GMT

I've been very crap at updating recently, probably a sign that I've not been doing anything very exciting!

There's been a fair bit of gardening going on, mostly weeding but also taking the finished plants out of the vegetable patch. There are still some tomatoes, peppers and aubergines in pots in the conservatory, but I don't think they'll be productive for much longer. Mike managed to mow the back lawn, for the first time since before our BBQ: it was in a bit of a state! I must get my sweetpeas started for next year, and think about the practicalities of my plan to turn the bee garden into a polytunnel for the tomatoes. The tomatoes did terribly this year, as in we've already finished the passata that I made (last year, it lasted until April!).

We've had our first, very slight, frost of the year, the elctric blanket's back on the bed, and the trees are starting to look very pretty. We've also had our first (and second, third and fourth) mice in the barn traps, which I'm treating as a good thing because we didn't get so many last autumn when the rat was in residence. Still to come: first fire of the year, which I'm looking forward to!

In the house, I continue to be impressed with Freddie's Flowers (my second batch was cabbages and white roses, but I also still have a vase with some of the first batch in!). I've been making jelly and sewing various things that are mostly going to be Christmas gifts for people who read this, so no pictures of those, or aren't yet finished (this isn't like me, but the Christmas stuff jumped the queue). Mike's been busy at work, so it's just been me and the pooch more than usual, but we did have a house full of visitors at the weekend, which included going to the beach, looking at old churches, and seeing the Oysterband in Canterbury.

We were expecting the hunt this morning, but didn't see any sign of them (we did hear the hounds, off in the distance). The boys seemed entirely unconcerned about the noise, but we were quite glad that we'd already finished riding by that time!

We're having some issues with their hay this year, annoyingly: back when we first started using this year's batch, they refused to eat three of the first six bales, but then it didn't happen again so we thought maybe it was still a bit green. Over the weekend, though, they turned their noses up at two more bales, so I gave the hay lady a call. She says the culprit is false oat grass, which she's got in the corner of one of her fields (although though the internet seems to think it is palatable), so next year we'll be sure to take our hay from the other field (which is where we've previously had it from, which is why we've not had a problem before). She did say that later in the year (when there's less grass) they might be happier with it, which I'd also vaguely though, but I doubt GB will eat it.

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Adventures in foraging

Mon, 28 Dec 2015 18:56:15 GMT

This year, I picked a whole lot more wild garlic than last year, because it seemed a shame to waste it. Some of it I blanched and froze (ok results. Nothing amazing, but that may be partly because the only thing you can then do with it is stick it in a stew-ish thing with lots of other stuff), most of it I made into wild garlic pesto, which was fabulous even after being frozen, and will be repeated.

I didn’t pick as many blackberries as last year, I’m not sure quite why. Sadly, this means there isn’t a stash in the freezer for making crumble with. I did pick enough to make blackberry and apple jelly, though, along with the apple and lavender jelly and the apple butter.

On the booze front, we’ve had
- elderflower vodka (tasty, but it did seem to make people poorly. Note to self: check if elderflowers are slightly poisonous in the same way that the berries are)
- vin de pêches (not strictly foraged, but very, very tasty: I’ll be making more of that in the spring when the new peach leaves come through. Might also try cherry leaves)
- chestnut liqueur (still in the bottle. I have no idea if it’s going to work or not: Mike is doubtful that any flavour will come through)
- wild strawberries in vodka (also not strictly foraged, although they're wild plants on our land, and also still in the jar. Really must do something with those, it looks lovely...)
- sloe gin (of course!)
(We’ve not had hop vodka, sadly. The hop had a bad early summer, which we think was not enough water: it was dry, and there were tomato plants near it this year. Next year.)

On the non-booze drinks front, the usual apple juice with apples from the common, some strawberry juice (panda-bowl man while he’s packing up counts as foraging, right?), and spiced elderberry cordial (must make some more of that, the berries are in the freezer).

