Goodbye Mrs Flint

Our last original Allotment girl, Mrs Flint, died today.  It was very quick, (thankfully), and not at all expected. She was absolutely fine yesterday.

I'm sorry to see her go as she was a lovely girl. Didn't like being handled, very bossy, but really pretty, and really soft.   Her 3 daughters - Siouxie Sioux, Norman and Not-Norman - are fine.


I guess we'll need to think about increasing the Laydees flock later this year. 

Neck

had a migraine Saturday AND Sunday and part of Monday. Spent Tuesday in bed. Migraine gone,  realised it was caused by shoulder/neck problems.  Have seen Chiro twice and have been taking anti inflammatories.   Have been limiting my time on the 'puter.
Will update properly soon

Hamming it up

The ham has been removed from its Wiltshire cure. It's very black, which isn't surprising given the ingredients (treacle and bitter, for example).


It has been rinsed and is currently hanging in muslin to dry a bit. Then it'll go up into the loft to finish off.

Bye Bye Delilah

Delilah, the last of my 3 original hens,  died whilst dustbathing under the pampas grass.

She was a gorgeous Bluebelle, a bit under 4 years old.  She'd been slowing down a lot over the last few weeks, although was always bright and alert, so we've been expecting it.  It was still a shock to find her, and I' afraid I stood in my garden blubbing like a baby.

'Lilah really was a lovely looking girl, and I'll miss her. 

Eggciting!

We're starting to collect fertile eggs for incubating next weekend.

Just one batch this year,  but a big one. We'll have 2 Incys on the go.

Eggcited!

Funny little girls

Ever since DH let the Girls "help" while digging,  they've rushed over to him every time he goes into their pen.  He often can't move without risking treading on an Expectant Hen.

We rearranged the netting the other day. Now that the grass is growing we wanted to give them a fresh piece and rest another piece.   Poor DH had to move hens every time he was about to put his foot down to press a post into place.

On a separate note,  Roobarb - who up till recently was the least approachable of my Girls - has become obsessed with me.  Every time I go anywhere near her, she starts quivering and then crouches.    SHe won't let me go without me stroking her back, or tickling her neck.

And finally, a couple of snaps...

Pork update

Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam. 

Although we've had a lot of pork lately, it's been in various forms so it hasn't been getting tedious.   Saturday was roast pork hand,  Sunday was the shredded pork in pancakes with hoisin sauce,  Monday was sausage burgers,   Tuesday was ribeye steak (so not pork at all),  Wednesday was home made cannelloni, and tonight was Toad Out of The Hole.

Downside - if there is one -  is that I had cannelloni left over, which I put in the freezer,  and I made the leftover filling into meatballs, which I fried and froze.  We also had to find space for the brawn,  so the freezer is still full to bursting. 


We're low on beef (we ate quite a bit before we butchered the side of pig, so we'd have space in the freezer), and I'd like to order some more... but we need to eat a space first. 


I think we'll have something unfrozen tomorrow, and then see where we're at on Saturday.

Brawn before brains

We've made the brawn, but we're a bit porked out at the moment (we  had roast pork yesterday, pork with hoisin sauce this evening, and we've having leftover sausage tomorrow).  So, we've packed it and we're going to freeze it for later.

We've also made pork stock with the bones (roasted the bones first),  we had so much stuff for stock that we had to use the pressure canner as a pressure cooker.

Ham is still sitting in the fridge in its Wiltshire cure; bacon still dry curing in the fridge as well. 

Pork with hoisin sauce

Following on from butchering our half pig, we had a large hand of pork (3.4kg) yesterday for dinner, as we had friends around.  I slow-roasted it, using Jamie Oliver's recipe for bone-in pork shoulder,   allowing extra time for the middle part of the cooking (6 hours instead of 4.5).  It was fantastic.  Moist, juicy, tasty.  (No good if you like your pork sliced, this was fall-off-the-bone-in-chunks meat.

This evening for dinner we made piadines, which are an unleavened bread-type affair. We make these when we want to have "fajitas".     We shredded (scuffed about with two forks, in the manner of the waiters at chinese restaurants) some of the leftover pork and we made "pancakes" with the piadines, hoisin sauce, finely sliced cucumber and finely sliced spring onion.

OMG, it was delicious!

I've spent years not eating pork because when I think of it I think of dry squeaky meat.  These other cuts are such a revelation to me!

