Can I Help You?

" Yes .... can I help you ? "

This is one of our newer girls, she's a Rhode Rock, they have quite an evel glare to their eyes don't they but they are delightfully friendly chickens.  We bought four of them this Summer from a local farmer and they still laying us an egg about every other day even though for reasons unknown to us, all our other girls stop laying through the Winter since we moved here to North Wales.  

While we lived in Oxfordshire and Berkshire all but the pure breds continued laying year round.  Our neighbour over the road had the same problem with his hens last year.  There were lots of us to be seen in the supermarkets last year buying free range organic eggs, and I suspect so were a lot of other chicken keepers in this area, as this was the first type of eggs to sell out whichever supermarket you went to.

So at the moment we are getting around 14 eggs a week which is just enough to keep us in eggs with the occasional half dozen for my Mum.

Yesterdays post seem to throw up lots of questions, so I thought I would answer them here.

From the Comments -

Yes, Chard, or most other leaves for that matter, can be used to make pesto.  See the recipe for Green Basil Pesto on the 'Recipes I Use Regularly' page at the top of the blog.  Basically Pesto is a mix of leaves, nuts, parmesan, garlic and olive oil, and it is the one recipe I constantly mess about with, just using whatever I have in store.

Pine Nuts can go rancid quicker than most other nuts due to their size, and as they are pretty expensive for the amount you get in a bag I tend to buy them only when I see them at a reasonable price and then store them in the fridge.  

No they don't go soft, they stay exactly as they are, as long as they are either in their sealed packet or in a jar or plastic sealed tub.  ALL nuts can be stored in the fridge or freezer, in fact the freezer is pretty much the best place for them if you buy a large quantity as a bargain buy.  Nuts contain a lot of natural oils and this is what gives them a short shelf life outside of the fridge or freezer, but their extremely low water content means they store very well chilled or frozen.

I tend to keep a jar of made up Pesto in the fridge for a couple of weeks for instant use, and then whatever is left after that I decant into ice cube trays and freeze.  Once frozen they cubes are tipped into a plastic tub for long term storage.  You can use pesto from frozen, I tend to just slice up the cubes and dot the pesto around where I need it.  I'm not the only one that does this if you go to Google Images and type in 'frozen pesto cubes' you'll find lots of photos, I was amazed  :-)

No, I don't heat it through to serve it with pasta. I simply drain my pasta (catching some of the water in a bowl) and return it to the hot pan and then stir through a couple of tablespoons of Pesto, adding a little of the pasta water back to the pan if I want to loosen it a little.  Served with a sprinkle of extra Parmesan style cheese it makes for a nutritious and very quick lunch or supper.

From the Emails -

Does mine work out cheaper?

It can be as cheap or expensive as you want to make it.  

If you were to always use Pine Nuts, top quality Parmesan or Pecorino cheese, Virgin Olive oil and supermarkt packets of cut Basil it would be pretty expensive, although would no doubt taste pretty lush.  Using whatever nuts you have in store, (you can even buy packs of broken nuts much cheaper than whole ones), supermarkets basic Parmesan or own label cheddar, a nice quality ordinary Olive Oil (as I do) and homegrown leaves or 'yellow stickered plants' from the supermarket or market, it works out much, much cheaper ..... and in my opinion just as tasty,

A jar of  bought Pesto seems to be an average price of around £2, which I think it pretty good value actually but it just doesn't go very far when compared to my huge storage jar full of pesto for about the same price.  I didn't think to weigh the pesto when I made it and I don't intend to make a mess by taking it out of the jar to weigh it,  (unfortunately I don't have a similar empty jar to weigh either, sorry).  And homemade pesto is just zingingly fresh tasting when you compare it to the jarred bought stuff, so I would still make it if the cost were the same.

How do my ingredients compare to bought jars?

My ingredients are:

Leaves

Nuts

Parmesan Style Cheese

Fresh Garlic

Olive Oil

Salt and Pepper to taste

This jar of 'Classic Basil Pesto', taken from the Sacla website -

Ingredients
Sunflower Seed Oil, Italian Basil (36%), Grana Padano Cheese, Cashew Nuts, Sea Salt, Glucose, Pecorino Romano Cheese, Crushed Pine Kernels, Flavourings, Potato flakes, Acidity Regulator: Lactic Acid; Extra Virgin Olive Oil

I don't know why you would need glucose (a form of sugar) or potato flakes ... I guess they are a bulking out and thickening agent.  Also notice the way the Extra Virgin Olive Oil is last on the list of ingredients, it must contain a tiny percentage, but they can quite honestly then advertise the product as being 'made with Extra virgin Olive Oil'  .... aren't they clever  ;-)

Have I ever bought the ready made tubs of Pesto Pasta?'

