Musical instruments on a shoestring

Check out this and this (tuning not so great on this last one).

Where there's muck there's brass

Our veg patch is looking superb at the moment. Everything is full of promise and bursting with life. We don’t use any chemicals or fertilisers on the garden so I’m constantly finding things to compost down to improve the soil. Even so it’s a struggle to make enough compost for the whole garden, especially the large impoverished looking borders in the front garden.

I decided to buy some bags of soil improving stuff from B&Q to mulch around the plants. I was amazed at the price! £4 for a small 50l bag of manure. I bought a bag and it barely mulched around 4 rose bushes.

Being the skin-flint I am I took matters in my own hands and called up a local riding stables to try and blag some manure at a slightly better price. ‘Of course!’ said the nice stable lady. ‘If you dig it out yourself you can have as much as you want’.

I admit, there was a moment when I nearly lost a welly through suction from the enormous dung heap that I wondered if perhaps £4 for a nice sterile bag from B&Q was the more sensible option, but now I am the proud owner of 12 sacks of lovely crumbly rotted manure for the princely sum of £0 I have changed my mind. What could be nicer than spending an hour digging on the world’s largest pile of horse poo on a sunny evening in June?

The son of the stable lady drove me over the fields to the dung heap, and helped me stack the sacks in my car boot so I gave him a fiver for his troubles. A small price to pay for what would have cost me the best part of £100 at B&Q.

Tips on collecting manure from a stables

Phone up first, and offer to dig it out yourself.

Ask which is the oldest poo and dig from that. If it still looks like straw and poo you don’t want it because it will burn your plants. The heap I was taking from was about the size of 2 tennis courts (I’m not kidding) and the stuff on one side was about 3 years old, compared to the younger stuff which was still very fresh and a bit stinky. The old stuff won’t smell at all, and should look black, crumbly and just like expensive compost. If it’s full of worms you know it is good stuff.

Take wellies and gloves. Dung heaps are the perfect environment for nettles who love a rich soil to grow on. If the heap is covered in nettles you know it will be old enough to have broken down.

Clear off any nettles and plants and remove the top layer to make sure you aren’t importing weeds into garden. The whole point of mulching is to reduce your weeding, not bring more in!

Use strong bags as manure is very heavy. Reusing old plastic compost bags is ideal as they are tough. Those woven plasticy mesh sacks you get coal in are also good. I had some very thick rubble sacks as well. Normal bin bags won’t be strong enough.

Free food no.2

Dandilion leaves. I have nothing to report about this, as on our recent walk to the meadow I was forbidden from collecting them by my husband worrying overly that dogs had weed on them.

Of course they would have been weed on. If you were worried about that you wouldn't eat anything!

I was planning to put them in a salad... Maybe he'd feel better if I boiled/sauteed the hell out of them before eating.

Anyway, where we were, the flowers were just coming, and apparently you're best picking them before flowers appear. All is not lost however, you can also harvest in late autumn and even use the flowers (see here).

Free food no.1

Don't these look lovely? Perhaps not, but stinging nettles are a powerful source of vitamin A, iron, calcium, flavinoids, the list goes on... They are of course also free. What's to lose?

Cover up well when picking them, and choose the top, young leaves (they're a more vibrant green than the old ones). Now is a great time to pick them before they get too old. I got my nettles from an obliging field in Wytham.

Here I am with my nettles in a bowl of water. I'm looking for intruders, discarding tough stems, black bits and curled up leaves.

Don't throw away the bits you have discarded. I'm told that nettles left in a bucket of water until they stink is nature's own plant food. And that's free too, although I think my neighbours might have something to say about that little project...

Here are my nettles, rinsed in clean water, ready to use.

I looked up a couple of very different recipes, and so in the end decided to make a veggie soup as I would normally make it, but without too many additions as I was interested what the flavour would be.

Onions and garlic...

Add a large chopped carrot and a few sticks of celery...

Don't forget some potato to thicken...

Add your nettles, stock and simmer for about 20 mins. It's this bit that kills the sting. At this point I had to change pans because of the non-wilting surprise (see below).

Whiz it up and season with salt, pepper and lemon juice...

Voila!

