Keeping Warm, Odd Jobs, Simple Foods

This weekend we were both full of colds, so we spent our time having leisurely breakfasts, with lots of hot drinks.

We fetched wood into the house to keep the log burner going.  Using wood from our woodland means that we have a continual source of free fuel, we just have to do a bit more woodland management later on this year.  Now that the building work is completed on the house we will have much more time to gradually work our way through the woods, clearing space around new saplings and making sure that a new generation of trees will be available to keep us in this lovely free fuel.

 Some jobs were done but they were only bits and bobs of things and the everyday chores such as cleaning out the henhouse and filling feeders etc.

But mostly we ate simple foods and curled up in front of the television when we weren't at the cinema.  We went twice this weekend, using our already purchased year long passes means the more we go, the better value they will be.  All in all a very lazy weekend for us ... we should have more of them it did us both the world of good!!

Sue xx

Flicking a Switch ..... or Keeping Warm the Cheaper Way

It's been cold here this morning, and I mean really cold, so much so I was almost tempted to flick a switch and set the central heating in motion ..... almost!!

Instead I decided to go out to the wood store and bring some more logs and wood into the house.  There was already enough at the side of the log burner to have a fire tonight, but I don't like filling up the log basket in the dark, spiders, moths and screeching birds make for an eerie time late at night, and anyway wood at room temperature burns so much better and warmer.  So I thought I should stock up now so I could light the fire early to warm up the house.

Once we do get the house warm it holds onto the heat really well thanks to the excessively thick insulation in the loft and the Aga ticking over twenty four seven.

Two loads of wood like this and I was happy I had more than enough wood to last the afternoon and the evening.

Oh, and did you spot the little visitor in the top two pictures .....

... I thought I saw movement as I stepped back with my bowl of wood and when I stood still and watched he started hopping about.  A cheerful little chappy in his red waistcoat.  He made my day.

After all the gathering and carrying of the ood and then stacking it beside the log burner I was lovely and warm so I didn't end up lighting the fire but I will be lovely and cosy tonight .... and hopefully somewhere outside in his nest or den so will my little feathered friend.

Sue xx

Monday Morning Wash Day 'Blues'

I harvested the Garlic this morning.  All the books I've got and the Google pages I've read say to wait until the leaves have turned yellowish and are starting to go over, then leave the Garlic to dry out in the sun until the papery covering is dry and ready to store.

I waited until the leaves were yellow and were going over, then the sun decided not to keep it's side of the bargain and instead the rain fell and fell and fell .....   

My garlic was going soggy!!  So this morning I dashed out during a lighter shower of rain and rescued the lot.  I had to wash it and chop lots of the stem and some of the roots off as they were decidedly soggy.  As you can see I have laid it on paper towels and trays and left it for a while on the Aga to start the drying process.  Once the surfaces are dry I will move it to somewhere more ambient and leave it to dry out some more.

Most of it will have to be used pretty sharpish as the individual cloves are visible and won't store well at all, no hardship really as I will be making some chutneys with our courgettes and the onions I had to dig up prematurely, so some garlic will give a good depth of flavour.  But I might attempt a small braid with the best of it.

My hands smell gorgeous at the moment, I really don't understand these people that search for 'things to stop your hands smelling of garlic' .... I love it, the longer it lasts the better  :-)

As you can see from the picture the Aga is also busy drying the weekend working jeans as well as the garlic, definitely the Monday morning wash day 'blues'.  

There are no other blues ..... here the washing machine does all the work.  With it raining outside there will only be one other load going in today.  

Years ago Monday morning meant real hard labour, I know I've been there, years without a washer and two small boys meant back breaking work over the bath washing, scrubbing and then wringing and hanging out.  Clothes, bedding, towels and nappies mostly done daily but I usually tried to give myself Sunday off, so Monday was always a slightly heavier load to do.  I'm glad those days are past.

One tradition I do keep up with though ... is a slumbering dog beside the Aga.  

Suky knows the best place to be on a wet Monday morning.    :-)

Sue xx

The Reality of Keeping Warm

Minimal living is virtually impossible when you need to gather all the wood you possibly can to keep yourself and your house warm.  

When I see the pictures of lovely country fireplaces with a teeny tiny log basket, a handful of kindling artistically arranged and no stack of newspaper lying to hand to start the fire off, I always get the impression it's a set up .... or at the very least the central heating is working it's magic in the background.  Not of course that there's any harm in that, but it's not the reality of getting your warmth from wood.

The reality of keeping warm with only wood, whether it be foraged wood or wood bought in, is usually something like we have here.  It's no pretty picture however carefully we stack it around the wood burner .... but it is the reality.

Our wood comes mainly from our own woodland, we have around 2.5 acres stretching out behind the house and the paddock right up to the top of the hill.  It will, once we have worked our way through it coppicing and managing it properly, be enough to keep us warm through out the Winters to come. 