Yes, I have bought one of these in the past, when we were out and had no lunch with us.  A tub of this and a bottle of water made for a very small lunch, but served a purpose.  I would not buy it to bring home and eat - EVER!!

Look what I also found on mysupermarket.co.uk while I was getting the image above.

A 700g 'Easy Entertaining Pesto Pasta Salad for £6 ... for that price I would expect it to entertain me!!

You could of course just make your own - one jar of sauce and one bag of value pasta shapes, using Tesco own label Green Pesto and one bag of Value Pasta Penne Shapes = £1.70, it would take you about ten minutes from start to finish.   Perfect for a party ..... oh and if you want it to entertain you I would just sit the bowl of pasta in front of the television and watch  ;-)

So ... enough talk of pesto it's making me hungry, and yes, after all this I am just going to have to have some pesto pasta for lunch  :-)

Sue xx

Pesto Pasta Al Forno

Yesterday, I was sat eating my breakfast looking at the Basil plants on the windowsill and thinking that I really must use some more of them before they go over.

Later reading some of the Blogs from my sidebar I came across Shirley's, and what should be on there but a recipe for Green Pesto, and then I was off.

It's such a simple recipe -

Green Basil Pesto

25g Basil

1 clove of Garlic

25g Pine Nuts

25g Parmesan Cheese

2 tbs Olive Oil

half a tsp of salt

Simply blitz all these together in a food processor and there you have it a lovely bowl of Green Pesto. 

 (I didn't have enough Pine Nuts so I used some raw Cashews and it still worked perfectly, (and of course I use veggie Parmesan equivalent, as no Parmesan is vegetarian).

I added my lovely Pesto to a pasta bake.

Pesto Pasta Al Forno

Pasta Shapes

Spinach or Broccoli

A Jar of rich Tomato Pasta Sauce

Goats Cheese

Green Pesto

Grated Parmesan

Cook enough pasta for 2 people in boiling water, steam some broccoli or wilt some spinach above the pasta pan, when these are cooked drain the pasta and tip the veggies in, stir through some rich tomato based pasta sauce, tip it all into an oven proof dish and dot with slices of goats cheese and dollops of your lovely fresh Pesto.  Add a sprinkle of Parmesan, saving some for when you serve it up.

Put in the oven for about 20-30 minutes, it's ready when your cheese is meltingly lovely and there are bubbles around the edge.  Enjoy.

Lovely Hubby had his with some slices of roast chicken breast, I just enjoyed it as it was and it was plenty filling enough.

Luckily there's enough Pesto leftover for me to have a bowl of pasta for lunch, and there was enough leftovers for LH to take a smaller version of last nights tea for his lunch today at work.

Al Forno just means 'in the oven', I think Italian recipe names  have a lovely 'ring' to them, I could have just called it Pesto Pasta Bake!!

I'm off to read my new book now......I'll tell you all about it tomorrow if it lives up to expectation!

Sue xx

Nothing Goes to Waste

I'm trying to make the most of everything I harvest, okay I admit sometimes at the end of a tiring day making the most of everything simply means the chickens get a tasty extra snack, but  'Hey Ho'  ....as John from Going Gently would say ..... at least that means the trimmings get turned into the most delicious eggs for us to eat!!

But the other day I pulled up all the remaining Beetroot plants and the leaves looked so lush I just had to use them.  Some were wilted down to have with tea in place of Spinach, and the rest were turned into the contents of the jar you see above.

Hardly a Recipe - Any Leaf Pesto

Equal weights of
Leaves (Basil/Spinach/Beetroot/Radish etc, or a mix)
Parmesan Cheese (or any other hard cheese, or a mix)
Nuts (Pine/Almond/Brazil, or a mix)
Garlic to taste (lots if you like lots not so much if you don't)

Whizz these together in a food processor and then drizzle in enough Olive Oil to get it to the consistency you like.

There I said it was hardly a recipe!!

Put the finished Pesto into a clean jar and keep it in the fridge.  Whatever you haven't eaten after a couple of weeks can be spooned into ice cube trays and frozen.  Once hard pop out and put into a freezer bag or box.  It will keep in the freezer for years, but I doubt it will last long ... it's delicious.