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Adventures in edible gardening

Mon, 28 Dec 2015 18:56:03 GMT

On the edible gardening front, this year we planted:
- four types of tomato (Hundreds and Thousands, and then Aurora, Amish Paste and Latah)
- aubergines (Black Beauty)
- chillis (Chilly Chill and Orange Wonder)
- peppers (Semaroh and Amy (pointy), and Kaibi (round))
- tomatillos
- cucamelons
- mange tout (norli)
- French beans

I also got two grafted plants, one tomato and one aubergine, to see if they did enough better to be worth the money. They didn't.

The tomatoes really did quite well. The 100's and 1000's are very small cherry tomatoes, which I grew in hanging baskets. They were nice to have early in the season before the larger ones had ripened, but weren't really all that exciting: I'm not sure I'll bother next year. The Latahs were the earliest of the proper tomatoes, and did their job as such. The Aurora produced vast amounts of fruit, even allowing for the fact that a lot of it was wasted because we hadn't quite considered the amount of staking required (apparently you can get circular jobbies that you put around the plants to keep the stems up, which sounds like a plan for next year). The Amish were utterly gorgeous but didn't all manage to ripen, which was a real shame. I have a shelf full of jars of passata, which was the main aim, but next year really hope to be able make some just with Amish, as I think it will be really good.

We must have had at least four or five aubergines, in total, but then it wasn't a great growing season. The peppers produced quite a lot of fruit which almost all rotted on the plant: the only ones that actually ripened did so after I'd put them in the conservatory to see if I could keep them over-winter, so next year I'm going to try some outside (in the hope it will be a better summer) and some in pots indoors. The chillis, on the other hand, did brilliantly, with masses of fruit on both types of plant; I'm also trying to overwinter some of these plants, which still have ripening fruit on them now that they're inside. Next year, Mike wants to grow a hotter variety, as he says even the Orange Wonder is very mild.

The tomatillos did, if anything, too well (tomatillo passata didn't work as well as we'd hoped, but Mike's made a few batches of tomatillo stew and, of course, much green salsa was consumed), and work better in pots than in the ground (easier to pick the fruit). The cucamelons went outside too early, which knocked them back a bit, but they did get going eventually; I've saved some of the tubers, so I'll see if I can coax them back into life in the spring.

The mange tout and beans did ok but I think I need more plants (and to put them in places where they won't be so overshadowed by tomatoes and tomatillos!): we never really got enough at once for a meal unless they were left on the plants for too long.

Next year, I suspect we'll probably have most of these again, if in slightly different proportions. As well as another chilli, we're also going to add a couple of other types of bean and have a go at baby corn and (I hope we don't regret it) courgettes. Which reminds me that, as well as the mange tout and french beans I started a few weeks ago, I should also start the new variety we bought at the garden centre the other week....

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The cake is a lie

Sat, 31 Oct 2015 20:51:55 GMT

This afternoon, I thought I'd try out our new baking oven.

I had a look in Mary Berry's New Aga Cookbook, and then I had a look in Mary Berry's (old) Aga cookbook, and I thought that the tray-bake lemon sponge sounded good, but then I looked again and got confused.

The new book gave 225/225/250 butter/sugar/flour (which made me slightly confused anyway, as the quantities weren't equal, which is just Wrong). The old book had 250/250/275. Ok, close enough to not count.

But the new book said that was for a small Aga tray (double it for a large one), and the old one said it was for a large Aga tray (halve it for a small one). Which was odd. After some debate, (I instinctively prefer the old one, it's much less swanky-looking and has the added bonus of recipes for things like jugged hare and canapés for 70 as well as having been through far more reprints) I went for the small one, which was the right choice.

But then I looked at it after the suggested 25 mins (new: 20 in the old) and it was still very soggy. In the end, it had about 45 mins, and Mike pronounced it to be good, so all was well.

It's very odd, though. Surely the old Aga cookbook, of which we must have about the billionth edition, can't be wrong on which size tray to use? (The trays have not changed size, before anyone suggests it!) Surely they can't both be so wrong about the cooking time? I shall have Mike stick a thermometer in there tomorrow, and check that the new Aga's doing what it ought.

