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  • MrsC my OH just refuses to eat pork, or chicken on the bone now that we don't need to. He is on board with the plans, but takes the view that food should be a pleasure, not a chore. I agree with that, but mine takes the form of not eating.

    Greenbee it was £2 for an uncovered one, so £3 for one with a knitted cover was quite reasonable. He did the boys the heat bag covers yesterday but is now busy making practice rucksacks. I ordered a 50m roll of curtain lining which should arrive this week so that will be the next project.

    Two heat bags made, and very much appreciated by the boys - especially as it is now snowing. Its so cold that the small joint of beef I got out to defrost last night was still frozen at lunchtime.

    I've been meaning for ages to have a go at making my own stem ginger in syrup so did a trial run yesterday. Will taste test later and see if it is something I would do again.
  • greenbee
    greenbee Posts: 16,073
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    Should I post you my old backpack :D (and my curtain and blind measurements...)
  • I've been meaning for ages to have a go at making my own stem ginger in syrup so did a trial run yesterday. Will taste test later and see if it is something I would do again.
    OMG sounds gorgeous. Let us know how it went...
    If you have built castles in the air, your work should not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

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  • MrsChaos
    MrsChaos Posts: 2,069
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    Yes please to sharing the stem ginger results. DS2 loves ginger covered in chocolate, but it's a rare treat, due to the price.

    True to form, all of us like chicken apart from OH, who barely tolerates it. For DS2 it depends on the texture of meat and DS1 isn't keen on anything on the bone. I don't mind some pork and beef dishes (pulled pork, stew), but the meat has to be very lean and well done. I dropped on a RTC free range chicken in Lidl yesterday morning and it's currently cooking. Hope it's nice.

    I agree that food should be a pleasure, but at the moment it has to stay affordable, too. I called at one of the butcher's farm shops yesterday - a family meat and potato pie (DS2 didn't like the meat...), 2l milk, 3 or 4 large carrots and 500g mince for £10. The pie was £4.40, so the rest quite expensive. They get the milk from a local dairy, which is why I quite like to buy it.
  • We have a farm shop within walking distance but the F&V are very tired and they buy their meat from the butchers that I go to. Milk is tricky, we use at least 2l a day and it drives a lot of my food spends.
    Anyway, MrL for milk first thing (see what I mean!) and on the way my windscreen wiper fell to bits. £16 in H on replacement and fitting.

    I've got an order to collect from the new butchers at lunchtime and then a visit to the quacks at 4 so a busy day of nothingness. I need to return the £8 edging strip to the diy shop next to the butchers, the 30p pine quadrant strip did the job and is actually more durable so that's a win.

    The butchers said if I give them a couple of days notice on future orders they will save me some beef bones for stock :j

    Stem ginger in syrup - love the stuff but at £3 a jar it isn't a regular buy so I had been meaning for a while to have a go at making some. I wanted lots of syrup as well as the ginger itself.

    I have a tub of odds and ends of peeled ginger in the freezer. RTC or ends of fresh bits that have been leftover. The internet says to freeze it overnight as it helps change the texture, and I would agree with this as I can tell the difference between the bits that came from the freezer and the fresh bit from the fridge.

    I di a mix of two recipes, this one and this one from my Vegetarian Option book - the ginger syrup is steps 6 & 7.

    I chopped the peeled ginger into big cubes - it shrinks so don't go too small. I covered it in water, up to the boil and then simmered with the lid on for an hour. I then took out the lumps and put them in the fridge for later, and used the cooking liquid and took it up to 350ml with water for the next step. Rather than mess about grating ginger I used a couple of blocks of Taj frozen ginger (85p for a big bag from MrM) together with the zest of a lemon. I took that mixture up to the boil for a couple of minutes and then left it to cool for a few hours. I sieved out the bits which gave me a strong ginger/lemon flavoured liquid. I added 450g of white sugar, and then heated it through until the sugar had dissolved, then gave it 20 minutes to make the syrup, then added the ginger lumps and gave it another 20. I ended up with one jar of just ginger syrup and one jar of stem ginger lumps in syrup - both with a real kick to them. It was a little runnier than I wanted so would tweak the water sugar quantities but the ginger flavour in the syrup is excellent, much better than the commercial jars. I will make it again but will keep an eye out for a good deal on the ginger to do it with.
  • Fork Biscuits
    Purely in the interests of testing it out I made some ginger fork biscuits. OH loves the nostalgia of fork biscuits, his granny used to make them. I like the simplicity of them and the fact that you can flavour them how you like.

    Basic mix is Cream 4oz butter with 2oz sugar, then add 5oz SR flour to make a dough. Roll tea spoon sized amounts into a ball and pop onto your greased baking sheet. Use a fork to flatten them which leaves pretty lines on the top. 15 mins at 160 fan.

    I did a half mix and used brown sugar, a teaspoon of powdered ginger with the flour and some finely chopped ginger from my jar, and then used a spoonful of the syrup to pull the dough together. They made lovely short textured ginger biscuits, which sadly all got eaten yesterday.
  • DIY store refunded the £8 back to the gift card so that is stashed away for another day. Makes a change from things going into the 'might be useful one day' grave yard of the garage. Collected the butchers order, and was very impressed with it. I need to break it down into portions and freeze it but I ran out of energy before I ran out of jobs.

    Made bread for the boys today, first time in a while after a few bad batches which I had put down to cold kitchen. Lovely silken dough, and a great batch of bread. The only difference was a new pack of yeast - MrL finally have it back in stock.
  • Busy day, work then home to do some tidying as DS1 (who helped) has a friend coming over tomorrow. Biscuits made for them to snack on, and then of course he had to have pancakes this evening. Still need to do the bathroom but will do that in the morning before we pick him up.

    Scrubbed the back hall wall and noticed the plaster is going flabby so probably needs replastering sooner rather than later. Luckily OH can plaster so its just another job for the very long list.

    Dinner was jacket potatoes and new butcher sausages - they were excellent. Even I liked them and I am not a fan.
  • i love nice sausages
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  • ..... so do I. :D - I now have sausage envy as well as pancake envy (after reading inod’s diary!)
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