So much for resolutions!

Well I tried, but today had many 'other' things to do, including shopping, making dinner for 8, tidying up after Christmas, can I continue making excuses.

In hindsight, the chicken tardis was a bad idea. It is outside the bedroom window and the rooster set off at 3am. I had watched him in the previous pen and he wasn't crowing yet, just chose this morning to do his first practise. Because of the dinner tonight I wasn't able to catch him and move him away from under the window, so I guess it's ear plugs tonight.

Dinner was a success, I covered chicken breasts in ready-made bolognaise sauce, then wrapped it all in a puff pastry parcel. We ate this with red cabbage, al dente, and special mashed potatoes.  Followed by 'no wheat' chocolate cake.

I can't eat wheat and have found I can substitute rice flour for wheat flour and make a reasonable cake using a traditional, 4,4,4,2 Victoria sponge recipe. It doesn't rise as much, but tastes good. It was chocolate flavour - well what else?

Still signs of Mother nature in the garden , above ivy on the drain pipe. Ironically I can't get it to grow indoors, but it is wild where I don't want it.

Seed pods.

Cyclamen on the kitchen window sill, it likes the cold and is still flowering nicely.

That's all for today. See you tomorrow.

Resolutions and good intention.

Happy New Year!

So here we are 2013. My resolutions are to spend a minimum of 30 minutes in the garden / greenhouse each day. Grow all our own vegetables. Spend more time doing the things I like. Put lots of effort into my internet shops. Oh and blog daily.

Did any of this happen? Why yes - here is the proof.

Chicken Tardis. Mobile pen to let the chickens weed the path without having to use any weedkiller, completed today.

Satellite dish finally moved to the top of the chimney after 7 years of intermittant TV. The signal used to be cut betweek may and November once the trees had all their leaves.

Mint cuttings, overwintering in the greenhouse.

View from the field looking towards the house.

Last years kiwi's - only about an inch long and hard as bullets - perhaps this year.

Life in the pond - today a sole water boatman.

So yes all resolutions accounted for today - watch this space.

So much to tell you....

Hello, so it is now thursday and I have been wanting to write since tuesday.  Tuesday nights I teach bellydance to a group of 15, a mix of French and British, in a village hall, in the middle of nowhere, central France.

We started up over 5 years ago after I asked in our local Mairie where the nearest class was. The secretary looked at me like I had horns and smiled ' noone here does bellydancing, this is France'.  After I sulked for a while and totally gave up on the idea, it travelled round the grapevine (many of those here hahaha) and came back to me. I was asked by a local lady to start a class in our village and it started there....

Anyway we have started to learn some Bollywood moves this session up to Christmas. I find the moves on Youtube and make up a choreography to music I have at home.  It is great fun and much faster than the bellydance we are used to.

I have sold 24 of our chickens. I placed an advert on a french web page and within 5 minutes had 2 buyers wanting 12 each.  The first lot of girls go tomorrow. We really have far too many after we hatched 11 and were given another 16. I am keeping some of the prettier ones who should lay some pretty blue eggs in spring. 

Every time we walk out the front door we are followed immediately by 30 chickens and 4 ducks (all the ducks are called Pilchard).  video to come soon.....

Morning Valley Soaps

Rachel has a great shop here I can literally smell and taste her soaps just from the pictures. Why don't you have a look and see if you can smell them too.

I am now working on the principle that 'what goes around comes around'. Actually I always have and probably always will. Now some would disagree and say 'why do something to benefit someone else at no benefit to yourself', well it's just something I do.

Until June this year I was working as a home help here in France, looking after grannies and grandads, doing all the things that most people wouldn't dream of. It does come naturally to me, I guess because I like people.

I had a works accident and now have a frozen right shoulder. Yes I am right handed too! so now I am back to doing another of my favourite things - making and creating.

Today I knitted 2 neckwarmers on my machine (shoulder doesn't permit hand knitting) which I will be listing on http://www.etsy.com/shop/FrenchFabrics within the next few days. Tomorrow I have a full day planned out with ironing and photographing all the linens I bought on Sunday.

So today share the goodness and go and do something willingly and freely for someone else and if you want to share it then you can as a comment below. ;)

New e-shop link

Morning, it is sunny and not too windy today. I hope to hang out all the beautiful French linens that I bought yesterday and photograph them for my shop.

I found a great shop today

heart and home

Have a look at her beautiful paintings. Yogi is offering a place to link your shop.

Having done so I am now offering the same - see side bar on the right.

Be creative.

Shoulder

So I have another full blown frozen shoulder. It limits so many things, especially work. I have been on eht interweb and hopefully linking up all my efforts. I had thought it would be a good idea to keep everything seperate, but it is all like a wheel with me as the central spoke, so here I am spoking to you.

Have a blustery saturday

So I'm back!

Yes I seem to have been away a long time. Well I was working as a homehelp with some facinating French elderlies. Details will appear.

Todays contributions is food. So in the oven is one leg of venison. One pot has chicken soup and one pot has a venison stock in the making.

