Today I…

Posted by louisa on Monday 18 July 2011 in DIY, meta | 10 comments

Today I slept late because we were up til the early hours putting the world to rights with a friend. When we’re elected supreme rulers of the world, things are gonna be sweeeeet. ;)

Today I sanded and re-primed the bathroom door frame – we did all the woodwork in there yesterday but the door frame “alligator” cracked so I had to start again rather than getting on with the first coat of the actual paint. Note to self: use the right brush for cleaning your teeth.

Today I filled in various cracks/holes/seams in/around the bathroom woodwork and in the coal hole-turned utility room. I heart decorators’ caulk.

Today I “supervised” John making doughnuts for the first time in reaction/protest to everyone going on about the new giant chain doughnut shop that’s opened up near the motorway. They were pretty good for a first try but have lots of ideas on how we can make them better. However we’ve not sure we *should* make them better – too much temptation.

Today I wandered over to Homebase (our “convenience” DIY store, although we prefer to get major stuff from better/cheaper places further afield) to buy a tile trowel and ended up buying in addition to the tile trowel & spacers: a little pot of green enamel to revamp some lanterns (reduced from £4 to £1), two 3-exposure photo frames (reduced from £10 each to £3), two mini succulents and a mini cactus (to be potted on together for John’s desk), a Calla Lily (pictured above) and some sort of stripey-leaved red Bromeliad — the latter two because I want some more houseplants and specifically at the moment, some colour for the bathroom. Naughty unplanned spending though.

Today I bumped (literally) into the same guy three times at Homebase. It got embarrassing by the third time.

Today I used my new tile trowel with my bought-super-cheap-at-Focus-the-other-week tiles to make a splashback in the former coal hole/now utility room. The tiling gods were smiling down on me for my first spot of tiling in 12 years – the corner to edge of the wall cabinet was exactly four tiles plus spacers, and the corner to the edge of the wall the other way was exact three – no cutting required!

Today I sat down at my computer to do a bit of work and didn’t realise how much tile adhesive I had stuck on my arm until it all dried and flaked off onto the floor. Another note to self: sweep that up.

Today I sanded the bathroom door frame AGAIN because the second coat of primer had cracked in the same way as the first. I decided to get really aggressive with the sand paper and ended up peeling – in pretty big sheets – three layers of paint off the door frame. It seems that somewhere down the line someone really skimped on the prep – the newly exposed level was perfectly glossy. I sanded that back though and primed it for a third frickin’ time and so far, no cracks. Woohoo.

Today I was grateful that John volunteered to cook a big batch of pasta sauce for the freezer so we could have that for dinner rather than me having to stand in front of the stove this evening. He’s serving it as I type this. Final note to self: type faster!

What have you been up to today?

Freezing courgette/marrow flowers

Posted by louisa on Friday 15 July 2011 in cooking, Featured, growing, preserving | 13 comments

We love having marrow flower fritters for lunch at this time of year. Made with eggs, courgettes & marrow flowers from the garden, and served with homegrown salad, they’re very low in terms of food miles – and they’re easy & super tasty to boot.

But at the moment, our 13 (gulp!) courgette plants are cranking out more flowers than we can sensibly use – so I freeze them.

The petals are torn up for the fritters but I think it’s better to freeze them whole so they don’t clump together too much. I treat them like soft fruit – I wash the flowers then spread them out individually on trays before putting them in the freezer. A few hours later (well, probably sooner but I leave them that long), they are frozen solid and can be bagged up for longer term storage.

Because they’re so delicate, they don’t take long to defrost at all – we lift out the half dozen or so we need at a time, and leave them on the side while were gathering/mixing the rest of the ingredients. By the time the flour & eggs are mixed and the courgette chopped and added, they’re ready to go.

I don’t keep them in the freezer for months and months but they’ll certainly be fine for a few weeks, by which point our fresh supply may be waning slightly.

Do you eat marrow (summer squash) flowers? What do you do with them? We’ve got so many that I wouldn’t mind a few more recipes! :)

How we got 14 meals from our Swillington Farm chicken

Posted by louisa on Thursday 14 July 2011 in cooking, eating, frugal | 7 comments

We got our first Swillington Farm meat box delivery at the end of June and are determined to do it justice. I’m keeping a lengthy record of what we did with every bit of it – but as we’ve not got through much of it so far, I thought I’d mention this separately – what we did with the chicken.

As part of our “medium” box, we get “1x large organic chicken” each month. By “large”, they mean large – it was considerably bigger than any I’ve seen for sale at supermarkets. According to the Swillington Farm’s website, the birds start indoors but then “spend the next 2 months free range on organic pasture” and “aged at least 3 months before they reach your plate [producing] larger, better tasting chickens than the average supermarket bird” (supermarket chickens are typically 6-9 weeks in age when they’re killed – ie, 1.5-just over 2 months old). Butchered, our Swillington chicken weighed 2.6kg (5lb 12oz), and they included the liver & neck in a little baggie.

How we used it

• 2 portions: Chicken legs (each weighed close to 370g!) roasted with a light garlic, lemon, ground coriander & black pepper marinade. Cooked with roasted new potatoes, and served with purple sprouting broccoli.
• 2 portions: Chicken wings and some meaty bits from the carcass roasted with the same marinade, with leftover roasted potatoes and garlicky broad beans & salad from the garden.
• 4 portions: Chicken & sweetcorn noodle soup made from stock/meat from the carcass/neck.
• 3 portions: Chicken jalfrezi, made with one chicken breast and our eggs.
• 3 portions: Chicken & pepper jalfrezi, made from the other breast and our eggs.