This year while we are in the midst of building works and setting things up we are making good use of stacks of wooden window frames that the house's previous owner left behind.  They have dried out nicely over the year we have been here and Lovely Hubby set to last week while I was away, sawing them into lengths that will fit into our wood burner.

Setting the fire is something I try to do in the morning, knowing that it is ready to put a match to when the temperature drops to make lighting it necessary or when we get back from somewhere chilled and damp, makes me feel better.  My first port of call during the day is always an extra jumper topped with my fleecy body-warmer, and then in the evening the blinds go down and then the curtains are pulled across, giving us an additional couple of barriers after the double glazing to trap the warmth of the house.

It all adds up to cosying the place up for the long evenings we now have.

Ready for action tonight.

And to finish off this post here are the final shots after yesterdays post about sorting out the kitchen.  All neatly arranged and fitting in snugly.

Something was bugging me when I looked at the first picture, so the offending items have been removed.  (Go on .... play Spot the Difference.)

I'm a minimalist at heart .... although you wouldn't guess it would you!!

And did you spot a little tail in the first picture ... and then a bottom in the second one.  Suky refused point blank to move while I took the pictures, although she did get fed up with me asking her to, hence the dropped tail :-)

Sue xx

A Very Handy 'Waste Not Want Not'

 

The other day making up the batch of soup I used the last pot from the freezer of my Veg Hash.   Luckily in the bottom of the fridge were just the ingredients I needed to make some more.  Even though I am running the contents of the freezer down this is something I will not be without, useful, frugal, time saving and downright tasty why would I ever be without it.

 

Simply chop everything up finely, I do it in the food processor usually to save time but if I have twenty minutes and a good radio station to listen to I have been known to chop it all by hand, it's very therapeutic.

 

Once chopped I usually decant it into all my small plastic tubs and a couple of rinsed out butter tubs, but this time knowing I would be transporting some of it to the other house I put six of the portions into plastic bags and placed them into one of my larger tubs.

 

Neatly stacked and ready to go into the freezer.

 

What do I use it for ..... well you know all those recipes that start off with 'gently cook your chopped onion' in those for a start, I use it as the base for most of my soups, stews and even in some pasta dishes.  Fried gently in oil or just a smidge of water straight from the freezer it speeds up all sorts of recipes and adds a background depth of flavour that has to be tasted to be believed.

 

It means that if I have any of the constituent ingredients languishing in the fridge I can use them up in their prime and nothing gets wasted.   My very basic three ingredients are onion, celery and carrot but this time I had some garlic that needed using up so that was chopped up finely and added in.

 

Simple food at it's best.

 

Sue xx

Simplicity

 

All this packing and unpacking, moving and shifting has made me think even harder about the things we own.  We worked so hard all through this year and the year before to get rid of things, to sell at car boot sales and online, to move to a more simple way of life and yet still we seem to own so much. So many items have been packed, loaded, driven up the motorway only to be unloaded and unpacked at the other end.  I think doing it in small loads has highlighted to me the sheer amount of stuff we have. 

 

We forgot to bring the dog bowls home with us last weekend, and I wondered what we would put their food in ... for a moment I even very briefly contemplated going and buying two more stainless steel bowls for them.  I needn't have worried, looking around the house when we got home I managed to find two dog bowls within minutes.  We have bowls sat inside and outside the house filled at all times with fresh water for the dogs and cats to drink out of and there were the bowls that used to belong to Sophie, our beloved Border Collie.  So it took me literally two minutes to get two bowls together that can be designated food bowls for the two dogs during the week and stop the need for bringing the others backwards and forwards with us.

 

 

 

We also have enough plates, bowls and cups for us at both ends, I seem to have two very functional kitchens working in tandem with each other.  We truly have everything we need and more.  There are so many less fortunate than us.  We've worked hard for what we have, we both work very hard to earn money and make that money work for us.   And we've managed through sheer hard slog to get together half the value of our home and we plan to pay for it completely in as short a time frame as we possibly can so it is truly ours. To make sure this happens I have decided I will be continuing to downsize our belongings, already at the new house there is a growing collection of things, some not wanted and left by the previous owners and some ours that we have realised simply don't fit in with how we want the house to be, all these will be sold off at the first chance we have and the money raised diverted to paying off the mortgage.

 

In the new year I intend to resurrect my Recipe Book Blog and work my way through my vast collection of books, being much more ruthless this time and only keeping the very useful and much used favourites, the rest will be sold.  I may even be tempted to try to raise £2014 in 2014 the way I did very successfully in 2012.  I find with a definite figure to aim towards you do push yourself that little bit more.

 

But anyway the main thing behind this post was to tumble down in words my desire to get back to simplicity, as I feel in buying things for the new house I had lost sight of it somewhat.  There's been no 'make do and mending', there's been lots of 'we need this so we'll buy it' and that's no bad thing for a short while after all we'd worked hard to save the money to get ready to buy these things and it is the first home we have ever bought together, but soon it has to stop and I guess with a brand new year almost upon us it's a brilliant time to make plans for how you want things to be.

 

How do I want things to be - Simple.

