'supporting each other through really tough times'

sevenup01

Wow - Shegar! 41 hens???? Your garden must be huge! I would love to be able to have a few hens but i only have a front garden and i dont feel that they would be safe from the large numbers of foxes we have in the area. I hope all your new ones pick up and start to look healthy soon.
I have done my shopping and had a small shock - morrisns hadve got easter eggs out!:mad: Its far too soon.
I have also had one of my lovely brothers visit with his wife and two of their children. I love my brother and get on very well with his wife so it was a lovely surprise:j
For those of you who mentioned going running - you can carry on with that all you like but i will not be joining in as i dont want black eyes thank you very much!
Fuddle - enjoy your gardening and i will admire any photos of your garden that you may post. I hate gardening but i do love a well looked after garden.
Dinner tonight is pork chops with jacket potatoes followed by bananas and custard.
Tomorow is baked bean lasagne. No idea what it will taste like but i dont care - i am cooking it and the kids and i will be eating it.

ginnyknit

We have baked bean lasagne all the time, layer of leftover spag bol, lasagne, layer of beans, lasagne, top it with a 29p cheese sauce from Mr A bread crumbs and any bits of lurking cheese and Bobs your auntie. Costs pennies and fills my men up a treat!

Roasted all the odd spuds up today and got some ys pork chops. leftover carrots and turnip, dollop of gravy and DS thought it was Christmas :rotfl: I really like this no nonsense approach to cooking, if in doubt freeze it and serve it up as something else. The pickled red cabbage went down well with Ds, he loves pickles of all kinds and thinks it finishes off a meal. I used the vinegar from pickled onions and just added shredded cabbage that had been salted over night and rinsed. Just need a recipe for onion chutney now as I am addicted to it, it must be simple I think.

Thriftkitten

Well caved in on the budget and took dd2 11 to the cinema this afternoon to watch Madagascar3 it was hillarious and lovely to spend some quality time together stuffing our chops with popcorn.
Shegar i have 10 chooks, started off with 2, then someone asked me to rehome 3 that had lived in a garage most of their lives and were on their last legs... they looked very pale, one had an almost white comb flopped over and they only had a handful of feathers between them. They did look so ill compared to my others, so I know what you mean, all 3 of them were pre occupied with pecking eachother, guessing that was through boredom, but they soon got out of the habit after i used hanging baskets low down on the fence filled with broccoli ends etc... we even had a one of my original girls( a brahma i think) go broody and we acquired 6 fertile eggs and did the whole 21 day thing and big momma now has 3 girls and mr coca doodle. great fun candling the eggs with the kids to see how far along they are, much to big momma's disgust, but she needed to stretch her legs and eat/dustbath over the 21 days. I gave my newbies some live yoghurt mixed in with their pellets and these days I am getting an egg of every one most days, except the babies but they are due to lay at any monent, I think they are about 23 weeks. Mr cocca doodle is pushing his luck and I think he is gonna have to go to our friends farm as he is finding his voice and wont go down well (council house rules) even though we have an 80 foot long garden with alottment where they live, 5:30 in the morning is not a happy time to be woken up!! Anyhoo I have the pleasure of my friends little preemi baby tomorrow, 3 months nearly and barely 5 pounds while she lets her hair down.... after i said yes she duly informed me he is feeding about every 3 hours:eek: so will be a long night... but i am very excited as it has been such a long time since mine were that age. Happy pre New Years everyone xx

7_week_wonder

Ok, embarrassing confession time: I have *never* made lasagne. I've got some value lasagne sheets and fancy giving it a go but do I have to soak/pre-cook the (dried) lasagne sheets, or do I just put them in straight from the packet?

Shegar - good on you for rehoming caged hens. I only have 3 girls and don't really have room to have any more, but anyone who takes on the poor ill-treated hens has my utmost respect.

Well the banana cake is out of the oven: will wait til later for a taste test.

Have a good evening all.

ginnyknit

7WW you use the lasagne straight from the pack. I always put meat as the first layer to make sure the next layer of lasagne is cooked nice and soft - I know some put it on the bottom tho - you cannot really go wrong as it ends up a rich yummy slice of Italy when its cooked (even with baked beans in:rotfl:).

Whenever I make spag bol I always make sure theres a pot left to do a lasagne.

meanmarie

Hi all,

Turkey carcass in freezer for when I want to make soup...am going to make cottage pie to-morrow as it will be a lovely change.

