Yikes, I wrote this post weeks ago but forgot to publish it – doh!
We really are quite a foodie family and it’s common for us to give each other gifts based around food and drink and if not, then things to eat and drink with.
This was one of my favourite past gifts to give, it’s a nibbles box based around the Iittala Thule range.
I bought two of the nibble bowls and two champagne glasses.
It was a kind of tongue-in-cheek gift as my Sister (who they were for) is well know for her ability to knock over and break glasses to the point of being ‘banned’ from red wine and anything with a stem. I figured these flat bottomed little glasses are quite sturdy and make her usual breaking habit a little harder. They have been used on Finnair, First Class, since they were designed in late 1960s and I just LOVE them (I have quite a few bits from the collection myself).
The blurb on Iittala’s website reads:
Legend Tapio Wirkkala was the pioneer of modern Finnish industrial art. Internationally recognised for his glass designs, Wirkkala’s greatest inspiration always came from his native Finland. Wirkkala defied the rules of glassblowing with his iconic Ultima Thule collection. Inspired by ice and snow, Wirkkala spent nearly a thousand hours with the glassblowers at the Iittala Glass Factory, to recreate a unique slice of Nordic nature. Characterised by a rounded base supported by three ice peaks that float above the surface, the groundbreaking Ultima Thule brings a piece of arctic nature into any interior
I filled the rest of the box with champagne and nibbles to go with the glasses and bowls and the card is us when we were kids; I’m the one with short legs. I really enjoyed putting this gift together. These are on sale at Nordic Nest right now (well they were weeks ago when I wrote this post, who knows now!).
Another similar gift I’ve given is The Aviary cocktail book.
It’s a bit like having the Heston Blumenthal ‘The Big Fat Duck’ cook book (which I have received as a gift one year) in that it looks great and is fascinating to read but you need a LOT of kit to make most of the contents so it’s more of a coffee table inspiration book. Saying that, I found a few cocktails that were worth attempting and bought all of the booze and kit to make them and included this as part of the gift.
There are loads of cocktails that involve making flavoured ‘spheres’. It all gets very scientific but it’s loads of fun.
Here was my attempt at creme de menthe spheres before adding a frozen wasabi and white chocolate base to make a ‘Kyoto Winter’ cocktail. Sounds revolting but it was lush, like an adult slush puppy bubble tea. I was too busy drinking it to take a nice photo, clearly.
This year one of gifts I received was gin and new ‘matching’ (gorgeous) LSA Dusk balloon goblets. Loving these.
As always the boys are no exception to the food giving. F has decided he likes tea and as the only tea drinker in the house he got loads of tea themed gifts for Christmas, including a tea advent calendar and a Pukka tea selection box. He also got some lovely loose tea from The Tea Makers of London, with a new glass teapot and some very pretty flowering tea bulbs which have gone down a storm.
Finally C also got food gifts in the form of a Velvetiser from Hotel Chocolat. Technically it was a ‘house’ gift as it lives in the kitchen but it was really for him as he’s taken to daily hot chocolate making over winter and (if I am being very honest) I was a bit sick of cleaning the pans afterwards, so after MUCH deliberation I decided this would be a gadget worth buying. You can get the same machine by the same makers, I understand, as a milk frother for half the price elsewhere but as it was a gift it seemed important it was branded as a hot chocolate maker and he got a little hamper of sachets and biscuits to go with it, lucky boy. I really am reluctant to add anything new to our already crowded kitchen and this was expensive but it has proved its worth in the short time we’ve owned it already.
I only noticed this unpublished post as I was sitting down for a moment between baking cake for the weekend and clearing all the open windows on my laptop. It’s Eurovision on Saturday night and we like Eurovision in this house. I grew up watching it, thrilled at being allowed to stay up late and (don’t call Social Services, it was the 1970s/80s!) drink some Lambrusco whilst revelling in the sequins and songs I couldn’t understand the words to as they had to be sung in the countries local language back then. I have just made Nigella’s Marzipan Loaf Cake which you can find here on the BBC and I’m now looking for the best Rosti recipe so I can make giant ones for our Eurovision party as we like to have fancy food, I’ll then add Scandi toppings and salads. We know how to live.
Right, off to print off some score cards!
