Foodie Memories

Bathchaps - traditional West Country fare

Mentor Anne, we know, is exploring the possibilities of pig ownership as are we. She too has obtained a half carcass to practise the processing and food making part of this project on, the sausages, butchery and so on. But Anne is a West Country girl and her memories hark back to traditional foods she would eat as a youngster growing up so her most recent post on her blog, which I follow, talks of "Bathchaps", brined, rolled and boiled chunks of pig cheek meat (and lower jaw sometimes) which taste reminiscent of ham.

 http://anirishalternative.blogspot.ie/2014/01/the-real-thing.html

I have never met these before and apparently one of the last manufacturers of Bathchaps (working in Bridport) may be about to stop production. We may be able to correct this omission soon as Anne is trying to get some exported to her and will also be trying to make her own when she gets to the 'pig's head' stage. Till then we have been going down the brawn route, as you know.

Traditional Dublin Gur Cakes

Here, in contrast, it is a glut of eggs which is exercising our bakers and the Irish women in our circle have been looking at sweeter fare from their own childhood tradition, namely Gur Cakes. These traditionally Dublin confections involve pastry top and bottom but a filling made with stale bread moistened with 'tay' and treacle and mashed in with all manner of dried fruits. Another one I have not knowingly eaten but which looks like my all time favourite type of cake, the Eccles Cake.

First make your bread go stale!

Gur Cakes would have been a way of using up your stale left over bread. Round here, bread does not hang around long enough to go stale, especially when there is brawn to make into sandwiches, so Liz found herself having to deliberately 'save' some bread to then make it go stale! I look forward to trying out the Gur Cakes and maybe also a sliver of Bathchap to taste.

Meanwhile we chug on gently through our Irish Garden Bird Survey, which runs from December right through to the first week in March. We have not had any unusual surprises but have had regular counts of all the usual suspects - the 15-strong mob of chaffinches which tidy up the left chicken corn in the yard, the grey-bodied hooded crows which are the only type we get here and a single 'drive-through' by our raven ('Quoth'). We have regular goldcrests and tree creepers in our black spruce, normally around 7 blackbirds, 5 robins and a couple of fieldfares.

One poor little mite which will not be featuring in any more weeks of the survey is this wren, one of the 5 or so we see regularly nipping about in the ivy and the log stacks and walls around the yard. Unfortunately Rolo the cat caught this one last night and Liz only saw him bringing back the tiny brown shape by chance. She rescued him and told off the cat (much good will that do!) and we almost wrote him off, but in the warmth of my hand he seemed to come to a bit.

RIP An Dreoilín, caught by the cat, Rolo

His little eyes opened and he seemed to be taking an interest in things, so we left him quietly in a warm, dry box to maybe recover through the night. Sadly, he never made it and his stiff, cold little form was there in the box this morning. Presumably shock or internal injuries caused by Rolo's attentions. Rolo was scolded and made to write out 100 times "I must not kill anything with feathers" on the blackboard before he was allowed to go home from school. Poor little wren.

Flatpack bee hive and protective outfits

On Saturday we drove through the sleety wet snow, back to our 'Two Marys' beyond Drumshanbo to buy some bee equipment, taking advantage of their January sale prices. We'd intended to only buy the hive in the sale which was going to be a flat pack which we would build but, to cut a long story short, we took shelter from the rain in the clothing store and got tempted to start trying on the caps, veils and over-trousers; our bee keeper "space-suits". Liz was sorted easily but this gear is made in India by small people and we struggled a bit to find sizes which worked with my long arms and (cough cough) broad shoulders. You do not want cuffs too tight or arms too short which might pull up while you are working, exposing the flesh of wrists and forearms to the bees' stinging bits.

