I'm Not The Pheasant Plucker...

Whenever I pass a sign saying "Farm Shop" I can't resist going in. Today I saw one saying "Farm Shop - Ducks and Pheasants £1.50 each". What would you have done?

It's the end of the shooting season and the owner needed to get rid of lots of locally shot game ASAP. So I picked up a brace of pheasants for £3, as well as instructions on how to prepare them. They're hanging in the garage waiting for my dad to come on Friday. I think he'll enjoy roast pheasant for his dinner, and I'm really looking forward to plucking and dressing them because I've never done that before.

Cash Crop

Tom: "Mum, on our allotment, can we plant coca?"
Mum: "I beg your pardon!"
Tom: "Coca, can we plant coca?"
Mum: "Well I suppose we could quickly raise some money to buy a smallholding that way, but I think it needs a higher altitude than we have here in North Cheshire. So no, not really. Why do you ask?"
Tom: "So we can make our own chocolate"
Mum (relieved): "Oh, you mean cacao."

Down On The Allotment

We spent some time on the allotment at the weekend, planting soft fruit bushes. We planted:

8 canes of the summer fruiting raspberry Malling Leo

8 canes of the autumn fruiting raspberry Autumn Bliss

1 thornless blackberry, Black Satin

1 loganberry (variety not specified)

1 redcurrant bush (variety not specified)

1 soft fruit bush of some kind but nobody knows what it is because the label fell off, so I shall call it "mystery soft fruit bush" and hope it's a blackcurrant

My husband, Ed, got them for me for Christmas, hence the uncertainty about the mystery fruit bush. He bought a selection of soft fruit from the garden centre, but he can't remember exactly what he got. They all look like dead twigs at the moment anyway. Still, it will be a nice surprise when it finally fruits. Watch this space.

Whole Different Ball Game

Eco laundry balls didn't stand up to the test, performing no better than plain water in our highly rigorous (ahem) Bean Sprouts lab. Since then I have used neither eco balls nor laundry powder in any of my washes, and my clothes still get clean to my satisfaction. But what about dryer balls?

These claim to soften laundry without adding liquid softener, and also reduce drying times. Are these claims true? I tested them and the results were surprising.

I washed a normal laundry load as usual and dried it with the laundry balls. I have a sensing tumble dryer that stops automatically when the clothes are dry. It took 1 hour 35 minutes to dry the laundry with the balls.

I then rewashed the same load and dried it again, without the balls. It took 2 hours 22 minutes. That's 50% longer, which astonished me. Obviously you can save significant energy using the dryer balls.

As for softness, I washed two identical towels together, and dried one with the dryer balls, one without. This time the balls failed the test. Both towels felt equally soft to the touch, and came out equally fluffy when folded. However my clever sensing dryer also has a reverse tumble feature, meaning it changes direction every now and then. It claims to reduce static, tangling and stiffness. This could have wiped out any softening effect of the balls. Or then again maybe they just don't make clothes softer. I'd be interested to see how the balls perform in a standard dryer.

One thing the balls don't do is scent your laundry. When you buy them they have a lavender fragrance that fades after only a few uses. If you like the smell of softener then you may not like the balls. But I hate the strong sickly perfumes in washing powders and fabric softeners, so for me the lack of scent is a distinct plus.

I'd say the dryer balls are worth the money, because they substantially reduce drying times even if they don't soften clothes. But remember that you can save even more money and energy if you dry clothes on a line instead.

Ways With Cabbage

This time of year can be pretty challenging for people who grow their own, or insist on local veg. Trying to subsist on swedes, cabbages and leeks and little else for months on end can be pretty trying. I'm OK with the swedes potatoes and leeks - you can make mash with plenty of butter or cream and lots of salt and pepper so at least it doesn't taste so damned healthy. Or you can make soup from them and keep it interesting by adding different beans, noodles, dumplings, croutons, or serve it with different kinds of home-made bread (I'm on a big soda bread kick at the moment - more on that in a future post).

But cabbage is a problem. I'm with Hedgie on this one. I'm just not a big fan of cabbage, and I admit I've flung a few of them to the chickens in desperation when my kitchen seems to be taken over by more cabbages than I care to eat. The chickens seem to like them as long as you can figure out how to suspend the cabbages so they don't just get trampled into the mud.

I have found the secret to making cabbage a pleasure is to cut out the tough central veins on each leaf and shred what's left into really fine ribbons - 1/8" or so. It's the mouthful of tough chewy cabbage that gets me down.

