This is a savoury, juicy apple with strong acidity at first, which then mellows as the fruit matures during September, but the flesh softens soon thereafter. When picked early, it makes a sweet and delicate stewed apple, but then can be used as a dessert apple. [...] James Grieve is a very good apple because it produces fruit every year, is somewhat disease-resistant, and a very good pollenizer for other apples. It may drop early in warm weather. It is also a good apple for making apple juice.
We’re going to plant both of them at the bottom of the garden.
Soap is simpler to make than you might have thought. You’ll need olive oil, organic palm or coconut oil, and beeswax pellets.
Heat the ingredients together on the stove to about 54 degrees centigrade stirring regularly.
Now for the tricky bit. Soap is produced when the oils which are acidic are mixed with lye.
Lye is sodium hydroxide or caustic soda, a powerful alkali. When powdered lye is added to water it heats up, add the hot lye water to the melted oils, taking great care to avoid splashes as these will burn, and stir until the mixture thickens.
After this is done, you can add any colourings, fragrance and softening oils – for example, honey and sweet almond oil.
Pour the raw soap into a mould for setting and curing which is a maturing process needed before the soap is ready and safe to use.
Finally turn the soap out of the mould and cut to the desired shape.
The recipe for pheasant pie is very easy, although somewhat time-consuming. It is adapted from this one. First I simmered the pheasants, onions, carrots (etc) in water and some white wine for a few hours:
Then I separated the meat into some pie dishes and covered it with streaky bacon:
I returned the bones to the stock and boiled it further, then removed all the bones and vegetables from the stock and boiled it hard to reduce the stock and intensify the flavour:
I also added sage, thyme and pepper at this point to get the seasoning right.
Finally pour a little of the stock over the meat (not too much — you can save any stock you don’t use), cover with puff pastry, and cook in the oven 200C for about 20 minutes.
Not sure about the whole message there, but anyhow … inspired by this advert, I bought a packet. 59p per packet, and they are quite tiny compared to the real pocky. Also the milk chocolate is horrible compared to the plain chocolate pocky they sell in Japan.