I timed the deliveries really badly with Charlie’s Birthday at the end of the 10-day run meaning we didn’t have much fresh, but we managed and he got his requested 
followed by sushi and Vietnamese roll lunch complete with Ramune then ‘posh’ burgers for tea. It was lucky we had everything in for the sushi and I found a Vietnamese Roll kit (by Nem Viet) in the cupboard.
Amazon helpfully filled the gap of any weird foods we needed including lots of things C requested as gifts (only one of my kids can ask for food for his Birthday!!).
For some reason we can’t buy frozen sweetcorn but we can get fresh so there has been lots of salsa 
For bread, I bought a Lekue silicone thing for baking in as I am sick of trying to get sticky dough into a hot Le Creuset pan (which is how I normally do it), the jury is out on this one at the moment, it does work in that you mix and bake your dough in the same container but it isn’t quite big enough for my normal bread recipes. I need to try it a few more times to see how it really works out.
I forgot to mention we made pine tip syrup to go with C’s birthday pancakes. You basically put the tips with a thin slice of lemon layered into a jar with equal sugar and let it sit in a sunny position for a couple of weeks, giving it a shake every day and it turns into syrup.
SCANDINAVIAN OAT BREAD
On the subject of jam, there is obviously a massive new interest in homemade going on at the moment and I realised that it’s already quite difficult to get hold of jam sugar (sugar with added pectin), which seems crazy. I just bought a batch from Amazon along with some new jar lids so we are set to go. I don’t make jam every year as it takes us a long while to get through it (except strawberry which is C’s favourite) but we are finally running out and the cupboard needs a replenish.
I don’t tend to eat a big dinner during the week (which is why I often eat separately to the boys in the evening, plus I like to eat later) but we do eat together over the weekends and ‘Saturday Night Tea’ in our house is a big thing, along with Sunday lunch. We had homemade pizza on Saturday as it’s one of the boys’ favourites. I always have the ingredients in. We cheat a lot, I always make homemade dough but we often use a Dolmio stir in pasta sauce as the pizza sauce.
For Sunday lunch we turned to some of my favourite cookbooks, the Ottolenghi series. The ones we use the most are the original one (at the bottom of the photo) and the new one, ‘Simple’. Let’s face it, I will win no prizes for food blog photos, it’s just not my bag, we are always too busy waiting to eat for me to start prancing about posing everything and I definitely need to work on my food presentation but gosh it was good! I had the chicken in the freezer already marinated. I bought a whole chicken, cut it in half so we have 2 Sunday meals for me and F – C had stuffed peppers – then marinated both chicken halves with the ingredients from the recipe ‘Roast chicken with sumac, za’atar and lemon’ which you can find 
Our first Eglu Go was a simple basic one with a 2-meter run and it was delivered complete with a bloke who put it together and 2 ‘Ginger Ranger’ chickens (brown hybrids, basically). I remember the delivery fella as nice but wildly patronising, he was having none of my ‘I was brought up on a farm’ banter, he clearly thought I fit perfectly into the middle-class Mum dabbling into keeping chickens category. The Eglu was a very generous Birthday gift.
We got bitten quickly by the chicken bug and a year later I got a second Eglu Go (again partly as a gift) and our 4 ‘little’ girls (Pure Breed Bantam hens) – this photo was taken before the run extension I ordered had arrived.
By now Mr Fox had taken Doris, and Mabel got new companions with the original Eglu being converted to a Go UP – no wheels, I notice. I remember doing each little bit in stages, when I could afford it. Eglus are eye wateringly expensive.
Then there were chicks and a purple Eglu (at this point, both the original green Eglus were converted to Go UPs). This was actually bought for the guinea pigs but somehow ended up with chickens in it. 
Madness. I clearly had money to burn (I definitely didn’t!!!). It doesn’t feel so bad if you do it in stages. Look how shiny and clean they are. I used to buy shoes….now it’s Eglus! How things have changed.
We then sucked it up and bought a low walk-in-run (again, Eglu)
so we could sit in with the chicks. The boys were constantly trying to crawl into the Go UP runs to say ‘hello’ and it got painful watching them. It was a good move and meant we ensured the new chickens were all quite tame.