This recipe has also been added to the Recipes I Use Regularly page at the top of the Blog for future reference.  Which also contains my recipe for Pesto Pasta Al Forno .... delicious and something I think we will be having this weekend with my lovely new jar of pesto.

While all that was going on the Beetroot was lazily cooking away in the bottom oven of the Aga. 

 Once soft it was sliced and packed into these jars and I topped them up with some spiced vinegar.  Which is simply vinegar that has been brought to the boil and simmered for about 15 minutes with some pickling spices  (around 1oz to every bottle of vinegar).  I buy mine ready mixed to save having lots of jars of spices I don't use that often.  

I always boil up much more than I need and pour the cooled, unused vinegar back into the vinegar bottle for future use ... make sure you add to the label that it has been spiced !!

So Pickled Beetroot and a big jar of Pesto, another days successful harvest processed for future use.

Sue xx

Getting On With Life (Hissy Fit Solutions) ..... and Basil Pesto

Sometimes having a hissy fit is just what you need, every now and then it certainly is for me.  The fact that you lovely lot were there for me with practical encouragement and words of wisdom helped greatly .... THANK YOU,  and today I am just getting on with things which I find is the best hissy fit solution of all.

My other hissy fit solutions are -

Treat Yourself

 Make Something

 Sort Something Out

Take Action

and  Do Something you've been putting off for ages.

So last night it was a tasty tea, and almost a full bottle of wine over the course of the evening ... hic!!

Today it was making the Basil Pesto

I sorted through some more books and things to take to the charity shop next time I'm in town.

I took action and sorted out the dogs for next week to make life a little easier for me and them.  The Jack Russells will be going to the kennels from Monday until Friday so they don't get totally stressed with the conservatory roof being off.  Suky the Pug is laid back enough for it not to bother her and Charley is going to the vets on Tuesday to be spayed so she need s to be at home, but will hopefully be a little subdued after her operation.

And I finally got round to tackling the ironing ... which means I have clothes in the wardrobe I can wear again!!

Hopefully that's things sorted for a while and me back on the straight and narrow, I firmly believe in doing something when necessary and not wallowing for too long!!

*** *** *** *** *** 

Making Something - Basil Pesto

Big Basil the basil plant from the kitchen windowsill was finally past his best, he's been cut right down to soil level on numerous occasions and sprouted right on back, but now he was ready to be used for the final time and give me back some much needed daylight through the window.

All his leaves were pulled off, his stems were thrown to the chickens and the spent compost from the pot was tipped into the compost bin behind Chicken World, ready to be transformed by the magic of warmth and worms back into usable compost once more.

I whizzed up the leaves with an equal amount in weight of nuts, in my case Cashew nuts, I didn't have any Pine nuts which are used in traditional Basil Pesto, I was also lacking o

in the Garlic department, but a good squeeze from my tube of garlic paste did the trick.  I trickled in Olive Oil until it was the right consistency and added some Sea Salt and freshly ground Back Pepper, then I tasted it and wondered why it didn't taste right at all ......

..... DUH!!  

I had forgotten to add an equal weight of Parmesan Style Cheese.

So I did.

Et Voila!!

Cubes of Basil Pesto to pop into the freezer.  Once these were fully frozen they were tipped from the ice cube trays into a lidded plastic box.  Now they are ready for action, I use them to make a simple pasta sauce literally just stirred into hot cooked pasta and then sprinkled with more Parmesan.  Dotted on pizzas or into quiches and pies they add a wonderful fresh taste,  and I add them to anything I want to give a garlicky, herby hit to.

The thing to remember when making it is to simply have pretty equal measures of Basil (or other green leaves), Nuts and Parmesan (or similar) cheese, then add oil to get to your desired consistency and salt and pepper to taste.

Sue xx

Homemade Fresh Basil Pesto

I'm sure lots of you guessed what I would make with the other rampant Basil plant that had overtaken my windowsill. 

 

It just had to be a lovely jar of Homemade Basil Pesto.  Surely one of my favourite foods for stirring through pasta, dotting on top of pizzas and pasta bakes and even just smeared on a piece of freshly toasted homemade bread.

 

What could be simpler and more delicious snack or meal to fit in with our current ethos of living and eating more simply.

 



 

I keep it all very simple, just equal weights of leaves, nuts and parmesan (I use a veggie version).

 

 

Whizz the nuts and parmesan first then add your leaves.

 

After they have all been blitzed to bits add some seasoning, I use sea salt, black pepper and this time 'Lazy Garlic', because that's what I have at the moment (it's very good by the way).  Then drizzle in slowly your oil, until your pesto is the consistency you want it to be.