ION, we started taking out the front hedge leylandii. "Started", here, is understood to mean "Mike fiddled with his new chainsaw for half an hour and then chopped down one of them and then it was time to put the animals to bed". Still, with a gap now made the others should go much quicker! Our bonfire pile seems to suddenly be nearly as big now as it was a week ago....

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Eventful day

Thu, 24 Sep 2015 19:14:55 GMT

This morning it was moist, so we put of riding until the afternoon and, after we'd done the yard jobs, I retired to the kitchen: spiced elderberry cordial, sorting the boxes of apples and tomatoes with subsequent passata and apple juice, general tidying.

Mike, meanwhile, was upgrading my iPhone to iOS 9, as he'd already got it downloaded and wanted to do it before it started requiring 9.1 (or whatever the never version is). It seemed to be taking a terribly long time.

When we got in after walking Jo, the phone rang and a nice young man said he was calling from the bank. I pointed out that my phone was showing a different number to the bank's, and he said he'd leave a note on my account with his extension number. A quick call to Mike's mobile Just In Case and I was soon speaking to him again: First Direct is running a reward scheme for long-term customers, and they're sponsoring the Northern Ballet this year, and they're doing Wuthering Heights in Canterbury next month and would I like to go? Two free tickets, drinks receptions before and after, talk from the director, Meet The Cast. Oh, go on then. I don't think Mike's very keen but I'm sure I'll find a taker (anyone fancy it? I have asked Mrs Next Door as well, but she doesn't strike me as the ballet type).

(Mike is in a small huff, because he's been a customer for much longer and they didn't offer him tickets to a thing he had no interest in seeing. I pointed out that they may be deliberately offering them to women. Then I remembered the time they gave me a case of wine for being a good customer, too!)

Around this time, Mike learnt that there was a known bug in iOS 9, fixed in 9.1 (see above), that left it hung at the 'swipe to restart' stage, and started downloading 9.1 (ditto) in the hope he could just overwrite it.

A bit more faffing in the kitchen, and sticking a cake in the oven, and going Harvesting in the garden (the tomatillos in the ground have done much less well than the ones in pots on the patio, which seemed odd. But suddenly they've gone mad with enormous fruit since I took out the tomatoes plants next to them!) and it was time to take Jo to the vet for jabs and a general check-up. I got about two miles from home and the car started making A Noise, which I thought might be a branch under the car: I pulled into a parking space and had a look. Couldn't see anything but, oh, wait, that corner of the car seems to be lower down than it should be: flat tire. Better call Mike. Oh, wait, my phone's both bricked and at home. Just as I started to swear, a dog walker came back to his car and let me borrow his phone (I think he was a bit worried I was going to ask him to change the tire!). Mike remembered, as I had not, that there was an electric pump in the car, so I got the tire pumped up and made it home. One quick tire change later (he's had practice, recently!) and I was re-booked at the vet and on my way again.

Jo was her usual good self, even if she hates having the Kennel Cough vaccine up her nose, and was long-suffering when having her bum squeezed (she's been itchy lately). She didn't want to lie down and roll over for the vet to check where she had the cancer removed, so in the end I just picked her up and sat on the chair with her on my lap, facing out. The vet was bemused and impressed, particularly when Jo stayed in the same position to have her claws trimmed! ("I'll have to remember that trick... although I can't imagine many dogs would stay in that position while I did their claws...") Jo'd not been brushing her teeth properly, though, and needs them cleaning. The vet sternly warned me to keep an eye on her weight until I get it done, as the price for sedation goes up at 35kg and she's currently 34.45.

We did manage to ride, after I got back, which was good except that GB was favouring his dodgy leg a little, which is always worrying. There seemed to be an awful lot of washing up when we got in, though, and that plus cleaning the kitchen floor (shocking state, simply shocking. Please don't listen to anyone who tells you I'm house-proud) occupied the time until dinner, and now that I've written this I'm off to give the boys their evening hay!

Edit: Oops. It appears that the things we failed to do today was put the ducks to bed after we'd ridden: the perils of breaking your routine. They'd gone in on their own, though, and nothing had followed them home. Phew.