Once you've done that there are a few things you can do to make really delicious dishes with cabbage. I like stir frying it - I had a lovely vegetarian stir fry the other day with julienne swede, finely shredded cabbage and leeks cut into sticks rather than rings. I fried some garlic and ginger up with it too. Then I put on plenty of soy sauce and a little sesame oil and served it with noodles. It would have been even better with some soy sauce marinaded chicken but I didn't have any.

Staying with the Chinese theme, if you finely shred savoy cabbage and deep fry it with slivers of garlic, then drain it and serve with lots of sea salt, that's exactly how they make the stuff they call "seaweed" in Chinese restaurants. I don't make this any more because a) I haven't owned a deep fryer in years and b) when I tried it I found it tricky getting the cabbage properly crispy but not burned.

You can stir fry cabbage without going all oriental. I like to fry strips of onion in olive oil until they're soft, then add shredded cabbage and shedloads of black pepper. Don't think "seasoning" think "flavouring", like steak au poivre. It's supposed to smell strongly of aromatic black pepper. With some buttery nutmeg swede mash and some tasty sausages and onion gravy you won't be wishing for summer peas and lettuce, you'll be revelling in delicious winter food.

Or you can steam your shredded cabbage with some fennel seeds. Remove the rind from a lemon and squeeze the juice. Finely shred the rind and cream it into some butter along with the lemon juice, sea salt and a moderate amount of black pepper, them stir the lemon butter into the steamed cabbage. Our veggie family likes this with a vegetable quiche, and perhaps some mashed spuds. But I'm sure it would also accompany chicken or fish very well.

But our family's favourite use for cabbage is the legendary Baked Cabbage with Nuts and Cheese.

Baked Cabbage with Nuts and Cheese
Shred a cabbage (usually a white cabbage but it works with a Savoy as well) and boil. Make cheese sauce with a strong-flavoured cheese, and thin it out with some of the cabbage cooking water. Season well with sea salt, freshly ground black pepper and lots of freshly grated nutmeg. Mix with the strained cabbage and a generous handful of salted peanuts. Bung it in an ovenproof dish with more cheese and nuts and nutmeg on top and bake in a moderate oven until the top is golden.

Believe me, this is one of the best things you will ever put in your mouth. This is the dish that has converted fundamentalist carnivores to vegetarianism. You know the people who always quip "This would be nice with a pork chop"? Serve this to them and it will shut them up. You won't believe cabbage could taste so good.

You don't believe me, do you? You're thinking "It's cheesy cabbage. So what? Sounds rubbish." Try it. I double-dare you. Then come back here and tell me if I lied to you about the best thing you ever put in your mouth, or not.

Bless You

My sister Stephanie sent me some hand-made recycled real hankies. I must confess we mostly blow our noses on kitchen roll or Handy Andies. We choose 100% recycled kitchen roll, but the Handy Andies are made from virgin woodpulp, and both are probably chlorine bleached which produces organochlorines and dioxins that are just evil. Well no more. It's real hankies for us from now on, and lovingly hand-made real hankies recycled from my beautiful God-daughter's old clothes at that.

Review: Soap Maker's Companion

Sometimes I like to make things because it's cheaper than buying them, and sometimes I like to make things because I can make them better than I can buy. But mainly I like to make things because I just like knowing how. I get a huge kick out of thinking "I can do that" for as wide a range of things as possible. I think that's the reason I love to make soap.

One of my favourite soapmaking books is The Soap Maker's Companion by Susan Miller Cavitch. It has detailed enough instructions to be excellent as a beginners' book, but also plenty of information that would be of interest to a more experienced soapmaker. It wasn't my first soap making book, but I learned a lot from it that isn't explained anywhere else.

The batch sizes are on the large side, which some beginners might find offputting but in fact large batches are a lot more likely work well than small batches. This is because slight inaccuracies in weighing are more significant in small batches, and they also lose heat quicker than large batches which can lead to problems.

There are no photographs, but I love the quirky line drawings and woodcut-style illustrations. In fact "quirky" is a good word to describe this book, along with "earthy" - two of my favourite adjectives. The recipe names will give you a flavour of what I mean; "Build Me a Buttercup", "Down the Garden Path", "Blowin' in the Wind Laundry Soap". The recipes I have tried have all turned out very well, and there are plenty of tempting recipes I want to try in future. I have several soap-making books but this is definitely my favourite, and I'd recommend it to complete beginners and old hands alike.

Unexpected Benefits of Washing at 30°

One of the unexpected benefits of washing at 30° (apart from saving over 40% of the energy used for the wash cycle) is that when your daughter leaves a sparkly pink lipstick in her pocket, it doesn't get hot enough to melt and cover all the supposedly-clean clothes with sparkly pink grease.

Why Organic?