 

 

Scrape every last bit into a sterilised jar and label and store in the fridge ......

 

... after first admiring the gorgeous shade of green glistening in the jar.

 

*** *** * **

 

And why do I only have 'Lazy Garlic' you might ask .....

 

 

.... well last Saturday I planted my last 7 cloves of Garlic as they were starting to look a bit sad.  And already just seven days later I have four nice strong shoots.

 

This really is the easiest way to get yourself cheap, fresh Garlic.  Buy a nice fresh head from the supermarket or your usual shop use half in your cooking that week and plant the other half of it.   All you have to do is to separate the cloves and put each individual one into it's own pot, as you can see I cheated and put them into one pot but each individual clove is in it's own toilet roll tube so it gets plenty of space for it's own roots to develop.

 

Once they are bigger they will go into a big pot and sit outdoors, Garlic is so easy to grow.  If you want any more information have a look HERE, but really it is a doddle.

 

We are having a half work day and a half day out, a little bit of time to our selves after a busy week is all we need to recharge our batteries.   When we get back there will be pasta and pesto for a scrummy and very easy supper.

 

I hope you all have a lovely weekend .

 

Sue xx

 

Still preserving...... ( and rescuing chickens from the jaws of death! )

I didn't get round to any reading yesterday, when Lovely Hubby arrived home, we sat on the patio drinking coffee and catching up with news.  We storted out the diaries and made as much use of our time in the coming week as we can, our aim is to leave ourselves as free as possible to be able to get up to Scotland to visit our lovely Mum.

Then while LH nipped off the farm to run an errand I decided to use up the  red and green basil plants on my kitchen windowsill they were looking quite sad and past their best. I believe strongly that everything should fulfill it's destiny, and their destiny was Pesto!  So I dug out my yummy recipe and luckily I had all the other ingredients in the store cupboard to be able to whizz up two double batches of this wonderful mixture.  I put it on the Blog once before nip over HERE if you want to use it.

The colours zing out and look wonderful, the Red Basil Pesto started out looking very lavender but settled down to a speckly grey within minutes.  They are nestled securely in the fridge now and will be used over the next couple of weeks in pasta dishes, quiches and well....lots of things.  I made the red one extra garliccy and it smells divine.

When I came to label the Plum Jam the day after making it, I discovered it hadn't set very well, at first I thought I'll just use it as Plum Sauce, but then I bit the bullet and tipped it all back into the jam pan and reboiled it hard.  Now it's back in the jars and although it's still not as firm a set as I would have liked I think it will stay on the toast now.  Reboiling it meant I lost two jars worth through evaporation, a shame but we still have five jars to squirrel away.

Today it's the turn of the tomatoes, because of our extended chat yesterday I forgot to pick any in the polytunnel and when I went in there first thing this morning they were everywhere like wonderful red jewels of every size and shape, I had a HUGE bowl full and thought I'd turn it them all into some jars of sauce while they were so very fresh.  Again using my jam pan so I could do it all in one batch I added lots of garlic, some red onions and lots of other little tasty things from the garden and the cupboards, we'll see how many jars I get when I get the pan out from the bottom oven of the Aga later on today.

Halfway through doing this I had to dash out to defend my girls from horrible Mr Fox and believe me he's a huge brute, he had the cheek to stand looking me straight in the eye, completely miffed that I'd managed to rescue Scrawny Neck from his very jaws!  Now she's also missing all her wing feathers on one side as well as the ones on her neck, not a pretty chicken, but she's MY chicken and by god he's not having her or any of my girls while I'm here to defend them.

Sue xx

Radishes ... and Poor Man's Pesto

I picked another bunch of Radishes from the Tin Bath yesterday, they are now swelling up juicily with all this rain we have been having and keeping us totally supplied to go with all our salads.  They are nothing like the bitter radishes you get from the supermarket out of season, each one of these gorgeous red balls is mildly peppery and juicy through and through.   Eaten fresh from picking with just a dunk in salted water get them clean and then a whizz round in the salad spinner, I've been slicing them thinly and scattering their red and white prettiness all over our salads.

Of course there are always lots of lovely leaves with a radish and it makes sense to me while I'm doing the £2 House Keeping Challenge to make good use of them.  I pick the youngest and sweetest to use as salad leaves ...

...  the next best get mixed in with herbs.  The tattier and any nibbled leaves go straight over to the chickens with the little radish trimmings, they love them, not a bit of wastage here.

Finely chop the Rosemary ...