The first thing to say is that it doesn't wilt like spinach; nettles are quite a lot more robust. So actually making soup like this I had too many nettles, or too little stock base depending on how you look at it. Next time I'll definitely start with a little grilled bacon for flavour. Having said all that, it is surprisingly nice and the flavour is definitely unexpected. I'll serve this up to my guests tomorrow with a swirl of cream in the bowl.

I think I'll go nettle-picking again next weekend. I want to make nettle tea and nettle omelette (you boil them for a few minutes before adding them to the egg to avoid nasty surprises).

Hearty Red Bean Stew

I know I said my next post would be chocolate brownies, but I tried this last night and it was deelish. And let's face it, you'd only get fat on chocolate brownies.

Maybe I'll post chocolate brownies dependent on demand. Then maybe I can up my quota of comments (Rach, this is war).

Back to business. This recipe very kindly comes from my friend Emma.

Hearty Red Bean Stew

1 tin red kidney beans
1 tin chopped tomatoes
half a white cabbage, chopped
2 or 3 carrots, chopped (the original recipe I got from a friend had green pepper but I much prefer carrots)
1 onion, chopped
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp chili powder
enough stock to cover the veg
coconut milk/creamed coconut, as much or as little as you like

Fry the onion in a little oil then add all the other ingredients except the coconut. Bring to the boil and then simmer until the veg is cooked. Add the coconut and continue to cook for a further 5 minutes (Emma often make this ahead of time and then add the coconut when she's reheating it). Serve with baked potatoes, rice or crusty bread.

This is a really odd mixture of things, or so I thought until I did a little research. Apparantly the soy sauce/coconut mixture is an island (particularly Jamaica) thing, and by gosh is it yummy. Of course Jamaican recipes use black-eyed or pinto beans (along with goat...) rather than kidney beans.

I forgot to put stock in it and put in more soy sauce for flavour (just until it was salty enough). I'll try it with stock, but I wonder whether it wouldn't be better this way.

Right, all you who want to reduce your meat and up your pulse consumtion: get cooking!

Very easy project for beginners

Here's a project for everyone:

Find your local chinese supermarket.

Now you just have to be prepared to look fairly silly as you spend ages trawling past shelves for something you recognise.

I only had the guts to go in mine fairly recently and I'm hooked - things that I would buy in Tescos (creamed coconut, soy sauce, ginger, sesame oil... the list is endless) are so much cheaper, but on top of that I've only just begun to discover delicious new things. My latest favourite is Thai Green Curry paste, which will feed about 12 hungry people per jar without being stingy, and is fabulous when you want dinner on the table in 20 mins (I use frozen fish for minimal fuss and its mouthwateringly good).

I still wander around in hopeless disorientation, but I do plan to get a book and start being adventurous (green curry doesn't count, I know).

Apparantly the one in North London sells things half to the third of the price of the one here. I can smell several bargains...!

How to Clean your Oven...

...without needing to fumigate your kitchen afterwards.

This is surprisingly fun and very satisfying. It's a bit like something you did when you were five, along with potato printing. Remember to ask an adult to help you.

You will need....

1 cup white vinegar
1/2 cup bicarbonate of soda
1/4 washing detergent (I think this may be optional, but I haven't tried it without so wouldn't like to say)

a bowl and spoon
a painty thing (a pastry brush is perfect, if not just use the spoon
a scrapy thing (a fish slice is perfect, or a spoon...)
a 'clearing up' thing (hoover is best, or dust pan and brush)
a cloth

Put your oven on high, and while it's heating up mix up your ingredients in a bowl. It should make a paste. If it's the wrong consistency, add some flour until it is. Put your bicarbonate of soda in slowly, or it will fizz everywhere...

When your oven is hot, switch it off, open it and paint the whole of the inside with the paste, using your painting implement of choice. Close the oven door and leave for at least an hour.

(Here's one I painted earlier)

Now it should be dry and cooked, and you get to scrape it all off. Scrape away the grease! You'll get powder all over which is why it's handy to have a hoover on standby. If your oven is black, make sure the door or something you can see is really gross so you have the satisfaction of seeing all the cooked on horribleness disappear.

