More frugalness

Home-made wine - it's that time of year to get cracking with what nature has to offer.


Mind you, my frugalness is probably less than other people's frugalness, as I read someone's blog recently where they were literally just buying the food for planned meals for the week - as in one onion, one courgette, one orange etc. I couldn't live like that - I HAVE to have my well-stocked larder and freezers. To be honest, it is cheaper buying things in bulk - within reason - even if you are a singleton. If the SHTF then you don't want to be left looking at Mother Hubbard's Cupboard do you?

Take potatoes for example. My b-in-law, who lives on his own but is a wonderful cook and always has friends and family round for meals, always buys potatoes by the individual small bag from the supermarket. The sort where you have to pay a couple of pounds in money for perhaps 5 lbs of spuds. We ALWAYS buy our spuds by the sack, nearly always Maris Piper as they make good chips and roasties and aren't too bad for other ways of cooking either. Our latest sack was £5.75. That works out at about 10 pence per pound. That individual bag works out about 35p or 40p per pound, more if you are just buying 4 big bakers on a stupid polystyrene tray. My spuds from the garden weren't prolific this year - my fault from not digging and manuring well enough, and for not trenching . . . I was worn to a frazzle by the time I planted them, a little belatedly . . . but we still have a sackful of various varieties, most of which make excellent mash and good oven chips too.




My b-in-law would never DREAM of picking blackberries - yet he lives barely 100 yards from a trackway which offers splendid wild fruit for the picking. He would rather pay whatever you pay for a tray of supermarket blackberries (Oregon Thornless at silly price per pound) to make an exquisite blackberry and apple pie . . . I have one whole tray of my big freezer bulging with blackberries I have picked in recent weeks - free food and happy memories.

Rarely do we buy fruit and veg from the supermarkets (exception is bananas, which are always cheaper at Lidl and occasionally stuff from them when it is reduced to half price, especially Mangoes, which I use for Mango Chutney - or eat fresh). We go to the big fruit and veg warehouse at Abergwili. The chap there used to have a market stall but now sells direct from his warehouse. His stuff is competatively priced, much of it from Britain, and I love to get a box of use-very-quickly fruit or tomatoes or whatever for £1, for jam or chutney making or for cooking and freezing. You can get a whole sack of onions or swedes or carrots for £3 or so a sack, and in winter if you look for swede or parsnips in Tescos, you would think they were a rare breed or something, jetted from t'other side of the world and priced accordingly! This week I am jam and chutney making, so I am making a beeline for Abergwili this morning . . .

I needed to make more room in the freezer yesterday, so I have decanted elderberries, blackberries and sloes. The elderberries have made it to the first stage of Pontac sauce (finally!), some more of them along with blackberries, sloes and windfall apples from the garden, made the first batch of Hedgepick Jam, which is DIVINE, with such a depth of flavour . . . if it were wine, it would be a hundred pounds a bottle, it tastes so good! I'm making some more today.

GRANNY SNEYD'S HEDGEPICK JAM

"This recipe was given to me by a lady living at Hinton Charterhouse, a village just outside Bath. She told me it was given to her by someone instructing members of the Women's Institute on jam-making during the war. The quantities of the different fruits can be varied, but Mrs Sneyd suggests that it would be unwise to use a large proportion of sloes.!" (Taken from: the National Trust Book of the Country Kitchen Storecupboard by Sarah Paston-Williams. My copy is much-used and covered in splashes of jam and jerusalem!)

2 lb (900g) crab apples, or any apples
2 lb (900g) blackberries
1lb (450g) elderberries
1lb (450g) sloes
1lb (450g) sugar to each 1pt (500ml) fruit pulp

Peel, core and chop apples. Cook in a little water until soft. Beat to a pulp. Wash other fruit, removing any stalks from elderberries and sloes, and cook in a little water until soft. Remove from the heat and push through a sieve. Mix with apple pulp and measure the quantity of pulp together. Place in a large pan and stir in 1 lb (450g) sugar for each 1pt (500ml) fruit pulp. Heat very gently until sugar has completely dissolved. Then increase heat and boil rapidly until setting point is reached. Pour into warm jars and cover.


