Tough Aul' Birds

I promised to report back on the 'Duxelle' (mushroom and ham based) stuffing Liz created to use up some of our mushroom glut, using the Darina Allen (Ballymaloe Cookery School) recipe, and I am happy to report that it was delicious. Full of flavour, too, was the roast chicken it accompanied, being the tiny carcass of the Sussex Ponte bird we culled just before New Year because she had injured her self 'beyond repair', possibly the rather bedraggledy girl we knew as 'Baldy' last summer. I can not be as complimentary as this about the texture of this bird - we were both really surprised at the toughness of the meat. She had received a fairly standard roast having been spatch-cocked and looked 'normal' but as soon as we started to attack it we were switching to sharp steak knives to cut meat from bone. The meat thus cut was very good and perfectly edible but it was a struggle to bite through the skin and we ended up ripping our half (each) to pieces with our hands and teeth, Medieval Banquet style.

Of course we quickly worked out that these Sussex Pontes, our old originals obtained at point of lay (20 weeks old) in May 2012, are 2 years old, easily the oldest chicken we have ever eaten. Standard commercial birds are pushed to killing weights in just a couple of months, commercial free range and organic birds more like 80-100 days and our own Hubbards were being eaten at between 100 and 140 days. This is why, of course, there are recipes around like 'Coq au Vin' designed to slowly cook a sinewy old bird to edible tenderness. We will know for next time and not try to fast-roast our 'geriatrics'; Heaven knows what the Marans birds will be like - they are more like 6 years old! Ah well, Baldy was left with plenty of meat on her bones when we'd finished our Medieval gnawing (and we were perfectly well fed on the meat we had eaten and the good range of veg accompanying her and the Duxelle stuffing) so she went into the stock pot and got the hours of gentle simmer she'd really needed.

Meanwhile our inner 'tough aul' birds' have been called on over the last couple of days as a result of the weather. Last night another 'orange warning' wind storm came through and blew a hole in my theory that the outbuildings are safe enough as long as the wind is from the south. We heard the mild clang in the dark of a sheet of corrugated iron going air-borne and the dogs woke up and started fretting. In the dark at half six or so, I ventured out with dogs to check on things (the dogs only because dogs fretting in the night can mean that someone has an upset bowel and if they can't get out you will end up cleaning up 'accidents' indoors). Our way up the cattle race was blocked by a long sheet of corrugated iron and a quick scan with the torch showed me that the chickens had lost a roof panel. I think it had simply shaken loose on its nails and slid down like an avalanche to land in the yard; the wooden frame of the roof there is quite badly rotted and probably long overdue replacement. In the dark, though, with the wind blowing a hooley and the rain coming down, there was not a lot I could do - the chickens were all OK not being directly below the new hole. I went back to bed to sweat out the wind noises and pray that no more panels went for a fly about.

That was our job, then, for the morning, trying to shore up and replace rotted roof timbers, then slide the sheeting back up its 'slot' and fasten it down with new screws and waterproof washers. Luckily the wind had abated a lot and the rain was now in bands between which you could nip out and scramble reasonably safely on roof ladders. It remains to be seen whether our repair will hold, the forecast has several more wind systems coming through. Mercifully, we only lost a roof panel and that not damaged. The internet and news are full of homes flooded, power lines down, rivers bursting their banks and coast roads impassable. Our sympathies to anyone who is really struggling through all this. We also take our hats off to the earlier Irish resident 'tough aul' birds' who survived all this kind of weather and mud without the benefit of modern outdoor clothing, power tools, light aluminium ladders and Posidrive screws.

Christmas is all over. The tree has been stripped of its finery and now languishes on the pile of 'sneddings' awaiting its fate on the range fire. The tinsel, baubles, pine cones and fairy lights are back in their crates in the Utility Room till next time. The cards are in the recycling. The Christmas Cake is all gone, the huge pud is cut up into sensible one-meal portions and frozen. Liz had blitzed through the house sweeping up the shed pine needles, pieces of dog-chewed decorations and rescuing the (thankfully plastic these days) silver baubles which we'd displayed artistically in a big bowl on the coffee table. Blue the cat had invented a good game of scooping them out of the bowl with a front paw and watching them roll onto the floor, whence they ended up under the sofa, the settee and the tree. Thank you, Blue, we have retrieved them all now.

