HELLO MUM

We had a full chicken dinner last night and there was plenty for tonight too, so Hello Fresh meals will start tomorrow.  There’s a second helping of the pudding I made too:  poached ready-to-eat dried apricots in the slow cooker for 3-4 hours.  300g apricots, sprinkle with 50g caster sugar, 1/4pt dry sherry, ¼pt cold water, 1/2tsp ground black pepper, served hot with crème fraiche.  Very delicious.

After a late breakfast I stripped the leftover meat from the chicken and put the carcass, onions, carrots, celery and peppercorns on to simmer for a couple of hours to make delicious stock – just right for chicken and rice soup for some of it which Damnonii reminded me of.

It rained quite persistently this morning but gave way to a bright and blue afternoon so off I went up to The Farm for a good blow.  Golly it was cold, I spent too long watching Mum pig with her small litter of 3, then off to the little garden patch where the bird feeders are, sadly rather empty but a few Great and Blue Tits came to have a look, quite a few Sparrows and our friend, the Robin came to have a forage too, and most of the trees around were full of chatty Starlings.   After standing about too long I was almost frozen to the spot so took off to the café to have a bowl of delicious spicy winter veg soup with the most gorgeous gluten free pumpkin seed bread (must have a go at making this) and all enjoyed by the lovely log burner which warmed me up in no time.
 
Back home just before it started to rain again, dinner prepped and looking forward to a good night of tele:  Great Pottery Throwdown followed by The Midwife.

Extras:  More Piggies, The Robin and the Weather Vane, a lovely tribute to the founder of the Farm.