We got there in the end and came home happy with our car load. Still no bees, yet. Too cold for them till June, but our names are now down in black and white on the waiting list for our Nucleus ('nuke') box. The other thing we are waiting for is any of the wax 'foundation' sheet used in the hive frames. These sheets are pre-moulded with an 'embossed' hexagon pattern to give the bees a clue where to start 'drawing out' the wax tubular brood cells and (later) honey comb. The manufacturers do not like making the foundation or shipping it about when the weather is too cold, as the sheets are very brittle. They wait till the weather warms up and the sheets become more pliable.

Last but not least, another year has come round to Feb 1st and the day we make our St Brigid's crosses from the local rushes. Far fewer rushes about now we are pleased to say, after all our hard work mowing, scything, strimmer-ing, sheep grazing, goose grazing, rabbit grazing and horse grazing but we found enough to do a cross a-piece to keep in with the tradition.

All your Birthdays at Once

Having all your birthdays at once usually means having such a good day that it feels as though all the treats from all your birthdays have arrived together. Here we have a different meaning. It so happens that last year, when we were looking to buy a pup, the pregnant Westie bitch who was going to supply us with him, Mrs Silverwood's "Lily" (by Maxwell), happened to whelp on the night of 2nd June into the morning of 3rd June 2012. Regular readers may recall that in the event we ended up with both the planned boy-pup, Towser on the right here, plus his sister and litter-mate, Poppy (left).

Meanwhile, Liz had been looking to buy 2 kittens and we had found out that there was a friend of Mrs Silverwood's, living just around the corner who had a pregnant cat. The morning of the whelping we found out that this cat had also given birth on the same night to three kittens and that we could therefore have our 2 from that little gang. These turned out to be Rolo (pictured here stalking through the buttercups) and Blue (sleeping in the caravan, below).

So there we had it - 4 animals all with the same birthday. It makes remembering the date(s) easier. Our traditional birthday treat for dogs is raw pork ribs which are gnawed, ground and slurped with relish. The cats will get a treat of fish which they will also love.

So, Happy Birthday Towser, Poppy, Rolo and Blue. We nearly had all this batch of baby rabbits born on 3rd June too, but we are fairly sure these were yesterday or the day before.

Are these cats dogs?

We are fairly convinced that we have a couple of confused cats here which seem to think they are dogs or, at least, think they have the right to as much fresh air, exercise and walking, as our dogs. First though, a quick 2 pictures of the first completed rabbit run as promised yesterday, now that it is out in the sun. The cats, though. We first noticed that Blue had a love of coming out on walks when I used to take the pups for their first walks around the perimeter of the 12 acres of this farm (the bit we don't own). The walk is almost a km but Blue would howl to be allowed to come out with us and would then bounce along with us, leaping from tussock to tussock with his tail up like a flag, no mean feat for a small kitten.

Since then the pups have grown up a bit, gotten more adventurous and had started to escape and get into the lane as well as, on one occasion attacking our rooster, so that they are now only allowed out on the lead and we take them for a short walk round our bit of the farm (2.5 acres) several times a day so that they can do the necessary. They also get a proper walk, of course, up or down the lane, also on the lead. During the short ones I generally get out of the front door with my three dogs and no sooner am I gone than both cats are yowling at Liz to be allowed out with us. My route usually goes down the length of the lawn, round to the drive, back up to the orchard and then through the yard and back to the front door. I am barely half way down the lawn when I hear the front door clonk softly closed again after Liz has released the cats and seconds later they come bowling by us down the lawn mixing it playfully with the dogs. The 6 of us then do the walk and at the end the cats either decide to come in or not, as suits them.

In the dark, I use one of those new-fangled LED head-torches which, amusingly, show up the cats' eyes a bright blue-green even when the cat is too far off to see any of the rest of the cat. Amazingly, even if all I can see of the cats is the pair of eyes reflected, I can unerringly tell which cat I am looking at. Blue bounds down the lawn towards me just like when he was a kitten, so the eye-reflections bounce across the dark grass. Rolo is more of a slinky mover, and walks down the lawn so his eyes come at me in more of a straight line.