Mushroom Soup and Duxelle Stuffing

And so to 2014. Happy New Year. It has dawned for us a bit grey and gloomy but mild enough and windless. We were half of a mind to go to bed early and catch up with it this morning but in the event we ate a lovely meal and then stayed up watching some gentle TV stuff on DVD and we 'First Footed' before we went to bed.

The meal was a beautifully flavoursome, slow roasted shoulder of one of our own lambs (Dora the Explorer) served with sprouts and chestnuts, leeks and parmesan cheese with me doing roast parsnips and spuds, It was followed by some excellent home-made trifle (no 'sponge-fingers' and raspberry jelly for us - we went with some left over Dorset Apple Cake chunks and a purée of blackberries). The lamb had been smeared with olive oil, garlic, lemon juice and anchovies for 24 hours and was then roasted at 130 degrees for 4 hours, then rested under its foil and a tea towel for an hour. Gently does it. We were delighted to realise that most of the main ingredients were our own produce - the lamb, veg, garlic, herbs, blackberries and all the tastier for that.

The TV was a couple of episode from our 1999 boxed set of the Alaska based series "Northern Exposure" which we find very gentle and relaxing, plus the DVD of 'The Blues Brothers' which I got for Christmas. There are very few films that just 'tickle' me - I find them so funny that I am famous for breaking down into a fit of giggles and fall off the furniture struggling to draw a breath like some kind of hysterical lunatic. John Belushi and Dan Ackroyd's musical masterpiece is one such - it works every time. In fact we slightly under estimated how long it would play for and the final chase sequence was in full flow as midnight clicked round, so we missed any Big Ben bonging or Radio folk shouted count-downs and caught up with things a few minutes after the hour.

We always 'First Foot' our houses; in fact we are probably slightly eccentric in the way we treat the house with as much respect as if it was an important relative; a living thing. When we were building we used to talk to the house, as if to check that relighting fires in the hearths after all those years was 'OK' with the house and might even cheer it up to feel warm again. At the end of each week of work, as we left for Silverwoods, we'd wish it goodbye and assure it that we weren't abandoning it, only leaving for a few days. Call us scatty if you like; it's just the way we roll. Anyway, First Footing to us is now part of New Year. The first person across the front threshold must be as close to 'tall dark and handsome' as you can get (No comment!) and must come armed with a coin to represent money, bread for 'food' whisky for 'drink', coal for 'warmth' and salt for 'savour'. You must open the back door to let the old year out before you open the front door to greet the First Footer who represents the new one. Here, I fulfill the role, so I nip out the back as the countdown starts, with all the goodies on a plate, leaving the door ajar (but not ajar enough to let the dogs out) and sprint round to the front and wait for Liz's beckoning which signifies that the midnight hour is rung round. The coal goes on the fire, the bread and salt gets nibbled upon, the money is just the money and you can probably guess the fate of the dram of Black Bush! And so to bed.

Every now and then we like to take a stroll round the 'estate' catching up on how all the parts are getting through the winter. Today we included the poly tunnel in our stroll and were delighted to find more chestnut mushrooms flourishing in the spent mushroom compost. First it seemed to be just a few which I could fit in my hand, but then there were more and more, too much for Liz's double hand-full, then overflowing the first pot we grabbed and ended up as just under the kilogram in a big garden tub - mushrooms are not very dense so a kilogram is a good volume. We suddenly had a glut.

Our first port of call in looking for ways to use up these 'local' ingredients out here in the 'Wesht' is Darina Allen, Queen of Ballymaloe Cookery School (and organic farm) in East Cork and she came up with a lovely mushroom soup into which went the bulk of the kilogram. She also describes a 'Duxelle' stuffing which we can use for the late Sussex Ponte chicken tonight. This is a mix of ham, mushrooms, thyme, parsley, onions and butter. I can vouch for the soup which is a lovely winter-warmer, but I will have to report back on the stuffing.

