The roast chicken challenge

A roast chicken dinner has got to be one of my favourite meals especially on a cold, soggy weekend. While I love to eat the clucky, feathery, idiots (the chickens I have met have been rather foolish if adorable birds), I also want them to be happy chickens up to the point that they squawk. So this means free-range, truly free-range means outdoor space to roam not just a slightly larger cage space (and even then you have to be careful as definitions of free-range can be rather stretched, meaning what is labelled as free-range isn’t necessarily the green field image it conveys … investigating and finding a good brand is worthwhile). As we all know, free-range birds tend to be a little bit pricier in the supermarkets than their unhappy factory squashed counterparts. So in order to spring for the pricier, happy chickens without making me squawk at the checkout till, I need to make the bird stretch for more than just a meal for two and maybe some sandwiches the next day. 

 

My parent's chickens in England lead a very good life, though they are
strictly not for eating ... unless that blasted Mr Fox gets lucky again!

To Pea, or not to Pea, that is the question!

I'm having a bit of a pea dilemma, there is nothing better than a home grown pea fresh from the pod, but there is limited space in my veggie patch and I have to weigh up the space/yield/value of everything that I put in there.  Broccoli and peas are my go-to vegetables of choice for accompanying an evening meal and while I feel like I can grow enough broccoli to make a dent in the broccoli purchases, I can't grow anywhere near enough peas for them to be more than a blink and you miss them novelty, a cameo appearance in a year of veggie growing.  Somehow though it seems wrong to leave them out! 

Recipe books from another era



Hello there, I couldn't resist sharing some pictures of these gorgeous old cookbooks, though I'm sure most people have these in the back of their cupboards somewhere or at least in the back of their mum's/grandma's cupboards. Husband's mum sent down some boxes of books for us and these were included so I've had a lovely Sunday evening sitting by the fire and taking a step back in time. 

Easy, effort-free bread recipe to knock your socks off!

I can’t claim credit for the recipe but it is so ridiculously easy, hassle free and above all tasty that I had to share it.  If you’ve never made home-made bread before because you think it is too difficult, time consuming and generally not worth the bother, then give this recipe a try, it is delicious and will give you a huge smug feeling for the whole day! :) It is knead-free and prove-free so even if you already have a good go-to recipe for bread, this recipe is still worth a try on those days when you are feeling low on energy and simply can’t be bothered with it all, we all have those for sure!

Over-winter soil improvement

In the last post I covered vegetables that can be grown, and more importantly harvested, in winter.  The post was quickly followed by a unseasonal chilly spell, sorry about that guys! :)  The cold snap might have persuaded you that you really don't want to be gardening over the winter months or like me, you might not think you will need all of your vegetable beds for your winter veggies.  Rather than letting it all go to weeds I've been researching some soil improvement tips as things don't seem to grow quite as well in one half of the patch for some reason. It gets the same amount of sun so I'm thinking it will benefit from some TLC.

Winter is coming!

Nope this isn't a post about Game of Thrones, but I've been thinking about what to do with the garden over winter.  It seems ridiculous to be planning for winter on a lovely warm summers day (update that was Thursday, 2 days later it's bucketing down with rain and cold, much more appropriate).  We’ve already stocked up with firewood while it was going cheap and I’ve been doing a bit of over-wintering research. It is the perfect time to start thinking about it as a lot of summer crops are finishing and it will soon be time to put in some of the slower autumn/winter seeds or seedlings.

Half the wood-pile, will be sad to leave summer but I can't wait for the first cosy fire!

Glut recipes - Tomatoes

Tomato season is well and truly here, I've cleared out some space in the freezer to prepare for the tubs of sauce that will be taking up residence soon.  The damp start to summer and the fact that I may have slightly over-crowded the greenhouse has caused a few issues of the fungal variety but I think I've caught it in time and the fruit production doesn't seem to be affected, fingers crossed!  

The harvest in just one day, delish!

Glut recipes - broad beans and spring onions

The broad beans and spring onions have got to be my success story for the year ... at least so far.  I was expecting to have loads of the beans for the freezer but I've been throwing them in everything since husband decided he likes them after all! They've gone in salads, stir fries and pastas, so have the spring onions.

Glorious fresh goodies from the garden

Sunshine on a rainy day

Hello all, I hope you've all been enjoying the start to summer.  There has been some sun in there between the rain and wind!

The veggies have been enjoying it anyway, perhaps not so much the wind, but the change between sun and rain has everything going bonkers.  I haven't been planting much out lately, hence no how-to blogs being posted lately,  I've just been impatiently waiting for things to harvest until recently.  My impatience is being rewarded though, I am starting to get things out of the garden to eat now, hooray! 

Someone else is living my dream / rampant radishes

I had a lovely trip over to Central Otago this weekend to visit friends, got to sit in the sunshine too, fantastic!  I also got to visit their mum, a lady who is currently living my dream and came back to Dunedin full of envy and determination.

A weekend with Annabel Langbein

Well not really, but it felt like it :)   After entering my details on Annabel Langbein’s website I was lucky enough to be chosen to be a free range foodie panel member and receive a free advance copy of her new recipe book, a Free Range Life Summer Annual.

A free range life - summer annual

Potatoes Part 2 – Planting out

If, like me, you started chitting your potatoes last month (potatoes part 1), then your seed potatoes are probably starting to look a little bit ugly, all wrinkled with alien like sprouts. If you haven’t got started yet then it isn’t too late, you may have missed the boat for Christmas dinner but you’ll still have a lovely crop later in the summer.

Wrinkly Alien seed potatoes

Faster than the speed of light!

I'm liking this new trend for rain during the week and sunshine at the weekend.  It is very much the opposite of what I am used to!  I've been taking full advantage and the garden looks amazing at the moment.