Avian flu here and the run entirely covered for some weeks living inside. I let my chickens free-range normally, so when they have to be kept in the run I am totally soft and feel it’s important to give them as much space as possible. As I had the panels from the previous photos I just extended as much as I could giving them a comedy long run (the other chickens were in the walk-in). I was just reading River Cottage Handbook No11 ‘Chickens & Eggs’ as I found it on my shelf (didn’t know I had it) and it talks about 0.5 sq meters of run per chicken which I struggle with – I know the minimum is usually considered 1 sq meter but I prefer to give more, if possible.
Most of the chickens are in the ‘big’ run by now, which has again been converted to full-height. This is what I love the most about Eglu, you can add and change bits as you go along. They often also have spares such as extra roosting bars as well as fancy bits like treat feeders and chicken swings. All at a price, that can’t be ignored.
In winter it looks like a shantytown. I always keep the tops covered but come colder weather the sides get plastic too. It may not look very nice (it starts off good, but gets dusty very quickly) but with smaller chickens with feathered feet and silkies it’s really important they are kept wind-free and dry.
Here is the big run is in its Summer position. 
The final thing was saying sod it to the multiple Eglu GOs and buying a Cube (last Winter). Here the run didn’t fare so well after one of the gales, having not been pinned down as it should be.
On that subject, t
(I’ve tried really hard to find the owner of this photos on Pinterest but can’t. Sorry)
Or even this lovely run by 
Which brings us back to where my chickens live today. I currently have 3 new bantam Pekins (but I have more chickens coming in May – exciting!). My plan is to dig out all of the rubber and replace it with bark chips which will be on top of the dirt, which will be fully wired underneath so no animals can dig into the floor of the coop. I will then regularly rake the bark chippings out and replace them. I’d also like to plant around the run to make it more of a feature and maybe add a brick path along the front (if I can dig down enough, but I think tree roots will be a problem).
My big girls (2 hybrids) and Sargent Bilko live in a separate run, the one cobbled together from random run bits to make it wider. I can still wheel it about the garden on my own, it’s clumsy but it works!
What we have been eating:
Baking was Rye brownies with bay and almonds from a recipe in 
We started back in 2015 with a couple of brown hybrid chickens (delivered with our first Eglu). I’m fairly certain we then had 3 brown hybrids so clearly we ‘lost’ one (fox attack, I think) and bought 2 more.
I then hatched out 2 lots of chickens in 2016 and 2017, initially with bought eggs (Pekins and Bantam Orpingtons)
2 Pekins (Millefleur coloured) of which one died quite early on 😦 From the second lot we got a crossbreed hen and the most fabulous cockerel, Ziggy, son of Bowie neither of which I have a photo of! Ziggy had eyebrows like Denis Healey – they were amazing.
We also bought two new chickens in 2017, a Crested Legbar (that laid beautiful blue eggs) and another Polish called Prescilla.
Our favourite chickens by far have been Elvis (actually a girl) my oldest son’s Polish Frizzle because she was such character as well as being a shoulder riding crazy chicken.
Bowie, one of the cockerels I hatched who I adored as he was big and fluffy and from being a chick would hop up on your lap for a cuddle.
Audrey my porcelain Pekin bantam and finally, my youngest son’s chicken, 
Puffles, the silkie, as she was also very friendly and just too cute.
Silkies are really adorable and fluffy and generally very friendly but as they are a flightless bird they shouldn’t really be in a run and coop set up with ladders as they can find it difficult to climb up at night. They also like to be kept undercover and out of the wind which wasn’t a problem for us as I keep my coop well covered. We have ladders so no more silkies unless I put on of the Eglu’s back on the ground. (The photo is of Greta our Pekin bantam not Puffles as I can’t find one of her).
Pretty much all of our other chickens I’d have again, including our Legbar, which is supposedly a flighty bird; Cleo was fine, we had no problems with her but she wasn’t the friendliest of chickens.
8 because I bought 3 new bantams for myself as a birthday gift, including this pretty girl, was because a bloody fox came and ate them all one night. I was truly gutted. He managed to dig under the skirt of the Eglu run and patiently took his time to take all the hens one by one (I have video cameras on the garden so replayed the horror as punishment for not locking the door of the coop).
Rock Cottage Year 