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[yawn]

Fri, 18 Sep 2015 20:10:28 GMT

We had a weather-induced power cut last night, which kept me awake rather: I'm not sure if the battery is dead in my clock and I woke up when the power went out (which seems more likely) or if I just happened to wake and look at my clock the second the battery did die, but either way it was 2:30am and I spent the rest of the night being woken up by the weather and vaguely worried about freezers and suchlike.

Today, though, I have made apple butter: no idea if it's going to have worked, but the spoon tasted pretty good. Something of a faff peeling and coring any quantity of wild apples, even if I did pick the biggest of the batch, so if it is good I might use shop apples in future. Of course, then it probably won't taste the same.

I'm starting to think that the boys have got it in for me. Given that they've stopped coming up to the gate at coming in time, Mike and I have been taking it in turns to go and get one of them (usually Bugs, as he's more likely to wander over in search of treats), after which the other will follow up the hill to the gate and stand to be caught by the other of us. For about the last ten days (not that I'm counting), they've been within about twenty yards of the gate on Mike's days and right at the other side of the field on mine....

Currently on the dining room table: a box of invitations for the House of Lords thing, which need to be in the post on Monday. The curses of having Nice Handwriting. I just hope my wrists are up to it. I've even got my fountain pen out!

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Busy day

Thu, 17 Sep 2015 19:56:53 GMT

After we'd ridden and done the boys, I went out to pick tomatoes and decided that, given the way they were going black and mouldy, I'd do better to just have the plants out and put the undamaged fruit indoors to ripen, so that took longer than expected but now I have a couple of boxes that will hopefully become useful later.

(While we were doing the boys, we kept hearing low rumbling noises, which we thought might be blasting at the quarry over the other side of the A2, as we sometimes hear that. There were a lot of them, though, and Mike's just seen a story on the local news website about people feeling tremors in Canterbury that it blames on firing on an MoD range in Essex! It must have been horrible close by!)

Then it was time for lunch, and after that we headed out to the common with Jo, where we got another four bags of apples (which are going to have to wait until tomorrow), some sloes and some elderberries.

Then I headed off into Canterbury for a little shopping: a few bits at M&S, because I had a voucher (and I also handed out the 'friends and family' vouchers to random people in the store, which got confused but grateful responses), a new pair of evening shoes for the Bloody Boxing Do, the last thing I needed for making the Christmas cards, no fabric as neither of the fabric shops had the one I wanted (not very surprised, I'll buy it direct from Moda, but I thought I'd check as I have a 10% off voucher for one of them), and four punnets of strawberries for £1.50 (the lot) from the Panda Bowl man who was just packing up. I also headed over to The Country Shop to get a few bits, mostly because they were on offer in the latest catalogue, and a new rug for GB.

(While I was paying, there was a woman at the next till who's obviously a regular: she was chatting away to the girl serving her, apologising because she was paying with the egg money. I hadn't really looked, but noticed that she was holding a small black-and-white dog. Then I looked again and realised that it was actually a badger. Then one of the other members of staff walked past and asked if it was the one with the funny nose. "No, this is the other one," she replied. Boggle.)

And then I came home and made strawberry and peach juice, and roasted tomato passata, and sorted and froze the sloes and elderberries, and had dinner somewhere in there, and now I am Sitting Down On The Sofa.

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Tai Chi

Sat, 12 Sep 2015 17:47:35 GMT

This afternoon, Mike and I went to a free tai chi try-out session, mostly because one of the paid-for courses that it was trying to get people onto is in the village down the road, so quite convenient. I signed up because I was interested to try it, and to my surprise Mike decided to come along as well.

It was a little bit woo for my tastes, but that may be because the instructor was trying to get people interested in the concept. I could also have done with him doing a bit more than just standing at the front of the room and doing the actions with occasional pointers about how to do it better, but presumably on his regular classes he does get off the mat (as it were) and correct people individually. He came across as a bit nervous, in fact.

