Singing Chicken

Remeber these? The quails' eggs I blew in September/October? I have had 6 months to attach ribbons but only last weekend did I get round to even starting it. I still want to paint some too.
I read about inserting pieces of glued matchstick inside but that was too fiddly and the stretchy glue just a pain in the neck. Making a knot in the ribbon and just stuffing it in with tweezers was far easier.

I'll show you some painted ones when I've done them. I've found some good twigs for the Easter tree itself and I have some other very cute things to hang on it.

You will see the tree in good time. A local shop has had its egg tree in the window for weeks now. Too early. I will only put mine out when Easter is imminent.

Larry has gone to a home where there are people around all day long, who can give him the frequent feeds he needs. It wasn't going to work, having a full time job and being in a theatre show at night this week coming. Then in a few weeks' time there's the long weekend when go to my Dad's. Who would care for him? It's a lot to ask. Then there's the weaning process, gradually getting him used to sharing a field with sheep and getting him to learn what to do. I did feel we were out of our depth. Maybe this is something we could do when we are no longer working, but for now it would not have been the best thing for Larry to stay with us.

I was on my way to feed the ponies on Saturday morning when the local delivery man drew up to say Hello. I asked him if he knew of anyone who would like to hand-rear a lamb and he said he would talk to his wife and ring after 6pm.



Meanwhile, we had a great day with Larry, showing him the garden, feeding and cuddling him, introducing him to Ludo (who didn't like him!)etc. When 6pm came, the man rang to say he would come in 20 minutes. He arrived with his wife and 3 grandchildren, all clamouring to touch him and sreaming about his cuteness.




Here he is, waiting in a box in the porch, before being taken away to his new home. They said we could visit whenever we wanted, and if we found any more waifs, to bring them along, because they have brought up many before and kept them as pets. Larry has fallen on his cute little feet.

Goodbye, Larry. It was a lovely 48 hours.

Last Sunday, there were only green buds. The next chance I could check in daylight, Thursday, there they were! It was so warm I could have sat out. Hedges and trees still bare though, perennials area in the foreground completely bare, but it's coming.

It's an anxious time, when you think the perennials might all have died, as has my rhubarb. I hope to report better news soon.



This Lenten rose has been there a week or two, gradually opening. It usually has multi heads, but this year only one. Maybe it's the effect of two extreme winters on the trot.

Larry is doing fine and has been in the garden this morning for a photo call. Will put up more when I get them onto here. We are trying hard to find another home for him because during the next working week we are sometimes out for up to 17 hours at a stretch which is too long to leave him. It will be sad to say goodbye but Larry's welfare is the important thing.

The local lambs have just started emerging. Now, I am not in the habit of appropriating other people's animals, but when I alerted farmers to their abandoned lambs last year, I found later that they either hadn't found the lamb or not seen to it and they died. Last week I bought a baby's bottle and some dried ewes' milk substitute and am so glad I did because last night when I was comiing back from a walk and I spotted a little shivering waif at the edge of a field. There was no bleating ewe in sight so I went in and made up some milk and gave it a good feed.

We brought him in to our sort of greenhouse and made a bed with hay. Left in the field he would have been got by Mr. Fox. He had a good feed last thing, and he was already up this morning, trying to suckle on the wooden leg of a bench! He keeps tryiing to suck on our legs and any bits of us that get near him. He needs his mum really but he's very good at taking from the bottle.

We don't intend keeping him as a pet. As soon as he is strong and has teeth for eating grass we will put him back in the field. I'm just not sure how he will adjust because he thinks we are his parents, so I'll need to ask people and look online about how to wean him and get him able to cope with life outside.

During the walk I got all excited because I saw my first spring migrant bird, all the way from Africa!- and took some pics and I decided that would be the subject of today's Fauna Friday, but Larry then took over. I'll put the bird up next Friday.




Just to brighten up the wordy post, here's a picture from the same field. This is probably a cousin of Larry.