Now wipe out the inside with a damp cloth to get the rest off.

Hooray!!

I'm conscious that Rach's posts are more interesting than mine because she uses more pictures. So here you are:





(Don't try this method on this type of oven)

The best houmous/hummus I've made...

... was this recipe.



Try it as a must.

And since we appear to be on something of a chick pea theme at the moment, I just wanted to let you know that soaking and boiling a huge vat of chick peas and then freezing them in small batches works really well. You can just run them under the hot tap to defrost them as you need them. Readers will remember my earlier chick pea mistake... I don't plan to go back to tinned, and given that my freezer is kept on anyway (and apparantly they function more effectively the fuller they are), I think this way uses a lot less energy than tins, even if you recycle them.

(The tins I mean, not the chick peas.)

Chick Pea Casserole

Chick Pea Casserole - the ultimate in very cheap, very healthy food. Oh and it's vegan.

This recipe comes (I think with permission from) the ever great Gillian Cromar. Must check I've got her name spelled right.

1 onion (2 if it's small)

crushed garlic

a little oil for frying

grated ginger (or 1 tsp powdered)

3 or 4 carrots, chopped (more if they are small)

1 tin chickpeas, rinsed and drained

1 tin tomatoes

1 stock cube

3 tbsp worcestershire sauce

4 tbsp vinegar

2 tbsp brown sugar

2 bay leaves

hot pepper sauce (how much? It depends how hot it is silly!)

Fry up your onion and garlic, add your carrots and chickpeas and continue frying. Stir in your ginger and put in an ovenproof dish. Put all the other ingregients in the same pan, warm through and pour into the ovenproof dish. Cover and cook at 180 degrees for an hour or so. Serve with rice or something even cheaper if you are feeling poor.

It goes without saying that this is one that goes in my slow cooker. The first person I met makes this with a couple of rashers of grilled bacon (put it in with your onion at the beginning) instead of stock for flavour: both are lovely. Oh and other thing is, for goodness sake don't forget to reduce your sugar if you are using balsamic vinegar with it being so sweet.

The great diesel experiment

We've all seen the price of petrol and diesel creep up recently. If like me you need your car to get to work, then spending £50 to fill up your tank every 2 weeks is enough to make you weep.

Over the past few months I have been conducting my own highly scientific experiment aimed at discovering the most efficient way of expending my diesel. I would recommend you undertake the same experiment - you will be amazed. (The experiment requires your car to be able to display the Miles per Gallon statistics)

Control stage

With a full tank of diesel I reset the trip computer so that the miles per gallon (MPG) was blank and ready to go. Then I drove around as normal. By normal I mean that I drove observing the speed limits of 30mph in town, 60mph on single carriage roads and 70mph on the motorways. My drive to work consists of 15% town driving, 50% single carriage A roads and 35% Motorway. I would accelerate away from and brake at junctions normally.

My tank of fuel lasted for 11 trips to and from work, at an average of 54.6 Miles to the Gallon.

Experimental stage

Again, with a full tank of diesel I reset the trip computer. This time I really tried hard to drive ultra smoothly. At junctions I would accelerate fairly slowly, trying to keep my revs as low as possible. Coming up to junctions I would try and anticipate them in advance, allowing the car to slow down naturally, rather than driving along at 30 and then braking at the last minute.

On the A roads I would try and do the same, keeping a long distance between me and the car in front. This meant that if they braked I could slow down gradually. Also I kept my speed down to a maximum of 50mph.

On the Motorways I reduced my speed to maximum of 60mph. This seemed really slow at first, but I soon got used to it and realised that loads of people drive like this. Lorries are only allowed to go at 60 so you are happily in the flow of traffic. I find myself regularly driving at about 57 or 58, and my revs never go very high.

Result? My miles per gallon shot up from 54.6 to 69.7 and my tank lasted an extra 3 days.

But surely your trip takes much longer?, I hear you ask. Strangely enough, not really. You can bat down the motorway at 80 and then the lights in town turn red and your 2 minutes of advantage is lost. You feel like you are going faster, but the actual difference in time is hardly anything at all. We've all noticed the boy racer types who zoom off at traffic lights only to have to brake suddenly at the next set while we pull up gently beside them. They have made alot of noise but saved no time and expended twice as much fuel. It's the same principle but over longer distances and time frames.

