Back in the Country

After an extended stay in the city, Kitty is back in the country. Well OK I have been back almost a month now but I am only just getting on top of all the garden and canning work I left behind. I had such a blast in London I have to say I almost didn't come back, but then my husband kept sending me lovely pictures of my babies in the garden and I knew I had to come and finish what I had started.

So in the last few weeks I have been canning, tending, picking and eating my way through the garden. After some concerns about blight, our tomatoes pulled through though the potatoes died an early death and didn't produce as much as we would have liked. They still tasted absolutely fabulous pan fried with a little duck fat!!!!

Pics and further updates will follow just as soon as I am done canning these tomatoes!!!!!!!

Potager Update

Well, June has been a bit of a schizo month weather wise. Really hot and then pouring rain. The humidity has been horrible, but the plants have been loving it and it has made for some beautiful skies. I can't believe how much the garden has grown in the last two weeks. I am always amazed to go out and find that a squash has literally doubled in size overnight.



Produce is coming in steadily. We have been eating kale and chard for the last two weeks, as well as radishes, peas and salads.


Now we are seeing the first tomatoes on the vines and we harvested the first zucchini yesterday.


The squash and everything else is doing so well!!! We will have beans in a week or so, the broccoli is starting to come in, and the beets are already big enough to eat! The pumpkins and squash are big and strong and producing fruit. It is going to be a bumper year for squash!

All the hard work is paying off and we haven't lost too any plants to bugs and pests. One notable exception being the tomato plants we lost to gophers (we think). Something ate the roots and the plants literally shrivelled and died. So pissed off. We lost Mr Stripey yesterday and he is our third casualty. I am hoping he will be the last. If we lose any now it will be far too late to plant more.

Going out and pottering away in the garden is always a very therapeutic process. These plants are my little children and I am always amazed at how fast and how big they have grown. To think they all started as a tiny little seed, it is truly a wonder. I can't help but exclaim "my how you have grown, I knew you when you were yeah high!" I sound like one of my mum's friends when we were little... Now I know how they feel!!!

What's in your food?

One of the advantages of moving to the country is that I am closer to small independent farmers who can provide me with meat and dairy. And small independent farmers mean better food as far as I am concerned. Whenever I see Khaiti at her farm or watch her piggie videos on her facebook page (L.T.D. Farm ), I am amazed about how happy these pigs looks.

All her farm animals get so much care and attention. You can just tell they are thriving and able to express their inherent qualities be they pigs, ducks, turkeys or goats. I know whenever I get anything from Khaiti, I am eating compassionately and lovingly raised produce.

This month I got a little closer to my food than I usually do. I participated in my first animal harvest, two ducks and a turkey to be precise. I was more than a little apprehensive but managed to get it together for the big day. I figure if I am going to eat meat, I may as well see where it comes from.

Although I am not suggesting that everyone ought to go out there and butcher their own animals, I think that it is a good idea that everyone experience it at least once in their life. It really brings home the connection. Meat is not lifeless, inert packages wrapped in clingfilm in the chiller case. It is the product of living breathing creatures.



Khaiti was great and took us through the whole process. She was wonderful with the animals and so compassionate and kind at the final moment. Plucking and eviscerating was frankly very interesting. I never knew how easy it was to pluck a bird, and the innards were a wonder. I kept thinking we are just like that inside but bigger. Nothing was wasted. The dogs ate the innards, the feathers were composted and I made away with wonderful meat.




You're probably wondering "is it really that easy to take an animal's life for your own enjoyment?" Whilst I will admit that when I held that little ducky in my arms and felt its heart beating against my chest, I did have a "is this really the right thing to do?" moment. But a prayer of thanks and a quick cut and chop later, it ceased being duck and started being dinner.

That doesn't mean I didn't think about it as I lay in bed that night. When you feel the life force of the animal ebbing away, you can't help but be amazed at the strength of the reaction. This force that is within all of us is truly amazing. But we are all here for a purpous and this was its purpous in life after all. And since Khaiti raised the animals, I knew they had had a good life. It was up to me to honour that purpous as best I could by killing them humanely and not wasting any of their precious gift.