I agree it doesn't look like a problem, and it isn't a problem to eat, but here's the reason for the title.
Went to bake a walnut fudge cake on Tuesday night. I checked it a bit early and it wasn't ready. I tried to slide the oven shelf back iin and it wouldn't go, so I shoved it a bit and it went with a jolt. The cake tin flew back and hit the back of the oven. That knocked the air out of it so when it came out it wasn't very tall. It was suposed to be one that you cut in half and put filling in, but the two halves would have been pathetically thin, so I set to and made another the same. This one did rise, but still not enough. (This is a problem I am having. I am losing my touch and cakes aren't rising like they used to. They say you mustn't over-cream or under-cream, and mustn't add too much baking powder or too little, but give no indication of how much/little they mean, and anyway Ihaven't changed my method so I am feeling quite despondent about it)

I decided to make the first cake the bottom half and the second cake the top half. I made the fudge filling and put extra chopped up fudgey bits in it. I put the top half on, iced it and put on the walnuts and more fudgey bits.
I got out my tallest tin, but it was too tall for that. What I should have done was cut both halves down to size, but having filled and iced it, it was too late. It doesn't matter. It is 7 ins wide and 5 ins tall (or nearly 18cm by nearly 13cm if you use these new fangled units). What's wrong with a huge cake? Nothing at all! It tastes very nice indeed, although the texture is a bit dense with its failure to rise.

I haven't been here for a few days as I needed to do work. I thought I had better just not even look at the blog because it can take over,once you start. So I woke up today to follower no. 14, who I think is Javier because the others were all there before, or so I thought. Well into 2 figures now. That's brilliant.

French Fries are what I am enjoying as a little snack these days. I first tried them years ago and didn't really like them , but I do now. They are very dry so you can eat them at your desk and not cover all your papers in greasy fingermarks as you do with normal crisps. They are not over-flavoured and really do taste quite a lot like proper little thin French chips.

Before I went away for my little break, I got my weight down to one lb above target. Brilliant! But since then I have gone back to almost where I started. Grrrr.... It's hub's birthday this week so I won't be re-starting the diet (or mini-diet as it was) for a few more days. It didn't take long before so it won't again. You just need to be in the right mindset, which I'm not this week.

What are they? No, I haven't given you droppings. Not yet anyway. I think they are regurgitated pellets of sheep wool. Something like a buzzard or an owl has feasted on dead sheep and then all the indigestible non-meat bits have been expelled later. They have been in the same place for months. I think they will take ages to decompose.
Sorry not to give you a picture of a cute furry animal but it's very interesting just observing what animals do!

I would like to welcome Follower 13: Sage. Hiya Sage! Oooh, watch out, Sage. I see you are a GP. I will be asking you about all my little problems now!

Make a caramel sauce with butter, sugar and golden syrup. Coat the sides and base of an ovenproof pudding basin with it.

Poach some pear slices for 3 minutes. (Is this necessary? Pear is soft and it gets and hour in the oven afterwards. I won't bother next time). Press them into the caramel. I think if they had been cold they wouldn't have made a pool of juice in the bottom but it's OK because it had no bad effect in the end.



Pour in some spongy mixture and bake for about an hour.




It looks a bit overdone but it wasn't really. It turned out fabulous. It would be great with apple. If you don't want to cook the apple first I would suggest a nice sharp flavoured eating apple instead.

Oops. I've just remembered I'm supposed to be putting up a pastry recipe for Helsie. I will do it!

I had a few days away last week, sorting out my bonkers Dad (seeing professionals and arranging extra care for him), going on a course for work (zzzzzz.......) and visiting a lovely friend. I had a morning at the big shops and I bought what I've been meaning to buy for a long time - a digital camera with a proper eye hole. They don't make compact ones with eye holes any more so I had to have this big one. It was very modestly priced and does lots of things the other doesn't, including an 18x optical zoom!

In certain lights and conditions I just cannot see the picture in the back of small cameras, you see. There must be lots of people in this position. I need a hole to peer through. Now that I have my own camera I can click away whenever I want blog photos and it doesn't matter if hubby is out with the other camera. Also I don't have to explain why I am taking pictures of bird footprints or food gone wrong or ash buds that look like bits of broccoli. I can just do away as I like! It looks bulky but it's very light and the carrying case has room in it for my keys, a few snacks and pen and paper for writing down bloggy ideas or learning words/songs etc which I do when out walking. Off I go!

Sorry I have been quiet but you know I have been away for a little spell. I spent some time with a friend who has two cats and I felt for that reason I should really make cats the subject of this post, but I feel a bit uninspired about what to say and also I have no photos yet to upload because I haven't had time yet, so here's this week's animal: the Komodo Dragon. It came to mind because I found myself playing a game of 'Guess the Zoo Animal' over the weekend and tried to imitate a Komodo Dragon.

