Jubilee Update

So the Jubilee weekend is upon us and life has been all go.

The Terminator has a lovely case of Jubilee chicken pox. The ducks and chickens are producing eggs at a prodigous rate. So far I’ve cooked a BBQ outside on the coals. A pork and aubergine curry accompanied with cauliflower and beetroot curry and home made naan bread. A beef pot roast and home made vanilla ice cream, but not together. That would be horrible.

The A-Bomb prepared a little Jubilee tea party in the living room. The weather took away thoughts of holding it outside. Which included tea cakes, rose infused tea, strawberries and scones.

These were all nice variations on life as normal. But we have also started off a 10 litre batch of elderflower champange. It’s been a long time since we did any home brewing so this is a nice return and hopefully the product will be up to scratch.

There has been a lot of preparation work taking place to get the house tidier and unpack further following our move. We’re hoping to get some substantial jobs done this year including air con in the bedroms and a complete re-wire of the house.

We have some new arrivals in the form of 3.. no! 4.. no! 5 guinea pigs. Which apprently don’t hunt and eat rabbits to my great dissapointment. Other solutions for the rabbit menace may be needed.

I have a new toy, a lovely red tractor and I’ve enjoyed taking it out to mow the paddock. It’s only small 16 hp 3 cyclinder with a flail mower. But it’s easy to use and does the job in keeping the paddock in check until I can get around to making a wildflower meadow out of much of it.

I’ll try and follow some of these up with dedicated posts in the near future.

Cooking With Monsters – Sausages

A cuumberland style spiralled sausage

I haven’t done any interesting cooking with the monsters for a while, so I decided they might enjoy having a go at some breakfast sausages. I’ve had mixed success in the past with sausages. Despite having all the right butchery equipment I’ve never quite got the consistency or taste quite right. So never one to shirk a challenge I doubled down by including the monsters in the process.

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Homemade bacon

A piece of dry cure bacon that has been cut in half.

Over the years I have tried many different types of self-sufficiency crafts, whether this be home brewing, beekeeping, grow your own or butchery. I have done a bit of curing now and then too, my homemade chorizo didn’t give me botulism. The proscutio was edible, the salt beef was rather good but the pastrami still needs a bit of work. My least successful attempts have been at homemade bacon, although in my defence they were my earliest.

So in the spirit of practice makes perfect I had another go.

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