Making Crab Apple Jelly . . .


The finished product - the colour (and flavour) is just wonderful.

Last week on Economy Gastronomy, they had a couple who would cook a chicken, cut a bit off the breast, a bit off the leg (why not eat the whole leg?!) and then THROW THE REST AWAY! I couldn't believe my eyes. Fortunately, they were re-educated - swiftly! Obvious uses for leftover chicken are cold meat, a curry, a pie, pasties, risotto, and of course boiling the carcase up for stock for soup.

I make a cheat's pie using meat cut off the carcase, a tin of Campbell' s Condensed Cream of Chicken Soup (NOT the low fat variety - that has no taste whatsoever) or Chicken in White Wine Soup and some 'boughten' puff pastry, though you can of course make your own shortcrust pastry. Literally, make the soup up with a canful of hotwater and getting rid of the lumps, add the meat (and chopped bacon, mushrooms, peas etc - whatever you wish to add), pour into a pie dish and plonk the rolled-out pastry on top. Brush with milk and straight in a hot oven till golden brown and bubbling. Another alternative to this is to slice potatoes thinly and par-boil, use as a topping in place of the pastry by making a potato "thatch", sprinkle a little cream if wished, plus a shiver of ground nutmeg and black pepper and top with grated cheese. Cook until golden brown and bubbling again.

Home-made pasties - the fillings are infinite. My menfolk like plain mince or mince and a little potato, but you can use cheese and onion, cheese and ham/and potato, bolognese, chilli mince with spicy beans, curried mince or meat or vegetables, spicy mince 'n' rice, ratatouille, or whatever.

More recipes and ramblings tomorrow . . .

Carew Castle again

A view of beautiful Carew Castle across the historic meadows where the Great Tournament of 1507 was held.


We have had a busy weekend, doing car boot sales back-to-back to try and get rid of excess "stuff" we no longer need and to swell the coffers a wee bit too. The electricity meter was read last week and you know what THAT means . . .

Anyway, as we were right by Carew Castle, we had a stroll around once we'd packed up. An unexpected . . . bonus . . . meant we actually had almost exactly the amount to pay to go round the castle, so we threw caution to the winds as with moving next year, it may be our last chance and K had never seen Carew on the inside. It always reminds me of Raglan - I suppose it is the Elizabethan extension carried out by Sir John Perrot which does the memory jogging, because those tall Elizabethan windows are so similar, and the water partly surrounding them - and indeed, both castles have quite a family air about them. You can easily imagine people living there. For a different angle - and a superb photograph from across the river - go HERE.

Carew is on a very historical site. The Norman, Gerald of Windsor, who laid the foundations and built the first wooden castle here in the early 12th century was only following on from Iron Age people who had made their own settlement there. It is usually found that what was considered a good site in prehistory, was often settled throughout the ages right up to the present period. Indeed, utilized by the Normans is a massive rock-cut ditch which formed part of the defensive system of a pre-historic promontary fort which had the river forming two more defensive arms.

My cheerful husband (who LOVES castles, as I do) in the other hall. Behind him is a tapestry showing the great Tournament here in 1507.


The beautiful window above shows Princess Nest, who had quite an . . . eventful and fruitful life. Follow the link to read about her story.

One of the ruinous fireplaces with its typical circular Pembrokeshire chimney jutting skywards.

The ramp up to the Great Hall was once a flight of steps. The Great Hall was built in the early 14th century, I believe by Sir Nicholas de Carew. The coats of arms above the entrance are those of Henry VII; his son Arthur (sickly brother of THE Henry who was to become Henry VIII) and of Catherine of Aragon, his wife, who his brother also subsequently married. This three-storied porch was a later addition by Sir Rhys ap Thomas. The hall had a minstrel's gallery, and two fine fireplaces and a projecting tower which housed the Chapel.