An added advantage is that I am convinced it make me a safer driver. Aside from the speeding issue (an offence of which I have been caught on camera twice in the past and have no desire to rack any more penalty points on my license) simple things like increasing the distance between vehicles on the road has got to be a good thing.

If you try this yourself, tell me how you get on.

Air Freshener

This is the ultimate green cheap tip, and I got the idea from Anthea Turner's Perfect Housewife, which I have to say I've never seen in my life. I did however, while it was on, get her handy weekly tips off the internet. I don't often admit to that.

Ok, so if you are using Air Freshener regularly, you are a) fairly gross and not very clean, or b) you live above chain smokers that fry bacon and don't ventilate. However, if Anthea needs it then what hope is there for the rest of us? This is great to have on hand when you've just had fish for tea, or have just been to the loo and people are arriving in 2 minutes....

Green Air Freshener

1 tbsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 glass cold water

Put it in a squirty thing (also recycling!). You could also add essential oils to smell nice, but this is all you need to neutralise nasty pongs. If it's really nasty, you will need several squirts, but you can do so with a clean conscience knowing it's super-green!

Easy and virtually free patchwork quilt – Part 2

Read Part 1: preparing and trimming the curtain sample fabrics.

Designing your quilt

So, by now you should have all your blocks cut to the same size, and with nice square corners. (we'll do purposely wonky pieces another time, square is much easier for now.)

Now it's time for the creative part. Lay out the blocks side by side in a combination that pleases you. In order to get a rectagular quilt you might have to ditch a few. I had 41 blocks in total, so I could have made a 5 x 8 or a 6 x 6. I plumped for a 6 x 6 as there were a couple of colours I didn't really like, so omitting 5 blocks was no hardship.

If your sample book has only a few very large fabric pieces, consider cutting them in half to give yourself more options.

Anyway, this is what I did:
First I pinned them up in the order they were fixed in the book.



Then I shuffled them about a bit:



Then I rearranged them all starting with the palest colours in the centre moving to the darkest colors at the edges. This is my favourite layout:



In my studio I have a wall covered in polystyrene so that I can pin up quilt pieces when I'm designing. Before I had this little luxury I used the floor.

Now you are ready to sew it all together. That's part 3 though, so come back soon!

Biscuit Basics

Warning: this post could potentially make you very fat.

When Rach asked me to do a post on 'Biscuit Basics' it took me a while to realise what she was going on about.  Then it dawned on me: on holiday in Dunquin, Ireland last summer I made biscuits every day.  This is because no sooner would they be out of the oven than they'd be gobbled up by my greedy family and they'd be demanding more.  There were no scales and no recipe books in the house we were  staying in, and the nearest little shop was a half hour drive away.  Necessity is, as they say, the mother of invention, so it was time to improvise.   I should start by saying that the one thing we had a steady supply of was butter, without which you'd be fairly stumped (but not entirely - see below).  But all other biscuit ingredients, I believe, can be conjured up by rooting through cupboards and being adventurous.

Here's a good basic recipe to get you started.  You can't go wrong.  I certainly recommend following this or another recipe closely until you've got a good idea of mixture consistency and how much they spread during cooking (the following recipe won't too much but others will) before you start to play with it.

Simple Biscuits

250g butter at room temperature, plus a bit more for greasing

125g caster sugar

300g flour (my recipe states it should be self-raising; I don't think it makes a scrap of difference)

Grease a couple of baking trays.  Put the butter in a large mixing bowl and beat with a wooden spoon to soften.  Beat in the sugar then stir in the flour.  This is where you get to roll it out and use your favourite pastry cutter (or just an upturned glass) or if you're like me you'll just roll it into small balls and flatten with the heel of your hand (or a fork for a pretty pattern).  Bake at 180 degrees for 15-20 minutes, until golden.

