Yay! We have 4 chickens again! I went to my violin lesson with just one and when I got back there were four. Apparently one or two of them aren’t in great shape, having been mauled by a dog (I heard it was with consent by the owner – what the hell do people think they’re doing?) so hopefully they will survive the night and have a nice happy life here on our little small holding!

The Three New Girls

I’ve been baking again. I wanted to make some more biscuits for Caroline to nibble on while I’m away next week – well, that and just because I like baking!

I wanted to make some non-chocolatey biscuits this time so I looked up recipes for custard creams. Then I looked up some ginger biscuits because, although I’ve made Delia’s chocolate-chip ginger nuts which have, for the last two times, gone wrong, I’ve not made straight up ginger biscuits before.

Then a thought struck me. I love ginger creams! Perhaps I could merge the two.

So, off I went with a ginger biscuit recipe (this one from GoodToKnow) and set about making some ginger creams.

I didn’t follow a recipe for the cream, I just made some basic butter icing from a cake book I’ve got: mix together 75g butter, 250g icing sugar, vanilla essence and a couple of teaspoons of water to get the right consistency.

Putting the Cream in the Biscuits

A Biscuit and a Nice Cup of Tea

They’re yummy and just perfect with a nice cup of tea!

Last Saturday (yeah better late than never) we went out to watch the Bournemouth Air Festival. We thought it would be nice to watch it from the water, so we sailed out (along with about a million other people in boats) to near the peer where we dropped anchor for a few hours before heading back to try and beat the tide. Unfortunately we failed and ran aground within sight of our mooring and had to sit out for 2 hours until we floated again.

Here’s some pictures:

Sea Vixen over Bournemouth Peer

Acrobatic Plane

Dad watching the air show

Zap Cat Races and hordes of people on the beach

Sea Vixen over the sea-bound spectators

Sea Vixen

Sailing Back from the Air Festival

Tonight Daisy and I (well mostly Daisy) have been preserving all the garlic that we dug up a while ago. Although you can leave garlic to dry such that it will keep for around 6 months, by preserving it you clear up all the garlic hanging around the place as well as making it last a great deal longer.

To do this, we stripped all the garlic of its skin. By letting it soak in water overnight the skins came off much easier.

Peeled Garlic

Then we bashed it up in a mini blender…

Chopped up Garlic

… and put it in jars covered in olive oil. It’s the sort of stuff you can buy at the super market as ‘cheat’s garlic’

Jar of Chopped Garlic

Preservation of the glut is all part of being a gardener or smallholder. It’s not always the most rewarding part and can be quite labour intensive, but it’s always worth it when you’re still chomping through your home grown produce in the depths of winter.