Butternut squash rind soup for the chickens

Posted by louisa on Wednesday 8 December 2010 in chickens | 0 comments

I made some spicy butternut squash soup for our lunches this week and as usual, cut off the rind before cooking.

If the rind is thin, it doesn’t really need cutting off – but the soup is so deliciously smooth that I don’t want to risk coming across bits of tough rind in it.

There isn’t really enough squash meat left on the rind for the chickens to be able to pick it off but I decided to boil up the small pieces of the rind in some veg water from earlier in the evening and see what happened.

What happened was I didn’t put enough water in then forgot about it and burnt it. Sigh. It’s the first thing I’ve ever properly burnt on the stove – it smelled like Halloween & Sunday roasts from childhood (when the carrots caught occasionally).

But at least some of it was salvageable – I took out the worst of the burnt bits and added a little more water. The result was a fairly thick soup (made from the squash meat left on the rind), with soft rind pieces.

I served it lukewarm as their warming lunch treat and the chickens loved it. Next time, I’ll try not to burn it.

Spicy stuffing with chorizo recipe

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 7 December 2010 in cooking, recipes | 0 comments

At the end of last week, we bought a chicken. We don’t eat that much chicken really and when we do, we tend to get on-offer pieces so I’ve probably only roasted whole chickens a dozen times or so and they’ve been ok, good even, but not great.

This time I decided it was going to be great. I decided I was going to try one of those “stuff a lemon up it” recipes but when it came to it, I didn’t actually have a lemon – and was too tired, post-dog icy walk, to go to the shop to get one.

So, I thought, what else can I STUFF in there instead? What do other people use to STUFF chickens? What sort of things do people use for STUFFING chickens? I think my brain was having a bit of a lazy Sunday afternoon because it took me ages to realise what I was asking.

There are loads of recipes out there for sage and onion stuffing – the good old failsafe – but as I said, I wanted it to be great so that wouldn’t cut it. As may not be a surprise to the observant, we were going for a spicy rub for the chicken and I wanted a stuffing to complement that. This is what I came up with.

Chorizo and chicken go really well together. There isn’t enough chorizo in it to overwhelm the meal but enough to give it a delicious, smokey taste. The pepper adds sweetness and the chilli, unsurprisingly, adds spicy heat.

John said it was the best stuffing he’d ever eaten. The chicken was pretty ace too – a longer marinading time would have added to the flavour but it tastes good and was wonderfully moist. Basically, WIN.

Saying no to TV saves us £145.50+ a year

Posted by louisa on Monday 6 December 2010 in frugal | 4 comments

Over the weekend, we got a letter from the TV Licensing Authority – a prompt to confirm that our circumstances had not changed, that we’re still not watching TV.

For a long time, the TV Licensing agency’s website was vague – it seemed to suggest that you needed a licence if you owned a TV — it seemed deliberately unclear and phoning the agency wasn’t much better. Now it’s a lot clearer: you only need it if you have a device (including computers, phones, games consoles, digital boxes or recorders) that you use to watch or record a television program as they’re being shown on TV or virtually the same time.

You don’t need one to watch pre-recorded DVDs/VHSs or play games – which is all we use our TV for: we’ve not watched broadcast television for years and years. It saves us £145.50 a year.

(I’m in no way advocating cancelling your TV license if you do watch TV as it’s being shown, on whatever device. As it’s classed as a tax, it’s a criminal offence to avoid paying if you should be. But if you don’t watch television, you can register that you don’t need a licence at http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/noTV )

But the £145.50 is just the tip of the iceberg really. As we’re already using cable services for our landline and broadband internet, chances are, we’d have signed up with our cable provider for TV instead of sorting out a Freeview box or whatever. Our cable provider’s cheapest (non-offer) TV service costs £6.50 a month = £78 a year, but I could see it as a slippery slope – certain channels are only available on the more expensive packages – £11.25 or £23.50 a month… And we’d see a whole lot more adverts and lifestyle inspiration ideas – it’s hard to know how much more that would cost us a year…

For some people, TV – the licence and any monthly cost – is a good deal when you consider it on a per-hour-of-entertainment basis. But for us, it’s not a good deal at all, so we’ve opted out.

Chickens in winter – still rewarding but so much more work

Posted by louisa on Friday 3 December 2010 in chickens | 11 comments

Sorry if this blog as got a bit one note of late – all winter! winter! winter! It’s partly because I’m reluctant to post any recipes at the moment (I’ve got a few I want to write up but I think our oven thermostat is broken so I want to check that because saying “bake this at 230 for 30 minutes”, when really it needs 10 minutes at 180) and partly because the weather is a little … in our faces at the moment.

We’re not used to this. Even after our “once in 20 years” bad winter last year, we weren’t really ready for this – and especially not starting so early. I know a lot of people in north America and mainland Europe have it far, far worse for far longer but if I lived in Canada or Sweden, I’d expect it and be prepared for it but we’re just not used to it here. It was a balmy -6C/20F outside at noon today – it had been much, much colder overnight. I grew up on the sea-warmed coast (sunny sunny Southport) – we didn’t have either hills or snow there so trudging up and down the first in 8ins of the second is a very new experience to me.

We’re also not used to waking up to find these outside our kitchen window in the morning:

The in-need-of-filling bird feeder looks like wax has been poured on it.

