New Lawn Mower

We have a lot of grass cutting implements and we decided we needed yet another one. The flymo is good on the steep bits - well kind of good, it is hard work but possible and gives a neater finish than strimming - but it is hard work on the lawn and other areas as you have to push it and it gets stuck on lumps and bumps. So we have bought a self propelling lawn mower. It has reasonable size wheels and is rear wheel drive, so not to bad on slopes.

I hope you are loving the outfit too :)

It was pretty exciting having the lawn mower make some of the effort and having it collect the clippings instead of wildly spray them everywhere as the flymo does.

Rhubarb Fool Recipe

300g rhubarb
100g sugar

150ml cream
1 dessert spoon sugar

Put the rhubarb and sugar in a pan and heat gently until rhubarb softens and falls apart.
Whip the cream until stiff, add the spoonful of sugar and whip a little but more.
Swirl the cream and rhubarb mixtures together.
Chill and serve sprinkled with brown sugar or with some crushed up biscuit (specaloos is good) on top.

Cow wrangling

The clicker training on the cow is going well, but we decided we needed some basic cow handling equipment to make some things safer for us (and the vet).
More ropes needed to hold them to the trees.

Pulling the apple tree upright

Our favourite apple tree fell over in the Autumn under the weight of the apples.
Doug chopped the branches off a little while ago. We tried to push it upright by hand, but it was too wedged in place. So we got the mini digger and pulled it up with that.

This is after we had got it a tiny tiny bit more upright by hand. But not really good enough!

Only time will tell whether it will stay upright and whether it will survive the loss of branches and the twisting on it's roots.

Deboning a rabbit for burgers

I have never boned one of the rabbits before as it looked like it would be too much of a fiddle. However I wanted to try it once, and actually it wasn't too bad.
We had stir fry rabbit from the back of a young one and the thing I really wanted to try which was rabbit burger made from an older rabbit.
Both came out well. The rabbit burger was 2/3 rabbit and 1/3 pork as it needed some fattier meat in it.

Boning a ham

Home grown, home cured ham.

YUMMY

It has been curing for 18 months. We didn’t exactly mean to age it so long, but we had quite a few and were only getting through them slowly - getting them out and slicing them was a bit of a job and we kept forgetting about them.
Not long ago we got a super electric slicer, this does mean the dried ham has to be boned which is a bit of a death defying job on such solid ham, but makes the whole thng easier once that is done.
We have not tried curing one with the bone out, but apparently they are more likely to go off during the curing process than with the bone in.

Yummy slices of ham

Macaroni cheese with ham

The super slicer

Making Clotted Cream

I have only made this with fresh jersey cream, but apparently it doesn’t work with UHT cream or cream (as we get in France) with thickener added.

I made it using something thicker than single cream, but not as thick as double cream

Backing dish or tray deep enough to fit 1 to 2 inches of cream in (I am not sure what difference the thickness of the cream makes)

Enough cream to fill the dish to an inch or two full

Pour the cream in to the dish 

Put in the oven at about 75°C for 12 hours
Let it cool a bit, then put in the refrigerator for 12 hours (or more).

Make a hole in the corner of the hardish surface and pour off the liquid, do it gently so the thick cream on the bottom of the crust doesn’t escape.

Serve with scones or whatever. Maybe strawberry short cake, not tried this yet but I want to!