And we certainly didn't waste a gram of those beautiful birds! The turkey made excellent roast, shish kebabs and burgers, not to mention the best stock and soup I have ever tasted. The ducks made a roast and Chinese noodle soup broth. Everything tasted amazing.



And it tasted all the better, knowing that it didn't come from the industrial food mill where animals (and the people who work there) are treated like shit and live like shit only to be slaughtered in massive, cavernous processing plants. If everyone could boycott our industrial food system to the best of their abilities, the world would be a better place in so many ways.



I have vowed to follow Khaiti's example and eat vegan off the farm wherever possible. If I don't know what's in my food and how it got there, it ain't going in my belly. I am not going to be dogmatic about it, but I will try and minimise my dependence on industrial food wherever possible.


And yes, my Limey friends and family, that does mean I WILL be making an exception for Entrecote when I get to Europe- it is just too freakin good and I have been looking forward to decent food every since I moved to the states!!!!! One step at a time :)

What to do when life hands you lemons...

...Make lemonade, of course!!!

Except in this instance, life handed me eggs. Massive beautiful duck eggs to be precise. My wonderful farmer Khaiti had a fridge malfunction and dozens upon dozens of her beautifully packed and ready for the shelves duck eggs froze and expanded cracking the shells and oozing all over.

There was nothing wrong with the eggs except that they were no longer saleable and needed to be used pronto. Her misfortune was my good fortune and yesterday evening I was the happy recipient of a big bowl of duck eggs.


So what did I make? Pasta, of course! I had tried to make pasta from scratch once, thinking that eggs and flour couldn't be that complicated to put together. After that attempt I realised why fresh pasta at a deli is so expensive. If you don't have all the gizmos, it is hard work and time consuming to boot! But I have a good kitchen minion and when someone else is doing the kneading it is not too bad at all!

It is a simple process really. You measure your flour and make a well in the middle. Crack in the eggs and start combining until the dough comes together. Then, the hard part. The dough needs to be kneaded at least 5-10 minutes to develop the gluten which makes it nice and elastic when you cook it. I have no problem kneading bread dough but pasta dough is an entirely different beast. It is hard and dry and a minute feels like and hour! Enter kitchen minion...

After kneading let the dough rest then roll out thin (this demands some vigourous rolling but nothing quite as demanding as the kneading). You can make raviolis by cutting little squares and filling them (in this case, with chard and spinach from the garden and feta from Khaiti) then crimping them closed. Or cut them into ribbons for tagliatelle or linguine. We did some of both and froze what we weren't going to use immediately.


We still had tons of eggs left, so we made more pasta and this time took the lazy man option and just made lasagna! Nice big easy to handle sheets.


Since the greens are in full swing in the garden, we predictably made a chard and spinach lasagna. You would think I would be sick of the stuff by now, but you never really tire of greens that fresh!!!

The lasagna we had for dinner last night and it was delicious.


Thank you Khaiti for your wonderful gift!!!!

We froze enough pasta sheets for 3 more lasagnas which we will be making as soon as mum gives up her Bolognaise recipe...

How does your garden grow?

Well despite the near constant rain, I am pleased to report the garden is growing steadily. At the beginning of the month it was starting to look like a real Potager and not just a bare patch of land.










When I went out a couple of days ago, I couldn't believe it! Things are growing so fast! The potatoes look sooo healthy! We are expecting a bumper crop and all the brassicas are looking fab!!!
We harvested our first bunch of chard and kale two days ago and braised them with some of the rocket from the garden.


I have pretty much used up every available plot in the garden but, much to my husband's chagrin, that doesn't stop me from browsing the seed packets in the local co-op. I know I need to stop buying seeds but I just couldn't resist giving a new variety of plant the chance to grow and feed my tummy (and they were on sale)!!! The last (I promise!) purchase include Hokkaido squash and some Aztec bean I liked the look of. This will definitely be the last one. It is getting too late in the season to plant now. If I try any later they may not mature before the first frost!!!

I can't believe it's not butter - or is it?