And the cats had the skin & liver cooked up and blended into a “pate” – which they *loved*.

We have … generous appetites so the portions were still quite large – both in the amount of chicken in each portion and the size of the portion. I thought there was enough meat in all the meals – all the meals felt sufficiently chicken-y for me – but John said he’d have liked a better chicken-to-other ratio in the first jalfrezi.

Update – Jan 2013: We’ve had Swillington Farm meat boxes most months since I wrote this post and we’ve always had equally generous chickens – including some even bigger ones at times! 14 meals from a bird is the rule in this house, not the exception – and 16 meals isn’t uncommon. I’ve written a little update here.

What are your favourite ways to get the most out of chickens?

Things from the last week

Posted by louisa on Wednesday 13 July 2011 in eating, growing | 6 comments

Last week was our “summer showcase” production week at drama, meaning I was there every night, and most afternoons, for either rehearsals or shows. Compared to how unprepared everyone was at the start of the week, they pulled off some great performances on the night/s. I’ve also learnt a lot about what to do, and what not to do, for future years.

That took up a lot of my time – free or otherwise – so I didn’t have time to do much else. I did though have to do some crafty stuff for the show – making props/costumes, including most notably some six-fingered gloves (they looked rather weird!). Drama productions really do draw on a lot of different skills – we didn’t have a lot of costumes/set for these ones but our big shows in April draw on lots of people’s craft skills. If you like sewing or building/painting stuff, and want a new outlet, I’d definitely recommend joining an am dram group.

John did some fab cooking for us to keep me well fed last week, including a lovely lasagne, layered with our homegrown courgettes. Last year showcase-week was the week when all my courgettes grew into marrows without me noticing – this year, I made sure to pick them. We now have a shelf in the fridge full of courgettes and I know there are at least two in the garden that needed picking yesterday. I must make them into ratatouille for the freezer.

After the show finished on Sunday night, I gave myself some playtime on Monday. I made a big batch of pizza base dough – which grew into an insanely big batch in the perfect-rising-temperature porch! – and made lots of bases. As I said on Twitter, my pizza bases don’t usually qualify to be euphemised as even “rustic” in shape so I wanted to try a lot in one go to figure out the best way to do it. By the end of Monday afternoon, I hadn’t perfected it but I feel a lot more confident about shaping them than I did before. I also part-baked all the bases, which seemed to result in a stable-but-very-thin pizza, which made me happy. And we’ve got four part-baked bases (and a couple of batches of dough balls) in the freezer for super quick homemade meals in the future.

On Monday, I also ate some out of date (cured) sausages. I’ve had a long time love of sausages and I thought the feeling was mutual. It was not. Yesterday was a slumped-on-the-sofa and bland food day as a result.

I’m still not feeling perfect today but I thought I should check in. How’ve you been?

75% off seeds at Wilkinsons

Posted by louisa on Thursday 7 July 2011 in frugal, growing | 10 comments

It feels a bit early (in general and earlier than last year) but various shops have started selling off their sow-by-2012 seeds cheaply.

I was near a Wilkinsons yesterday (I heart Wilkinsons – I nearly wet my pants when they opened a big store down the road from our old house in Leeds and it’s one of the things I miss most about living in Leeds. #sadconfession) and popped in to peruse their packets — all 75% off in store (they seem to be 3 for 2 on the website). I went a bit mad at first and ended up putting about a dozen of them back but I did buy…

That’s:

2 x dwarf french beans (Canadian wonder – 120 seeds per pack) = £0.25 a pack
2 x runner bean (white emergo – 40 seeds per pack) = £0.32 a pack
1* x broad beans (Bunyards exhibition – 50 seeds) = £0.56 a pack
3 x nasturiums (trailing single mixed – 35 seeds per pack) = £0.49 a pack
1 x onions (bunching ishikura – 375 seeds) = £0.32 a pack
1 x pepper (“sweet” mini red – 50 seeds) = £0.32 a pack
1 x beetroot (boltardy – 275 seeds) = £0.37 a pack
3 x cucumber (telepathy F1 – 5 seeds per pack) = £0.39 a pack
1 x phlox night scented (200 seeds) = £0.32 a pack
2 x sweet pea (mixed – 25 seeds per pack) = £0.56 a pack

So 17 packs of seed for £7.35, rather than nearly £30 – I’m quite happy with that.

* I would have bought more of these even though they’re branded so more expensive, but this is all they had

Combined with the (18) free packets I’ve collected one way or another this year, and what I’ve haven’t used this year and the seeds I’ll save from my Real Seeds purchases this year (achocha, special peppers etc), I think I’m about all set on the seeds front for next year already – perhaps some more broad beans (as they’ve been fab this year), some courgettes (as I don’t have much luck saving seeds due to being hybrids/cross-pollination, and we heart courgettes) and some basil, but that’ll be it. Hurrah! :)

Apparently Dobbies and the super cheap supermarkets (Aldi/Lidl etc) are heavily discounting their seeds at the moment too.

Have you started buying seeds for next year too? Have you spotted any other seed bargains out there?