Recently we also had an issue where Blue tried to follow me down the lane on one of the main walks, yowling at me to wait for him to catch up. Given the fun we have had lately trying to keep pups from getting run over by cars, this was NOT FUNNY. There was no way I could manage 3 dogs on leads and grab a handful of cat when ever a car approached. I had to walk back to the gate and call Liz down to grab the cat so that we could set off again sans cat. We soon learned to check Blue was safely indoors before I set off from the house. Yesterday that all worked fine but I had got half a mile down the lane, way past McG's and John Deere Bob's house, when I suddenly had Rolo with me. He must have snuck along behind us, undetected by dogs and then 'pounced'. Once more I was on the phone to Liz, who I thought might drive down but she came walking down commenting that this was the 'most she'd walked all week!' She carried the kitten home while we carried on the walk. Now we know to secure both cats before we head off down the lane.

My other news is just that we have started to get some damage from the geese on the new fruit trees. I had been warned that geese can damage trees but I had thought that this was just nibbling leaves. I assumed that our fruit trees, which are mostly tall enough to have their leaves well out of reach of even the gander, would be OK. The older trees already have their sheep-proof fences round them and this seems to keep the geese far enough away. I had not got around to fencing the  7 new trees yet as we are not likely to get this year's lambs till August or so.

Well, it is not just the leaves, by all accounts - geese will nibble away at small shoots and buds and even have a go at the bark on trunks. They are creatures of habit and obsession, and will happily start worrying away at a fruit tree's bark till they have stripped the bark all round, ring-barking the tree and killing it. Some of our new trees are so young and small that even the main 'trunk' is still, technically, a fine branch and I was starting to see the geese hovering near the trees whistling innocently and when I inspected the trees, I was seeing nibbled ends and the start of ring-barking on the small ones. Time to invest in some tree -guards. We have bought the hard plastic spiral ones 75cm tall and have now fitted them to all the trees without sheep guards. They came from an on line supplier and were only about 50 cents each. For some of the trees which looked particularly vulnerable, I have even stacked another half length on top, so that I have easily enough protected even from the tall gander.

My final picture shows the three suspects by a tree but is mainly to show off how bright and white they are now in the sunshine and to let you see the view across the turf bog land and forestry to the north of us, the view we 'borrow' for the garden in best Capability Brown landscaping tradition. It gives the geese something to look at, too. I am hoping that now that the geese are not confined to the orchard, they will not focus on the trees and will start to explore other sources of bark-nutrition.

The Only Way is Up

Who even knew there was a 'right way up' for eggs? Apparently there is, and it is 'pointy end down' so all my pictures of eggs so far have been wrong 'uns. It just looks so wrong and pointy end up looks right. However, it all has to do, apparently, with the air sac of the egg being at the blunt end. If you put this end down the sac tends to bulge up into the egg and the yolk will sag on its suspension strands within the white. White contains a lot more protective enzymes than yolk, it seems, and if you do this you can get a lot more shelf life out of the egg - up to 5 months if you need it, though our eggs would never last that long around here. All the commercial boys do this and modern egg packing gear lifts the 6 eggs using rubber suction cups by their blunt end, so egg boxes from the shops are all this way up, if you look. Ah well. Now I know (Thank You, Mentor Anne) as from the 3rd January I will toe the line.

Recent days have also seen John Deere Bob and I out with the chainsaw and tractor again and attacking the local ash trees. First up, though, an appointment at Bob's where in his own barn, he has left from a big load of wood, just the gnarly bottom-of-tree bits which resist his axe. He's an old boy, 70+ and even so can still swing that axe impressively, but these bits have knots and scar ("spelted?") tissue and the axe is no use. The chain saw, though, doesn't take any prisoners and we soon have these great discs and cubes of iron-hard wood reduced to breeze-block size and smaller, to fit in his fireplace. From there he sends me off for a couple hours felling and logging coppiced ash in the warm sunshine till we have enough for 2 loads in his tractor-mounted box, saying he'll come down later to load it. That amount of logs quickly fills up all the spare space in the log shed and the space underneath and even bulges out into the rain. Should see us through to the good weather.

