Traceability

For quite a while the buzz word with major supermarkets has been traceability, as anyone who read our blog will know, we buy very little from this type of store and try to source locally or at least buy stuff that is produced in the country we live in. Today I wanted to buy some prawns, the only so called 'fresh ones' I could find were from Saudi Arabia, the label stated that they were a farmed product, however what was missing from the label was a farm reference number or even a lot number. I walked away and decided I would look at the frozen sea food section, there it was even worse, although there were plenty of different types of prawns on display only one section had country of origin been displayed, the others just said prawns, not even what class they were.I'm sure that things are no different in other countries, and that supermarkets only insist on traceability on the soft touches, i.e.the local farmer selling fresh food. If it comes from one of the big distributors it seems that this traceability goes out of the window. So yet another good reason not to shop in supermarkets.

Where's the winter?

We should not be complaining, but what has happened to our winter? This year has been the mildest winter since we moved to Spain, yet other parts of Europe have had lots of snow and some places have had the lowest temperatures for decades. We had a few hours of snow the beginning of December, but since then we have had hardly any frosts and no more snow. It has rained the last four days, in some places very heavily and the river Mino has burst it's banks in Lugo, but today we have had spring like weather and I have even spotted wild birds gathering grass and twigs in preparation for nest building which could spell trouble for them if the weather does change and we get a late winter.
A lot of trees are showing buds and we have even seen some ornamental prunus trees in bloom, the Mimosa trees are already showing colour, this is all a month ahead of normal.

PET HATES.Shopping Centres. We buy very little in supermarkets, only what we would call utility items, we both find these stores soul destroying, this week however we bought even less, every store in this shopping centre had pop 'music' blaring out of their speakers,very, very, loudly. Of course every shop had different 'music' and the result was an assault on the ears, things did not get better as we entered into the supermarket, there the noise, I will refrain from calling it 'music' was so loud we could not even talk to each other to confer on what we needed to buy. The result, a nearly empty shopping trolley, the cat and dog food, a plastic bag of sugar [ they still have not replenished their stock of cane sugar] and that was about it. We could not even think what we wanted, let along discuss it. Why do these stores play this rubbish at full volume, it's bad enough that they play it at all, but customers do need to think, or maybe that is the game plan, dull everyone's senses so they buy unnecessary items. With us this just does not work and we left, having spent about half of what we would have normally spent.

Bread Making.

On and off throughout our life we have been making our own bread, and for the last twenty plus years we always have made our own. When we first moved to Ireland we found the bread unacceptable, so started making our own by hand three times a week. As our organic business took off we often found we were out of bread and had no time to make it so we bought a bread maker, this was OK, it gave us quite good bread, but not as good as the hand made bread. Since moving to Spain we have reverted to hand made bread, sometimes we use the food mixer and sometimes we do the process by hand. We think the food mixer with a dough hook gives better results, although it takes about the same amount of time.
So to make bread.
1lb of strong white flour or half and half of white and brown. We always use Organic flour.
Half a pint of half milk half water, just warm.
1 egg.
18grams fresh yeast or two level teaspoons of dried yeast.
1 desert spoon of sugar.
1 level teaspoon of salt.
We always add the yeast to the warm milk/water with the sugar although it is not necessary to do so, we find this works best.
Place the flour with the salt in a large bowl or the food mixer bowl with the salt. Wait for the yeast to foam up,add this to the flour and add the egg, mix together well, if using a dough hook this takes about 10 minutes, if by hand about five minutes, with a further five minutes kneading, using the heel of the hand to work the dough, stretching and folding the dough under until it is pliable. You will know when it is ready by pushing your finger into the dough, it should spring back.
Shape the dough roughly to the shape of your tin and place in the greased floured tin, brush the top with either milk or beaten egg and sprinkle poppy seeds or sesame seeds on top, leave in a warm place to rise. When it has doubled in size, bake in a moderately hot oven about 30- 35 minutes. It is as simple as that,it should sound hollow when cooked, you can do what they call a double rise, this does not give a better loaf. You can of course add various thing into your bread, from garlic to stinging nettles, nuts to fruit.
Try it, it's fun and very rewarding.
Unlike pastry that needs the gentle touch, bread likes to be pummelled, it also likes warm hands, unlike pastry.
Last week we were forced to buy our sugar in a plastic bag, the shop had run out of the brand in the paper bags, the sugar in the plastic bags is made from sugar beet, so more plastic to get rid of, although it is a cent or two cheaper. The sugar in the paper bags is cane sugar, what we had not realised is that beet sugar is sweeter than the cane sugar. I had the second batch of Marmalade to make using the beet sugar we found is was far too sweet for our taste and had to use a couple of lemons, this of course changed the thickness of the marmalade so it is very well set, I just hope we can spread it on our bread.