... mix approximately equal quantities of assorted nuts ... (I simply raided the cupboard where Lovely Hubby keeps his Fruit and Nut stash and picked out some Almonds, Hazelnuts and Brazils,  I didn't want to use up all the more expensive Pine Nuts this time) ....

... with cheese, here I have mostly Cheddar from the freezer with some parmesan style cheese ...

.... and your leaves.

Whizz the nuts and cheese together first and then top with the leaves and a swirl of Garlic Puree ...

... a brilliant store cupboard stand by.

Taste after you have processed it and get your seasoning just right, I seemed to need lots of Black Pepper with this one but not much Sea Salt, it varies every time, depending on your choice of herbs.

You end up with a lovely bowl of Pesto.

 I simply could not resist the temptation of dipping in a Radish and eating a bit straight away. 

 Good honest and simple food.

And there's lots more where that came from!!

Sue xx

Kale for the Freezer

It was the turn of the Kale plants in the polytunnel to be stripped of almost all of their leaves yesterday.

Once again I set up my little production line of wash, drain, cook, drain, plunge into iced water, drain and then squeeze out as much excess water as possible.

The difference with kale is that I blanch it for a couple of minutes in a panful of boiling water, just small batches so that it stays boiling and keeps the production line moving.  I love kale's water-proofness when you first wash it to remove all the little critters that have set up home there.  It bobs to the surface and needs to be held under.  But in the boiling water it sinks a little more satisfactorily.

I used the scalded out washing up bowl for the iced water but this time rather than a small bowl, and it sped up the process a bit.  Kale is sturdier than spinach and it sat happily in the iced water for the ten or fifteen minutes it took me to get all of the harvested leaves processed.

Once drained, and spun in the salad spinner I laid all the leaves on a clean tea towel and rolled it up tightly.

Then I peeled all the leaves off and shared them out between half a dozen small tubs ...

... ready to go straight into the freezer.

I have portioned them up ready for one of my favourite meals, which is simple Pasta and Pesto with Kale.  I simply drop the frozen Kale block into the pasta water when the pasta is five minutes away from being cooked, to quickly defrost and cook it, once cooked the pasta and the kale are strained together through a colander, put into a serving dish and a spoonful or two of Pesto is stirred through.  I add a sprinkle of Pine nuts if I have them, or chopped Almonds if I haven't, and you have a speedy, tasty meal on the table in the time it takes to boil the pasta. 

I might have a go at some Kale Crisps with the next batch I harvest, first I have to wait for the plants to produce some more of their wonderfully rich, nutritious leaves.  Has anyone else tried to do them and was it successful ?

Sue xx

Bargain Buy Pastry

Remember this post last week when I said 'Today I've been mostly processing apples', well I thought I better show you the photos of the goodies I made with the apples and the bargain packs of pastry .....

... that for some reason I thawed out all in one go!!

In my defence I have to say I didn't realise that each of the wider boxes had two rolls of ready rolled pastry in them, even more of a bargain than I thought at the time.  So I ended up with lots of pastry to use up .... not that it was in any way a real  problem, I LOVE pastry  :-)

I made four pretty big pies, although the dishes were quite small they were very deep and I used up all of my apples ....

... and a bit of rhubarb that was left in the fridge, quickly stewed with some brown sugar,  to make them.

Raiding the fridge for something else I could encase in pastry meant I could also add four small quiches to my days pastry work.  Simply filled with goats cheese, a bit of  crumbled up Feta cheese, some spinach and a couple of cubes of pesto straight from the freezer, and of course a couple of our own eggs.  

I always have pesto in the freezer, frozen in ice cube trays it means it means it's always available for adding it's wonderfully strong garlic and herb hit to many a dish.  

And the pastry I had left was quickly turned into five Jam Turnovers (I had already eaten one as soon as it cooled enough to bite into it's pastry yumminess) and half a dozen sweet pastry lids.  Which are simply circles of pastry brushed with beaten egg and sprinkled with sugar before baking.  If I fancy a mini 'apple pie' for one I can now just open a jar of stewed apple, put a couple of dollops in a bowl and thaw out one of my little lids to pop on top.

Not a bit of my pastry was wasted and now except for one of the apple and rhubarb pies and one of the quiches everything above is safely tucked into the freezer ready for when we need them.  The freezer is getting pretty full at the moment, but it's nice to see so much of our homegrown and homemade stuff in there instead of boxes and packets of ready made bought in things.

I'm starting to feel like a squirrel, storing my nuts for Winter  ;-)

Sue xx