Daydream thread... without the rose-tinted specs

lostinrates

CTC recipe from a lovely book salt, sugar, smoke by Diana Henry:

For a I litre jar, so !

White wine vinegar ( too expensive unless for sale or high days and holidays probablyly)

I sliced beetroot

100 gr granulated sugar
2tbso coriander seeds
1/2 cinnamon stick
3 dried chillies.

(14 chicken eggs)

Never made it , but seems 'good enough' for quails eggs, doesn't it, and the beets would be a different take on what I do with blue cabbage, I'd do a batch with each for different colours personally

greenval

I have spoken, my perennial sweet pea is also setting seed. I will keep some of the fattest healthiest looking seed, I've grown some from seed before but now have more 'requests' from friends for plants. I'm kicking myself as I've got white, pale pink and deep pink all grow2ing together and forgot to mark the stems by tying bits of wool of the relevant colour on them.

Davesnave

greenval wrote: »

I have spoken, my perennial sweet pea is also setting seed. I will keep some of the fattest healthiest looking seed, I've grown some from seed before but now have more 'requests' from friends for plants. I'm kicking myself as I've got white, pale pink and deep pink all grow2ing together and forgot to mark the stems by tying bits of wool of the relevant colour on them.

But they'll likely interbreed anyway, won't they?

I'm sure the resultant plants will still be garden-worthy.

I want the pale pink , so I'll take some of a friend's seeds, but I assume success might depend on what her neighbours grow!

Davesnave

lostinrates wrote: »

Hippo bags are much stronger than normal dumpy bags. They are more exoensive, so we tried normal dumpy bags, false investment. .

We have about 20 dumpy bags in circulation and I reckon they last a good few years. That's probably because we only fill them with a weight a person can pull along.

And they're 'free,' because for small deliveries of materials, we use a company that only works with them. Can't order a 26 tonner to deliver 3 tons of chippings!

Alexelisey

COOLTRIKERCHICK wrote: »

Alex.. how are the quail doing? did you ever put eggs in that incubator you won??? I like pekins.. don't really like sablepoots as a friend of ours had them ( they used to show pekins) and she was saying they always had trouble with their feet due to the feathers on their feet, as they wernt 'soft' feathers, proper big quill feathers.. in the end she got rid of them.

The quail are great, we get 4-6 eggs a day. I hatched them in the incubator I won, so it did a good job :T. The Sabelpoot was just because I'm a bit of a sucker for the lavender colour and I like variety! However, if it's a male I'll give him away if I can. One of the Pekins has buff and white on its wing feathers, I wonder if it'll be a Millefleur or will be something else once it has all its feathers!

They are very cute little things, the racket they make when they get a mealworm is something to hear :rotfl:so they have to have one each otherwise none of them would get enough peace to eat their own! I'm handling each of them for a short time every day, to get them used to it.

I've worked out that if we know which are boys and which are girls by the time we have a little holiday next month, by the time we come back I will have decided whether to put a batch in the incubator to hatch some more. They would be pipping when I have a week off in October. So the timing works out nicely if I go down that path.

While I have this office job it makes sense to sell as many eggs as I can - the chicken eggs go easily, but no-one wants the quail eggs at work. It doesn't matter too much, as I have a big flan case which I've made a quiche in two weekends on the trot, and each takes 36 quail eggs without it being too eggy... if you know what I mean. And I have quail egg scissors, so that makes it so much easier. I'd recommend them to anyone that uses a lot of quail eggs - although obviously they won't work with shelling hard boiled ones. What did you do with those 80 you shelled, CTC? How many days production was it??

Choille - yes I learned my lesson with the quail boys fighting - separate them from each other as soon as you can tell the gender! I'm not lacking in space, just quarters at the minute, but that's easily remedied.

BD - one is black, one looks like it might be partridge, and the other is a wait and see - started off as a pale yellow chick though, so I expected it to be pure white LOL.

COOLTRIKERCHICK

Alex, unless you are brooding them, and keeping them indoors I wouldn't put any in the incubator now, as its too late in the year.


It is quite easy to tell the diff in pekins... by the comb.. the females comb is quite flat, and the males comb is rised up a bit..


take some pictures of yours, and depending on the quality of the pictures we might be able to tell you.. would be nice to have some pictures of your quail and chickens/chicks so we can have a look lol ( don't think you have ever shown us pictures of your birds)


not going to be long before the shops will be full on Christmas stuff, went into te$co for something over the weekend, and they have a huge display of quality street by the door already lol..


LIR... why is there 2 lots of sugar in the recipe?? might try and find that book..


picked some blackberries yesterday, just enough to do a small apple and blackberry tart for hubby.. Strange but my mother put me off backberries when I was a young kid, saying they always got maggots in them..

lostinrates

Oops there isn't, I have mistyped, I'll check it later for you, huge apologies! I have the book so I can check quite simply soon.

COOLTRIKERCHICK

thanks LIR..

I have also found one in a preserve book I got, and they suggest you add some of the juice from a jar of pickled beetroot, which will make the eggs go pink lol..

lostinrates

COOLTRIKERCHICK wrote: »

thanks LIR..

I have also found one in a preserve book I got, and they suggest you add some of the juice from a jar of pickled beetroot, which will make the eggs go pink lol..

Which is what the beet in the above recipe with do, or the red cabbage goes a cool colour too. .

COOLTRIKERCHICK

Thinking about you Alfie, and your Mum....