Weeds, windturbines and water...

It seems so long since I sat down to update this blog, I think in reality its maybe been about three weeks...
I would like to thank all those lovely people who over the last few days have either emailed or phoned... or both to make sure that we are all okay... Its really touching that people care that much about us.. thanks guys, you know who you are...
There is no problems, we are all fine, its just been very hectic here, during the last few weeks, rick has had some work that has taken him away from the place for long days, very long days,  hes just been coming home, eating, showering and going to bed, Ive had a knee injury, that has meant my weeding times have to be cut drasticly, so the work has really built up here, it soon happens the weather has been perfect growing weather, good hot sunny days with thunder and rain early evening, creating ideal growing climate... sadly weeds grow the fastest...
So to combat the problem of me feeling a little overwhelmed by all the work stacking up that I just cannot do, due to injury and just not enough hours in the day... we have two good helpers arrived the other day, now I know we said we were not having any this summer, but Andy and Katja were a couple I had approached twice over the last year or so and they were always in such great demand, I missed out... so when they offered to come immediately, I jumped at the chance, and true to their word they arrived next day and have got stuck in very well, such great enthusiasmn... its excellent.
We also have our old friends Alik and Jan staying a while, making wind turbines, adapting my range cooker to heat hot water and doing all kinds of weird and wonderful contraptions ...
The plan for the hot water is this... we now have a old but good cenrtal heating radiator that rick and alik are fitting to the back of my log burner cooker, it will be connected to the mains water, the cooker when alight will heat it up,  the pipes will then run to a water tank upstairs which will be conected to a header tank and hopefully make a cheap, and good system... as my boiler has been broken a year with no chance of fixing ...I long for a good supply of hot water.
The homemade wind turbine... made from scrap wood, a car\alternator and blades made from plastic drainpipe will hopefully eventually run our lights... most of the time...
Its all very exciting... pictures will follow of successful results...
The garden is going great guns, I grew from seed tons of squashes, spaggetti pumpkins, harliquin pumpkins, normal pumpkins, butternuts, three different sizes, uchich kuri .. courgettes... oh just about 45 in total... and all are looking good... and have baby fruits on them, we've had tons of broccali, and huge... bigger than my caulis were last year... sadly rick doesnt like it... we have lettuce coming out our ears and we've just started digging gorgeous new spuds...
I love this time of the year....

Followers...

All I can see if the word, Followers... can you all see the picture block? It suddenly vanished for me almost a week ago....

Followers...

My followers bit has dissapeared... Im not sure how or why...

Frugal Living... Nettles and yet more Nettle recipes..

Frugal Living. Nettle soup version two.




Well, I’m sorry I don’t seem to be finding much time lately to update this blog, its obviously getting into our busy time for the land work and I just don’t seem to get round to this much these days.

Everything is steaming away, growing like mad, and sadly the weeds are growing the fastest of all. At the mo, I’m trying to spend at least a couple of hours every day down there weeding, plus I’m picking tons of broad beans, podding them and freezing them, and of course trying to keep the weeds around the cottage and guest area under control so it all looks pretty and welcoming for our guests…

So we are living on easy cook stuff at the moment, and soup seems to be high on that list…and as we have a nice big patch of nettles that I keep trimming the tops off to keep them growing and fresh… nettle soup is top of the list…



Rick and I generally disagree on soup… I like mine blended and smooth; he likes what we call ‘big soup’ which is good and chunky…

This is my version of nettle and chorizo big soup.



I am lucky I can buy a kilo of cheapy and quite bland chorizo on our market for 2.80 euros. And for that I get 8 chorizo, and I only use one at a time for soup so it’s very economical. The rest gets bunged in the freezer.

The night before, soak a large handful of dry beans… I use black-eyed beans

Cook the beans in fresh water till soft.

Peel and chop a large onion, chop a couple of carrots into regular chunks, a couple of cloves of garlic, put in a large pan and sauté in a dollop of olive oil. Add a couple of large potatoes, diced, a good handful of shredded cabbage, keep stirring to prevent it all sticking, add more olive oil if needed. Slice thinly the chorizo sausage, add that to the pan, then add a good colander full of nettle tops and stir well. Cover all with water /stock and simmer till veg is soft, if you use water, add a stock cube, I added a couple of chopped tomatoes as I had some leftover…plus the cooked beans, let it all simmer till the veg is soft and the potatoes are ‘falling’.

Serve with chunks of fresh soda bread…. Yummy.



I made nettle and chicken and Parmesan ravioli the other day… it was gorgeous, I’m using the nettles in anywhere that I would use spinach… or cabbage …



Make the fresh pasta as normal, and for the filling I just, put in a pan some chopped cooked chicken, just a handful, some chopped stingers (nettles) make sure there is plenty, a little chopped onion, a knob of butter. I then sautéed it all together, added the grated parmesan at the end when it was all nicely mixed, shoved it in the pasta and cooked it… with a homemade tomato sauce it was delicious…



You could replace the spinach in a lasagne with nettles too…