Food for free

Today is a jam making day, or more correctly a marmalade making day. Monday we were at friends for the day and they have a large, heavily laden orange tree in their garden,the winter months are when the oranges are ripe, one of those trees that flower and fruit together, we came away with eight pounds of oranges, far too many for us to either eat or make into juice but we both love marmalade, I have the first three pound simmering away, marmalade is not a quick job unlike most of the jams that we make, it requires several stages. This Christmas I was given a zester, so half of the orange peal has been zested and the other half grated, hopefully by this evening we will have our first batch of marmalade made. Of course marmalade is normally made with Sevilla oranges, however I have never been able to find them in Spain, maybe they all go for export.
So far the winter has been kind to us unlike other parts of Europe, we are getting lovely sunny days, very little frost and just one day of snow, it's also been quite dry, with only a few wet days. We just hope that the snow is not storing up ready for the peach blossom, this happened a couple of years ago resulting in a failed peach crop.
The new kids are doing well and enjoying themselves frolicking around in the field with the other kid.

An eventfull week

However much we have tried to skip Xmas it just never happens and we now concede that it's a good time to have friends round and enjoy a meal together, compleat with all the trimmings.
This year was mainly home produced,however, I dont think prawns are something we can grow ourselves, well I suppose we could try fresh water cray fish but that might be taking self sufficiency a tad too far, so we are happy enough that the geese and the veg were ours, the sausage rolls, mince pies, Christmas pud and cake all home made, the greenery to decorate the dining room was all from the hedge rows, decorations that did not entail the uprooting or cutting down of a tree. Keeping it simple is fun although a lot of work! somewhat a contradiction in terms.
The past week seems to have be very busy, Simon had the last three of our table birds to slaughter, they all weighed about the same 6.5 lbs, and are definately worth doing, we have only cooked one so far, and it tasted like chicken should. Then came the slaughtering of the Xmas geese, this is quite hard work, and they are one thing that neither of us feels quite right about killing, geese have real personalities. Still that's the price we are prepared to pay. So the job was done, and all that was left was the baking, until Thursday. Simon went out to pick the greenery for the decorations and came back in with a new born kid, we instantly named him Noel, photo taken and the kid returned to mum and there was the second one. So we now have two more kids, Noel and his sister Gabrielle.
Christmas day was bright in more ways than one, we had our two newly married friends over with their helper, and after the meal played silly Xmas games,and had deep conversations, putting the world to rights, although it was conceded that is no longer possible to do so. The latest Wikileaks are an eye opener.We are glad that we did 'DO' Christmas this year, for who knows what the future has in store?

Organic chicken

Today we have slaughtered the first of the four table birds that we got three months back, we have reared them for around 100 days, and the first one has weighed in at 6lb 4ozs, approximately 28000 grams, he looks good and has good breast length, under organic standards, slaughtering should not happen until at least 84 days so we were more or less on target. At least we know what he was fed on, and that he enjoyed his life. He will get stuffed with a few herbs and served with all our own veg.
Wednesday has been set aside for the slaughtering of the two geese that we reared this year, this is our Yule tide celebration meal which we will be sharing with some friends, although we shall miss having so many geese around we know that our dinner enjoyed their life's and have been fed on the best of feed, totally GM free. Hopefully they will taste as good as they look.
There have been a few hard frosts, but so far no more snow, the days are still sunny for the most part, tonight there seems to be a fog descending.
This coming Tuesday is the solstice, [the shortest day] and there is a Lunar eclipse, I'm sure this must have some significance, although we don't know what it is, no doubt someone will tell us. We are not too sure if we will be able to see it, I shall have to Google to see where it is visible from.

Yule Tide

For two decades we have tried to skip Christmas and to some degree we have been successful, we refuse to become part of the consumer frenzy which surrounds this time of year, it is above all the celebration of the shortest day, and looking to the future, the longer days, the planting of the new crops and of new life in the spring, somehow it has been hijacked by the big corporations to make loads of money. Even here in Galicia we saw the first signs of Xmas at the end of Oct. We will celebrate, but it is very home spun, we always make a cake, but this is because we like a nice rich fruit cake, we will have a special meal,but they are still running around the field at the moment,[goose] and we always have a 'Xmas Pudding' but again, this is because we both love Xmas pudding, the veg is from the garden. What day we will have our Yule Tide meal has yet to be decided.If we do decorate the house it will be done a day before our celebration from whatever greenery we can find.As we have no open fires we can't have a Yule log, but we always make a candle holder from whatever interesting log we find.
We have a puppy lodging with us for the next month,owned by friends who have gone to the warmth of Tenerife for a month, he has settled well and our cats are fine with him, however our two kittens do not like him, they have had little contact with our own dogs, but no doubt, after a month they will at least tolerate him.
The last couple of weeks have been unseasonally warm, this warmth followed early snow which was very pretty and didn't last long, today however it feels as though the weather is about to change again, although sunny there is a distinct chill in the air.