From the upper reaches of the Castle, there was a wonderful vista of the Tidal Mill and river beyond.

The warm walls provided footing for brambles which offered a lovely crop of blackberries, but sadly, way out of reach above our heads!

Sir John Perrot's extension seen from inside the small inner ward. Strange to tell, but one of our not-too-far-off neighbours here (in a nearby valley) is a Perrot . . . One of the displays inside the hall to the right of this picture mentioned that Sir John Perrot could well have been one of Henry VIII's bastard sons and indeed bore a strong resemblance to him . . . He was born in 1528, to Mary Berkeley and her husband Sir Thomas Perrot of Haroldstown. He was a staunch Protestant during Queen Mary's reign of terror, much of which he spent abroad in France, for the good of his health shall we say! Queen Elizabeth made him first lord of Munster, a post which left him exhausted after just two years in office and he was glad to return to his lands in Pembrokeshire. Eventually his talent for making enemies and his indiscreet remarks about the Queen led to his arrest and imprisonment in the Tower of London. If Elizabeth was aware that she had condemned her half-brother to death, she was spared the mental anguish of actually signing a death warrent as he died of natural causes in 1592.

A view through an arrow slit in the back curtain wall, looking towards the river beyond the tidal mill.

Double click on this photo to read about the Great Tournament held here in 1507, one of - if not THE - last Tournament held in Britain. Below are details of what took place during the five days of the Tournament. It must have been an amazing site, especially to our present-day eyes.


I love the tile on the left, which was unearthed during excavations here in the past. I think that the stripes down his neck and the large set of teeth must mean he was a lion - eating a rose?

The photo above shows the original tower with the north wall of Perrot's Elizabethan extension abutting it.

Windows in the north wall of what was known as the Long Gallery. To the left of the picture was a massive bowed window, which can be seen in the link in the 2nd paragraph (towards the bottom of the link page).

Now there are owls here instead. At the bottom of the picture, if you enlarge it, you will be able to see the remains of an owl pellet with vole skull and bones and fur.

Looking down the Long Gallery.


View of the castle from the Tidal Mill.

Frugality

This is a key word in our household at present. Some financial changes in my income - as in, I now have NONE nor will have until I claim my pension in three year's time - and a couple of hefty unexpected bills have caused a sharp intake of breath and frugality on a level not practiced quite so fanatically in this household for many a long year.

I have remembered that making a dish and then eating it until it is gone is possible, if boring, though remind me not to make quite such a substantial risotto next time, and perhaps less heavy-handed with the cabbage strips too?

I have remembered that home-made stock for soup gets that last mouthful of flavour and goodness from a chicken carcase, and is a habit I had quite gotten out of in the last couple of years. I have some in a jug in the fridge now, just waiting for me to fry off some onion, add various veg - leek, carrots, an ageing parsnip, and some of the recently-made roasted tomato'n'garlic to give depth of flavour. That's a job for this afternoon, although we have a weekend of back-to-back car boot sales and will be off to the 2nd shortly, so I may not be feeling like doing anything vertical by then - my back and hips are complaining after being on my feet all day yesterday. However, since any money made from car boot sales is fairly vital to our cottage economy right now, it's not something we can cry off from.

I must remember more eggs too, as we are getting low and I am doing a lot more baking one more, to "fill up the corners". I had started buying free range from a neighbour of mine, and indeed, can barter jam or whatever with her for her eggs. Unfortunately, several of the last eggs we had from here were not just a bit off, they were BLACK when broken open. OMG, the pong of an egg past its best lingers in the kitchen like a particularly bad f---! So we have been reduced to seeing if the eggs floated before using them, and so as my husband doesn't have a bad shock when he boils an egg for lunch, we have had to pay top dollar for half a dozen FR eggs from the supermarket, though doing so sticks in my craw. £1.45 or more for 6 eggs and then their idea of a large egg seems to be my idea of a pullet's offering . . . Having had our own free range hens in the past, I will not, on principle, buy anything other than free range eggs, even though I doubt very much if the hens producing them have ever seen a blade of grass, since the yolks are a pale insipid yellow and not the deep orangey-yellow of a hen on grass.

