Small Batch Preserving Is The Way Forward

 I love just canning a few jars of fruit on an evening, often when writing in the kitchen. 

I know I've said it so many times before but doing it like this, little and often, really does fill up the pantry! 

Baking Before School

Sometimes I get silly ideas in my head - like making bread before school! 

To  be fair it was only the dough that they were making. An enriched one to make apple buns for a bake sale at school.

Brick Arch Former

 It's not been dry enough to do much on the cob oven, it needs more time to dry out (although I have done more since the last post).

So my eldest daughter and I decided to make a wooden former for the arch over the entrance, a nice simple project we could do together. 

Blighted Tomatoes - Green tomato Ketchup

We've avoided blight the last few years here, but this summer when we got back from holiday it was waiting for us. 

The girls and their mum ripped out most of the plants and seperated up the tomatoes into ones that would ripen and ones to use green, then they sat there staring at me until I did something with them. 

The Base - Earth Oven Part 4

Although we had some cob bricks made we had nowhere to put them!

I had dug out an area and filled it with hardcore but as I knew the oven would weigh a fair bit I decided to use some concrete here - hopefully the only bit. I lined the bottom of the footing with some left over plastic from our polytunnel and made a frame out of some left over fencing timber from earlier in the year.