I recently went out to Evan's place for a little tuition on keeping a dairy cow. I found him through the Sunday papers. They featured his farm as part of a back to the land type spread. He keeps two lovely Jersey cows on fresh pasture and hand milks them. These cows are living the real deal. They are rotated regularly so that they have fresh green pasture and are 99.99%grass fed, just as nature intended. In case you were wondering what the other 0.01% was, they get a little tasty treat of oats or grain when they come in for milking. They love it!

Jerseys are apparently very sweet tempered cows and are somewhat smaller than other breeds making them perfect for "domestic" use. According to him keeping a dairy cow was very common back in the day and intimidating though I find them, apparently milking the cow was considered kid's work.

I spent a very enjoyable morning with him talking about cow keeping, we milked the cows of course (I even had a go!) and after he had plied me with homemade brie and the best maple vanilla ice cream I have ever tasted, I left with a huge jar of milk and three pints of god's honest rich, decadent jersey cream. (Before leaving I also bagsyd one of the geese and a promise that came harvest time we would have a confit party!)

After pouring lashings of delicious unctuous cream over raspberries and peaches and lightening my coffee with it I decided to have a go at making butter. I had recently picked up some butter paddles at a jumble sale for 25c and was just waiting for such an opportunity to test them out.

The whole process proved to be remarkably simple.

I left the cream out over night on the counter so that it would sour slightly. Then I agitated the cream continuously to separate the solids from the buttermilk. I suppose this part would be traditionally done in a churn but I don't have those kinds of biceps and I certainly don't have that kind of patience so I used electric beaters.

The cream thickened and eventually looked just like whipped cream. If you keep beating past this stage it will look like over whipped cream (surprise surprise!) and after that as if by magic, in one instant, the fat solids miraculously separate out from the buttermilk and Bob's your uncle! You have butter.




If you don't have the convenience of electric kitchen appliances and don't fancy flexing your biceps, I am told that similar results can be achieved by putting the cream in a jar and giving to kids to play with and roll around on the floor. But since I don't have kids I decided to take their word for it.





After that all you need to do is drain the buttermilk away and "wash" the butter. You basically kneed it between the paddles in a bowl of fresh cold water to push out the remaining buttermilk. If you leave any in, the butter will spoil. You need to keep changing the water till it runs clear.

Then salt it to taste and voila!!!!











The whole process took about 20mn and this was the yellowest butter I had ever seen! I had heard that milk and cream from grass fed cows was yellower than milk from the grain fed cows which tends to be much whiter, but now I have seen it with my own eyes. No wonder they add all sorts of dyes to butter. In the olden days, it was yellow of its own accord!!!









Of course nothing is wasted in my kitchen. I used the buttermilk to make little rolls which we had for lunch slathered in butter with a duck egg and spinach Spanish omelet!!!! Country living at it's best!
Can't wait for my next delivery!!!!!!!!!!!

Cover up in the Country

I have been asked why it is that I am always covered from head to toe like an old babushka while out in the garden. I had harboured dreams of gardening virtually nude in order to transform my pasty white skin to a warm golden brown but those hopes were quickly dashed.

You see I live in the middle of tick country. And I don’t just mean those pesky ugly and disgusting wood ticks that burry their head in your skin and suck your blood. Those I might just about be able to live with. No I am covering up like a fundamentalist’s wife because we also live in deer tick land. And deer ticks in this part of the country often carry Lyme disease. And that is no joke.

Overreacting! I hear you say. Well actually I thought so too. Until my husband was diagnosed with it a week ago. After suffering sever flue like symptoms for a few days (chills, fever, aches and pains), a clear telltale sign of Lyme disease appeared; a red bulls eye on the skin. One trip to the emergency clinic later and a prescription for three weeks worth of antibiotics, he is now thankfully on the mend. We never even saw the tick and we were lucky the bull’s eye appeared (you can have Lyme without the bull's eye showing up) as Lyme disease is difficult to diagnose. Without early diagnosis, there can be complications and very scary long term problems.



Luckily the peak season for ticks is now behind us. They will probably come back with a vengeance in the fall but I am not taking off my clothes any time soon. All the rain and the hot spring we had mean that the mosquitoes are really bad this year… Sigh. The joys of country living….