Soup making frenzy

I have spent this afternoon making soups...3 different sorts to be precise!


I wanted to use up some rather old bulb Fennel which came in the veg box and also I had a rather old Celeriac, so made up a recipe of Celeriac, Fennel and Celery soup using shallots and garlic grown by us and some ham stock from cooking an organic gammon joint.



I also made some Pumpkin soup, using one of my stored Lady Godiva pumpkins. Compostman very kindly chopped the Pumpkin into chunks for me and I roasted it in the oven whilst our Sunday meal was cooking. This variety has "naked" seeds which are good to dry and eat!


The Pumpkin soup used Onions and Garlic and home made veg stock.

The final soup was a vegan Lentil and assorted root veg soup...using Onions, Garlic, Kohl rabi, Swede, the trimmings of Celeriac and Fennel from making the other soup and an organic soup mix of Pearl Barley, Lentils, and Peas in with home made veg stock.


I have altogether made 10 portions of the Celeriac, Celery and Fennel soup. 14 portions of the Lentil and Veg soup and 18 portions of the Pumpkin Soup. All portions are VERY generous!!

I used home grown herbs for flavour and butter to cook the shallots and for the vegan soups I used a vegan spread to saute the onions !!

All are now in the freezer...waiting to be eaten YUMMY!!

All the veg was either grown by us or came from our veg box provider 5 miles away..and the meat stock came from an Organic farm less than 10 miles away, as did the butter.

The spread is UK made but not sure where!! So almost totally zero food miles for all of it which makes me very happy indeed!

I am still seriously considering doing a set period of a "15 mile diet"...it WOULD be easier to do from now until October, as we produce all our own fruit and veg during this period and I could get organic meat and dairy from within that limit..Hmmm..will have to have another think about this!

The "buy nothing" challenge was quite do-able and has become second nature..I stop and think and question EVERYTHING I want to get now and try to get it Free cycle or library or borrow it or charity shop it if I can...so maybe a new challenge is in order??

Cider tasting at the Blossomtime cider festival

We spent most of today (Saturday) at the Big Apple Blossomtime Cider and Perry trials, just up the road from our house. The public events happen on the Sunday and Monday of the May bank holiday, but having entered a demijohn of our own cider in the Novice class we were required to attend the Trials on Sat and judge the entries in our own class, and then taste the other entries as well..such hardship!!



We arrived at the hall at about 11.30 to drop off our entry and were quite suprised at the number of entrants...much increased over previous years!!


here is the table with the Novice classes alone!!




We then went to some friends for lunch. They live in a fabulous, typical Herefordshire Black and White cottage and are very keen on medieval history, so their cottage has lots of interesting items to look at...Compostgirl was enchanted by it all!







After a delicious lunch we all came back to the hall for the tasting and marking session which took all afternoon!






Compostgirl made herself very helpful by handing out glasses of palate cleansing water and biscuits to the participants.





We also had a daring rescue attempt, a Swallow had got trapped inside the hall and despite our best efforts to clear the room, close the curtains and open the doors...it wouldn't fly out of the door but kept on bashing against one high window!




So eventually a ladder was brought (here is Compostman unfolding it)

and one of our friends climbed up and opened the high window.


You should have heard the cheer when the Swallow finally flew out and away to freedom!!

















We had enormous fun, joining in with our neighbours to taste and vote for the cider and perry on offer. Our cider didn't win anything but it tasted ok when compared with the others in our class so we feel happy at that, AND we had a fun afternoon well spent in good company.

The entries were hugely up on previous years...craft cider and perrymaking is alive and well in Herefordshire, at least.

We will be attending more events over the next 2 days...so watch this space for updates!

Wood

Compostman has been busy in the wood over the last few weeks, felling some dead trees and turning them into logs. He has made further space to store logs in the lean-to, using the pallets I "liberated" from a skip. Yes those pallets, the ones I injured my shoulder getting!
Still he has put them to good use and made another bay for the logs, so we now have 3 bays, one for "burn now", one for "one year old" wood and one for "felled this season".

We leave the felled logs to dry for a bit as big logs sometimes, or sometimes Compostman cuts them into woodburner lengths and leaves them in a pile in the wood to dry a bit, before bringing them in to stack up under cover.

So the wood is either ready to burn now, ready Winter 2008 or Winter 2009 depending on which bay you look at.

I do like a nice pile of wood!

May Day/ Beltaine good wishes

It was too wet here to light a Bel fire outside, so I had to manage with what I had....so I lit the woodburner!



Couldn't quite manage to get the livestock to jump over it...but I did what I could!











Settled down in front of it with a glass of home made cider, after a meal of home grown and cooked food, to listen to "The Lark Ascending"...a piece of music which perfectly encapsulates, for me, this time of year.

I am VERY tired after my efforts of the last 3 days in the woods...and have a busy weekend and week coming up...so need to rest and recharge tomorrow so as to be ready!

Bright blessings and Beltaine good wishes to you all.

Hen Pheasant

Compostman has been cutting down the nettles around the edge of the fences recently and whilst strimming a huge clump on the very oldest compost heap...he startled a hen pheasant....and THIS is what she was sitting on.....



He had cut down most of a substantial nettle thicket, so the nest was now rather exposed. This was obviously a worry, so I put a small plastic table over the nest in the hope the hen would return and carry on sitting on her nest.
And she did!! She seems quite happy to be now sheltering under a child sized plastic table, rather than a nettle thicket!!

Oh and there are 20 eggs in there....I counted next time she was off the nest!

But she is still there now, sitting tight,

and the hens seem very interested in her also - they keep hanging around her table!