A few years ago, at a zoo, I was intrigued when I saw that they had dragons. I didn't think dragons existed outside myth and legend. Real, live dragons? Apparently. None of them breathed fire though.

I sometimes think I could live off this dish, which is made up of layer upon layer of tomato sauce, aubergines, mozzarella, basil and parmesan. You don't get much tastier, much more succulent, than this.
I made this last summer when my veggie friend came to stay.

What was that clear jelly doing spread over the tarmac? I looked, expecting to see the flattened skin of a frog with tyre tracks in it, but it was just jelly, with little black dots in it. Frog spawn! But why did the froggy squirt it all over the road? I considered scraping it all up an putting it in the pond, but it would have been too difficult and would have damaged it anyway.



So the frogs are active again! Sure enough, when you come back on a dark night, there are all these little silvery triangles on the lanes – little frogs, sitting on the road blinking into the headlights. If they look as if they are reasonably in the middle, you shut your eyes and carry on. If they are near the edge, I like to stop, get out, lift up the froggy, pop it into the verge then carry on. It can take longer to get home at this time of year.

Last year they gave us these road signs. I don’t know why. If people care about the frogs, they’ll try to avoid them anyway, and if they don’t they won’t. I think, sadly, most people fall into the second category. I don’t think the sign is really of any use.

I must listen out for the croaking chorus “Brek-ek-ek-ex! Ko-ax! Ko-ax!”



We have tried and tried to get frogs to breed in the back garden pond by collecting spawn and putting it in there, but it just doesn’t work. They breed in the front pond, but not the back. They will visit it and sit and croak in it, but won’t spawn there. They, and toads and newts, frequently come in the house quite willingly and unbidden, and have to be removed and plonked outside, the carpet fluff first picked out of their toes.

You've seen the above before. It's a peeled apple getting covered in pastry. In fact you've seen them all before.

My shortcrust pastry used to be terrible. It was hard,chewy and tasteless. How to get that really 'short' pastry that people rave about? The type that doesn't bend when you bite it, but crumbles, and has a sweet/salt taste? Well, I got to thinking about other things I've liked eating, that I would want my own pastry to emulate, and came up with shortbread. I looked at the difference between a shortbread recipe and a pastry recipe. Shortbead is traditionally made with butter, whereas I was using any old marge from a tub. Shortbread has a much higher proportion of fat to flour, so I changed to butter, and in large quantities! Not healthy, but I chose taste and texture over health, because it's quite rare I make pastry and I do eat a lot of fruit and veg anyway and I exercise. I don't use as much as in shortbread, which is two parts butter to 3 parts flour, but I do use more than the recommended 2 parts. Shortbread recipes use no water, and I had read that you mustn't put much water in pastry. I used to throw loads in, to get it to be malleable enough. Now, I might sprinkle a little with a teaspoon.



There's all this blah about having cold hands and not handling pastry too much, whereas shortbread requires kneading. Well I can't keep my hands cold and if it won't bind without handling it, well I'll have to handle it. Sometimes I use the dough hooks on my hand mixer, but I usually just use hands.

I think that has all turned it around and made it successful. If it's a savoury recipe, it's the same but with no sugar and a little salt.



If I may say so, a colleague took some mince pies home to a friend, who said the pastry was the best she had ever tasted! Last year's (Christmas 2010) was over-buttered. I forgot myself. It even smelt a little cheesy, from all that butter! I hope nobody dies.

Here's what I was up to last night. I used up some more of that vast pastry mountain in the freezer, which dates back to when I made too much for the Christmas mincemeat pies.

There's a church social coming up and they want fruit pies. I forgot to buy foil pie dishes and my metal ones are too disgraceful to let anybody see, and a bit small, so I had to use my one round ceramic one and do the other in a square one. Not that it matters what shape they are. Both the big pies (bottom pic) are apple.

With a bit left over from the pies, I made two little jam slices. Take two slabs of pastry: one for the bottom, with raspberry jam on, then cut each in half (before putting the lid on otherwise the jam would shoot out the sides) prick the tops with a fork, put those on and bake them.



I hope you all approve of my chicken jam pot!

And not a shred of meat in sight. I've been reminded by JC and CJ that there are wonderful foods to be had without meat and how right they are.