The End of the Year

Last of the cake

Our local lough, Lough Feigh, is full to bursting after recent rain and resounds to the beautiful noise of the 30 to 40 swans who spend their winter there. They are either Whooper or Bewick's Swans (I am not very good on the smaller swans and these two are very similar) and I have not been down to the lough with binoculars for a close look. We just enjoy the musical honking calls which come up on the wind to the lane as I walk the dogs along the top there, and to the front garden. We wonder whether our own geese feel some kind of 'Call of the Wild' yearnings as they hear them.

And so we come to the end of the year. Christmas left overs are starting to run out. The Christmas Day goose has reappeared in a number of guises since, sneaking back as cold meat, then a superb pie and most recently as small jars of 'rilette' (finely shredded meat mixed with apple, garlic and butter, a bit like a paté). The spiced cabbage has brightened up a few meals, served alongside a risotto and the pie. The cake will go a few more slices and the pud will supply a few more portions lubricated with the ice cream.

Chestnuts for the sprouts tonight.

I feel a bit of an urge to sum up the year but I promise to keep it short and sweet; just the one paragraph. In (very) short it's been a really good one for us. The small holding has moved on a-pace in the warm dry weather (the rain is only recent) and we have produced mountains of veg. I am particularly pleased with the onions and spuds and we have a freezer full of beans, peas and calabrese. We have produced a million eggs and plenty of chicken, goose, rabbit and lamb. We fenced the East Field, built the poly-tunnel and completed the pond. We made some new friends and consolidated existing ones. Liz got involved with the local knitting group and has got into knitting and has also expanded her cookery skills into a wealth of cakes and pies. Not everything went 100% to plan, of course. We lost the use of the 2CV. I killed one chain saw but inherited a perfectly good, and superior, replacement. We celebrated with a delicious Christmas. All in all a good 2013. Roll on 2014.

Our surprisingly good, well ripened
and now stored onions

One 'hin' however, will not be seeing 2014. She was one of our old original Sussex Ponte hens which have already given us a brilliant first year of egg laying but have lately gone off the boil. Yesterday this young lady managed to injure herself in a serious and debilitating way we believe, by pecking on sharp piece of wire or broken glass, both of which we have too much of in the soil not yet dug over and cleared. I am not going into any more detail in case you are eating your tea, but suffice to say that we had to cull this girl out and even as I type this, Liz is plucking her in the kitchen. She is going to be a tiny carcass despite being full grown. I doubt if she will be even one kilogram 'oven-ready', way smaller than the hulking Hubbard birds we have been processing most recently. She is a neat shape though, so she is 'petite' in the same way that Guinea Fowl and poussins make small carcasses, rather than scrawny or thin. It will be nice to roast a whole bird between 2 of us, rather than (as with Hubbard birds) having to dismember them first and make 4 separate meals out of them.

Ooops. Despite my care the tractor cuts up
ruts in the soft ground

Not tonight, though, Josephine! Tonight we are on the slow-roasted shoulder of lamb, in this case 'Dora', one of our ewe (they say 'yow' here) lambs.

Finally, I was in this morning to visit our lovely old neighbour, Una, who is still struggling with a finger injured on and infected by a rose thorn in her own garden. I nip round every couple of days to bring turf and logs in to the house from the sheds and today took her round some eggs, leeks, sprouts, parsnip and a beetroot as a mini food parcel. She sits me down in her beautifully old traditional Irish kitchen (range, painted wooden furniture) for 'tay' and home made scones and jam and today she was telling me all about the 'Wren Boys'

Naughty or Nice? Lego from Santa

The Wren Boys is an especially Irish tradition which my UK readers may not have heard of. We had heard of it here but have still not seen it in action and it is now fading fast and may soon pass into memory. It happens on St Stephen's Day (Boxing Day). In times past the 'Wren Boys' would capture a wren and then dress in motley clothing and hats and capes made of straw (like 'Mummers') and parade it round the village knocking on doors and persuading money and goodies out of house owners as a bribe not to harm the bird ("A penny or tuppence would do it no harm...." etc). They would sing special songs, make music and recite appropriate poems.
They would also call round the pubs and 'perform' for the clientele.

