This week’s meal plan – garden a go go!

Posted by louisa on Monday 27 June 2011 in weekly meal plans | 8 comments

Our first Swillington Farm meat box arrived last Thursday night – all the (fresh) meat we’re eating this week (and hopefully for the next three weeks!) will come from that. Most of it went in the freezer so we’ll have it across the month and like a veg box, we don’t have any choice in what’s in there, so it should encourage us to some try different things. We had some of the bacon & some of the sausages for breakfast over the weekend and I also jointed the chicken – we froze the breasts (which each weighed over 250g/half a lb!) and had the rest on Saturday/Sunday. Tuesday’s soup comes from stock from the carcass – it was supposed to be for eating today but it’s far too hot for that today!

As for the title for this one – the garden is finally providing! We’ve been having spots of salad for a few weeks (much later than last year for some reason) but various things are finally starting to shine. I think there is something from our garden – either veg or eggs – in every meal, hurrah :)

Sunday breakfast – eggs & sausage
Sunday lunch – leftover chicken & potatoes, with homegrown garlicky broad beans & salad
Sunday dinner – dining out – curry

Monday lunch – marrow flower fritters with salad
Monday dinner – rump steak with purple sprouting broccoli, homegrown potatoes, broad beans & salad

Tuesday lunch – chicken & sweetcorn soup
Tuesday dinner – pasta with chorizo, pepper & homegrown courgette

Wednesday lunch – leftover chicken & sweetcorn soup
Wednesday dinner – chicken jalfrezi with lemon rice

Thursday lunch – bread & meat with broad bean salad
Thursday dinner – leftover chicken jalfrezi with lemon rice

Friday lunch – curried egg mayo with bread
Friday dinner – homemade pizza, with salad

The weekend of exploding cider bottles

Posted by louisa on Monday 20 June 2011 in homebrewing | 7 comments

It actually started on Thursday night/Friday morning. I woke up to find Lily-dog shut out of the kitchen and John inside the kitchen looking confused. There were bits of glass on the floor but not enough to be a whole bottle or glass – but he couldn’t find the rest of whatever had broken. He was inspecting the empty beer bottles from Wednesday night’s beery evening when Detective Louisa stepped up and suggested the cider – which was housed at the other end of the kitchen, about 4m away – may be to blame. Lo and beyond, the rest of the shattered bottled was found.

John cleared up and put a towel over the remaining bottles – just in case any others decided to go bang. And go bang they did – yesterday morning while I was relaxing (well, gaming) on the sofa in the next room. I have no idea how we missed the first one – the second boom was LOUD. It turned out three bottles had broken – presumably one had set the other too off, and they had also shattered the glass of the kitchen clock (which was above the bottles) and left deep scars in its plastic. Thankfully the towel had caught most of the glass – but sticky cider dripped everywhere.

While he was cleaning up that lot, he put the remaining five bottles into a strong plastic bucket, with a piece of wood on the top, weighed down with a 2kg weight. Just after he’d finished cleaning up, one of those bottles exploded too – the force of the explosion didn’t break the other bottles but it was enough to lift the wood & weight to spray small bits of glass in the vicinity of the bucket. John immediately decanted the cider from the remaining bottles into strong plastic bottles and vowed that it would be drunk by his family that afternoon (it was).

We think a few things might have caused the explosions:

1. a little too much sugar added at the last stage
2. not enough air space left in each bottle
3. the bottles weren’t a strong as they appeared – he’d reused old shop-bought cider/beer bottles as instructed by experts/other homebrewers but perhaps they weren’t as strong as they should be. It was the bottles that gave way, not the caps popping off.

Whatever happened though, it was frickin’ scary and definitely something we don’t want to repeat. I can only imagine the damage it would have done to us or the animals if we’d been in the kitchen at the time.

Have you had homebrew explode before? What precautions do take to avoid it?

This week’s meal plan

Posted by louisa on Monday 20 June 2011 in weekly meal plans | 0 comments

Last week’s mostly-eating-from-the-freezer week was good – the closest we’ve stuck to the meal plan for a long time (aside from the beef goulash and “for next week”‘s sausage & lentil casserole swapped places).

This week should see the first not-just-salad crops from the garden – broad beans and new potatoes will definitely feature, and we might get our first courgette too. I heart this time of year :)

Sunday brunch – bacon butties (yay!)
Sunday dinner – roast beef dinner (John went to his mum & dad’s for lunch and brought a plate back for me)

Monday lunch – tomato soup with a pastrami & pickle sandwich
Monday dinner – pasta with tuna, sweetcorn, olives and chillis

Tuesday lunch – leftover pasta with tuna etc
Tuesday dinner – some sort of risotto (whatever John fancies making)

Wednesday lunch – poached eggs (hopefully! going to learn how to make them)
Wednesday dinner – the beef goulash I forgot to make in time last week

Thursday lunch – samosas, salad & pickles
Thursday dinner – leftover goulash

Friday lunch – bread, cheese & pickles
Friday dinner – new potato & broad bean salad (both from the garden, woo), with bacon/pancetta & poached egg (hopefully!)

