Further financial faux pas and even more disasterous decisions

lucielle

Morning Moo,
Just wondering what you wormed your chooks with?
L

moo2moo

Why Verm-X of course at £15 for a teeny weeny bottle. I wouldn't be caught dead sticking 25ml of cider vinegar (available from any good supermarket for about 65p a bottle, although puritans insist its the active stuff from the posh farm shops) in a litre of water.

lucielle

Of course you wouldn't, silly me. Thanks
L

moo2moo

We emerged from the v. muddy ratehr quiet car boot sale with a huge pile of paper air rifle targets, 10kg of carrots, one soiltary grapefruit, a punnet of french beans, a childrens book and a huge gammon joint with considerable change from a tenner. We then ventured on to the farm store where chicken feed has gone up £1.50 a bag to £8.50. Eeeek. The spendy elves were on the rampage! We continued on to Mr Ts for the ingredients necessary to transfrom the carrots and somehow ended up with 36 whoopsied kiwi fruit and a cunning plan to make kiwi fruit jam. Had a look at pans whilst we were there but decided not to fork out £25 for a pan simply because its the right sort of size, may as well fork out a whole lot more on the right pan.

Off to feed the starving hordes before commencing operation carrot crusher. Vaguely recall having a shredding disk on the food processor which will be so much easier than grating that volume of carrot by hand.

moo2moo

I may well have a carrot shredding disk in the deep dark bowels of the cupboard but once its out it ain't going to fit back in there. Ended up grating the carrots by hand. The carrot bag is now rather depleted and the washing up bowl I used to slap everything in is rather full and considerably larger than my largest pan. Really need to get my hands on a preserving pan sooner than later, but obviously not today otherwise I won't get the stinky carrot slop into jars.

Couldn't find a kiwi fruit recipe that didn't involve some essential ingredient that I didn't have so ended up improvising by workingon Pam the Jams theory that all you need is fruit, sugar and pectin. Rather a lot of finely scooped and chopped kiwi inards later I added a proportional amount of sugar and bunged in a copuple of apples. The end result is even nicer than anticipated. So nice that DD2 was trying to eat it before it had made it as far as the jars. Ended up with 8 jars at a total cost of £3. Finding jam making surprisingly therapeutic as well as being v. rewarding. Need to find somewhere else to stash the preserve stores though because they're taking over the cupboard.

Whilst on a roll we cooked a portk joint which was generous enough to do last nights dinner and three further family meals which are now in the freezer to stop people (aka OH) munching huge slabs in sandwiches before going to bed. Also whipped up a garlic mushroom lasagne and flapjacks to add variety to the chocolate fudge cake and the ginger cakes in the DDs lunch boxes.

Have been getting more and more interested in the whole self sufficiency thing which clearly isn't practical when ones OH smokes and drinks like a fish, I'm sure theres a happy middle ground whereby I can grow sufficient fruit and veg that we don't need to buy in much over the summer months, obviously this wil require me spending considerably more time in the garden than I usually do but thats quite an appealing thought.

The non woody herbs have now been moved, the bay tree, rosemary and thyme plants are tucked out of the way of any major planting. Now just need to get shot of the tree and see the back of the frost (although not holding my breath on that as snow is forecast again) and I can make a start. Getting rather excited about it although the number of things I planning to grow given the area of ground I'm going to use are rather at odds with one another. May need to work on my list as I'm getting a bit too carried away.

moo2moo

Potentail planting list #1:

Spuds - easy, plus they enrich the soil which is mostly clay.

Beetroot - as the key ingredient for choclate beetroot cake this is an essential

Green beans - easy, fun and prolific

Courgettes - easy, fun and v. prolific with a tendancy to be dog proof

Tomatoes - lots of delicious chutney unless I get side tracked and grow the sweet mini cherry version and then there won't be any surplus to make anything with or even put in sandwiches if DD2 spots them first

Butternut squash - v. tasty but a bit unpredictable and likely to turn into slug feed.

Pumpkins - simply because they look so pretty .... they take up far too much space though.... may need rapid expansion plans

Garlic - although a bit late this year

Peas - because nothing tastes nicer than freshly shelled peas

Clearly I need lots and lots of space and time and a dog who does not trample on everything.

chevalier

normally I would suggest dog proofing the garden. then i remembered what type of dog you have and thought nope that isn't going to work is it. Unless you build a 10ft brick wall around it......which probably would make as much shade as the elm tree you are abou to finish take out...:rotfl:

chev

MrsMoo2U

Try heading over to pippilongstockings thread if you havent already joined in over there. She is a great plantswoman and can advise on lots of things over there. Also she has a little ebay plant selling going on. I have invested in Alice Flowers book which talks about companion plantings to get the most from a small space.

moo2moo

Nine jars of the most time consuming chutney later I'm in chutney eating heaven. Could quite happily sit eating it from the jar with a spoon its that good. Unfortunately its rather expensive to make, however now I've splurged on all the expensive bits it would seem a shame not to make it again, the sooner the better, theres just the small matter of a lack of jars preventing me from doing this.

lucielle

Can you go to the recycling place and get some from there?
L