New (to us) car

The Panda is getting quite old, and we are not good with cars that go wrong, so we decided to get a newer one. We also thought a 4x4 would be useful as it is just the most practical thing round here.

Not the colour we would have chosen perhaps, but it is the only 4x4 one they had - they are hard to come by at the moment it seems.

We have a dream and a hope that we will manage to keep it cleaner than we managed with the Panda, which was filthy inside (due to NEVER having been cleaned in 10 years!). We have a cover for the back seats for Poppy, so that is a good start.

The new owner of the Panda is hopefully collecting it tomorrow - the drive is rather crowded with 3 cars!

Happy Valentine’s Day

We are not big on Valentine’s day, but marked the occasion with a nice homegrown meal. Monday so stayed off the wine :)

Chicken breast with orange (didn’t grow the orange juice), chips and kale. With some nice homemade mayonnaise.

Naan Recipe

I can never really settle on a recipe as results vary, I think more due to the cooking technique than the dough recipe. Generally a wetter dough is better I think…

 270g plain flour

120g warm water

2tsp dried yeast

110g yoghurt (kefir)

3 tbsp soft butter

1 tsp sugar (or some honey)

Salt

Some butter (to brush with when cooked)

Knead everything together.

Rise for an hour or until doubled in size

Divide in to 8 pieces and form into balls

Rest the balls for a few minutes and then roll each one out till maybe 15cm in diameter.

Cook in pizza oven (or on a hot skillet - butter it a bit first)

Crazy time of year for a BBQ

 Not even mid Feb, but we are going for it! Starting early before sun set.

Yuuuuum! We are still trying to lose some of the lockdown weight. So just salad with the delicious pork…

Terrarium lights

 One day, when we finally manage to get on with more work on the house (animals, paid work and mowing allowing) we are thinking of having some terrarium lights. A lot of the house is quite dark (cooler that way), so it is good to have some plants. We will see how they go!

The cows are wasters!

We built ‘wood-henge’ for the cows around this time last year, so that we could feed them large rounds of hay without the help of the farmer who had been putting them in the field with his tractor (he stopped selling hay). It is great because we can get it rolled in without getting covered in mud - they can only access and poach 3 sides of it and we roll the hay in off the drive from the 4th side.

However they have been throwing hay on the ground, which is good to a point as it soaks up the mud and makes it dryer for them to stand on, but it was getting too much, so we are trying putting the bale in a giant hay net to see if they can still get enough to eat, but waste less. We shall see!

Curry Cooking Day

 A friend spent some of her childhood in India and is a super cook of Indian food.

In aid of the twinning association (Bagneres is twinned with Inverurie and Malvern) we helped cooking for a curry take away evening.

Curry cooked for nearly 50 people. 15 different dishes (including salads and desert). Hectic at times, but fun and very delicious food.