My dad asked why we bothered pulling all the couch grass out by hand, rather than just zapping it all with weedkiller. I love this kind of question because it prompts me to think clearly about my philosophy and the basis for my actions.

There are lots of reasons why I choose to garden organically. One of them is much more important than the others, and I will come to that last.

1. It costs money - the people who rented that plot before us told me they sprayed £60 of weedkiller on it. And it's still full of weeds. I can only imagine it would be even worse if they hadn't but still, it cost Ed and I nothing to entirely clear a quarter of it by hand, and we'll do the other three quarters over the next weeks and months.


2. Artificial herbicides, pesticides and fertilisers are made from oil, and the oil is running out. We need to learn how to live without them. Organic gardening isn't a middle-class fad, it's the future.


3. We eat the produce from our allotment. I don't want to put poisons anywhere near our food. Just seems like common sense to me.


4. The ground needed digging anyway (in response to Hedgie's astute observation that digging makes couch grass worse - in fact we forked it, then removed all the roots, then forked again and removed more roots until either there were no more roots or we were fed up). So using weedkiller wouldn't have saved us a job, it would just have saved us the "removing roots" stage of the job.


5. We could have used weedkiller and then hired a rotavator to clear and cultivate the soil. That would have been pretty easy and quick. But then again we could have bought all our veggies from Tesco in the first place, even easier and quicker. But it's not about what's easiest, it's about what's best, in our opinion.


6. It's good exercise. Some people join gyms at great expense and spend an hour a day on treadmills and rowing machines to keep fit, and then they hire someone at great expense to mow their lawn and trim their hedge for them. Seems to me you could save some money on that arrangement and still keep fit. This isn't really a "reason" why I chose to dig, but it is one of several nice benefits.


7. There's a promising new blog called Allotment Junkies which is about allotment gardening and depression recovery. Being out in the daylight, taking vigorous exercise, having short-term achievable goals and seeing the tangible results of your labours (not to mention eating a healthy diet rich in fruit and vegetables) are all proven to be more effective treatment and prevention for depression than anti-depressant drugs. I have experienced depression in the past and have no intention of going there again if I can help it. Digging the garden or allotment helps keep me happy and healthy. This is also a pleasant bonus rather than a reason for my choice.


8. But the main reason why I choose not to use Roundup is that soil is alive. Or rather it is an ecosystem of lots of interdependent organisms - plants, animals, fungi and bacteria, both microscopic and macroscopic. Using herbicides and pesticides damages that ecosystem and in extreme cases can result in sterile i.e. dead soil. As a gardener, I am in the business firstly of creating healthy soil. Healthy plants follow on from that. I won't do anything that damages the health of my soil if I can possibly avoid it, which is the same thing as saying I garden organically.

Let it Snow, Let it Snow

It snowed last night, so plans to plant the soft fruit bushes are on hold. The ground isn't frozen, but I just want to see how long this "cold snap" lasts. It could be a flash in the pan, or we could be in for a long hard winter starting three months late.

Still, the children will be glad if they get to use their sledges this winter after all.

Couch Grass

We got down to the allotment for a few hours yesterday and dug up plenty of couch grass. Couch grass looks pretty much like normal grass above ground but below ground the roots are like spaghetti - thick and invasive. The easiest way of getting rid of it organically is to cover it all with a thick light-proof layer like old carpet, but that takes months. We did it the hard way - fork it all up and remove as many roots as possible by hand. It's back-breaking, and I feel stiff and achey this morning.

The area which we have designated for soft fruit now looks like a pretty respectable tilth. But we know that if you dig down, there are still plenty of buried bits of couch grass root. Each tiny fragment of root is capable of growing into more horrible couch grass as soon as the weather warms up, and ideally we'd like to eradicate it entirely but that's probably not possible in the short term without using a chemical herbicide.

We'll go back tomorrow and dig it all over again and remove as much as possible. But at some point we'll call it a day and plant the fruit bushes Ed gave me for Christmas. I need to look up how much space they need, but I hope there will be room left over for some strawberry plants. Then each time we go to the allotment we'll spend a bit of time pulling up any couch grass that dares to show its face, and in time we'll kill it all I hope.

I hate couch grass. The only kind of couch grass I like is the kind in the picture, which comes from ReadyMade Mag.

(If you haven't signed the petition to save Manor Gardens Allotments, here's the link again: http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/manorgardens/ )

Please Sign This Petition

Back in August I wrote about an allotment site in London which is due to be demolished in a few weeks' time to make way for a footpath serving the London Olympics site. The footpath will exist for only 4 weeks. The allotments have been there for 100 years.

