Jam Jar Dressings

i love watching cooking shows and eating! am i alone here? i don't think so. there's something so satisfying about it, your eating something delicious and watching someone make something delicious at the same time. what could be better, really? if you havent done this before i highly recomend doing so.

while eating and viewing i came across a great idea for a blog post. i was watching the program, Hugh's Three Good Things, with Hugh Fearnly-Whittingstall, and having a bowl of stir fried kale with steamed rice. and one of his recipes was for jam jar salad dressing, (which i make myself at home all the time), and bingo, a blog post was born.

im not the first person to make salad dressing this way, but i still thought i'd share a couple of my favourite recipes for salad dressing made in a jam jar. and since i have been chasing my tail all week trying to stay on top of things. these jam jar dressing recipes fit right in, they are easy to whip up in a rush - just throw your salad items into a bowl, shake up a jam jar full of dressing and go! (or go veg out on the couch watching cooking shows!)

My favourite seed sowing guide, better than an iphone app!

i did find time this week to sow some seeds in the window sill for the polytunnel. tomatoes (4 types - money maker, sungold and tigerella were saved seed from last year, and a new one: chocolate stripe), tomatillos, two varieties of aubergine, and 2 dozen modules of sweet peas (for outside). i also got new nest boxes attached to the outside of my hen house. which is wonderful, it means i don't have to go inside the run to collect the eggs, just open a door and presto! the eggs are collected.

d.i.y. hen house made from a dog house

Perfect Poached Eggs with Homemade Ketchup

i've been waiting awhile before dropping the 'chicken bomb'. for those of you that don't know me, i have to tell you - im an obsessed chicken person, i admit it. im currently caring for 12 chickens (3 cockrels and 9 hens + 2 baby chicks!)! its becoming a bit O.T.T. but im getting a handle on my chicken collecting. i just love having hens around and then buying new ones! i don't want to be going on and on about my hens and how lovely they are or all of their names or what breeds they are, but i have to warn you now, i probably will! so if this kinda thing bores you, skip ahead to the recipe!

a Faverolles breed

this is my first year caring for chickens.  and since im the sort of person that has to do everything from scratch, chickens came naturally. (as well as, growing vegetables and baking!) so, why not have my own free-range organic chickens to lay eggs? we'll im finding there's alot more to it, and i've gone the whole learning curve since bringing home my first few hens in march. researching breeds, hatching chicks, caring for sick hens, buying new hens, meeting new chicken people, travelling to markets, raising chicks ...... all of it.

surprisingly im finding after all that stuff that its totally worth the effort. at the moment egg numbers have dropped due to decreasing day length, this is also where chickens begin to molt old feathers and grow new ones.  it's a gradual process and one that most people don't tell you when buying chickens. so im telling you now: molting = fewer to no eggs for 4 to several weeks! because their bodies can't make eggs and feathers at the same time. i guess that makes sense.... so count on a 'hungry gap' of no eggs!

'Lucielle' the brown layer hybrid hen

DIY Seed Saving

carrot seed heads

growing veg from seeds saved from the previous years crops is an age old art. for the DIY-er its a climax in self sufficiency. its also easy to do with most veg or flowers. the trick is patience, as well as learning to let your plants go to seed rather than harvesting their crop. which at times can make a veg plot seem untended and messy. its just the natural course of a plants life and a great way to get more in touch with different plants and their life cycles.

in the not-so-distant past, commercial seeds where unavailiable to most. so every farmer knew to have enough food for the years to come - you have to save seeds from the best plants, at the end of the growing year. we can now get almost any imaginable seeds in garden centers, supermarkets, and farm supply shops. 'so why save 'em whe you can buy em ready to go?' im all for buying new seeds, its actually one of my vices, my collection expands every year and i love trying new varieties of veg. especially ones that are hard to find in shops: romanesco, heirloom tomato varieties, raddichio, coloured carrots, and painted corn.. have all joined my seed box collection recently, and these are the rare seed varieties i try and save seeds from. there is also an added benefit to saving seeds from successful crops: every year the seeds that mature and grow are more adapted to the surounding climates, so they'll grow better for you each year! so its a very handy skill, for our rainy climate.

dried carrots seeds (center, spiky) ready for storage

Saving your own seeds:
i've included pictures from two types of veg that have a slight trick to saving their seeds: tomatoes and carrots. tomato seeds need to be fermented before drying, and to get good carrots from your own seeds you need to wait till the second year of the plants lifecycle when the plants are matured.

Homegrown Bloody Mary

the best excuse to drink before 5pm

its been a one-in-a-50 year summer here in west cork: record rain, record wind and record alcohol consumption levels (that last one might only apply to me) and against all odds my new potager has produced quite a harvest thus far. while im typing we are currently experiencing  gale force winds and rain, so fingers crossed the veg will be there in the morning! as it turns out one of my favourite veg, celery, is a bog plant and what better way to describe the soil right now but as: 'boggy.'  since my celery is having a 'hay-day,' i decided i should join in on the fun by introducing my new food and garden blog with a delicous and celebratory, Home Grown Bloody Mary! i would also like to point out that today is THE day of birth of THE Julia Child, and what an auspiscious day to be launching a food/cooking blog! i didnt plan it that way, i swear, she's watching us. the first drinks for Julia!

we all know you can't make a mary, bloody without some tomato juice. you knew that, right?

 believe it or not, this season i've managed to produce some amazing fruits on my 8 tomato plants (currently im growing: tigerella, pineapple, sungold, cherry, and moneymaker varieties). one of the great things about living in ireland is you HAVE to grow plants like tomatoes in a poly-tunnel, for shelter. otherwise your looking at blight, wind damage and at best, green tomato chutney! or green tomato bloody mary's? that recipe is still in the works....

celery having a 'hay-day'

getting ready for the juicer

a bloody mary for me isn't just a hang over cure, its a great excuse to get in some of those five a day veg, a quick 'liquid lunch!' and a way to sneak a drink before happy hour hits. i've often produced this delicious cocktail with organic tomato passata from my local shop, but this version takes the cake. i never thought i'd go through all the trouble of juicing ripe tomoatoes for a bloody mary, but its worth it, tust me. especially so if you're looking at a bumper crop of toms and cringing at the thought of cooking a truck load of tomatoes. i used a juicer for this recipe but you don't need one, a food processor or blender would work fine in its place. since the celery is blitzed together with the tomatoes you do need a blending device to make this juicy bevy.