Fish pie

end of the month emptying the freezer time!

Had some fish pie mix(reduced to £1),approved food white sauce beefed up with super strong cheese from the market,a few frozen peas and 2 hard boiled eggs courtesy of our chickens,so fish was poached in milk which was then used for sauce and the whole lot mixed together and topped with aldi frozen mash and more stinky cheddar. twas delicious!!

just right for such a miserable evening and fed 3 of us with green salad.

Chicken starting to moult now so eggs extra precious :)

And I'm back in the room...
Life got a bit too hectic for a while but now returning to a bit of simplicity :)
Had a good year in terms of food production,no longer have the allotment but have turned the majority of the garden over to eatables now,if I can't eat it I don't plant it! well apart from roses,hollyhocks,lupins....and obviously a patch of ground to be dug by dogs and generally pooped on!Lost all the hens to a middle of the day fox attack,so just have 3 ex batts at the moment as i keep them in the run and want them to have plenty of space.
After a crappy summer am now off to harvest all the green tomatoes and turn them into chutney,
speak soon x

Bread

I make my own bread each evening so its ready for packed lunches and the neat days breakfast.when you think that a 3 lb bag of bread flour is aprox 75p and i make a 1 lb loaf each day it's quite a saving.

I am however a bit of a cheat and use a breadmaker to make the dough.I then make it into a loaf or bread rolls and the recipe is also enough for our Friday pizza night!

follow your breadmakers instructions and the quantities are:

1 lb bread flour

1/2 pint milk/water mix

1 teaspoon yeast

1 teaspoon sugar

1 teaspoon salt.

works a treat!

lemon curd

one of my favorites,sunshine in a jar! I like it quite lemony,so adjust to taste.

5 lemons

8 oz unsalted butter

14 oz sugar

4 eggs(i used 6 as they were small-new layers!)

melt butter in heavy bottomed pan.

stir in sugar,rind and juice of lemons,stir till dissolved.

slowly add eggs,remove from heat if goes lumpy and whisk!

when it starts to thicken decant into hot sterile jars,cover immediately.

yum!

frugal pies

One of those evenings when there seemed to be nothing available for the evening meal,had a scout round and knocked up a bit of pastry,and made pies!!

Tinned tuna combined with a white sauce and lots of black pepper and fresh parsley for the meat eaters and a cheese and homegrown spinach concoction with red onions and lashings of garlic and a hint of chilli for the veggies!

back again!

Crikey,I've been away for a while!!

Lots has happened,hubbie changed jobs,I had two jobs at one stage but had to give them both up when my son became very ill.

Thankfully he's on the mend now but I still need to be available for him iof need be so am a housewife full time again,which is great,but we have some debts we need to clear so frugality is the order of the day!!

Its good to be back!

monday in pictures

Poppy and Mabel get cosy!

beautiful flowers,lemon drizzle cake and Jeffrey begging for food(as usual!)