Still not satisfied, though, Bob now has his eye on a decent sized (not yet coppiced) ash on the boundary of his field. To me this tree looks too big for my chain saw but Bob is convinced we'll be OK if we just cut in twice, once from either side on the thick bits (!). The amount of wood would fill, again, my wood store over , so we will have to move some stuff in the Tígín and make space for a big stack under cover ready for 2013/4 winter. Probably not needed quite yet but, as Sparks kept saying, "Better to be looking at it than looking for it" and Bob seems to be on a roll, enjoying himself as an active logger with me as his new 'oppo'. Fair play to him.

The two cats, brothers and litter mates have grown, at 7 months into 2 quite different animals. On the left here, with white paws is sleek farm-cat Rolo, ace mouser and ratter (not so many lately - they seem to have wiped the local vermin out!). He is given to odd chirrupy "Prr-r-r-ooooo!" noises and sitting in the kitchen sink (when empty of water). His brother, Blue of the enormous grey feet is roughly the same weight (3.65 kg) but less of a vermin-killer and given to loud yowling when he wants a door opened. Also to quite manic demands for fuss where he will scramble to get onto your shoulders or lap or onto the laptop keyboard and start mouthing or patting your hands and face if you do not give him the petting, strokes and love he thinks are his right.

Our home made Merlot wine turns out to be a very pleasant, light, easy drink. It is not 'thin' in the alcohol sense and gives you the same buzz as would a shop-bought Merlot, but it is not heavy in dense flavours like a Rioja or a Shiraz might be. It is more like the top end of rosé so we have been trying out drinking it as would Diamond and Liz on their Greek holidays. They are used to the Greek red house-wine being chilled (which probably only works for the rosé end of things) but on Poros Island each customer would get a 0.25 cl carafe of the house red and any kind of tumbler or glass. These are rough and ready sea-front tavernas, not 'posh restaurants' and Diamond, having been going to Poros for a gazillion years knows all the taverna owners and is welcomed in with open arms like a member of the family. She is given the genuine stuff, not the tourist baloney. We are currently working our way through the 'overflow' wine which got put into 2 litre milk bottles when we ran out of wine bottles and corks, so the bottle sits in the fridge and comes out periodically to refill the carafe. The carafe is a genuine Greek one from just such an old taverna as described here (though this one up in the lemon groves at Lemonodassos); a present to Liz from the owner, Andreas.

My final picture is firmly back in the category of "Look away Now" if you don't want to know about the fates of last year's store-lambs, Connie, Dora and Flo. 4 more delicious chops from the freezer. We have over 20 of these 4-pack chop packs across the three carcasses and they are superb, and very nice with this Greek-style wine drinking. Liz blasts them in the griddle-pan with some salt tossed into the pan first, and serves them on warmed plates with whatever veg and carbs are around - yesterday it was quinoa, cabbage and carrots.

Big Day All Round

December 3rd (tomorrow) is like an alignment of the planets round here with everything seeming to happen at once. All being well the sheep are off on their final journey but I'll cover that story in a post of its own so that anyone who doesn't want to know about that can easily avoid it

On the same day all the kindergarten reach 6 months of age, with both the Silverwood puppies and the Tommo-the-Builder kittens all being born overnight 2nd/3rd June. The picture here is of Towser using Rolo as a pillow. These two seem to have paired off for daytime snoozing purposes and Blue has paired off with Poppy. Just "Auntie Deefer" prefers to sleep alone and tends to grump a bit if anyone strays into her air-space.

