Wild garlic and serrano ham pizza – mmm!

Posted by louisa on Thursday 21 April 2011 in cooking, recipes, wild food | 0 comments

We had wild garlic and serrano ham pizza for dinner last night. Our friend Strowger has repeatedly advocated wild garlic seed pods on pizza after we both pickled some last year but I hadn’t used the leafy stuff on pizza before.

I won’t do a full recipe – since I would have thought just about everyone reading this will have their own preferred dough & sauce recipe – but I will say I collected a large handful of wild garlic (Ramsons) leaves, which weighed about 50g including stalks – although I didn’t actually use any of the stalks on the pizza — they got sliced off and nibbled while I was cooking :)

I sliced the washed leaves into ribbons and wilted them slightly by frying them very lightly (30 seconds or so) in a drop of oil to mellow the flavour slightly, then immediately put them onto my prepared pizza. I paired it with serrano ham since that’s got enough flavour to hold its own against the WG – and added some flowers afterwards for prettification purposes ;)

And the verdict: well, the short version of thoughts is in the title for this post ;) John said it didn’t taste like any pizza he’d ever had before – but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. I thought the wilted texture was perfect – very soft without being slippery – and the flavour more developed than the sharpness of raw wild garlic.

Next time, I’m almost tempted to leave off the ham though (it was still there but not the star of the show) and just have some different cheese and perhaps some ricotta or sliced mozzaralla – basically a more intensely flavoured spinach-and-ricotta style pie.

Pain in the bum chickens

Posted by louisa on Wednesday 20 April 2011 in chickens | 8 comments

One of our hens, Ginger, is broody.

She’s the first one of ours to give in to her hormones and is being a grumpy lady at the moment.

By and large, I’m letting her get on with it – I tried to talk her out of it on the first day but she wasn’t interested in my efforts to cool down her undercarriage. Since then, I’ve just been randomly turfing/encouraging her out of the nest box a couple of times a day to make sure she’s amply fed and watered.

She’s not really the problem at the moment though. The good lady Buff is.

Yes, you Buff.

As I noted when I was worried she might think she was a boy, she’s considerably louder than all the others. The others buck-buck a lot and sometimes announce they’ve laid but Buff randomly makes a sustained noise that is a cross between a quack and a honk. It’s *annoying* and loud. At first, I thought she only did it when she was annoyed with me – if I’d got too close or tried to douse her with red mite powder – but yesterday lunchtime, there wasn’t anyone near the coop and she was quack/honking (quonking?) away for ages. It’s not constant but it’s sustained for a good 30seconds/minute at a time.

While we’ve all been shut inside behind double glazing, it’s not really been a problem but now the weather is glorious and we’re all out on the patio at every opportunity, I’m worried it’ll annoy the neighbours. They’re pretty easy going generally and we get along, so I doubt it’ll annoy them so much that they’ll say anything – but it’s the lower level of annoyance I’m worried about. The niggling annoyance trickle which ends up considerable bigger than the sum of its parts. I’m worried that noisy girl Buff is going to ruin it for the rest of them (and us) so I’m considering proactively giving her away – to someone with a coop further from their house/neighbours, on an allotment or, frankly, someone who doesn’t care what their neighbours think ;)

She’s a pretty girl, a pure bred Leghorn and now that she’s laying, she does an alright trade in pure white eggs – never the largest but a decent size, and about two every three days or so. Even though she’s not the friendliest bird in the world, she doesn’t bully the others by any means so she would be an asset rather than just another mouth to feed. She’s just a bit noisy.

I do worry that I’m not dealing with a problem, just getting rid of it, which isn’t great behaviour on my part. And I also worry that this situation could have been avoided with greater forethought – I should have thought about the noise factor before getting chicken (although, to be fair, it is only Buff making the problem. When we first got the ISA Browns, our immediate next door neighbour actually commented about how quiet they were and how he hadn’t heard them make any noise at all – unlike the couple of chickens who had previously lived next door on the other side). But on the other hand, it seems better to be proactive about it to save problems in the future.

What would you do? Any chicken people been in a similar position before?

Giving Approved Foods a try

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 19 April 2011 in frugal | 2 comments

My first order from Approved Foods arrived yesterday.

I first heard about Approved Foods back in 2008 when I was sent an email about it through Recycle This – they help reduce food waste by selling items close-to or just-passed their best before dates — the online equivalent of those cheap food stalls at markets or car boot sales. I remember looking at the site but not being too impressed – the range was limited and tended to be cheaper processed stuff I wouldn’t buy, plus there was a hefty p&p cost pretty much wiped out any savings I’d make on the few things I might buy. Fast forward a year maybe, and I’m reminded of it again but still the same feeling. Then over the last few months, the Frugal Queen has repeatedly spoken of its greatness (and cheapness) so I thought it was worth another look.

The range still doesn’t excite me that much but these are what persuaded me to give it a go in the end:

Deidentified (*cough Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference cough*) mixed Provencal olives and Nouvelle toilet tissue. Two things I buy in the normal course of things, especially when they’re on offer – those olives are just about my favourite supermarket olives. Both were about half their usual RRP. I bought 10 jars of the olives – I like them a lot and they’ve got a long date on them. In fact everything I bought had a decent date on them – the only things after their best before date were two bags of crisps (and their date was only a week ago so they’ll be fine).