I'm proud that Britain will be hosting the Olympics in 2012. I'm looking forward to it and I hope it will be a great success. It's an opportunity to show the world what is great about Britain. Not an excuse to demolish some of the great things about it. I'd like to see the footpath go around the allotments, with big banners put up saying:

"LOOK AT THIS! BRITISH PEOPLE LOVE TO GARDEN! WE FORM SMALL COMMUNITIES WHICH HELP EACH OTHER! THIS IS WHO WE ARE! WE'RE PROUD OF THIS!"

Please, take a few seconds and sign this petition: http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/manorgardens/

Beekeeping Course

I've signed up for a beekeeping course in Keele University in May. I'm so excited! Unfortunately the timing is poor - the course finishes on 27th May and as I understand it the best time to get started with bees is early in the spring. Do I wait until after the course and then try to get a hive and some bees even though it's not the ideal time? Or do I jump in the deep end and get bees and hive before the course, and learn what I'm doing as I go along?

I've ordered the recommended pre-course reading books from Amazon, so I'll be able to make a more informed decision after I've read those. If any Bean Sprouts readers are better informed than me (Stoney, didn't you have bees a while back?) I'd appreciate your expertise.

Pepsi Challenge

I read that you can clean toilets without bleach by pouring in a can of cola, leave it overnight, then flush it away. So I tried it. It doesn't work, even if you scrub vigorously with a toilet brush as well.

Ethical Mall

Under my web browser's "favourites" I have collected a lot of online ethical shops - organic, fair trade, recycled, earth-friendly etc. The list is starting to get quite unwieldy as more and more ethical shops seem to start up each week. I was idly thinking that it would be very convenient if they were all gathered together in one place. A sort of ethical mall.

So I did just that. Find it at http://ethicalmall.blogspot.com/. It's not really a blog, as it won't be updated frequently. But when I buy things from any of the featured shops I will write about it, commenting on the usability of the online store, the speed of delivery, quality of the goods and packaging and customer service. I have also invited a few of my friends to submit reviews, otherwise there only would be one update every three months or so when I buy something (I'm no shopaholic). Blogs are easier to set up than websites, though, so that's the way I have created it.

I hope other people will find it useful, but even if it remains nothing more than a glorified version of my "favourites" folder it will still be worthwhile.

A Pocketful of Rhyme

My 8-year-old son, Tom, is a published poet. His poem "Wings" was a winner of a national children's poetry competition and was published in the anthology
"Pocketful of Rhyme". I'm so proud of him. I have written my share of poetry, but I have never had any published. So here it is (with permission from the author).

Wings

If I had wings
I would touch stampeding winds in a tornado.

If I had wings
I would taste water from the very crust of the world.

If I had wings
I would listen to a meteor crash to Earth penetratingly.

If I had wings
I would gaze at the burning American forest fire.

If I had wings
I would dream of flying with geese in the shape of a V.

If I had wings
I would join the American army and explore the Pentagon.

If I had wings
I would touch clouds and see the wind giants, who argue a lot.

Spring Is Getting Nearer

It's only January but it feels like spring is aproaching. Yesterday the sun was shining and I could feel it warming my back when I was outdoors. And the broom is blooming in next door's garden. It looks very jolly and yellow through the bare hedge.

On Saturday my sisters, Lindsey and Stephanie, joined me to sing Carmina Burana in a day with my choir, St. George's Singers. Part of the text is:

Rerum tanta novitas
In solemni veri
et veris auctoritas
iubet nos gaudere.

Glorious spring renews
all nature’s might
and spring our heart imbues
with joyous light.

It would have been a great weekend to spend some time on the allotment, but Saturday was out because of the singing day. Sunday was also impossible because it was my daughter Eleanor's 7th birthday party. Her friends arrived dressed in pyjamas and dressing gowns and slippers. They baked cakes, told spooky stories, played party games and ate pizza and ice-cream whilst watching a Disney movie.

I had a lovely time both days, doing fun things with people I love. But it doesn't get the couch grass out of the allotment. I'm going to have to step up a gear this week.

Braun Blender

I have a very old Braun food processor which used to belong to my parents and my grandmother before them. It's practically indestructible, although as you can see it has needed a few repairs. I was making scones in it once when it vibrated itself clear off the worktop and the Bakelite cover of the mixing attachment shattered. Steph and I glued and gaffer-taped it back together. Also the rubber gasket on the liquidiser perished, but we replaced it with a plastic O-ring from some sort of toy which fits perfectly. And just recently the flex was worn through, so Ed just took it off, trimmed away the worn part, and re-attached it slightly shorter.

