Planting, planting

I will try to spell better in this post! Have to get back to sorting the products onto the cpnp database in a bit. Nearly half way thru today and have yet to begin any real work. The alotment is full of seeds. Or what we have already dug is so nowq time to dig the rest and start the endless task of weeding. And of course have to try and work out what is a weed and what is wanted which I find is not an easy thing to begin with. If you do not get rid of teh weed the planyt you want does not do well but identifying the weeds from the seedlings you actually want to keep is really hard. If it doesnt rain soon there will be nothing growing anyway. We have no water at our allotment. Something we need to sort out once we get it all planted. We have collected quite a pile of wood for building a roof area to catch water and feed a water butt but as yet also have no water butt to fill. And the rain must come soon...........Anyway the allotment is now full of seeds which gives it a reasonable chance this year. I ran out of florence fennel so have planted the stuff you put into curry. Will it grow?

At war with the mice

Well its started to get bit diaryish soooooooo I remember when I went to the allotment in the early morning last year. The sun was bright and shiny but not hot as yet. Early morning tends to be the best time I find. I hate the hot afternoon. Right now we need rain else we will have no crops at all. You cannot win in the UK. Lats year it was so dull I only got two red tomatoes all summer. Lots of green but it was pretty much a waste of time bothering to lant them. I have 14 this year tho the mice ate two in the night. They are protected in a workshop with a plastic roof so ok for now and lots of light from above. Found out the workshop has mice tho! I hate to kill something so I am going to try one of those sonic anti mice things that you just plug in and the sound gets rid of the mice. I have yet to find out if it will be too close to my hens tho. If they are made unhappy then obviously it willnot last long. Well off to try planting so stuff today. Not sure what yet but will see what gets put in I suppose. Time to start of the runner and french beans too about now. The weather feels good for that. The mice also broke into a cold frame last night and ate all my sweetcorn seeds. I am rubbish with sweetcorn at the best of toimes so this is not what I need. Have moved the pots to a higher place and planted more. The worst bit here is I had 5 healthy plants and they ate them as well as the seeds that had yet to germinate. I am at war with the mice!

The cpnp nightmare

My life is not working out at all right now. Firstly no time for writing due to CPNP nightmare. I have to get every soap ( I have nearly 50 formulations) uploaded now. Have done all the rest of teh products at least those we shall continue to sell. Some have gone since bad sellers or too expensive so no point wasting time doing them. Have checked and rechecked and updated as I realised I had done hings wrong. Even attached wrong docs and all sorts of errors. That will teach me not to do important stuff when flu-ish. Just wastes time if you have to go back and check it all again. Nearly there now tho. Just realised we are almost out of money so no way round it got to do a car boot this week to get cash for Mick to go to work else he will not manage to get there. I think the van may need brakes soon as well so its all got to start coming in soon else we will be completely knackered. Still I suppose we are both healthy so I have to think of good things really else I would just curl up in a ball and die.......... Will just have to wait and see what happens.

Baked stuffed aubergine with melon and lambs lettuce salad and coconutty-coriander sauce