Also on that date, Donna and CJ, the baby chicks reach the magic 6-weeks-old figure and, now that they are fully feathered, assuming tomorrow is anything like for weather, they can join the main flock. Even better, so can their Mum, Broody Betty who has definitely had more than enough of the Maternity Unit hutch. We never did get around to organising a bigger run; we were going to borrow a 6 by 4 foot run from Mentor Anne but it needs our trailer to haul it and you'll know that the 2CV (with the tow hitch for the trailer) has not yet passed its NCT. Poor old BB must be feeling a bit like a battery hen by now, all be it she has streets more space than those poor creatures. This pic is Donna at 5 weeks. I will publish some more up to date ones as soon as everyone is released and the babies are running with the herd.

Kindergarten at 3 Months.

On 3rd September the pups and kittens all make it to 3 months so this is an un-ashamed excuse to publish a few cute pup and kitten pictures. I can also include Buck Rogers in this group as he is nearly as young. He is developing bizarre tufts of fur on his cheeks and his head. We have heard of a type of rabbit called a 'lion' variety, so we wonder whether this is maybe what that is all about. Buck is a bit small yet to be looking after his ladies, so Dad is taking Anne and Simon up on an offer to allow their bigger, meat-breed buck, Peter to do the deed first time round. Peter is a Californian White, a breed commonly used in rabbits-for-meat enterprises.


Also 'we' successfully fledged a family of three baby swallows from the nest in the Tígín. They flew around an returned a couple of nights but now seem to have left the nest for good and may be among the birds wheeling around and gathering in our telegraph wires preparatory to the long migration to Africa.

In the two pup pictures, Poppy has the sticky-up ears, Towser's are still a bit floppy. Nobody minds this. They may stand up eventually (His Father's (Maxwell's) apparently took and age) but Dad thinks he looks quite cute anyway and we can easily tell the bu**ers apart, anyway! Mrs Silverwood is rather meanly calling them Poppy and "Floppy" on Facebook. Poor devil will probably end up with a complex.

The tabby kitten, Blue has grown some rather fetching ear tufts and has in the past also had nice long whiskers but these are currently a bit short due, we think, to his keenness to get onto the dining table and wander close to the candles. This is a battle Mum and Dad are determined to win (they won eventually with a previous cat 'Utsire'). He climbs onto the table and is ejected by the scruff. He climbs back on and gets ejected again. After a couple more warnings he is scruffed into the living room and gets to spend the meal behind that closed door. He'll learn. In the lower picture he fails to notice that a robin has landed on the wall beside him. Dad only sees this as it flies off but it's there in the shot when we go back to look.

Next up is the tortoiseshell kitten Rolo who may not have the fancy ear tufts of his brother but at least he has intact whiskers. And finally let us not forget William the Conqueror, now a magnificent, manly, brave and fearless Rooster with the start of a tail. When he arrived he was fresh out of a large pen in which he lived with 150 'hins' all of whom must have been taking a peck out of his tail as he passed. No respect some hens. He had a rather sore, pink parsons nose from which sprouted two broken feather bases sticking straight up. Now he is a bit meaner and ruffty tuffty and doesn't take any such nonsense from his new ladies, it has started to grow back in a gorgeous iridescent dark green, almost black. It is about 3 inches long now but should form a proud arching 'rooster tail' like on the Cornflakes packet. He hopes. He is doing a good job now marshaling and protecting his ladies and utters low growls at any threat and charges with ruff expanded, chest spread and wings out to make him look as big as possible. He even tries it on Dad but kinda goes off the idea as Dad looks him in the eye!