 

Sue xx

 

 

Plans

 

Soon the house will be all finished, well as finished as we need it to be and the time will come to make plans.  This picture is a plan by the guru of all self sufficient types the great John Seymour of how to be completely self sufficient on a smallish patch of land, I think it looks lovely although slightly impractical for us to copy being at the bottom of a rather large Welsh hill ....

 

 

... this was Lovely Hubby's brilliant computer done plan of our Veggie Patch here, so I could make notes of what went where and what would go there the following year.

 

With our wallets firmly padlocked again, save for really needed and budgeted for items I am making plans that will incorporate the  polytunnel, the net tunnel and the new raised beds ....

 

... and I have also spotted something during my trawling of the internet that would be the most perfect thing to help us sell our surplus fruits and veggies and our free range eggs at the farm gate next year once I am back in production.

 

I think my Lovely Hubby will be able to knock one of these together out of his stash of wood .... and then I could give it a coat of paint, in a rather fetching shade of green  :-)

 

Sue xx

Gazing into space .....

 

Like Ginger I've been caught gazing into space on many occasions over this past few days. 

 

There's lots on my mind at the moment, obviously we are really busy with our diaries needing to be updated and co-ordinated on a regular basis so we each know what the other is doing and what we are doing together.  Planning the dogs visits to kennels when necessary, visits to Wales, to Solicitors, to family, planning time when we can just 'be' and yes, that is just as important as all the other things.

 

There is so much going on at the moment, it seems that after months, nay years of planning everything is neatly coming together, but it melds so seamlessly there would be little time left for the simple things if we did not make it so.

 

 

Ginger can be snapped back to the here and now so easily with a simple 'hello  boy' or an even more simple 'shh shh' and he turns and looks, acknowledging your presence with those beautiful eyes .......

 

... but then his attention wanders and again he sits this time staring into a different space.

 

I know the feeling well, one minute I can be on my hands and knees weeding in the Courgette patch (the nettles and me are fighting an on-going battle this year), the next the trowel is lightly held and I sit back and think, sometimes it takes only a butterfly skimming low in front of me to snap me out of the trance like state other times I need a barking Jack Russell to bring me back to the here and now.

 

So many lists, so many compartments filled with information and all tucked neatly inside this little old head of mine.

 

I think I need to take Lovely Hubby's lead and start committing things to paper.

 

I have plans for September, if I didn't make plans for it I think it would whizz by in a flash, there's so much to do.   We have a weekend away all to ourselves at the start of the month, with friends coming to look after the farm, we should be the owners of our new house by the 13th and that will involve lots of travelling backwards and forwards, plans have been laid already for the first few major jobs. 

 

We need to make the driveway safe and install gates to protect the dogs from the busy road that runs parallel to our land.  Luckily we are backed by our woodlands  (oh how good it feels to say that 'our woodlands') and that should entice the cats at least, to the back of the house and upwards, away from the danger of the fast flowing road, they are both used to the excitement and hunting opportunities that the woods can bring them.  We need to get the kitchen slightly redesigned to make way for the reconditioned Aga that we are currently looking for, and we are making full use of the cupboards that we will be needing to move around.  The vendors are taking away a cooker, dishwasher, washing machine, and tumble dryer, of these we need only a washing machine so the spaces the other appliances filled will instead be accommodating the units we are moving to make way for the Aga.  It should work.  We have just this morning decided that the last remaining space, the breakfast bar will have a double sided bookcase underneath it to house my lovely collection of cook books.  How often would we sit at a breakfast bar when the table will be only four feet away!!

 

This is just a snippet of what we have planned, there is so much more, and I have decided to call this September ....

 

'Simple September'

 

... there's an irony in there somewhere, but my foggy brain is not quite getting it.

 

Sue xx

 

Our Food

 

 

Homemade Scones with Homemade Jam

 

I had to start a foodie post off with Lovely Hubby's absolute favourite thing in the whole wide world (well Scones and Steak I guess would be joint top).

 

 

Homemade Bread with Homemade Pickled Onions

 

Homemade Pesto

 

Homegrown Veggies prepped for the freezer.

 

Homegrown Basils, Red and Green, and home produced Eggs

 

More bread .... can you ever have enough homemade bread?

 

Simple meals with home produced ingredients.

 

You can't get a much simpler or tastier meal than homegrown New Potatoes with homemade Mayonnaise.

 

The ultimate convenience food.  It comes in it's own biodegradable wrapping!!

 

Storing the freshness of Summer for the dark months ahead.

 

Hungry tummy, empty fridge, wrap what you do have in pastry and it's doubly filling.

 

Homemade Herby Quiche with our own New Potatoes and Chives

 

The simplest of Omelettes, filled with herbs from the garden.

 

In a hurry for breakfast - 4 minutes and it's on the table!!

 

This is our sort of food, the sort we can produce ourselves, organically grown, harvested minutes before it's needed and yards from the back door, and then cooked simply so the flavours can speak for themselves.

 

  Simple living at it's best.

 

Our kind of living.

 

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