This week’s meal plan: using up stuff from the freezer

Posted by louisa on Monday 13 June 2011 in weekly meal plans | 2 comments

We’re swapping things around here at the moment, with our formerly sealed coal hole becoming a proper lovely & useful utility room-ette, we’re moving our undercounter freezer down there and have got a more space efficient (and generally more efficient) fridge-freezer for the kitchen. Anyway, long story short, we’re going to have more freezer space in the long run but are using it as an opportunity for a clear out now.

Sunday brunch – sausage & egg sandwiches
Sunday dinner – pasta with John’s special pasta sauce (from the freezer)

Monday lunch – croque monsieurs, since I’ve had a craving for them for weeks :)
Monday dinner – Spanish omelette with chorizo, garlic mushrooms & peppers (to use up some cheap potatoes we got last week), with salad (homegrown!)

Tuesday lunch – sandwiches or fish & chips if Strowger gets his way ;)
Tuesday dinner – spicy smoked mackerel kedgeree (smoked mackerel from the freezer)

Wednesday lunch – curried egg mayo with toast
Wednesday dinner – John out with friends; an on-toast or doggy bag for me

Thursday lunch – tuna and salad in wraps
Thursday dinner – slow cooker beef goulash (beef from the freezer) (thanks to Katherine for the inspiration :) )

Friday lunch – samosas with pickles and salad
Friday dinner – leftover beef goulash

And a note for me for next week – use sausages from freezer to make a casserole :)

Ten things

Posted by louisa on Monday 6 June 2011 in chickens, cooking, DIY, frugal, growing, soap | 2 comments

1. Buff the chicken has been in isolation since last Wednesday since the others started really *viciously* bullying her (as I said on Twitter, it’s disturbing how vicious chickens can be). I think there have been pecking order issues over the last few weeks and it’s stopped her being able to eat properly. She feels very bony (even for a pure breed) and is weak as a result – looking back at old photos of her, the difference is stark. I’m hoping some time by herself and some special food will turn her around but I wouldn’t be surprised to go down one morning to find she’d died overnight. Sigh.
2. We painted the bathroom on Sunday – not the woodwork yet but the second coat of the walls, ahead of the cupboards being fitted tomorrow. One June mini goal down (nearly)!
3. In other housey news, last year we found a hidden coal hole at the front of our house and over the last couple of weeks, we’ve been having it damp-proofed and turned into a utility room. It’s not been cheap but now has a proper full height doorway and is a proper extra room for the house – it’ll free up room in the kitchen too. It should be finished this week, hurrah!
4. While that’s going on at great expense inside, John’s DIY-mad dad is fitting a fence for us outside — to help contain the dog and the chickens a bit more. The fence is going to be rather frugal for a new fence as the lumberyard John’s dad goes to was throwing away about 20 horizontal fencing beams and some posts, because they’d got slightly bleached in the sun so couldn’t be sold “as new” any more. Madness! But useful timing for us!
5. And speaking of freebies, someone was taking a seemingly brand new electric staple gun in its case at the tip last time John’s dad was visiting – they told him it was “broken” but he took it home and found they’d just inserted the staplers in the wrong place. We now have a brand new working electric staple gun for free ;)
6. I never used to use bar soap to wash anywhere other than my hands – it left a film and dried my skin, causing my face in particular to get greasier in compensation. But my olive oil soap leaves my skin clean and soft – and it stays feeling that way for 12+ hours unlike just about every other cleaning method I’ve tried. I very much like it.
7. I made the ugliest soda bread I’ve ever made today – I don’t know what went wrong but it grew really unevenly. Still tasted lovely with soup for lunch though :)
8. Some of my rapini has gone to seed – the heads weren’t big enough to warrant harvesting. Damn the hot spring!
9. Do you make your own quiches? I’m looking for (frugal) store-cupboard recipe quiche ingredient ideas for when we’ve not got much else in — Viksterbean on Twitter suggested antipasti such as olives and artichokes, and that made me think about adding a swirl of pesto too. Any other ideas?
10. Boron would like it to be known that I did not write this post alone. Apologies for the poor quality of my webcam – I only ever use it for these type of pics ;)



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This week’s meal plan

Posted by louisa on Monday 6 June 2011 in weekly meal plans | 0 comments

This one feels less varied than normal – but should be quite efficient as a result and not need too much extra shopping, which I like. :) The shepherd’s pie was originally going to be cottage pie but I found some lamb mince in the freezer. Another win :)

Sunday lunch – Saturday night takeout leftovers
Sunday dinner – … Saturday night takeout leftovers (eyes seriously bigger than our bellies!)

Monday lunch – tomato soup with soda bread
Monday dinner – courgette & bacon risotto

Tuesday lunch – leftover risotto & bread (or if we’re lured into naughtiness by Strowger, fish butties)
Tuesday dinner – shepherd’s pie and veg

Wednesday lunch – curried egg mayo sandwiches
Wednesday dinner – pizza

Thursday lunch – samosas and salad
Thursday dinner – leftover shepherd’s pie and veg

Friday lunch – bread, meat & pickles
Friday dinner – spaghetti carbonara