I struggled a bit because some of the moves were vaguely close to Pilates ones but slightly different, so I'd keep getting to a certain point and then realising that my foot was pointed instead of flexed, and similar.

We were surprised by the mix of people: Mike was the only bloke, which surprised me a little, but also there was pretty much no one between about my age and about Mike's, which was odd: I'd vaguely expected to be the youngest person there.

As we were leaving, we mentioned that we were thinking about the local course, and he said that he wasn't sure it would be running as there wasn't enough interest. I guess we'll sign up anyway and see what happens?

When I was out picking tomatoes this afternoon, I found a few (in the back garden bed, which is likely to be the coldest place) that had what I suspect is a bit of cold damage. I've pulled up all those plants, as we're due to be chilly again tonight, and I'm currently torn between trying to ripen the fruit and making experimental green passata. Online, I can find a few people saying "presumably it would work?", often in threads about making pasta sauce with whole ones, but no one actually saying "I have made this and it is good". Maybe I'll try a jar and get Mike to try it before I decide, but right now there's regular passata on the go (in the Aga, to see if it works: it seems to, as it's reducing nicely).

(I also picked up a sensible-sounding passata trick: bash them with a potato masher and then put them in a colander to let some of the liquid drain off. I know that you can get a Device to de-seed them, but clutter. I did try one batch where I scooped out all the middles, and it did indeed reduce down much more quickly than when I don't. Unfortunately, the reduction in cooking time was about equal to the increase in prep time, and the effort vastly greater, so bugger that. Ditto skinning them: that's what sieves are for. I am tempted to try part-roasting the tomatoes first, though, as people say the flavour's much better.)

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Sloe time

Fri, 11 Sep 2015 15:13:34 GMT

My hands are covered with scratches: it must be sloe picking time!

Mike and I got a bit under 2kg while we were walking Jo, at a good spot we've had our eye on for a while, and then I got a bit over 1kg from our hedge this afternoon, so I think just another kilo to find (probably up at the top of the hill: we rode past there this morning and it looked pretty good at horse-height, at least) and then it'll be time to play "make Tesco's club card algorithm think we're seasonal alcoholics" again.

I've also started off some vin de peche, both the classic peach leaf variety and one using actual peaches that I saw an intriguing recipe for.

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Jelly

Tue, 08 Sep 2015 16:22:20 GMT

I'm feeling only slightly pathetic, today, so I managed to get that batch of jelly finished off, and start a new one. I had a bit of a revelation the other night: as I wrestled the bulging jelly bag onto a cane suspended from the legs of an upturned kitchen stool (as is traditional), I realised that I could probably just use the juice from the steam juicer. I checked the juicer instruction/recipe book, and it does include directions for doing so (including the delightful hint about checking pectin levels in your juice by mixing it with pure grain alcohol).

So, now the juicer's bubbling away with another batch of spicy juice and, if I can resist the urge to drink it all hot from the pan, I'll be boiling that up as well, later.

We're having a bit of an expensive month: not just the car, but also the oil tank has sprung a leak (the guy who fills it up did issue a Warning last time he came that we should replace it, it just never seemed to be got around to), although thankfully the top tip of the guy who came to quote for a new one worked: rubbing a bar of soap over it has temporarily stopped it (good, as we were running out of buckets I was prepared to put oil in!).

We've been talking about a new Aga almost since we moved in, as our FrankenAga is a bit ~~crap~~ temperamental, and since we had the solar panels (and with the inducement of being able to still use the hot plates to make toast and crumpets in summer!) I've come around to Mike's view that we should get an electric one provided it was a 3-oven one so I could bake. Their website listed a £1500 trade-in special offer for classic Agas, so Mike popped into the local shop this afternoon and the actual Aga shop called him back later: another, £2k trade-in, offer ends today, did he want to get his credit card out? After a bit of dithering, he did on the understanding that if Monday's visit from an engineer vetoes it then there will be a refund.

Given that I'm insisting on new fencing around the stableyard before the winter, we'll be dipping into the savings shortly, but it's all long-term stuff so it's not too bad.

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