This will definitely be a regular feature on our leftover roast pork menu!

Gnom gnom gnom.

At last!

Roobarb (Egg from one of the Welsh Blacks who is mainly Indian Game) crouched for me today, for the first time!  

And I think we have a first egg from her.   She's 45 weeks old.  Even older than Jasmine, my Welsummer, was when she eventually decided to lay.

Of course I did the egg dance in the garden,  whoo hoo!

Lard-i-dah pics

I've never really rated lard before... but making our own has made me look at it differently.    


The front jars have liquid lard in, only just rendered. The one on the left is half full.  The jars behind have lard in which had been out of the oven for about half an hour and was starting to set....

 

And this picture shows the set lard.  It is really white, and looks like face cream. There is no smell at al

Dinner update

Roast pork was perfect.  Very tender, very moist. Not overcooked at all.
 

Lard-i-dah

As soon as the lemon curd was in the souffle dishes, and the remainder in the jars,  we put the fat from yesterday's pig into two roasting dishes and popped it in the warm oven to render down.

After 30 minutes we already had quite a lot of liquid,  so DH strained it into a jug and put the rest of the fat back in the oven.   We then poured the hot fat into hot (sterilised) jars and put on hot (sterilised) lids.  It looks amazing! It's a light golden colour, and incredibly clear. It smells clean too. 

It'll solidify into white lard, and I'm looking forward to trying it as it'll be such a pure product.

We're also going to try roasting tonight's potatoes in some of it.  Shirley says it's only bettered by goose fat,  so let's see.

Good job S&K don't mind being subjected to these experiments!

Smells like a Brewery in here

So, today our good friends S&K are coming to dinner.  We're having pork (of course, that's the whole reason for inviting them!) and I thought I'd try Jamie's slow roast pork recipe.  It takes 6 hours, but is for a 2 kg joint.  My joint is 3.5 kg, so I spent a frustrating few minutes this morning trying to work out how much to increase the cooking time to.

In the end, it meant that I needed to get the Pork on *immediately* .   It was still cold from the fridge, so I've increased the initial blast of Gas 7 (180, 160Fan) from 30 mins to 45 mins.   I then covered in foil, and turned the heat down to gas 3 (150 fan) and set the timer for 6 hours (1.5 hours more than Jamie's recipe).


DH came home from doing the allotment chickens,  and started to make sausages.  I did the calculations for him, and weighed out the seasoning and rusk, and left him to it. I braved the town centre to get vegetables for dinner, bits for the ham cure, and other bits.  I'm never going into town on a Saturday again.


When I got home, DH had made one enormous batch of sausages, and was busy bagging them up.    The 3.1kg of sausage meat allocated to this batch turned into 4 kilos of sausages.     


I started to make the lemon curd for tonight's dessert, while he made the second batch.   1kg of sausagemeat turned into 1.3 kg of sausages.  They smell divine.


DH started to make the Wiltshire Cure for the ham.   We've found several recipes for Wiltshire Cure,  all different.  In the end we settled on Hugh's recipe,  so DH ended up boiling up a huge vat of cure, which included 1kg of treacle and 3 litres of beer. Boddington's was on offer, so that's what we had.    


The sboiling mixture smells gorgeous, very malty and beery - in a good way.  Smells like a brewery in here.

Telling Porkies

So, today we collected our half pig, and spent 5 and a half hours with Shirley teaching us how to convert it into the cuts we wanted.

What a great day!  I'm exhausted, my back aches; and we're currently still going, as we're making brine to cure a ham and the head.

First we learned to cut the half carcass into the four primary cuts.  This was relatively easy to do.  Having said that, if we decide to butcher our own half carcass next time (if we live long enough to eat all this pork and need a second half), I'll ask her to break it into the primary cuts as 4 pieces are much easier to move than 1 complete side!


SHirley had sent us some information in advance and had asked us to think about what sort of things we wanted to get from the side.   So, faced with the 4 primary cuts (belly, loin, leg, hand), we went through the things we had decided.


Belly:  one part for roasting,  one part for bacon
Hand: top part - shoulder - for roasting,  bottom part -  hand - for roasting
Leg : part to be used to make our own ham; rest to be processed into cubes or mince
Loin: 9 huge loin chops;  rest of loin processed into cubes or mince (we could have had more chops, or made bacon; but only DH eats pork chops,  and we alrweady had a load of belly for streaky bacon).