More recently no actual wren is used and it is more likely to be the kids going round rather as do Carol Singers in the UK, but at lunchtime in daylight, rather then in the evening. Our friend Charlotte of the mini-horses has done this as a teenager in a group and apparently done quite well out of it. Una tells us she can remember when great gangs of children would go, quite often driven round in cars by parents, but recently the kids have come to enjoy the pub-side of things less. They were, says Una, all quite sweet kiddies and sang and played their penny whistles and other instruments beautifully, but the local 'Herberts' in the pubs of particularly Balla-D, presumably 'with drink taken' would start heckling them and making rude and tasteless comments. The groups Una knows don't go there any more and, in fact, have now dwindled to a few pairs or singles of children being taken to pre-arranged 'friendly' houses to do their thing and get a €5 or so. What ever the story is, none came to see us, so we still have this only at 2nd hand.

Happy New Year! Bliain Nua Sásta Dhaiobh!

Red is not just for Santa

I may have already mentioned that, after 20 years married, this was to be our first ever real Christmas together on our own, as it were, not descending on some one else and not having the hoards descend upon us. We have up to now, most years, descended upon Pud Lady in Hastings for the 'traditional' (to our family) Family Christmas. I was always working right up to Christmas Eve (as was Liz, to 5 pm when those lovely trusting bosses would phone her work from the cosy firesides just to check no-one had bunked off a bit early! Happy Christmas, guys!) and I was often back in again for Boxing Day (St Stephen's Day) morning. The hour's drive to Hastings was about as far as you could go.

No 'Food Miles' on these. Just about 50 yards!

Just a couple of times (and once for me) Liz got enough time to get to Ireland and saw the wrapping paper storm as the Silverwoods children were at those magic ages. Then once we were over here, while we were house building we 'did' the Silverwoods again, and last Christmas they all came to us. Well that was all very lovely and appropriately 'Merry' but we were determined this time, now we have our own house and it is all settled down, to stay here, just the two of us.

Presents and papers from 'home'. We love that!

 We were amused to note that this

would mean we could do Christmas how WE wanted, at our speed, eating and drinking what we wanted and maybe starting our own 'traditions', cherry picking from the nice bits from previous years and walking on by the bits that weren't so much fun. Soft boiled goose eggs and toast soldiers for breakfast, anyone? Feed and release the livestock before taking tea and 'between us' presents up to bed? Your own goose? Ice cream with the 'pud' instead of the regulation custard or brandy butter? Time will tell whether all these bits are 'keepers'.

We also had some fun trying to list the bits of the feast which were home grown and less than a tenth of a food mile - just a few yards from the allotment or the orchard; the goose of course, potatoes, sprouts, any eggs of course, herbs like sage and thyme, onions, beetroot, broad beans. We are hoping to do even better next year possibly including red cabbage, apples and our own sausage meat. Liz may also MAKE the marzipan. She doesn't like shop marzipan but her objection is to the almond ESSENCE flavour - she can eat ground almonds and anything with the almonds flaked into it, so we think that marzipan made with real almonds, sugar and egg might work for her.

So, basically, we had a lovely day, just quiet and 'local'. We strolled round to neighbour Una in the morning to check she was OK. She is struggling to get over a finger badly infected by a rose thorn puncture wound, so we have been fetching logs, turf and coal in from the shed for her and she sat us both down for a cup of 'tay' and a chocolate biscuit. From there I walked the dogs down to the bridge, as usual, and called by John Deere Bob to check on him. I was immediately given the biggest tumbler of whiskey you ever did see. Both he and Una were being collected later by their respective families or loved ones and taken off for the meal, so they had declined our offer of goose.

Back home then for a relaxing afternoon of eating and drinking our fill, chilling and then phoning various family and friends, as you do. Later still we walked down to Carolyn's, invited down for drinks with herself, Charlotte, K-Dub and little Henry who was as proud as Punch with his new sit-in, push along the floor with your feet, car and a fancy 'tent' which had been erected in the living room for him. The girls were dressed in superb white "hoodies" made to look like snow men with black eyes, carrot noses and soft knitted "lumps of coal" for the 'coat buttons'.

