Busy Sunday. rabbits, chickens, bread and new gadget training

Eggs - Total to date: 254 - Day 113

KoKKo 84 (86grms) 29.11.2005 Personal best
Adelaide 85 (77grms) 13.02.2006 Personal best
Ginger 85 (78grms) 22.2.2005 Personal best

8am and it is cold and dull. But the chooks were happy enough when I let them out. The wood chips are all dry in their big pen - and of course are permanently dry in their covered Eglu run - so they were as happy as Larry when I left them practising flying in the breeze, and scratching about.

It is great to see them first thing - they really lift the day in more ways than one. They barge out of their pen and really look as though they enjoy having an early morning run and exercise.

Just like we would go out the back door take a deep breath and thing 'Ah what a lovely day'.

Ginger had laid an egg which was still warm and weighed in at 72 grms.

The others will lay later.

I have got a loaf on its first prove - wholemeal made with treacle, my favourite recipe and so easy, even though I don't have a bread machine. I adapted the recipe for my daughter in law for her machine and they all love it too.



It is a lot darker in 'real life' the treacle gives it an amazing colour, perhaps I should not have used the flash. This is it in the first stage and it is now in the airing cupboard with a clean tea towel popped over the top proving.

If you haven't been reading my blog for long - this recipe is one that 'Mike' gave me, and appears on his blog - the link is to the right - he shows how to make it stage by stage. If you can't find it get back to me and I will print it up.

I use the basic recipe and add all sorts of things to make various loaves.

I am going to have a go a pumpkin loaf recipe this week.

I toasted a handful of pumpkin seeds in the frying pan whilst I was weighing out the ingredients and tipped them in before I added the warm water - you should smell my little kitchen - and that is even before the bread gets cooking.

I need to do the rabbits this morning, (OH is squeamish so stays out of sight until they are cooked an on his plate!). I hope to make some sausages out of them, but I need to add a bit if pork to them apparently so will wait until the butcher is open tomorrow.

I am going to add what the rabbits eat up my allotment - sage and onion or sage and leeks! I brought back some leeks and have some sage in the garden a variegated one which did not die back over the winter, so that should look colourful.

Off for breakfast OH has finally surfaced, then after the bread has cooked, the rabbits done, I am emptying the compost bin in the garden, it is now lovely and mallable and ready to spread - then the bin will be destined for the allotment to add to the other three up there - as well as all my home made ones.

Have a good day and I will catch up with you all later.

1.10pm

Sure enough Adelaide laid an egg an hour ago. I had a lot of leaves from the January King for them and they ran helter skelter when I hung it up. Then complained loudly as they were jumping up and down and not getting much - I had hung it on the wrong 'notch' - clever things chickens. I had resited it, and Ginger followed me to the pen gate, and as I stood and watched Adelaide and KoKKo really tucking in - she still stood at the gate complaining. I told her that she was being silly and to look and see the others were tucking it. Probably a coincidence but simultaneously she looked around and you couldn't see her fluffy rear for dust as she dashed off to join them!

I have finished preparing the rabbit, and have 1kg or lovely meat for my sausages. A huge rabbit stew cooking in my bottom oven slow cooker. I added garlic, sage, onions, leeks, tomato puree, sweetcorn, shredded cabbage, broad beans, runner beans, and some roasted pumpkin - and lots of pepper - it looks lovely and colourful and should taste nice too tomorrow.

The bread is cooked and as Mildrew suggested sealed in a plastic bag - and not vacuum sealed - still the chooks really benefitted from the bread soaked in warm milk and it was full of sesame and sunflower seeds as well as the organic flours - which I am sure they were not the least bit bothered about.

I have just put on the new steamer and it was like using the controls of Concorde! When you read instruction books they seem to make them so complicated - and like most things these days the instructions were printed in a multitude of languages - and I think that some of it got 'Lost in translation'.

My how they have improved since I bought my old one. A couple of the basket bottoms are non stick metal - so they will not break in the middle where they were moulded. The bottom tray is now all one basket - so ditto that! It has a clock and a programmer and a vitamin sealer/saver and when the things are cooked it even keeps them warm and then turns itself off! It even has an alarm if the water level gets low! Must be idiot proof - once I learn how to pre-progamme it to come on later. Pat said not to bother as I am always here to put it on anyway! But it is good to know these things.

Our old one you switched on at the plug (which we often forgot to do if we had loaded it with vegetables earlier), and just had a manual timer - which from the conservatory where we sit, we could not here. It would also work without water in it - only my acute sense of smell alerting me to the burning! I shall not mention who had these mishaps as I am very grateful for any help I can get in the kitchen. Suffice to say that this should prevent all the latter though.

Pat got a fit of the guilt complex whilst I was doing a large number of things at once, so he has emptied the compost bin - the contents of which are now on various flower beds awaiting my spreading. Not today though. It is now dark and gloomy and as I have just sat down for the first time since writing this blog this morning, my back is protesting loudly!

Might find a sitting down job to do instead this afternoon. Snuggled on the sofa with Pat watching the Cup Final (yawn) but eating a choc ice. Bliss