TARRAGON & THYME

We have had stew for tea tonight using up some of the Beef Skirt which was bought last week. OH requested Dumplings, so I have been a bought a packet to make up for him to have with his stew and mashed potatoes.  It cost me 90p for a 150g pack which should make 8 small Dumplings. I followed the instructions and made the dough up as indicated from the packet mix.  However, in reality it tells you to use 6 Tablespoons of water, in reality I used more. Also, the Dumplings need cooking a lot longer than 20 minutes. They need longer so that the inside cooks properly which it will not do in 20 minutes.  The Dumpling should take on the flavour of what it is cooked with, but you should not have a floury bit in the centre. They did come up fairly light though. I must say that the Stew was super tasty again.  Yet again another meal each for tomorrow. I have also bought a 1.5 kg bag of SR Flour for 95p and a box of suet 240g for £2.10 as I have decided to compare the pricing an...

The Co-Op have some of their Christmas stuff in situ already and on surfing the Internet this afternoon I see that many of the larger stores have Christmas stuff if not in store definitely on the web. I do not intend to buy Christmas decorations this year unless there is something special and at the right price.  However, that is very unlikely at the moment although I do have my eyes on a couple of sets of candle lights for the Christmas tree. These are individual and battery operated by remote control and look more "traditional" and in keeping with the olde world look I tend to go for with regards to decorations.  I do like homemade decorations or items, as in every stitch you make, you are putting some of yourself into every item made and hopefully end up with a very individual repertoire of Christmas items to use for decorating. This year on the decorating front, I intend to use as much of what I have in the house or what I can find in nature and make something either with...

I have bought the first of the Christmas magazines today. A treat as I have not bought any magazines for a while. I have opted for the Country Living mag as they usually have a very good Christmas magazine.  The photography is excellent.   There are some really good cooking ideas in there, a pork belly Porchetta recipe which looks lush (we like Porchetta here) and a few different recipes to make by way of gifts there is a spice Granola mix to make.   I think that they may be doing what they did last year in that they presented a Christmas edition to buy separately and then in the final monthly magazine of the month for the year, put quite a lot of the ideas into the final magazine.  For me at the moment, most of the funds are going towards living and energy costs and I therefore have not been indulging in magazines.  Not that I do not want them, it is just that I have other priorities at the moment. There are some lovely articles by a whole range of di...

  At this time of year, it gets very busy as a rule as I am often involved in preserving of different kinds and especially foraging.  There is wild food foraging and there is a gathering together of items for use in decorations and displays through the autumn months, Yule and Christmas. Yesterday I made a gentle start on the gathering.  Each year I usually pick up a few Larch cones, which are small cones which are ideal for using in Christmas decorations and indeed parcel wrapping.  They are expensive to buy and therefore if you have some near you and are able to forage them, it works out a lot cheaper.  Today I was lucky to find some long twigs on the ground with both dried leaves which have gone a reddy colour and also a few cones on them.  I have therefore bought them home with me as I saw potential in using them in decorating the dressers for this autumn season, but they will not go to waste if I choose not to use them in this way; the twigs can always ...

This post was starting off at the beginning of September, and somewhere along the line I lost track of time.  I suspect that this is something to do with the fact that I have had some fatigue again, partly due to a flare up and partly down to the temperature dropping.  I have already had several Raynaud's attacks and some tiredness. I have not done much on the preserving front.  This post is really then as much of a round up I can remember of the past couple of weeks. I do apologise for this and hope to get back into good habits again by posting again this Sunday night coming; in essence two posts about the Pantry within one week. The first full week of September was predominantly about tidying and organising, and I still have an awful lot to do.  There is not therefore, not much on the preserving front at all compared to recent weeks.  Some quieter time after a concentrated spell of making stuff for the Pantry.  It is not I am not into prepping stuff for t...

Midday we had some more of the stew that I made last night. It was a cold morning and the decision to have some of this turned out to be the right one as it certainly warmed us up.  I only made half a pot of the stew yesterday (our machine is the large Foodi machine), and after a couple of big bowls again today, there is still one large bowl available for himself for tomorrow.  We will be having more stew during the week as I have some Beef skirt to use up both for a stew and also for a pie! No proper joint of meat today but something equally as tasty.  I had seen a recipe for a tray bake using veggies for roasting together with sausages and then a mustard sauce which I was eager to try on #islandcrofter on Instagram.  However, OH vetoed it as he is not a fan of mustard.  I had sausages in the fridge and I had an array of veggies that I could roast in the fridge as well.  It seemed to me a perfect way of using them up; however, on this occasion it was not t...

  Today has been a relatively quieter day compared to the rest of the week and I have taken some time out to potter about doing other things for a change.  That is until it became time to think of tea.  I had spoken the other day of having a chicken stew as I had a pack of deboned chicken thighs in the fridge.  So that is what we had.  When I bought the chicken thighs, they had worked out at a buy two packs for £4.  That offer has since been taken off, and now you pay £4.25 per pack which works out at £8.50.  In future therefore I think I will be buying a whole chicken. which is approximately £5 to £6 (unless I get one from the Butcher which is twice the size of the supermarket ones and where I pay about £9.  However, I do get far more chicken out of this at least three to four meals as they are hefty birds and of course the stock. I had been buying the thighs because they were so good a value.  It seems to always be the case where you find s...