Kindergarten

The kindergarten grows from strength to strength. The pup, Towser, at 10 weeks has almost doubled in weight from his 7 week old arrival weight (1.2 kgs) to 2.2 kg now. The kittens, Blue and Rolo are now 1.2 kgs up from 700g or so and all have come on in leaps and bounds (literally) in terms of their mobility, stairs-climbing ability and pushing back the boundaries of the territory they explore when allowed out. The three of them all play well together, all be it, Towser sometimes gets a bit rough with Rolo, who seems to be his 'best mate'. I am slotting into 'Aunt' role very well, much to everyone's delight and while I never let anyone get tooooooo close (this first picture is a bit of a lie - Towser was in the bed first and this is me trying to 'cuckoo's nest' him out; I would never let him join me in bed if I was already in it!) I do tend and mind them all and occasionally let a bit of scampering play happen, especially if I can cuff the pup and bowl him ovber occasionally. This is just to show him I'm still bigger than he is.

Towser gets into a few scrapes like in the 2nd pic, where he was 'busted' by Dad breaking into the chicken run through a narrow gap under the door. Rolo nails his first shrew out in the yard and then runs around with it in his mouth growling very professionally at all comers including me, who wanted to get a look in. The three of them frequently accompany us out as far as the rabbit run now and here are some pics of various babies meeting Ginny and Padfoot. The buck rabbit 'Rogers' is still with us but manages to stay out of most of these pictures, leaving the camera time to his ladies.

They are all also generally on hand to assist with gardening jobs. We have a heap of soil in the bit of garden still called "The Bit We Don't Talk About" into which is mixed a decent supply of coal and anthracite after the mini digger driver scraped up a load of topsoil when clearing brambles and unknown to him, a rotten pallet of coal bags buried in the grass. This fuel is still useful so Mum and Dad decided to dig through the heap and liberate any useful sized coal lumps and anthracite 'nuts'. Towser decided to help and is pictured here in the bucket Mum was using to gather coal.

Finally just a few pics of babies because they are cute and fun. Enjoy!

KIttens Arrive

Our main event for Sunday 15^th July was to head for Silverwood’s to collect the 2 new kittens. These little mites are only 6 weeks old which seemed a bit young to us but apparently that is OK for felines. They are called Blue and Rolo and were ‘bred’ by daughter of Tommo the Builder (though I’m surte that bher only involvement was to own the bottle-brush tailed cat, Bailey. Mum and Dad managed to wrap the 2 hour each way 'zoom' around a lovely roast pork dinner including Mrs S’s best ever crackling. It (the zoom) was preceded by the usual unleashing the chickens of war but we have now developed a handy rounding them up process involving going to fetch grain from the clangy dustbin in their shed (they hear and come zooming over to see if there's food on offer).

The drive itself was made slightly more scenic and less zoomy by us being diverted off the main road by the Guards (Police) to avoid 'Match Traffic' - some kind of GAA big match in Roscommon. So now we have 2 kittens who are doing ‘cute’ in a very thorough and professional manner but whom I am not allowed to eat. This message is being driven home very forcibly, as it was for the chickens, this time by a series of ‘training sessions’ in which I am kept on a lead and introduced. I am allowed enough lead to sniff, watch and chase them some of the way round the furniture, but never quite enough to poke them with my nose or worse. I think the plan is that we all end up one big happy family.

Oh and Dad’s Rotovator is sick. Something to do with the ignition, possibly as a result of him forgetting to cover it one rainy night, so that is off to the 'garage' this morning.

Mademoiselle

I said the other day that we were allowed the rare treat of checking in on the 2CV boys working on their old car, Mademoiselle d'Armentieres. Here's one of me and one of the guys, working on the rear of the body shell. I was, of course, most helpful

Good news from real-Mum. Her sores are all dried up and no longer itching her. She's on the mend. First Dad gave up on trying to keep the "lamp shade" on her and, instead, whenever she got itchy he would hustle her out for another long walk so she'd forget to scratch and be too tired to start again when she got home. He and she were walked off their feet over the weekend, but it's done the trick!

Nice walk tonight - well more of a frisbee chasing session to the Rec. We meet Ben of the peepie-toes shoes (see earlier blog) and a Cav called Rolo, who is good entertainment. We're as tired as poor old Mollie

Deefer