 Everyone seems to have had a great time but several of them have suffered at the hands of the huge storm which blew through on the 23rd and 24th. We had a tree blow down but it was an already dead one which needed 'weeding' out anyway and it fell (mostly) inside our woods so no damage was done, just the spindly top of it hitting the stone wall and part blocking the Rose Walk. We hear that Mazy, in Kent has had problems with a 'lean-to' sun-room leaking rain badly, guttering ripped away by the wind and at one stage an internal power cut. The Angel B and Jim have had ridge tiles ripped off by the wind and our former garden fence is broken off and leaning into their garden.

Both these homes and many more are now struggling with the problems of getting hold of surveyors, repair men and insurance assessors over the Christmas break and Jim, we know is very fed up that after paying premiums for 30 odd years with never a claim, he is now dealing with Insurance staff who are trying to argue that his flying ridge tiles are 'just wear and tear'. You have to love these chancers, don't you?

Our hearts go out to them but there is, apparently more to come. Met Éireann have Red Alerts out all over the place for Ireland tonight and tomorrow, especially south and west coastal counties. The pink on this map is for average winds of 34-41 knots (Gale Force 8), the red is 42-48 knots (Force 9) and there are warnings of gusts up to 150 kph offshore Clare, Galway and Mayo. Batten down the hatches, people, extra rocks on the chicken houses. The only mercy for us, inland a bit is that Roscommon falls in the grey coloured bit ( Force 4 ) but no doubt we will get our turn soon. Look after yourselves. Happy New Year.

6 Cents a Kilo

Basic white icing layer goes onto the cake

€0.06 a kilo! That is the ridiculously low price at which our most-used supermarket, Lidl's is currently selling carrots as a Christmas promo. They are obviously moving a good few too, and the sales 'gondola' is backed up by an 8 foot tall pallet of new trays sitting still on its jack-truck ready to re-stock the position as the stock is snatched up and the empty boxes tossed aside.

Making pastry.

Now, these 'loss-leaders' are nothing new. The technique of putting highly visible, fast moving 'staples' out at prices lower than cost has been in the retailers' armoury since well before anyone had heard of Lidl. It is common knowledge that this attracts in the 'footfall' and there is enough margin on everything else that the supermarket still makes a tidy profit across your whole basket. The marketing boys do occasionally get it wrong; Tesco famously added so many loyalty points to bananas, that people were buying them by the pallet and giving them away in the car park outside

The problem here is that Lidl have chosen to do it with an obvious farm produce line in a rural area. There is already enough flak coming in quite rightly from farmers for the well known squeeze being put onto farm gate prices on produce such as milk and meat which is forcing many farmers out of business. This is wrapped around further with the habit of the supermarkets for moving the goalposts after the contract is signed and the crop is in the field, or the animals half grown; they add 'marketing subsidies' and demands for the grower to help out on promotions by dropping the price still further. Then there is all the stuff around food waste - supermarkets are well known for demanding the correct size and shape of carrot and taking only 2/3 or less of the grown crop (sometimes none of it!).

Now, I am not suggesting that Lidl will have dropped the price to the growers of carrots, sprouts and so on, to 4 cents a kilo but that is the smell it gives off, and there have been howls of anguish from farmers and growers who are a big industry here and the social media networks like Facebook have seen a bit of this. People who know me will probably also know that I have no moral high ground to stand on, here, having been, for 29 years in working life, a part of the super-marketing industry. In my case it was Sainsbury, where I worked in chilled food depots and distribution, so you could certainly accuse me of working hard to promote this kind of behaviour and spending all day trying to make my supermarket ever more successful.