For the soup -
Yesterdays chicken carcass from the roast chicken, then chicken curry has been boiling for about 2 days, just with water and nothing else. I strained the liquid and discarded the rest.

I added rice, tomato juice from 8 fresh tomatoes, 1 teaspoon of curry paste and 8 potatoes and 4 carrots. The result is.....




YUM. I added a little sweet chili sauce on the plate, and yes it was very good.


The leg of venison was too large to fit in my casserole so I cut it in two at a knee joint. The larger part is in the oven with water and 2 chicken stock cubes. The lid is on and it has been simmering for about 2 hours now.

The smaller piece is in a pot with 1 onion and water so far. Simmering quietly for soup or stew for tomorrow.

I mixed some flour, sugar, eggs and vegetable oil into a batter and laid this onto a bed of apple and pear. All went into the oven and the result is...


Quantities well .... some flour, less sugar, 4 eggs and some veg oil. Cooking time - at least 2 hours in the wood oven at some degrees. Sorry I can't be more specific, this is a work in progress.

Here it is and yes it was good. A fruit base with a topping of sweetness, not a sponge, not a crumble, not a cake. So I don;t know what to call it, but it was good.

Free Fuel - sawdust cooker, rocket stove.

Well it's far too long since I wrote here, but I / we have finally cracked the 'free fuel' with sawdust burner. We have been pondering this for over a year and this winter with thought and experimenting we have enough good results to share this knowledge.

If you have a top loading log burner or wood fired cooker you can use dry sawdust (not shavings) and get a good hot fire that lasts between 2 - 24 hours depending on the size of container, packing, and dryness of the dust.

Basically you line the bottom of your burner with tinfoil (aluminium foil) and make a single hole in the centre, about 1.5 inches diameter.


Then place a wick from the burn chamber down to the ash bin underneath where you will light the sawdust. We have found that a strip of cotton cloth about 4 inches long x 1 inch wide works well.


Then place a tube vertically over the hole with the wick up the bottom of the tube. The tube should be about 1.5 inches wide - you can use wider - it increases the burn rate. The tube can be plastic, metal or cardboard - you take it out after packing.



Then start putting in the sawdust - about 3 to 4 inches, then pack it down firmly with something sturdy - a log in our case.



Add more dust and pack again, continue like this until your burner is about 2/3 full. The more you pack the sawdust the longer it burns.



Then gently and slowly pull the centre tube out of the dust. This leaves a central chimney which is where the burn will start.



Light the wick from the ash box and that's it.



The burner gets very hot and will smoulder for a long time.



We did this burn for 3 hours, then added logs to the middle to get our oven hot enough to bake in.



After 5 hours from lighting there is still sawdust around the edges and corners of the burner and in 3 hours it raised the temperature in the room by 3 degrees.


Shaving logs to come next and outdoor camping or BBQ burners.

How to make a recycled bottle garden

Take an empty plastic bottle, without its top, and cut a 3-sided flap/door in the middle third.


Then fill one third with compost.


Cover the bottom third with old compost bag or card or paper to protect the roots from direct sunlight.


Make a hole to plant your seed or transplant your seedling.


Plant seed and cover with compost and water a little.


Wind wire or tie string round the neck of the bottle and hang on a wall.

You can use this in a window too - hanging or freestanding. You will need to water less often because the bottle creates its own micro climate.

When the plants become too big you can either cut off the door or cut the top off the bottle.

Happy planting!

Greenhouse

The greenhouse is filled with seedlings. We had a few hot days to start everything off, but now we have rain. So all change and we have installed guttering on the back of the garage and greenhouse to catch as much rainwater as we can before the real heat arrives.

Many of my pots this year are toilet roll inners with a milk carton outer. Once the seedlings are up I will plant the loo rolls in the ground and replace with the next batch.

Banana sculpture

Just thought you might like to see a different way to eat a banana. The artiste is 2.

More hatchlings

Just one left to hatch - it is cheeping - and one that might not hatch at all.

The incubator stuffed with chicks.









The little one that wasn't quite right - its umbilicus wasn't absorbed properly.

Hatching Cou-nu eggs

So I'm not used to blogging yet, here are the chicks in reverse order haha....






The eggs started peeping last night at midnight and the first hatched today at lunchtime. So far there are 4, hopefully more later.

New Items on my DaWanda shop.

Here's a quick preview of todays goodies. For more go to the link at the right hand side.

Rubber eggs.

Well not rubber really, more shell-less. They are perfectly formed and edible, just missing a shell.

Lucky chickens!

Valentines Day

Saturday 14th February 2009 Happy Valentines Day!!!

So how many Valentines did YOU get?

I spent the day with 2 children and 3 helpers, Other Half is sick in Switzerland with MANFLU.

This morning we went to visit our ‘summerhouse’ and spoke to the farmer next door who informed us that they had calculated how much they owed us for the yearly rental of our field and it came to 84kgs of wheat or a cash equivalent (about 20euros). We will take the wheat and feed it to the chickens. Our land is slowly working for us.