Mondays have long been "instant" food, something simple as it is often a busy day and I don't always feel like cooking. It's nice to have one night off a week. Sometimes we have cheese on toast, or just cold meat and chips. Lately we have been buying steak and ale pies from Morrisons, and they are quite palatable, though my friend's chef husband would probably have 40 blue fits rather than eat one! They fill a hole though, and in fact, we had them for supper last night after a long day at the car boot sale. Home-made oven chips (spuds had been peeled breakfast time on Friday) and some beans from the garden hit the spot as accompaniments.

There are no shortage of apples for pies at present, even though the trees are in a resting year (I hope it's that and not the extreme shortage of bees around here this year), and I have been picking blackberries to freeze. The freezers (we have 2, plus the top half of our 1/3 - 2/3 fridge freezer) are chocca block now, so time to start emptying them before the next lamb is due in December. I always keep a good store-cupboard, so now is the time to fall back on it, though I will still have to keep things ticking-over in the re-stocking it department. The proportion of what we buy in Lidl has been gradually rising all summer. I've never been a brand-name shopper anyway. The fruit and veg place at Abergwili has seen the colour of my money and whenever we are going past I check in there to see what has been reduced to £1 a box and I can use in some way. Hence the full freezer, which has seen its fair share of cherries, apricots, plums, greengages etc in recent weeks.

Well, breakfast calls and hopefully we will come home with less belongings and more money later on . . .

Yan, tyan, tethera . . .

Counting sheep. That's what I do many a wee small hour now that I no longer sleep as soundly as I once did.



But my one, two, three is a long way distant from the manner of counting sheep in past times, and it varied from area to area. In Wiltshire, for instance, and probably other parts of Wessex, the following was used:

1 ain 2 tain 3 tethera 4 methera 5 mimp 6 ayta 7 slayta 8 laura 9 dora 10 dik 11 ain-a-dik 12 tain-a-dik 13 tethera-dik 14 methera-dik 15 mit 16 ain-a-mit 17 tain-a-mit 18 tethera-mit 19 gethera-mit 20 ghet.

In our local Museum here in Carmarthen, I know that in their wonderful attic stockrooms there are tally sticks which had notches for counting. The Shire book on Shepherding Tools and Customs I am referring to for the counting methods, suggests that counting by voice went up to 39, and then a notch would be cut in the tally stick and the counting started again. In Ceredigion (Cardiganshire to those outside of Wales) a slightly different tallying method was used, where there was differentiation between lambs, wethers, rams and overall head of sheep.

Here in Wales, we used: un, dua, tri, pedwar, pum, chwe, saith, wyth, naw, dig, warddy, dueddy, triardy, peswarddy, peinthaddy, waythaddy, saythaddy, sythaddy, nowjaddy and ugain.

In the Scottish borders it was: yan, tyan, tethera, methera, pimp, sethera, lethera, hovera, dovera, dik, yanadik, tyanadick, tethera-dik, methera-dik, bumfitt, yana-bumfitt, tyana-bumfitt, tethera-bumfitt, methera-bumfitt and giggot.

In Cornwall it was: on, dow, tray, pajy, pemp, wayth, sayth, ayth, now, daye, ignak, dowthak, traythak, peswarthat, pienthak, waythak, saythak, sythak, owjak and uggans.

This link will take you to a Cornish language page, where you get some idea of the pronunciation.

As you can see, there are several words which are similar in each counting, especially the word for 5 - being pimp, pemp, pum, and mimp. One also has similar roots: on, yan, un and ain. Three also has similarities in tray, tethera, tri, and tethera again. Apart from the Welsh dig and the Scottish dik (10) and the Welsh and Cornish words for 20 - ugain and uggans, the words used for ten, fifteen and twenty are totally distinct - my favourite is bumfitt! My eldest daughter can read Cornish almost as well as she reads Welsh as she says the languages are so similar.