I remember dad making lemonade in it when I was in primary school, and mum making cheese scones and grinding granulated sugar into icing sugar when she ran out during the Pope's visit and was making hundreds of yellow-and-white Pope-themed fairy cakes for some church event.

I love using it. It's no heirloom, too precious to use and consequently useless. I make bread, scones, pastry and cakes in the big bowl, I grind cooked chickpeas down to hummus using the mincer, and I blend soups and smoothies in the liquidiser. Because of its history it's much more satisfying to use than the cheap mixer I bought in Curry's. It's a pity there aren't more things like that in our lives - objects we inherit and use every day which carry a wealth of meaning and emotion.

I wrote to dad and asked him if he had any more information about it, and this is his reply:

Hi Mel,

Yes, I well remember buying the Braun. I was a young Boy Telegraphist on board HMS Birmingham and we were visiting Aden, late 1956. The food processor, liquidiser, mincing attachment and coffee grinder cost me the princely sum of £30. My Mum used it for mixing dough to make stotty cakes (twice, thrice, weekly), she made cakes with it, and scones (plain, fruit and cheese) she mixed pastry for pies, both sweet and savoury. She, like your Mum, made mincemeat with cheap offcuts of mutton and lamb. God, she used it for all sorts until, in 1970 when your Mum and I married, she gave it to us. I well remember spending hours paring meat off skirt of lamb to mince to make curries, lamb burgers, spicy lamb pies, etc. It was invaluable on a student's grant as we were then.

Some twelve to fifteen years ago, I remember writing to Braun in Germany, telling them the story of our family food processor and asking if they could help with the replacement of the bowls. They were so impressed with the longevity of the machine, and our fond feelings for it that they sent us the replacements free of charge and wished us many more useful years out of it. It does me old heart good to know that a new generation on it is still going strong and still loved.

Surely it is a good example of well made products give good service over a long life, not the light-weight, throw-away technology of today. Just because it is electronic, it doesn't have to be cheap and nasty, does it?

I really liked dad's point about electronic goods not needing to be cheap and nasty. So many electronic goods we buy are flimsy and short-lived that it is easy to imagine they are somehow inherently fragile. The 50-year-old Braun workhorse in my kitchen proves that isn't true, they're deliberately made that way now so we have to replace them more often.

Pumpkin Cake

Do you remember the monster pumpkin we were so kindly given at the beginning of November? I'm sure it was left on our plot for Hallowe'en, but we didn't pick it up until a few days later, so it was too late to carve into a lantern. Did you ever wonder what happened to it?

We kept it - pumpkins store very well as long as they are not damaged and are kept cool and safe from rodents. Ours stored on top of the fridge for over 2 months, and then one day last week I cut it up and made it into lots of pumpkin puree and froze it in batches.

What will the puree be used for? Well pumpkin soup is an obvious possibility. There are lots of good recipes here - my favourite is the coconut chili and pumpkin soup. I also make a cracking pumpkin pie. But recently I've found some more surprising uses for pumpkin. For one thing, I found a recipe for a delicious moist cake made with pumpkin (pictured) which all the children will eat! It has vegetables in it, but they eat it anyway. God bless Harry Potter, that's what I say. And I've invented pumpkin griddle cakes. They're scrummy. So scrummy in fact that I'm quite relieved the kids won't countenance them - that leaves more for Ed and me.

Pumpkin Griddle Cakes
Simmer 1lb pumpkin pieces in a little water, strain and lightly mash with a fork. Make sure you strain them well, squeezing a bit if need be to remove excess water. Melt 2oz butter into the mashed pumpkin and mix well. Mix salt, pepper and grated nutmeg into the buttery pumpkin mash, then stir in 4oz wholemeal plain flour. This makes a sort of sticky dough. Heat a frying pan and grease it with a little butter. Using your fingers make a few walnut-sized pieces of pumpkin dough and drop them onto the frying pan. Fry until golden on one side (only about a minute if the pan is hot enough) then turn over, and squash them down a bit with the back of a spatula to make flattened cakes about 1/4" or so thick. Fry until golden on that side, then remove from the pan and keep them warm whilst you cook the remaining batches of pumpkin griddle cakes. Serve hot.

10 Species of Birds...

... visible from my kitchen window during a short period yesterday:

1. Crows
2. Blue tits
3. Great spotted woodpecker
4. Lots of gulls (dunno which kind, I don't do gulls)
5. Woodpigeons
6. Six magpies (six for gold - yay!)
7. Great Tit
8. Starlings
9. A heron
10. A robin

You can tell it was only a short period as sparrows aren't on the list, and you can't look out of any window in our house for long without seeing a sparrow.