The p&p is still pretty hefty – £5.25 for normal UK mainland delivery but it’s for up to 25kg worth of goods so it would be possible to split the cost with a friend and still both be able to buy a decent amount of stuff. I tried to persuade Strowger with the lure of the olives but their stones were their downfall so ended up doing it solo instead. Still, even with having to pay the p&p all by myself, my total was £27.13 for a basket of stuff with an RRP of £46.58 – an overall discount of 42%.

Of course, the RRP stuff is slightly meaningless if you usually buy stuff when it’s on offer (as I do with a lot of stuff and almost always do with [recycled] toilet rolls, for example). I also bought some stuff that I probably wouldn’t buy in the normal case of events – for example, some shortcrust pastry mix. The mix will get used so it’s not a waste of money but it doesn’t feel like I’ll be saving any money because I won’t have to buy them next time I go to the supermarket. I did also buy some Jules Destrooper butter waffle biscuits as an impulse buy because they were cheap – and that’s going to cost me a lot in the future because, my God, they’re fantastically moreish.

I can’t see myself buying stuff from there that regularly – I will keep a closer eye on it from now on in case any more of my favourites come up but the p&p still makes it prohibitive for small orders. I did also get a lots of plastic-based packaging – I appreciate that they wanted to keep my precious olives safe with bubble wrap but the big bag of foam nuggets in with my flour (to, presumably, stop it knocking about) made me much less happy from a green point of view.

Have you used/do you use Approved Foods or any other services like that? Any recommendations/things to avoid advice?

Charity shopping, planting and making – my fun weekend :)

Posted by louisa on Monday 18 April 2011 in charity shopping, growing, making, wood stuff | 4 comments

Last night on Twitter, I asked people to put their hands up if they’d had a lovely afternoon in their garden/at their allotment yesterday and I got a sea of hands waving back – it is really bloody lovely out there at the moment, isn’t it?*

On Saturday, I blew my no spending month thing out of the window by going to a craft sale at Kirkgate Studios in Shipley – well, actually, I only bought two balls of wool and a postcard from there but since I was in Shipley… As with most poorer areas, you’re less likely to find exclusive designer goodies going for £1 but with eight charity shops, there is at least plenty of choice.

I bought 13 books. Thirteen! But 10 of them were (drama) work-related and two Monica Dickens books I’ve been considering buying off Amazon/Abebooks for a couple of months, so it wasn’t all spur-of-the-moment spend-spend-spend. Plus, eight of the books were in a 4-for-£1 offer so all 13 books cost £7.70 in total — not too bad. (And I’ve already found seven books to give away under my “buy 2, get rid of 1 old one” rule.)

I also bought a cute small plate to be our kitchen soap dish for 50p, another little dish for 50p because it was a tourist souvenir from Baghdad (and how often do you see those?) and a fake-patchwork duvet cover for £1.50, which I’ll turn into a cheat quilt like Lynsey’s from SwirlyArts made this time last year — again, something else I’ve been looking out for because I love Lynsey’s quilt so I was very happy to find it :)

Anyway, after all that spendery on Saturday, I declared Sunday would be a day for the garden. I didn’t get as much done as I’d hoped (I’ll have to have some time off this week to get the rest finished) but I potted on lots of tomatoes & pumpkins, sowed nearly all my potatoes as well as more lettuce & annual herbs. I also made two new scrap wood planters – not the prettiest but certainly the easiest ones yet.

I believe the sides are old scaffolding planks or similar — John’s dad had a trailer full when we went over the other day. He said “they’ll be great for burning” until he saw me hugging them to my chest and squealing with planter-building delight. They’re about 3ft by 1ft by 8inches deep, with reclaimed decking for the bottom supports. Again, they’ll be lined but I think I’ll see how far I get cleaning them rather than painting them as I like the character of the wood. (Apologies for the somewhat shadowy photo – was in a hurry, camera battery was dying.)

I also made some super quick wire wall mounts for some herb pots in the greenhouse – I’ve run out of room on my staging/the floor at the moment so wanted these little pots (and five with baby sage seedlings in them) out of the way. I’ll have to make sure they don’t dry out too much but they’ll probably be fine for now.

Oh, and I also cleaned the windows for the first time this year on Saturday evening – they were, as you may expect, rather filthy but I did a rather good job, even if I do say so myself – not a single water spot in sight! ;)

* (People in parts of the US still in the soggy tailend of winter and people in the southern hemisphere who are heading into full on winter – sorry to gloat about our sunshine. We’re just not used to this nice weather in the UK and you know, talking about it is our national pastime.)

What did you get up to this weekend? Any frugal fun? Or planting progress?

This week’s meal plan

Posted by louisa on Monday 18 April 2011 in weekly meal plans | 0 comments

Our grow-our-own salad isn’t quite ready – such a shame as it would be very useful this summery week!

(John was out for a family lunch thing yesterday so I just snacked on leftovers/cheese’n’crackers as needed – no meal planning required ;) )

Monday lunch: scrambled eggs on toast
Monday dinner: pasta with tuna, olives, sweetcorn & chillis

Tuesday lunch: bread’n’cheese’n’stuff
Tuesday dinner: risotto – possibly chicken & red pepper, with salad

Wednesday lunch: bread’n’cheese’n’stuff
Wednesday dinner: pizza

Thursday lunch: falafel in pittas with raita and salad
Thursday dinner: hot chorizo & poached egg salad

Friday lunch: samosas and bean salad
Friday dinner: burgers with salad (and any leftover bean salad)

Saturday brunch: sausage sandwiches
Saturday dinner: enchiladas (or possibly a curry with friends)