A very English piece of folklore . . .

I thought I would share the following extract from a recent car boot find, West Country Folklore:

THE DEVON BUTTERFLY

"There was, it seems, a somewhat unpleasant superstition, long standing in south Devon that advised people of the necessity to kill the first butterfly they saw if they wished to avoid ill-fortune settling on their shoulders throughout the coming year. On 14th May 1825, Woolmer's Exeter and Plymouth Gazette contained an item that referred to the custom.

A gentleman and his daughter, walking to church, were overtaken by a young man running at speed. |They stepped aside, not wishing to impede his progress if he was running after someone, and watched his frantic pursuit, though they couldn't identify his quarry. The man and maid continued on their way and soon afterwards caught up with an elderly gentleman of their acquaintance. They realised that the young man in a hurry was this man's son. "He came past in such a rush," the girl explained to the old man, "that we failed to recognise who it was." The three of them continued on their way and walked together towards the church as the old man explained that his son had been chasing the first butterfly they had seen, to make sure that he killed it. The men came to a halt when the girl stopped and let go of her father's hand.

"Why would he want to kill a butterfly?" she asked.

"So that we will avoid the misfortunes that will befall us if he fails to do so," the old gentleman replied as he moved on again.

Taking his daughter by the hand the man led her onwards towards the church where, at its gates, they found the young man proudly displaying a dead butterfly and saying to all who passed by, "I caught 'en at last." The girl averted her face as she passed by the trophy while her father made some comment to the young man regarding the unpleasant superstition.

Ah, zir," came the reply, "but oi knows the consequences of ignorin' it. Wan year I didn't kill the first bug'fly I zeed, and didn' I 'ave wundrous bad luck for the whole year!"

Blackberrying by moonlight . . .

I wonder if I could? I have been wide awake since 2 a.m., when I woke and my brain was determined to do reruns of things I had done wrong, mistakes I had made when I was 15 or 16 for heaven's sake? WHY do brains do this?

I think part of the problem was getting over-tired yesterday, then my daughter wanted help filling in forms in the evening, so my poor brain went into overdrive and stayed there. Once the effects of one small bottle of cider had worn off, that was it, back into overdrive.

My previous post invoked a lively response and I would recommend going and reading the wonderful discussion happening in the comments - and joining in the conversation too.

I was fortunate at yesterday's car boot sale, as I found several more books which came home with me. One is "Countryside Mood", a compilation of country writings, published in 1943, and many of the articles pertinent to the anniversary of the outbreak of the Second World War and working the land. You may be sure you will be reading extracts in due course. . . The other little book was H V Morton's "In Search of Wales" which is every bit as good as his I.S.O. England and Scotland, which I also have. He was a prolific writer (and journalist - he wrote the scoop on Carter's opening of Tutankhamun's Tomb) and I have quite a few books to go if I want to collect all he ever wrote.

I was very interested, in the light of the last post, to read the following extract by Peter Scott in the Foreword by Richard Harman:

"Friday was St George's Day. St George for England. I suppose the 'England' means something slightly different to each of us. You may, for example, think of the white cliffs of Dover, or you may think of a game of bowls on Plymouth Hoe, or perhaps a game of cricket at Old Trafford or a game of rugger at Twickenham. But probably for most of us it brings a picture of a certain kind of countryside, the English countryside. If you spend much time at sea, that particular combination of fields and hedges and woods that is so essentially England seem to have a new meaning.

I remember feeling most especially strongly about it in the late Summer of 1940 when I was serving in a destroyer doing anti-invasion patrol in the Channel. About that time I think everyone had a rather special feeling about the word 'England'. I remember as dawn broke looking at the black outlines of Star Point to the northward and thinking suddenly of England in quite a new way - a threatened England that was in some way more real and more friendly because she was in trouble. I thought of the Devon countryside lying beyond that black outline of the cliffs; the wild moors and rugged tors inland and nearer the sea; the narrow winding valleys with their steep green sides; and I thought of the mallards and teal which were reading their ducklings in the reed beds of Slapton Leigh. That was the countryside we were so passionately determined to protect from the invader."

