A Sloppy Mess

Marzipanning the cake. 

After the excitement of our snow and the beautiful pictures that were possible, the thaw was always going to be a come down. The snow is all gone now and the melt water is sitting on the surface, waiting to drain away, turning our grass and any soft paths into a sloppy mess. The ducks don't help, of course, with their keenness to dibble about in any puddle with their bills, sifting for grubs and worms in the slop. Areas that should be green are brown. We need it all to drain, which does not usually take too long, and then for a short, sharp rain shower to wash the grass blades clean.

This loaf had me worried this morning, but seems to have come
 good. When I first went to knead it after the overnight "sponge"
stage, it seemed cold, dead and dense. It then rose sluggishly, but
I had no need to fret. Looks and feels OK now.

This may well be the shortest post ever as we are literally just getting ready for the start of Christmas visitors. Coming this weekend we have old Friends of the Blog, formerly "Dan and Dan". Dan and Dan(ielle) are now famously wed on a cruise ship off Italy earlier in the year, so maybe we should call them Mr and Mrs Dan. They arrive tomorrow for a quick break but we will get them involved in decorating the Christmas Tree and sharing in our glühwein, so it should start to feel like Christmas for all of us.

That half-deer still giving us some useful joints - this a half leg
of venison, up for roasting tomorrow for the guests. 

With Liz away and the snow coming and then thawing, the dogs, cats and I have inevitably walked a fair amount of wet into the house. We can train humans to wipe their feet on the rugs and to take off their boots at the door (well, most of the humans, anyway!), but cats come and go through the cat flap at will and the dogs are so pleased to be back indoors and have eyes only for their dog-treat ('sweeties' here), so if you can get them to put each paw down on the rug even once in passing, you are doing well. It's a never ending battle.

A new way with belly pork. Mini 'porchetta'

A quick sorry update on those duck eggs we have (had) in Sue's incubator. They were keeping us waiting - a week ago we could see little feet kicking about in the 'candling' light beam but then day 28 rolled round to 35, 36 and now 37. Sadly they have now failed to hatch and are dead in their shells. It happens. They would be VERY late season, laid in November, so probably the drake and ducks are not doing their 'mating season' with the required amount of spring in their step. Their various contributions were not in peak of health and these babies were never going to be. Thanks for trying, Sue. We will give it another go in Spring. We have another string to our bow, of course - there are 5 duck eggs under very late broody 'Connie', which come to Day 28 on Christmas Day. Perhaps a real bird might fare better than the incubator. Watch this space.

A 'Swiss roll' of belly meat with inter-leaved herbs, all rolled
up in the skin. 

Meanwhile, we have found a new use for those big squares of belly pork. Bacon rashers and fried strips of belly are all well and good, and Black Spring's Nan's recipe is Divine, but we saw on the Internet, some people making a mini 'porchetta'. Our go-to You-Tube butcher, the 'Scott Rea Project', shows how to take a foot-square chunk of the belly, lay it flat on the chopping board and slice through it horizontally so that you can open two 'pages' like a book.

Nom nommetty nom!

Don't cut all the way through - leave yourself a 'hinge' at one end. You now have a sheet of 'meat' 24" by 12". Smear all over this sheet a mix of as many herbs and flavours as you fancy - we used salt, garlic, rosemary, thyme, sage, fennel seed and lemon zest. We strip all the stems out of the herbs and use just the softer leaves. Now roll the whole thing up leaving the skin outside and facing out, and do your best butchers' knots to make it keep shape. Score the skin all over to help the crackling. Sprinkle with salt or oil according to preference.

We served our porchetta with steamed kale (2 varieties), carrots
and white rice. 

Pre-heat oven to 230ºC (very hot!). Put the roll on a rack sitting out of the roasting dish. Have a mug's worth of water in the dish to stop the worst smoking and spitting. Cook for 20 minutes on hot, then turn oven down to 150ºC and cook for another 3 hours or so. Take joint from oven, cover with foil and a tea towel and rest for a good 20 mins to relax, while you do the veg. Ours was lovely and...oh!... the crackling. Thank you Scott Rea and the rest of the Internet pork-chefs. Good eating.

Thaw

Some bleak ol' photo's of the boat yard in the snow. Last night, though, mild winds blow in and rain washes most of it away as if it had never been. It's the weekend but Haggis wakes up all moopy and clingy and pleads with the humans to sit on their laps. Mum ends up eating her breakfast one handed with the H lying across her legs.

