The autumn has come to a close and the glut of apples lies o the ground. In which case it’s time to make apple cider.
Continue reading “Home Brewing – Scrumpy Apple Cider Part 1”Home Brewing – Scrumpy Apple Cider Part 1
Homemade BBQ Beans
So I had planned to do another Cooking With Monsters and make Homemade BBQ Beans over a wood fire in the dutch oven outside and get A-Bomb and the Terminator to help me. But the reliable British weather saw fit deluge the country the entire weekend and I wasn’t that motivated. So instead we have GymCee cooks beans in the warm and dry.
I did a fair bit of research online into baked and bbq beans recipes, mostly American in origin and mostly very very sweet sounding. So in the end I decided to cook as I so often do by general instinct with the idea of recipe informing my decisions.
Continue reading “Homemade BBQ Beans”Cooking WithThe Monsters – Courgette and Goats Cheese Soup
As previously mentioned I occasionally have the bright idea to involve my darling children, A-Bomb and the Terminator, in cooking a meal. So this week I thought I’d try courgette and goat cheese soup. This recipe is from a cookbook The River Cottage Year by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. It’s a really nice cookbook, Although there are only a few I use from it. The recipes are themed on an annual cycle split by month, this recipe is from August.
Continue reading “Cooking WithThe Monsters – Courgette and Goats Cheese Soup”Summer Daze – BBQ cooking al fresco
The Great Storm of 2019 – We Will Rebuild
So the great storm has passed and another damn fence panel has fallen over. Added to which one of our bee hives was blown over. Cue many annoyed bees. EmmCee has righted the hive, she’s so brave. And my workbank has increased from put up one fence panel to put up two fence panels and a post. Plus fix any other dodgy posts. Still we will not give in. We will rebuild 😀
First Workbench – Part 2
So unlike the workbench which I finished in two days I have put off completing First Workbench build story for quite some time. What can I say I was distracted by other stories to tell. In my last post I’d completed the legs, stretchers and skirt and was about to move on to assembly.
Continue reading “First Workbench – Part 2”Cooking with the Monsters: Lasagne
So occasionally I feel sufficiently foolhardy that I think cooking with my children is a good idea and this weekend was one of those occasions.
Over the years EmmCee and I have tried lots of different forms of cooking but it’s been a few years since we last made fresh pasta so we thought that might be a fun activity with A-Bomb and the Terminator. So this weekend we decided to include the kids in making lasagne from scratch.
Now given that I wanted this to take less than 12 hours I decided to make the ragu and bechamel sauces myself and only include the kids in the pasta making and assembly.
Continue reading “Cooking with the Monsters: Lasagne”Beekeeping – hefting the hives
It’s that time of year to give the bees a quick heft to check that they have enough food to last them through until the spring flowers arrive. Although I heft the hives each year I am still never confident that there is enough food inside, even for those that feel they have a reasonable weight. So I decide to do what I usually do and that is feed each hive with some fondant, with the rationale that if they don’t need it they won’t eat it, and that is better than them starving. This year I have elected to make the fondant rather than simply buy it which is what I usually do.
Continue reading “Beekeeping – hefting the hives”New additions to the household
So nearly 9 months after Precious passed away we’ve decided to get another cat, or should I say cats. We’re re-homing two cats from the local branch of Cats Protection.
Continue reading “New additions to the household”First Workbench – part 1
So for many woodworkers, myself included, one of the first serious rites of passage is building your own workbench. I’d been using my trusty Black and Decker WorkMate for probably 10 years and it has many qualities but big and sturdy is not foremost amongst them. So once the workshop was in a reasonable state of completion, which for me was floor, back wall and ceiling painted and electrics complete, it was time to start building my first workbench.
Continue reading “First Workbench – part 1”