It also makes me slightly regret how much I’ve been urging people to get chickens because they’re so easy to look after. My chicken-related workload has shot up over the last week – many many times more involved, although I guess that’s because they were so little effort before.

Last weekend’s big coop clean took a good three times as long – having to scrap the frozen poo off the floor – but that’s not so bad – it’s the daily tasks that are more time consuming.

In the morning, I have to defrost their drinkers as soon as I wake up. Sometimes that involves just using boiling water to melt the ice and top up the water levels (so it’s lukewarm for them to drink). Other mornings it means carrying the drinkers back up to the house (up three flights of icy steps) to defrost the solid water and refill. And some mornings, like today, it means carrying the drinkers up to the house, defrosting them, refilling them, carrying them back down, flipping them over to hang them up, the bottom coming off, the lukewarm water going everywhere over the run floor and having to start all over again, with a nice ice rink in the run to meet me when I return – and the floor of the run was already too cold for two feet as it was.

Why are you frugal? A quick poll

Posted by louisa on Wednesday 1 December 2010 in frugal, meta | 7 comments

I follow a lot of frugal, green, simple living and growing blogs – some of my favourites are listed in the sidebar but I read many, many more. Amongst all the great advice and ideas, I’ve noticed that just about everyone has their own reason for being frugal or growing their own – and that’s made me wonder what drives me/us too. What drives you?

I’ve listed what I think are a dozen reasonably common reasons for frugality here – but I’m sure there are many, many more reasons for it — and for many people, it won’t be just one thing, it’ll be a combination of a few – so feel free to tick as many as applicable.

For me, it’s a certainly a combination of more than a few! I’ve always looked after the pennies and I think I’d still look for offers/bargains even if I had a million pounds, I think it’s an unchangeable trait now.

Living cheaply allowed us the freedom to quit the shackles of our full time jobs and start working for ourselves – and it still allows us to do what interests us rather than needing earn a fortune to pay the bills.

I am a greeny and I abhor easily avoidable waste, and related to that, I also strongly dislike excessive consumerism – so I guess that’s part of my drive too. There are elements of frugality I find fun – cooking, growing, making etc – and I like having hobbies that help me save money and live well. I’m also definitely be ticking the “thrill of a good deal” box! Frugality isn’t all doom and gloom as far as I’m concerned.

So what about you? What drives you to be frugal? Is there something I’ve missed off the poll list?

Feeding the birds through the winter – how do you do it?

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 30 November 2010 in frugal, growing | 1 comment

I don’t mean feeding the girls, they get more than enough. No, I mean feeding wild birds. Last winter, we had bird feeder on the balcony stocked with wild bird seed and nuts from our local miscellanea store – I think the squirrels raided it more than the birds but we regularly saw feathered ones at it too. We went through quite a lot of feed during the six weeks of snow.

Back in September, Colette at the Permaculture Cottage wrote about how wasteful it is to spend money – and all the carbon cost – of importing peanuts & seeds to feed to wild birds, when there are other alternatives. I had a bit of a smack-my-forehead moment when I read that – I’m doing all I can to minimise our food miles but importing food for them.

Colette has noted a number of trees & plants that are good for providing winter food – those suggestions alone are a good starting point for me. I try to maximise the good growing ground in our garden for food for us but further down the garden, in the shade of the trees, there might be some space for bird-friendly bushes. Perhaps my living fence shouldn’t be all focused around our wants & needs…

Alternately, Kate from Living the Frugal Life grows sunflowers in the summer for their nectar and cheer – and for the free-bird-feed seeds to use over winter. I’m tempted to use some of our under-utilised front garden to grow sunflowers next year – although I suspect I’d be tempted to offer at least some of the seeds to our chickens…

Do you feed the wild birds in your garden over winter? Do you buy in feed or do you grow your own? If so, what do you grow? I’d love to hear your comments/suggestions.

(Photo by PsychoPxL – I tried to take my own version but every time I went outside all the birds disappeared, the little pesks!)

The chickens in winter

Posted by louisa on Monday 29 November 2010 in chickens | 3 comments

I had to crack the ice on the chickens drinkers a few times last week but yesterday, overnight, they froze completely solid. That, more than the inch or so of snow on the ground, drove home to me the fact it’s winter now.

Since the temperatures started dropping last week, I’ve reinstated my first thing runs down to see them in the mornings – since we fitted the automatic door, we hadn’t needed to prioritise them in the morning chores list but now I’m back to it. I go down to the run with a kettle full of boiling water now – to melt the ice and to warm up the over all temperature of the water in the drinkers.

After The Compost Lady recommended it, they’ve had a warm layers pellets porridge too. Also, like The Compost Lady, I’m liberally sprinkling corn around at lunchtime as a treat since they can’t scratch in the dirt as normal.

They thanked me for these comforts with a 100% laying rate over the weekend. The new ones still haven’t started laying but the four existing ones produced an egg each, each day – pretty good for snowy November!

In related news, I had to scrap lumps of frozen poo off the coop floor yesterday. Which was fun. I’m on the look out for ways to insulate it. I’m thinking maybe a fake floor (with insulation underneath and an easy-clean top) and a layer of insulation on the roof too. Just got to keep an eye out for materials…