This afternoon we went to visit friends who have a goat farm for making goats cheese. This month is when all the babies are being born so the farmer has a short holiday until all the goats can start to be milked again. The children sat in the pen with all the babies who were away from their mothers. The herd of 30 females plus one buck have produced 50 babies which will mostly be sold. They are long legged, long necked goats and all of a calm disposition. We saw round the dairy and were explained the whole cheese making process and returned home with 2 cows milk cheeses. The farmer sells the cheeses at the local makets.

Wood fired quiche

Wed 11th Feb.

How to cook quiche on a wood fired stove.

Start to heat up the fire an hour before you want to eat. Small logs burn quicker and faster than big ones.

Take your ready rolled pastry packet out of the fridge and let it reach room temperature, about 15 minutes.

While pastry is reaching room temp. start to cook lardons (bacon) and onions in a frying pan.

When the pastry is ready lin a baking tin with it on its greaseproof paper.

When lardons and onions are cooked put them in the pastry lined tin.

Add finely chopped vegetables – broccoli, sweetcorn, peas – your choice.
Add grated cheese to the tin.

Crack 6 – 8 eggs (2 eggs per person) into a jug, add about 150 mls of milk, season to taste and whisk.

Cook in the oven for 30 minutes, turning every 15 minutes to stop burning. Timing varies depending on the heat of your oven.

Serve and enjoy.

Musee des Blindes, Saumur

Sunday 8th Feb 2009

It was cold again last night and we had a slight bit of snow again. Yesterday we went to Saumur to the tank museum with helper no.51, 2 children and me. It wasn’t an easy place to get to though we have been there 3 times already.

On the way into the town we saw a sign for Buffalo Grill and decided to have lunch there before going to the museum. So we turned left at the roundabout and into a huge industrial estate ( we could see the Buffalo Grill) drove all the way towards Buffalo grill and couldn’t get to it. So we came out, went back the way we came and still couldn’t get to it. Went back round a roundabout and headed off to town to go to McDonalds.

Came off the first roundabout and turned into l’Eclercs. Wrong. Back out and joined the motorway. Wrong, drove over the river, turned, came back and finally got to McD’s. Had lunch and then the same sort of fiasco to get to the museum. We took another 2 wrong turns before we got to where we should have been.

The museum is huge and has hundreds of tanks all grouped in various rooms – Allies, french, German, Warsaw Pact etc. Biggest child loved it, smallest child spent most of the time jumping off concrete blocks.

You can find the museum at www.musee-des-blindes.asso.fr, it is open all year except 25th Dec and 1st Jan.

Candlemas Day - Groundhog Day

Groundhog Day in USA, Candlemas Day in Europe – what does it mean? Well basically if the sun shone today it means still 6 weeks of winter to come and if it was cloudy then winter is on its way out. We will see.

It was our local livestock market today and I took 2 helpers with me. It was grey and raining so not surprisingly there wasn’t a full complement of stalls and not many people either. We bought 2 tan ‘cou-nu chicks’ at 6 weeks old and 4 ‘souche lourde’ which are meant to grow bigger than the cou-nu’s. Already they are quite a weight.

The bugs were found in a log split for the fire, anyone know what they are?? The other photo was taken yesterday, down by the playpark.

Wood fired cookers

30th January 2009

Friday

Cooking on a wood fired stove. We started cooking on wood in November 2008. Our first cooker was beautiful. Concentric rings on top that you lifted out to suit the size of cooking pot, side boiler to heat cooking water and a little oven. We rescued this little beauty from a friends ruin of a garage. After sanding with a ‘soft’ angle grinder we managed to clean off all the rust and installed the stove in our new kitchen.

It burned well and we managed to cook on it, but the firebox was just a bit too small at 40 cm logs for heating our 200m cubed room. It also didn’t burn overnight. So we changed it for an ’ugly’ wood fired stove with a bigger firebox.

Stove no.2 heats the room reasonably well ( we have had temperatures down to –14* this winter) and cooks well too. Our biggest scare with it was one day we didn’t shut down the back flue after lighting it and it was fully open for 30 minutes. When we came back into the room there was an amazing thundering noise and the flue pipe was glowing bright red like a nuclear reactor. The photo has not been edited.

How to roast chicken in a range : -

Heat your oven 30 minutes to 1 hour in advance of putting in your chicken.
Place the chicken , breast down, on a roasting tray with a complete cover of tinfoil.
Leave in the oven for as long as it takes. Todays has taken 4.5 hours so far and is still not done, but when it is it will be wonderful.
Check with a meat thermometer before eating. The juices should always run clear.

Not a very technical recipe – wood cooking is slow and the food is ready when its ready and not before. The tinfoil keeps the moisture in during cooking. At the end we usually light our ‘normal’ gas oven and heat it to ‘8’, give the chicken half to an hour cooking to finish it off and then put the roast potatoes in for the last half hour.

Sometimes we sprinkle olive oil and herbs on the chicken before cooking, today we didn’t.
The chicken weighed 3.5kg and came from our own stock. We prepared it yesterday.