He's better once Dad is back from Canterbury where he has to buy dog sweeties (and other less important stuff!) and we get taken for a walk. We are now stretched out in front of the fire occasionally having to fend off Ragworth who has turned up with Diamond. Mum and D had been off to a rated local butcher in the village of Luddenham (The Angel B and Uncle Jim swear by it) and return here for a bite of lunch.

Have a good weekend.

Deefs

Getting picky

Mum tells Dad an umusing story from her work-at-home day today. Our "sweeties", often referred to in this blog, are almost invariably of the dried meat variety. Hartz (as was, not sure if they haven't been swallowed up) "Treatsters" were always a favourite - the square flat "half dice" shaped ones, with a hole punched into the centre. Since they've become harder to find round town we've moved onto (Purina) Bakers "Rewards" - the 4 inch long "sticks" of dried meaty stuff marked in segments.

This (meaty) choice was because Haggis does not "do plants" so no kind of biscuit or choc drops was acceptable. This causes much wrinkling of noses from well-meaning little old ladies who while out walking their own dogs, try to offer us a treat. Myself and Meggie take ANYTHING eagerly, while Haggis gingerly takes any offered treat between his lips, then drops (almost "spits" it out - you can almost hear the Peanuts-cartoon "pftoui!" noise) it onto the ground, walking away in disgust.

Mum and Dad though have, since Christmas, had a bag of choc drops, which Dad, in the dark, recently opened thinking it was "real" sweeties. Megs is happy with this and Dad had taken, whenever a sweetie opportunity arose (I'll explain the "rules" another time) to grabbing a meaty one for the H (hoping we'd not notice) and a small pinch of choc-drops for us. Worked OK for a while, but today, when Mum went to call me in, I sussed her out.

I came to the door to accept the sweetie. H got his meaty one and trotted in, Meg her choc drops and trotted in, but I took a sniff, realised they were chocolate ones, not "real" ones and , in a way the made Mum crack up, strolled off in a teenager manner till Mum produced a proper sweetie. I then trotted in with a "that's OK then" look at her as I went by

Gotta keep these humans under control you know - or you'd not know what they were up to

Deefs

Rules is Rules

We dogs are creatures of habit - we like rules to follow, we must know our place in the world. We need a structure to our day, rythms and predictability. We get concerned when anyone, particularly the humans in our pack start doing unexpected things.

One of the best rules and structures , we think, are those surrounding when "sweeties" are dished out. If we're in the garden and we get called in, when we (eventually) come in, we are rewarded with a treat. This can sometimes be stretched to "one of us has just come in so we should all get a sweetie" but when it gets pushed to "OK we didn't actually go out because it's raining, but we looked out from the threshold and now we're back in" it usually falls over. Treats also apply if the humans are going out and leaving us.

Another is the sweetie at bedtime. This is so strict a rule it is now a "tradition". At bedtime we are chased to the back door, the door is opened with a cry of "Last Out!" and we all speed off down the garden to do our last patrols, checks and um... ablutions. The we all head up to bed and when all are assembled, sweeties are dished out, 2 each in the following order - Meg, H, Deefer and Mississippi. Felix is not part of this and not interested in dog sweeties.

My photo is of 3 very attentive westies, left to right, myself, Meg and the H-man. Missi is here somewhere but not in shot. We are attantive because it is just before our bedtime "sweetie"

Sweeties are, incidentally, only those of the dried-meat type, like Winalot rewards. The packet says "meat and animal derivatives, at least 55%" but only "at least 4% beef". Not sure if that makes them technically "dried meat" but they work for us. The other acceptable type are square "polo" mint ones which were made by hartz, but seem to be now made by someone else and come in a grey bag on the rare occasions when the local Co-op has them on stock.

All other retailed treats are looked upon with derision, especially if they contain "plant". H feels especially strongly about this, and will outright refuse any "biscuit" type treats, much to the consternation of well- meaning sweet dog walkers and little old ladies, to whom we must appear quite ungrateful. Meg will sometimes save the day by deigning to eat such offerings, and I (natch) will eat anything if I see Meg or H trying it.

May have been forgiven for the robin thing. Another robin was singing away in the beech hedge this morning, which put paid to Dad's little digs when we went out into the garden along the lines of "Hark! Silence! Listen to the sounds of small red breasted song birds NOT singing!"

My other 2 pics, as befits the Garden of England - the large pink single flower is Quince blossom, and the other is apple blossom, specifically James Grieves

Have a good weekend

Deefs