DD3 and partner left at 9.30 this morning, they should be in Dubai in about 3 hours and then the 11 hours to Perth starts 2 hours later...will be glad when I hear that they are safely home.... seems like only a few days since she came instead of a whole 4 weeks. DD2 and family head back to London early on 1st Jan...she comes every time the granddaughters are off school so will be back in February...

Very cold and windy here, raining too so have not ventured out at all to-day. Lit woodburner in kitchen and it has improved the temperature out there no end....if I could imagine ever having money again would install a solid fuel cooker out there and put woodburner in one of other downstairs rooms, chance would be a fine thing!

Fridge and freezer still seem to be full of food, so will be having lots of 'free' meals in January I hope, OH may grumble but that's his problem, food is food!

Stay safe and warm all

Marie

shegar

As you both know that once the ex batts are being fed properly and are free ranging they will be fine ........Yea when I said they had pale combs I should have said " white combs.".............I quite agree about crowing cockeralls at 5.30 in the morning is not good, I dont have any cockeralls simply because of that............

My hens are all " goldline brown hens ", I use to have banties but only trouble with them is that they do go off lay for long periods at a time and beings I sell my eggs and have regular customers I dont have them, they do lay a super yellow rich egg:D...................Ive shut the hens up tonight because tomorrows weather is supposed to be wet, and as you know hens dont like getting wet and cold............. I like the hanging basket idea..Nice to have some of you that also keep hens to swap chat with...:Dsheila

kidcat

Shegar thanks for the suggestion - not sure we can have an open fire though, besides the issue of DS8, we have very strict planning and adding a chimney to the outside would be blocked. One of our neighbours moved before Christmas from their rented place - turns out they were issued an enforcement notice as he was bringing his work van home and parking outside, against the covenant.

7ww you can use dried sheets straight from the packet, however if you put them to soak in boiling water whilst you are getting everything out it means they are soft enough to make it easy to cut any bits off - my trays are all rounded edges so I need to take corners off!!

We had a little trip to costco today, after dropping DD18 off, Ds8 wanted more monster cumbers!! and we also got him a lovely new coat too.

Pooky

I'd love chickens, very jealous of those who have them. We have a small garden but do have room for a coop but it's against the deed rules on my house (the solicitor did point it out when we brought the place, no chickens, no pigs, sheep or cattle....but as he pointed out...it didn't mention goats lol). There's 4 houses on this plot with the same rules so I couldn't get away with it. The neighbour 4 houses down has an aviary full of budgies and cockatiels and chickens with a dappy cockerel that does his business all hours of the day...I love to hear them (and my 5 moggies like to go watch too).

Well I've de-Christmassed the house, our decs go up around the 1st so I'm happy for them to come down early. I feel right now, it's clean, it's tidy and it's dust free.

I froze all the left over pigs in blankets And have just bunged them in a toad in the hole for a nice change. All the last dregs of veg have been used and very tasty it was too.

Fuddle - how about making a hand sewn patchwork blanket, I always have a hexi blanket on the go for when I don't want to crochet. I like making my machine sewn patchwork too but for TV nights or sitting with DH whilst he's watching TV I hand sew. (give me a shout if you want instructions - I can post my templates to you for you to copy if you want).

DD2 had to be woken at 1pm, I remember being a teenager and wanting to sleep all day so I let her. DD1 was working all day and walked in the door looking like death warmed up. She's eaten a decent dinner and I'm going to dye her hair before she collapses in bed with a trashy film and a big bar of choccy.

Thriftkitten

shegar wrote: »

As you both know that once the ex batts are being fed properly and are free ranging they will be fine ........Yea when I said they had pale combs I should have said " white combs.".............I quite agree about crowing cockeralls at 5.30 in the morning is not good, I dont have any cockeralls simply because of that............

My hens are all " goldline brown hens ", I use to have banties but only trouble with them is that they do go off lay for long periods at a time and beings I sell my eggs and have regular customers I dont have them, they do lay a super yellow rich egg:D...................Ive shut the hens up tonight because tomorrows weather is supposed to be wet, and as you know hens dont like getting wet and cold............. I like the hanging basket idea..Nice to have some of you that also keep hens to swap chat with...:Dsheila

Did you know there is a thread on here called "Hey... Lets keep chickens" it's great and there is a lady who has a naughty car that keeps diverting and encouraging her to bring home new chickens... Yes big momma has 4 lemon milfleur sable poot bantams... she hillariously dosent think they are any different than her and has done a lovely job of raising them. I am looking forward to tasting their eggs.