Storms knock us out!

For the past three days we have had no internet connection at all after a real humdinger of a storm on Monday afternoon! Today we have at last been reconnected - although whether or not it will last I don't know as there are more thunder storms going on all around us; we seem to be just on the edge so perhaps it won't affect us!

Actually it's been heavenly. We have a house full of guests and just for once the children have not been able to sneak off to "check their emails". Instead they've been much more active outside - even helping me pick vegetables from the patch.

It's been very satisfying producing meals largely made up of home produce. Last night I "took the plunge" and cooked our first home grown chickens - two of the blue team. After Max had plucked and gutted them last week I put them in the freezer. I anticipated an element of heartache when I came to cook them but surprisingly that was not the case. I found that when they came out of the freezer they were just frozen chickens, nothing more.

There was almost no breast meat so I decided to casserole them with some of our onions and other vegetables. I put them in a slow oven in the morning and by the evening they were incredibly tender - delicious!

Anyway, once this lot of guests have left I'll be back online (storm problems accepted) and will show you my, er, glut of cucumbers. I don't think we'll have to buy another fridge but does anyone have any good cucumber recipes that can be frozen???

Lorna asked me in a comment on a previous post how the pigs are doing. The answer is fine. They are growing well - one much faster than the other - and are certainly developing their own characters. The big one is quite a bully at feed time but we have solved this by putting food in several different places so the little one always has another pile to go to. They love, I have discovered, the green beans I give them that have become too big and stringy for us - so nothing goes to waste at all!

Once again, apologies for the absence - I'll be back to catch up soon.