The Week We Went to War, and Proud to be English

The beautiful half-timbered Market Hall at Ledbury, Herefordshire.


Yes English, rather than British, even if we have been transplanted in Wales for over 20 years now.

This week, 70 years after the outbreak of WWII, has seen some excellent articles in various magazines and papers, and two programmes on tv which I thoroughly enjoyed - one on at 9.15 a.m. each morning which dealt with life in Britain during the week war broke out and subsequently, and Landgirls, a drama at 5.15 in the evening. The latter was a little predictable/melodramatic and my feeble brain is trying to work out if it was based on the book/film which came out several years back now (probably 20!). I found myself peering past the actors and actresses and trying to see what they were using in the kitchen! It would appear that I could have supplied them with a few props myself . . .

The Week We Went to War in the mornings showed film clips from wartime newsreels and Michael Aspel spoke about his wartime experiences, some poor student lad had to live for a month on typical WWII rations (I think it was probably the making of him in the kitchen despite him having been on Masterchef!) - but what a shame they didn't give more detail on that. Tim Wonnacott (there's a good Devon name for you) had a daily slot looking at Utility furniture, old radios, and other ephemera from that period. I could watch something like that every week, not just this one.

I am old enough to know most of the words to many wartime songs, especially Vera Lynn's, my foot taps to Glenn Miller still and I would have loved to learn the Jitterbug when I was slim enough to enjoy it! How I miss the old black and white movies about wartime patriotism which were family fare on the telly on a Sunday afternoon. The hero would be terribly "stiff-upper-lip" with a clipped English accent and a moustache just like my dad's, and would always do what was best and sensible, especially in affairs of the heart. An affair would have caused much heartache and a terrible scandal and was never contemplated.

I have been thinking about Sunday tea times in the Bolt household when I was a child, and which probably weren't a great deal different to when my mum was growing up pre-war, with a cake (nearly always a "boughten" in my mum's case), and quite often Angel Cake or Battenburg or sticky Ginger in pride of place on the little glass stand covered with Nasturtiums which I still have and use occasionally. There would be bread and butter on a plate, and with the butter usually spread into lumps and holes as it was too cold to spread properly when summer was past. To accompany that we had fish paste - bloater or sardine and tomato and we had a tin of fish - never tuna, for some reason, but either salmon or white crab meat - I can taste the sweetness of that crab meat now. There would be a tin of fruit (fruit cocktail or peaches or manderins) and a horridly Germoline-pink blancmange or else a jelly. Sometimes mum would make up the jelly with the tinned fruit in it - tangerine and manderins was the best!

In today's weekend Telegraph, they were giving away volume one of the Best of the Proms, and I have just been playing it downstairs in the kitchen whilst I finished putting the gimp on my piano stool which I reupholstered yesterday. I think Gordon Brown should be made to listen to Land of Hope and Glory, Jerusalem and Rule, Britannia! as he has his breakfast and then, perhaps, he might want to do something good for this wonderful country of ours. They made me feel proud to be English again. English, not British, as my West Country roots call loudly to me and I know if my DNA was tested, it would pinpoint me here since the glaciers retreated : )

So let us celebrate everything that is English - maypoles and Morris Dancers; cream teas and scones; Victoria sponges and home-made jam; red London buses and red letterboxes; half-timbered buildings and thatch; higgledy-piggledy stone walls and watercress beds; Enid Blyton and Agatha Christie; The Wind in the Willows and Beatrix Potter; The Archers and Sherlock Holmes; toad-in-the-hole and Sunday roast; the good old cuppa and a biccy to dunk in it; Changing the Guard and Buckingham Palace; the Mousetrap and the Proms; St Paul's and Westminster; proper cheeses from Cheddar and Stilton; Melton Mowbray pies and Ploughman's lunches; the Jam and Jerusalem of the W.I. . . . I am sure that someone can add to that list!