High hopes weekend.

It’s Friday night and I’m doing a  post of anticipated weekend activities in the hope I may  actually achieve a few. I have many jobs planned for the weekend as well as having everyone here on Saturday for Mothers Day. Looking forward to firing up the wood fired oven and cooking the first roast in it. I got to the oven last weekend with a wire brush attachment on the drill and got rid of most of the surface rust. Cleaned out all the little nooks and crannies of soot and gave it a good coat of stove polish. Looks great and fires up really well. Looking forward to that roast!

Quince jelly and paste.

One of the joys of blogging is that you get inspiration, ideas and reminders relating to all sorts of things from cooking to just about anything you can mention. I had a reminder the other night when reading a post on Slow Living Essentials that it is quince season, I hadn’t thought about it at all as I do not have a productive tree like the lovely one I had at the old place. I love my quince jelly, especially on hot cross buns or as a glaze on chops or chicken and my supplies have run out so that set in place a job for this weekend. Along with the jelly, you just can’t avoid putting aside some quince paste while these intriguing fruit are available. Inspiration from the Slow Living Essential blog that you can make the paste in a slow cooker really piqued my interest. That too is on the list for the weekend! Quince cleaned and chopped in the slow cooker – can’t wait to see how this goes.

Will keep you posted on results

Go Hilda!

We have been getting an egg every second day from Hilda. First two were 90g but tonight she’d produced a whopper 100g one. The girls are settling in very nicely, I am spoiling them a bit with a nice warm Weet Bix mash in the morning and I have bought tins of sardines to feed every now and again to keep the protein levels up. Tomorrow we will let them out for a run and see how it goes.

Warmth at last!

After many broken promises we finally had our hydronic heating system installed during the week. I must say it seems to appear that it will be even better than anticipated. Feel a bit cheated now that it’s been quite warm this week! In order for the radiators to be installed we had to ‘patch’ some sections of the bedroom floor that are severely damaged by borer. A more detailed post on heating to follow.

Our builder will begin replacing floor boards, take out a wall to open up the two bedrooms into one large room very soon. We have purchased recycled Baltic pine boards in the hope they will blend with the existing floorboards that are staying. We have to remove the very unattractive 1960’s wardrobe before he starts just in case we find more damaged boards under it. We took the plaster off the wall being removed a couple of weeks ago to get a feel of what the room will be like.

Right side shot is taken from a video clip so clarity a bit dodge. Still, get the feel of how big this room will be.

Other planned weekend jobs.

• Have a very overdue cello lesson! I have been very slack with lessons this year, there has just been too much else happening (my excuse) so need to get back into gear.
• Clean up some of the thick layer of oak leaves that have fallen so far and put into compost after chomping with the mower.
• General tidy up. It is very easy to quickly become out of control when renovating so need to rein it in.
• Make another batch of our delightful ginger tea we discovered while in India.
• Plant something.

Best intentions, lets see how we go.