Buying Spices

Spices are an essential bit of the pantry and if you like to keep a good stock of food in the house then keeping a good stock of spices is pretty sensible as well. 

I was running low on a couple of spices I use quite a bit the other day and I was reluctant to buy them from the supermarket in tiny little pots at inflated prices, so I decided to have a look on line and see what the prices were if I wanted to buy a larger quantity. 

When looking I came across "The Spiceworks", based in one of our nearest cities, Hereford (about 30 minutes away). They had a great range and came out much cheaper than the supermarket, so I ordered a few things from them to try them out before I place a much larger order (to be honest I'll probably go into the store in person, I'm not one for shopping but a shop full of spices sounds too interesting to pass up!).

I ordered Cinnamon (which was £2.99 off eBay but only £1.76 direct from their site for 100g) and Ras El Hanout, which is a Moroccan spice mix I've been using a lot lately on meat. I love the taste of it rubbed into chicken, pork or lamb before cooking, it's got lots of different flavours in there with roses petals and lavender flowers, great way to make a normal meal taste a little different. 

The parcel turned up on Friday and it had to be the best smelling one I've ever received! te spices smell amazing and I can't wait to use them. 

What spices do you keep in your pantry/food store and what quantity do you keep? 

What couldn't you do without? Any you grow yourself? Any special mixes you keep for making meal times a bit more interesting?

Alliums - How Many To Plant?

My leeks are looking very proud and big this year, it's crop I seem to have nailed and I've been really pleased as I've started to dig them up. 

When I start to use a crop like this that's been growing for months I always start to wonder if I've grown enough. I have one 10ft by 4ft bed full of leeks but I'm sure if we ate them with more gusto it wouldn't last us until march. The onions in the shed are already running low but I knew I didn't have enough of those planted to last us out. 

In fact I think alliums are a really tricky one to grow the right amount. I currently have two complete beds taken up with next years crops, garlic and shallots, that's without having room for my onions or next years leeks. Out of 16 beds total in rotation that's a lot of space currently being dedicated to them. 

When I cook I tend to use them a lot, most meals I cook use an onions and garlic, probably three or four out of five meals, so over a year that means I'd need about 300 without allowing for spoilage, making preserves or large meals when friends or family come round. I know that shallots can bridge the gap a little bit and I need to be better at using them but due to how much longer they take to prepare I tend to use them only where a recipe calls for it. 

The other downside is the fact that they are a fairly low value crop and the taste isn't hugely different to what you'd get in the shops (although I know how I grew them). If you were short on space I'd suggest leaving out the common onion for more exotic crops, although they are strangely satisfying to grow. 

So how much space to delicate to the lowly allium in your veg garden? If you were going for self sufficiency how many do you think you'd need?

Trees Down And Finding Time

I finished working at eleven last night, laying a large oak floor for a customer. So with a rare morning to myself I decided to do a few jobs around the homestead and have a walk around the fields to clear my head, something I haven't done for a little while in the light! 

Making a door this morning in the workshop as a bit of R&R - I'm a weird one. 

Of course this little walk resulted in more work! Two trees down, one on one of my new fences. There is another tree that looks like it's unsafe so I spoke to the neighbours about dropping it when the weather improves just so it's safe. It's only poplar so the wood is not of high value. Luckily neither tree are on land I own just rent but it will still need to be sorted out. 

Working again tonight so might be a bleary eyed in the morning but I've got so much work to do before Christmas I'm trying to fit it in wherever I can. Sorry if the blog is a little sporadic again!

Rottweiler Light

I changed the light on the front of the house this week. I wanted to do it before I got the tiles on the porch roof as it'l be hard to get to afterwards (but not impossible).

Halogen lights are notoriously unreliable, with bulbs popping if you so much as look at them. They're also pretty aggressive to look at, hence why my friend calls them "Rottweiler lights".

 I though it was time to splash out on a LED one, not only will it be more reliable it will also use far less energy. The old halogen one was 500W and the new LED is only 30W and nearly as bright, it should also, fingers crossed, never need a bulb changing. The one I bought was £35 from Screwfix so it remains to be seen if this is very good quality or not.
A simple and low cost bit of security for the front of the house and it helps us find the way to the front door when we get home in the dark. 
Anyone else using this type of security light outside their house? Any brands you recommend? I need to fit a few more of these around the house and buildings to make the winter nights a bit easier.

Chilli Apple Chutney & Raspberry Jam

It's been a couple of very wet days here and to make matters worse the little one has been under the weather. Nothing serious but she's been a bit clingy and not wanting to go outside as much as normal. So while she's napped I've started to do a bit more preserving of this years harvest. 

The first thing I did was to make some jam, just 7 jars but it's a start. These was using some raspberries I'd picked earlier in the year and some of the left over cooking apples from canning the other day. Jam making is so simple and we eat much more of it than we used to! In fact we were down to just one jar left! See previous posts on raspberry jam here and here.

Then the next thing I made was some chilli and apple chutney. 

Although I froze a load of chillies I still had some on the plants that I didn't know what to do with and I fancied something spicy to make cheese sandwiches a bit more interesting over the winter. 

I need to let this mature for a month before I try it, so please don't copy the recipe yet but I'm going to write it here incase it's any good and then I'll be able to copy it at a later date.

600g chopped onions
1 kg chopped apples,
300ml of malt vinegar (I think cider vinegar would be better but I had none!)
12 cloves of garlic
1 teaspoon of turmeric
2 teapoons of ground ginger
275g demerara sugar
Chillies - I used a few Sotch Bonnet, half a dozen cayennes, one Aji Crystal (really hot), and about eight cherry bombs.
Rasins - You can add these if you like but I hate them in chutney so never do!

I then cooked the onions until soft, added the apples and garlic and did the same before adding everything else and cooking until I could see the bottom of the pan when I pulled the spoon through.

Pour into sterilised jars and keep for a month before eating. I made five jars.

when I tried a bit the hotness was a growing sensation! Not too hot but it builds over time. Really looking forward to trying this when it's matured!

Anyone else made any chilli preserves lately?