Carbonara and chickens

My husband often cooks at the weekend, and ALWAYS on a Sunday.
Last weekend he made Bacon Pasta Bake, but I didn't fancy that. 
I yearned for carbonara.



He saved me a couple of pieces of bacon which I fried till crispy

 

Luckily I had a little bit of cream leftover from a previous desert, Parmesan cheese and of course, there are always eggs available

I also add a little of the pasta water to get the right consistency to the sauce. 
It was delicious.

 

And the chickens loved the leftovers for breakfast the next morning

 

Allotment in June

A quick update on the allotment

Loganberries ripening nicely

Picked about 1 lb which were added to several pounds already frozen by Mum earlier in the season.  They will be turned in jam later on.

 

Cabbages doing OK despite marauding slugs.

 

The onions are really taking off now. This shot taken before I weeded!

Beetroot - coming along slowly.  Hoping to have enough to pickle this year.

Rhubarb - all round star of the allotment (see previous recipes)

 

Cherry tomatoes. Again hoping for a good crop as I like to make passata and also green tomato chutney

Beans to the left - weeds to the right

And finally, my majestic field of waving corn - all four of them!

Dave

Lambing season starts around the end of February, so from this time onwards, my husband is very busy looking after thousands of ewes and newborn lambs.  It is an accepted fact in the farming industry, that from the moment a sheep enters this world, it is looking for the quickest way to leave as it possibly can and it's my husband's job to stop them doing so.

There are many abandoned and orphaned lambs which end up being reared by hand, usually living all together in a barn until they are old enough to be turned out to a field.

From about the end of February, the children and I start bleating (!) to my husband that we would like to look after a lamb but he always say no, as he is worried that we will get too attached and tears will ensue when it is time for the lamb to leave. 

I think my husband felt the only way to put a stop to our constant requests, was to give in and at the start of the Easter holidays, Dave came to stay. He was born on the Thursday, one of a pair of twins, but his mother took against him and left him to fend for himself. This is him sitting on my lap the first evening he spent with us.

He was really quite robust compared to some of the sorry states that my husband has rescued, although you can see that he hadn't grown into his skin yet. 

Dave was too small to sleep outside without his mum to keep him warm, so we tucked him up in a corner of the kitchen.  The first night we had him, he was very vocal and we thought he must be missing his mum and brother.  I'd heard that if you put a cuddly toy in with them, it stops them being lonely.  We found the largest one we could, which happened to be a cow, and it worked.  Dave curled up to the cow and went straight to sleep.  Ahh.  I was a bit concerned that Dave might develop an identity crisis being with a cow, but he seemed to cope OK.
 

We settled into the rhythm of bottle feeding, with the first feed at 6.00am, followed by four-hourly feeds, with his last feed at 10.00pm. I slipped right back into preparing bottles and early morning feeds, it was just like having a baby again!

Dave was such a joy to look after.  He'd go straight into the garden after his first feed and spend the whole day gamboling around until it was time to go to bed.  Lambs really do jump about with all four feet off the ground!

As the holidays came to an end, we knew that Dave would have to move on. We were all very brave and planned that he would go on the Saturday morning of last weekend of the holidays.  Saturday came and went, and we couldn't bear to let him go. 

We decided to hang onto him until the last minute and he went off to his new home early on the Tuesday morning, before we went back to school.

Dave had proved to be such a special lamb, that we couldn't let him join the other lambs.  My husband knows a lovely couple who have a smallholding.  They have a tiny flock of sheep, made up of many other 'Daves', so off he went to spend the rest of his days with them and with the promise that we could visit him whenever we wanted.

Woolly Bear

This is our dog.  I have hundreds of pictures of him, mostly disappearing out of shot, blurry or just an indistinct mass of black fur.  There is something about black dogs that makes them difficult to capture in a photo.

We have a friend who thinks he looks more like a Woolly Bear than a Labradoodle.

Because he is half standard poodle and half labrador he has two main hobbies - swimming and eating. 

I had to bribe him with a biscuit to get this shot

 

He usually saves this look of adoration for my husband.   They head off to work together every morning and dog has become an honorary sheepdog.  In an ideal world, dog would spend every minute of every day with my husband, but he'll make do with the rest of us at a push.

 

"Can I have the biscuit now please?"

"Thank you"

See what I mean about disappearing out of shot? They do say never work with children and animals ....

Allotment in April & May

It's about time that I posted some pictures of my allotment.  Actually, it's not really an allotment, it's a corner of my mum's garden, which she has kindly turned over to me for the past couple of years.   I did have an allotment before I had the children but it was nearly the size of a football pitch (honestly) and was just far too much for me to manage with working and little children.

The arrangement we have now is fab - I can grow vegetables and visit my mum at the same time.  Two lovely ways to spend an afternoon!

The photo below shows it at the start of the season before we weeded.  It's actually in very good condition with only a few weeds that gave up quite easily and a little bit of bind weed which is a pain, but is no match for my mother.

We were a bit late starting everything off this year, but hopefully we'll still get a decent harvest.

Lovely rows of onions - I planted about 50 red and 50 white.

These seedlings were donated by her neighbour

If the slugs leave them alone, we'll end up with cabbages, broccoli and brussel sprouts too - my children will be delighted!

These pictures were taken back in April & May.  I have some more up-to-date ones to show you too, but you'll have to wait until the next instalment...

 

The Red Arrows

The Festival of Speed is on at the moment, and we are not that far away from Goodwood.  I'd heard that The Red Arrows would be doing a display this morning, so the girls and I jumped in the car in an attempt to get near to the famous racetrack.  Great plan but the traffic put a stop to it.  We parked about 5 miles outside of Chichester and watched the skies.

We did get to see a bit of the display - my pictures really don't do it justice, but at least it is a flavour ....

The noise they make is amazing  

Their formation flying is impeccable

It was over far too quickly.

 

 We've been bitten by the bug and want to go to their next display.  It must be a wow-moment to see them up close.

Something different to do with chicken

This is what we had for dinner last night - it is well received in our house, with 3 out of 4 occupants actually in agreement about the supper choice.

 I think the recipe was made up by husband as I can't find it in any of my copious collection of cook books. It doesn't have a name, as such.  We call it Chicken Tikka, but it's a bit removed from the authentic dish! 

Make a marinade using

a large dollop of tomato ketchup,

garlic puree (because in my opinion life is too short to spending it chopping garlic cloves),

a dash of chilli powder,

a generous teaspoon of curry powder,

season with salt & pepper

and add lots & lots of chopped coriander (still my most favourite herb IN THE WORLD)

I also add a teaspoon of Apple Chilli Relish.  (I'll post the recipe for this in the Autumn, as I plan to replenish my stock then)

It was a bit of a challenge taking the photo with one hand and not spilling the relish with the other - you can see that I didn't quite manage it.

 

Marinate for at least half an hour, but longer is better, then fry. It's nice hot or cold.

 

If, like me, you have a teenage daughter, who has the appetite of a mouse, you could save 5 pieces of uncooked chicken, roll them in stuffing mix and fry them in the biggest frying you can find - rather than wash up a smaller one - and then you have also solved, at least for one day, the perpetual question of

"what can I take for my lunch tomorrow?

The fourth member of the household who doesn't eat this dinner is my husband - what an irony!

He had eggs and chips xx