However, I am getting VERY impatient, I want to start eating things out of the garden again!! At the moment all that it is producing is lettuce and the herbs, which is great because I did miss these over winter, but still lettuce doesn't get you very far.

Tomatoes and sunburn

I had an awesome weekend in the garden, had a good tidy up and got a lot of weeding done … I also got my first sunburn of the 2013/2014 summer, whoops!  The carrot and radish seeds are in the garden finally and I’ve evicted the spare tomato seedlings to make room for more up and coming seedlings.  The handy husband has also been busy, jerry rigging a plastic tray as a shelf in the greenhouse for seedlings to keep the out of the way and building this awesome vertical herb garden on the fence for lettuces and annual herbs.  The cat is not being so helpful, a new game appears to be digging up the non-frilly lettuces or biting and shredding the frilly ones, hence the vertical herb garden and a liberal sprinkling of skunk pellets.

A vertical herb garden

Strawberries = summer in a mouthful!

Imagine this, you wake up and have some strawberries scattered on your morning cereal, or perhaps some home-made strawberry jam on your toast, you’ve then got some strawberries tucked in to your lunchbox for a healthy snack, and maybe for dessert you’ve got a strawberry tart or some strawberries and other fruit mixed with yoghurt and honey, or maybe it’s the weekend and you can add some strawberries to your sparkling wine or pimms.   These are proper strawberries too mind you, not those hothouse grown, hard, strawberry flavoured bullets, but proper sun-warmed, luscious, juicy fruit with maximum strawberry taste!  Sounds good? Then get growing!

Quietly growing in the background

Hi all, did you miss me?  I was a bit shocked to realise that I haven't posted in nearly a month!  I think the blog and I have just been waiting quietly and impatiently for seeds to grow.  Also we have been doing more mundane things around the garden like repairing the lawn, shifting dirt piles, weeding, chopping down trees, and re-organising the front garden flower bed, so I haven't been too lazy, honest!

You may remember the seed packet bonanza that I mentioned in a previous post ... well I planted them out in seed trays shortly after they arrived and have been hovering over them like a broody hen ever since ... maybe that has more to do with the reason I haven't blogged, I've been too busy running to the greenhouse every 5 mins to see if anything has grown yet!  

Have you got yer spuds on? – Potatoes part 1

I think potatoes were the most satisfying thing I grew last year, so easy to grow and when they are ready it is like digging for treasure. The only thing I did wrong with these last year is to not grow nearly enough.

It’s time to get the seed potatoes ready, it’s called ‘chitting’, but all that involves is keeping them in a warm (but not hot), dry, airy place so they start sprouting … so basically what happens when you leave your eating potatoes in the cupboard too long! I keep mine in a tray in the bottom of the pantry, it seems to work well enough on my bag of supermarket spuds so why not. Other suggestions are an egg carton on a windowsill, they need a bit of light but not too hot. It is important that the resting spot you choose is dry otherwise you will end up with mouldy potatatoes. 



Chitting the potatoes before planting

Do try and buy properly certified seed potatoes rather than using potatoes from the supermarket, as they will be treated for diseases etc and be a bit stronger for producing lots of potato babies. I’ve got some Jersey Bennes and Agrias going at the moment for new potatoes and everyday potatoes. I might try and get another couple of more interesting varieties to go in a bit later on.

Place potatoes in a single layer on your tray/egg carton and try and get them eye side up (eyes are those little knobbly bits). After a couple of weeks they will start sprouting, you want three good strong sprouts of about an inch long. If the potato has any more than three sprouts you can just rub off the extras.

Don’t have a veggie patch? They sell growing towers and plastic tubs that work well for potatoes, especially the new potato varieties. When we were living in a flat in London we had a tiny outdoor space which was basically the roof of an extension on the flat below that was overlooked by the tube tracks. My husband grew a lovely lot of potatoes in one of those plastic tubs with some holes poked in the bottom.  Potatoes grown in containers tend to be a bit paler and thinner skinned for some reason, which is probably why it suits new potatoes better.  They are still great to eat though.

Posing with the London potatoes shortly before harvesting,
the wall at the back is the tube line.  And below is some of the harvest! 

My only warning is, that if you are planting them in the garden, choose a spot where you won’t mind potato plants appearing the following year! We were finding potato plants EVERYWHERE in the garden last year, even in flower beds and the front garden. I left a couple to grow and got a great harvest from those so that was a bonus, but unless you thoroughly dig down and out you are pretty much guaranteed to find a plant growing there next year.
To be continued ...

Halloumi - Brunch of Champions

We made Halloumi yesterday.  We've made it a few times now and it's the easiest and least time consuming of all the cheeses we've made so far.  It is very similar to making Feta (see here), but seems to take less time and less attention.  The best thing is that it can be made and ready to eat in an evening, hooray!

Spring - the promise of good times ahead

My plans for a weekend in the garden have been rained off, it's a bit yuck out there.  Can't say I'm really complaining about a rainy Sunday on the sofa though. 

There are signs that Spring is on the way though ...

The Magnolia is blooming

The Onion Patch

For someone that is not that keen on onions, I’m sure growing a lot of them!  I do use them in cooking a lot, but as more of a hidden vegetable in things like Bolognese or Chili.  It’s not the flavour I don’t like, more the texture!  I could never eat a raw onion slice or bite in to a chunky bit of cooked onion, blech!  The milder spring onions on the other hand I’m quite keen on.

I spent this Sunday afternoon planting out the onion patch in the sunshine, I’ve now got Spring Onions, Shallots, Red Onions and the everyday Pukekohe longkeepers (brown onions) in the ground.  Onion seedlings are good to plant out now in August, and then again in April  (make a start in Feb or Jun if you are going to try from seed).