We also shop regularly in supermarkets, so we felt both sad and guilty when our much-loved local Indian cookery ingredients shop, Hidiyat's, went to the wall last month, throwing in the towel having been undercut by their local supermarket, SuperValu. The Balla-D branch of SuperValu has steadily been increasing its range of Indian ingredients and selling all of them cheaper than Hidiyat's. Again, this is nothing new and all over the UK town centres have been stripped of their small business shops as the big boys have swallowed up their customers. We're just a little behind 'over here' and the towns do not have the really big boys (there is no real Tesco presence and no Sainsburys out here). Plenty of small businesses cling on, even through the recession. SuperValu manage to keep it a bit local, maintaining ranges of local produce such as cheeses and bacon rather than having it all in Central Distribution. There is no equivalent in Ireland of the 500,000 square foot 'Fulfillment Factory' Distribution Centres run by Sainsbury's round the M25. Ireland does not have the population to support them.

Anyway, 6 cents a kilo was a silly enough price that we grabbed up 4 bags for the feeding of rabbits over Christmas, and maybe a bit of Christmas dinner for Cody the horse. It is cheaper than any rolled barley, oats or 'meusli' you'd buy for them in a feed merchant. It would be good at that price, to be feeding the pigs on carrots! To be fair we then bought a €2 bag at the next shop of old tired carrots and parsnips past their sell by date in what Liz and Diamond would call the "Salmonella Corner" (the discounted racks) so we have done our bit there to reduce food waste.

Chestnut Mushrooms grow for free in the Polytunnel

You will have noticed that I have been waffling on for 6 paragraphs about carrots, but all my pics today are from today's Christmas Cookery operations, nothing to do with carrots. Liz has been on the mince pies, this time with homemade shortcrust pastry. The 'Jusrol' brand 'puff' which got used last time proved to be too puffy. I have had a first go at marzipan-ing and icing a cake and I am quite pleased with the results.

Sharp eyed readers may note that this is a 'Happy Hogswatch' cake, not actually a Christmas Cake. Hogswatch, for the uninitiated is the spoof version of Christmas which appears in the Terry Pratchett 'Discworld' series of books but if you need to know any more about that, then I'd ask you to go look it up. TP is a writer who both of us and all of the Silverwoods follow, and as it is likely that we, collectively, are the only people likely to see or eat this cake........

The mushrooms are a goody crop of chestnut mushrooms now coming out of the 'spent' mushroom compost in the poly-tunnel. I gave it all a good water and then closed the door on it and in this mild weather, it is keeping good and warm in there. The only problem I have is that the bales of compost we brought back, I found it easiest to invert them onto the ground to tip the contents out and pull off the plastic wrap 'tray', so the wads have gone down upside down. The mushroom fruiting bodies do not seem to be able to cope with this and are growing downwards, so you only see the crop to harvest, when the base of the mushroom pushes up the substrate enough to break it. Finally a nice pair of Panda slippers which Liz spotted while out shopping for presents in Carrick.

That is probably my lot pre Christmas, so I will sign off but first, wish all my readers the best possible time over the break and a Happy and Prosperous New Year. Happy Christmas, or possibly Hogswatch. Look after yourselves.

The Shortest Day

A thin Winter Solstice sun rises behind the trees

The Winter Solstice. Now there's an event worth celebrating. Never mind all this commercialized, Santa and sleigh bells, possible birth date (?) of the Infant Jesus malarkey. The shortest day, the turn of the year, the official beginning of winter. From now it is onward and upward into spring, days getting longer, sap rising and summer beckoning frantically. It's pretty much forgotten now of course; most 'townies' do not know what it is, do not know its date and would not be able to tell you its significance. They would care less, too, in the rush to Christmas, wrapping paper and mince pie cookery.

Winter Iris breaks surface

We are starting to see some signs of spring already - pictured is a good sized clump of Winter Iris emerging in one of our big tubs in the yard. These were bulbs generously given to me by Pud Lady when I was over in September. In the 'Rose Walk' a good show of new daffodil shoots reminds us of the net of mixed bulbs which came to us from the Steak Lady; both the 'Mums' have made their mark on this garden. Thank you Mums.