As we processed the bits,  we had a bowl for "sausages",  a bowl for "mince", a bowl for "diced", a bag for "lard",  and a bag for "rubbish".     


Of the parts mentioned, we ended up with:
Mince: 1.4 kg (bagged in 250g or 300g packs)
Chops: 3.4kg]
Diced: 2.7kg (in 250g or 300g packs)
Offucts for sausages: 4.1kg
Leg (for ham): 3.4kg
Hand (for roasting): 3.525kg
Shoulder (=spare rib joint for roasting): 2.95kg
Hock: 626g
Belly (for bacon) 1.630kg
Belly (for roasting) 1.9kg
Loin Joint (wither for roasting or breaking down to make diced/minced pork: 1.9kg


In addition I have as yet unweighed fat, for larding;  half a head, for brawn;  and 2 pigs trotters.


We're currently making the brine to deal with the head and the ham;  and we'll shortly be dry curing the belly for the bacon.


I'll write more when I have more information.

The slightest whiff off Spring...

..and I have to throw open windows and doors to let the house breathe.

And then I find myself emptying the living room of furniture so I can get the dust bunnies and tumbleweed,  and give the floor a good scrubbing.   Then leave it to dry with the fresh air blowing through.

Or, perhaps more accurately,  I start by moving one of the sofas into the middle of the room and am horrified at the number of lost treasures I find under there, all nestling in tumbleweed and dust bunnies.  And because the sofas have electric bits to lift up the legs, I can't actually move them that far,  so it becomes a dance of military precision: move furniture, sweep floor, wash floor, scrub bits; whilst part A is drying,  move furniture elsewhere in the room and go through the same  process; while B is drying, do it in a third area.  Then move A back, revealing D to be cleaned, etc etc etc.   Eventually, all done and moved back.  And clean.  Until I light the stove anyway.

The next whiff of Spring will probably see me doing all the curtains in the house.  Unless I happen to be cleaning another room at the time

Shampoo Champagnoise

2011 is a Significant Anniversary for us.

In fact, it's made up of series of events each of which is worth celebrating for its significance..

Yesterday was one such day.  It was a Noteworthy occasion.  We debated whether to go out to dinner to celebrate, but decided not to.   It was, however,  important enough to open something special to toast with.

I'm not that keen on Champagne, but I do like a variery of other wines made in mehode champagnoise.     I opened it last night, being careful to twist the bottle not the cork.    There was no shaking or disturbance.  The cork didn't fly off, it came out correctly.  But then the contents erupted.  In a shower of champagnoise, I put the bottle on the table and watched, everything in slow motion.  There wasn't any point trying to cover the top of the bottle, that would have just made the contents evacuate over a wider area.

The table as sodden.  My hair was sodden. My clothes, the chairs, the floor....  In total, over half the bottle evacuated.

But it tasted delicious. What was left of it, anyway.

Teeny weeny egg

Another pic from my camera.

Looks like a Cadbury's mini egg.

Bathing beauty

I've just been downloading some pics from my camera, and I found this one.

Custard hadd a particularly poo-ey bottom, and I had to give her a quick bath and blow dry

Done, And Ouch.

Well Milly eventually laid her egg, and I was able to go and empty the nest box, scrub it, jet wash it, Poultry Shield it.  I also tried to clean the roof with the pressure washer. At some point I realised that I was bitterly cold, and I came in to get a warm coat and warmer gloves.   I didn't finish that bit, which I'm sure I'll regret.

Then I jet washed the nest box divider. It's wooden, so I put it in the house (our house) to dry overnight. I've put the single nest box wall back in the coop for now.  As they've all been trying to squash in to the same nestbox, perhaps they'll prefer it.  But actually I'm in no doubt the Girls will voice their disapproval tomorrow morning.

I then got some old towels and dried everything,  and then started to put things away.   It's surprising how long it takes to re-roll up the extension lead, and the hose,  and the pressure washer bits when one is cold and tired.

Then, poo trays back in and lined with Aubiose.  The back, back on.   Fresh Aubiose in the nestbox.  Everything away.

And my back hurts. A lot. 


I have a Chiro check up tomorrow, fortunately, so she can take a look.  I'm off to try a steam bath to see if that helps.