Well this is an adaptation of a recipe I found years ago in the Demuth`s cook book. 1 large aubergine - cut in half lengthways and roasted with foil over it to protect it. Roast in a small amount of oil for about 30mins at 180degC - allow to cool Make filling. You can use just about anything really so long as it has fruit and spices. I used: about a handful of chopped ready to eat prunes, small handful of golden sultanas, About a teaspoon of crystalised ginger chopped small and added with sugar that coats it, 4 chopped ready to eat apricots, half a can of black eye beans, mixed cake spice - about a teaspoon, tablespoon of cumin seeds, half to one tablespoon of dried chilli flakes, one onion chopped and fried in oil ( or microwave for about 3 mins), 3 cloves of garlic, 1 chopped fresh tomato, A splash of apple juice, A splash of soya sauce, sprinkle of black pepper, Scoop out the cooked flesh of the inside of the aubergines making sure you leave the shells intact. Put shells into an oven proof dish. Make sure they are supported so will not fall over as you cook. Mix all of above filling ingredients together with the chopped aubergine pulp. Microwave for a couple of minutes. Mix again. Now put the filling into the empty aubergine shells. Make sure they are overfilled rather than underfilled. Bake for about 20-30 mins until slightly browned on top. If it is going too dark cover with some foil. Keep an eye on them since you do not want to end up with crunchy burned tops. For the coconutty sauce: 1 can of coconut milk 750 ml water large sprig of coriander (or I also use about 100m total of frozen fresh chopped coriander in water and add instead of last two ingredients) i onion and small amount of sunflower oil 2 cloves of garlic juice of 1 lemon tablespoon of turmeric 1/2 tea spoon cayenne 3 pieces of cinnamon stick about 100g ground almonds or enough to thicken the sauce To make sauce fry onion in oil. Do not brown. Add garlic to fried onion. Add rest of ingredients except for ground almonds and stir for several minutes. Cook on very low heat for about 10 minutes and then tiurn heat off, cover and remove cinnamon sticks. Blend. Add cinnamon sticks back to the sauce mixture and allow the cinnamon sticks to infuse into the sauce for half an hour or so before serving. Remove to serve. SALAD melon balls from half a honeydew melon two tomatoes chopped handful of fresh baby spinach leaves handful of fresh lambs lettuce In a container with lid such as jam jar, add about 50ml sunflower oil, 50ml white wine vinegar, dessert spoon of light soya sauce. Shake to mixe and mix with salad ingredients and leave to "cook" for about half an hour. I am having formatting problems with Blogger. Why is everything so terribly difficult?

brilliant start

Well and so it was a terrible begining. First day of writing and it all went to pot! I never got round to it! So today should I write 2 posts to try and make up for it? Doesnt quite cut it really. Still here goes............. Yesterday I spent the entire day trying to put products on the CPNP european cosmetics portal. I actually even managed to get banned from the support pages!! All because I told them the program was ridiculously difficult to use and sent them a screen dump of an error message only to have someone contact me saying the support people will not deal with me due to the tone of my question. Well why cant you just tell me the answer then???. Well honestly I really really did not mean or expect to upset anyone. Very touchy these government types. Makes me think its all true about faffing about when it comes to EU legislation etc. I got zero help but did manage to log several of my products tho no idea how to check if they are there and it looks like no one can be bothered to tell me where to find the database listing. I have read and re-read the useless manual they sent me since just about Christmas time and it just makes no sense at all. You actually have to log into 3 programs and finding your way from one to the other is it appears just a matter of trial and error or of luck. I still do not understand at all what exactly is meant to go on there. If I do not get it sorted by next july thats that for my soap making business. WE are off out in a minute to an event in Peterborough which may be good who knows. I am sitting drinking my tea waiting to let out my chickens and then we are off out. It is worrying though this new EU stuff cos if I get it wrong and we get fined it is likely we would have to sell the house to pay for it and that will mean the end to our world not just to my soap making business. The fines for getting it wrong are so huge and yet to pay an expert to put this stuff on their registeris impossible cos its thousands. What a scary thing to think really...........So this is a question indeed: Will the eventual ban which takes effect on July 11th 2013, on experimenting on animals for cosmetics mean small vegan businesses like mine cease to trade at all?

blog 1 - just for me. Aims and desires.

No idea what I am going to do with this blog but as the title suggests I may have to turn it into a recipe blog. This is my first blog here so has the feel of "anything can happen" and very possibly it will. My aims are to write in good English. That will be a challenge on it's own! Then to write daily. Something worth writing even if just as a practice for me and no one else out there has any desire to read it. This blog here is just for me really. Plan of action for 2013 To write daily in the blog. To complete the book, Walter. To complete a recipe book for vegans - no title as yet. To get published the Natural cosmetics book I am currently sending to everyone. To attempt to write a novel.