Some early bud expansion is also making an impression - in this case currant bushes in the Jam and Jerusalem hedge and on a flowering currant (Ribes) in the raised flower bed. Ribes are probably the easiest and earliest way of getting food to the bees in spring, so we will be planting plenty and then trying to strike cuttings from these bushes, all part of our wildlife gardening push. We are both enormously looking forward to how the pond, in particular, will fare. Will we get frogs and newts? Will the aquatic plants which we had mail order from the UK and which have mainly died back in autumn, leap back into action with spring?

Meanwhile we had to smile at this bizarre sleeping position by the boy-pup Towser. Wait till 'Daddy' puts his boots in front of the range, let them warm up a bit, then sink your nose down deep inside like a person drinking in the scent of a rose flower, and FALL ASLEEP. Daft beggar.

Happy Solstice!

Porridge

I'm Dreaming of a White..... and all that Jazz. A heavy weather warning tells us of 100 kph winds on the coast and we are once again battening down the hatches, putting big rocks on the roofs of rabbit hutches and, if we'd followed Mrs Silverwood's advice, nailing the chickens to their perches. There was some talk of wintry showers on high ground but we normally ignore those here at our huge 76 m above sea level. Well, the wind came through all right and the trees were rocking and rolling up aloft like Noddy Holder's Granny; we even got some fence-post sized dead bits falling down onto the lawn. By the time I was locking up the house, though all was calm and the skies were clearing.

Nice surprise then this morning when we woke up to a light, but still picturesque, dusting of snow which let me nip round getting these pictures on the camera. It also reminded me to re-instate "The Porridge Season". I do like a porridge for breakfast but only when I feel like I am setting myself up for some work. The 'recipe' of choice here is the oats cooked in just semi-skim milk and a pinch of salt, but then served over a sliced banana in the bowl, with a dribble of our not very well set home made marmalade over the top, maybe a splash of cold milk too. The marmalade is nice and sharp and citrus-y. The whole goes down a treat.

The job I was "setting myself up for" was a bit more calf-muck shoveling for John Deere Bob. He has 4 big 'calves' (more like young bullocks by now) in a non-slatted barn and he likes to clean them out and bed down anew several times through the winter, rather then leaving them all through the cold, wading around in an ever deeper mix of muck and straw. He very generously allows me to take the muck for the garden and allotment, especially when I am willing to shovel it up myself. My reward is that I get to drive the tractor between his farm and our place. Big boy's toys!

Lamb stew and dumplings made with
our own lamb suet.

Meanwhile we are on the gentle run in to Christmas. We have done what we hope is our final food and drink shop today, out in Carrick on Shannon. All the Christmas presents are sorted. We do not really 'do' cards since we have been in Ireland. In Faversham we used to send 60-80 cards out, often to people with whom that had become our only 'contact'; often we didn't even write anything in them, we would grab a stack each and just sign them 'Matt and Liz' or 'Liz and Matt'. We decided that once in Ireland and now with most of our 'surviving' friends either on Facebook or reading the blog, we would no longer support the card-making industry in this rather silly way, nor spend all that money on postage to the UK. Sorry if you have missed our cards but we will honestly not be at all put out of you decide to reciprocate.

Liz has been at the baking again. A batch of mince pies has been knocked up but then eaten (it was the mice, honest!) but Liz is not 100% happy with the pastry which was 'Jusrol' brand puff pastry and puffed rather too well. She is determined to try again with some home grown pastry. Meanwhile, one of the ladies at 'Knit and Natter' club turns out to be a sufferer from Coeliac Disease (Gluten intolerance) which is, apparently, quite common in the Irish because of their history of not eating so much wheat or wheat-flour. Liz got all inspired and decided to bake them a cake for their mid-knitting-session tea-break. She has a lovely gluten-free recipe based on polenta (a cornmeal 'porridge').

The cake was a real hit with the ladies. Needless to say 'the mice' didn't get any. The Coeliac lady came back for second helpings and the girls, between them, cleared the plate. Never mind, 'the mice' have been cooked a superb banana cake as compensation, with a lovely light texture and a lovely flavour. Liz is still thoroughly enjoying being able to bake and becoming really good at it. When we lived in Kent and both worked, there was never time to start baking cakes by the time we'd got indoors. Now we have a bit more time it has all become possible. I, for one, totally approve!