Now, in a perfect world, you'd always have a recipe to follow for whatever kind of biscuits you want to make, and scales to hand.  But if not...  Here are my personal favourite additions/corruptions:

Mixed spice: Always, always have some in your cupboard (or separate pots of cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger, but remember mixed spice also contains cloves).  Rach's favourite were mixed spice biscuits when we were kids, and I used to have a fabulous recipe (that was in one of those great brown 60s recipe books) that I of course can't find now, but a spoon of the stuff is always a yummy addition, and particularly good with brown sugar or...

Golden syrup: remember to use less sugar!  And be careful to bind them well or leave plenty of space between them on your baking tray as they'll spread more during cooking.

Cardamom: I list this seperately because unlike all the other spices I like in biscuits it isn't included in 'mixed spice' you can buy in one jar.  Also delish in rice pudding incidentally.

Oats: a healthy addition!  Lovely texture and will stop them spreading too much during cooking.

Custard power: you may laugh, but the ones that got the highest accolade in Ireland were made with oats and a tiny bit of flour (because I ran out) and flavoured with custard powder I dug out the back of a cupboard.

Flour: well, obviously.  But do try using brown flour and any kind of flour to hand really.  It's not like you need them to rise or anything.  There are of course loads of gluten-free alternatives you can use.

Peanut butter: my preference for all cooking is the one with bits in.   This is the only substitute for butter that I can think of.

Vanilla/Almond etc essence: I recently made brownies (which I'm afraid you do need a recipe for) with almond essence in them and they were delicious!  A principle worth carrying over.  A nice idea if you are using coffee is to have two doughs of different colours, roll them both flat, brush one with milk and put the other on top.  Roll the whole thing up and chill for 30mins, then cut into slices and bake for stripy spirals!

I won't insult your intelligence by listing things like dried fruit, nuts  and chocolate.  Please do leave comments if you have any more ideas!

So I hope its clear that you can make biscuits, even fancy ones, from things you have lying around in your store cupboard.  No need to rush to the shops in a panic.  And a top tip:  a run of home made biccys can easily and quickly made into a posh dessert by adding a dollop of ice-cream/yoghurt/mascarpone; fresh or stewed fruit (kept on standby in my freezer); chocolate shavings or a dusting of icing sugar etc etc.  The list of possibilities is endless....

Mother's Tip no.1

With age comes wisdom. Who do we know is both old and wise? Mother!

We have invited our Mother to impart some of her pearls of wisdom. Here is her first effort:

Rediscovering The Library.

If you haven't been in a library since school or college , or since your mother took you to Storytime on a tuesday afternoon, can I urge you to walk through the door and register for a library ticket.

They are changed places.

Firstly they are noisy and bustling and all the lending rules and renewal systems have improved beyond measure. If, like us, you have no more room on your book shelves, it has got to be the answer. Also, all that recycling and rereading of books must be better that buying new cheap paperbacks every time we need something to read. Think of all the trees we could save.

Here in North Lincolnshire, I can take out 6 books at any one time. They can be renewed online and can be returned to any library within the county. I can request books online too and an e-mail will tell me when they are ready for collection. My mother and grandmother were great library users but it is only in recent years that I have gone back to borrowing books and I now realise what a fantastic resource we have. Library budgets are being cut however, all over the country.

So let's make a real effort to get borrower numbers up before it is too late and help save then planet into the bargain.

Love Mother x



Bravo Mum! I agree with this, and although I admit that there is something magical about opening a brand new crisp book, the library does have the answer for avid readers trying to save a bob or two. I get all my non fiction books from the library, and spend many a lunch hour browsing the shelves. I have learnt how to knit, make curtains, candles, quilts, upholstery, topiary and countless other things from books borrowed from the library. Get yourself down there!

Soup by accident

Every wednesday I make a big vat of soup, because an unspecified number of people turn up for lunch. As I generally go shopping on wednesdays, this is a true make-do-with-what-you've-got/don't-waste-old-veggies soup. This week's was really yummy, so here's the recipe below. I didn't use any stock because I didn't have any, hence why I sweated out the celery with the onions and garlic (along with using lemon juice or balsamic vinegar depending on your other ingredients, this is my top tip for bringing out flavour). I figured chilli and coconut would give it a full enough flavour on top of that, and I was right!

1 large onion, chopped
few cloves garlic, finely chopped/crushed
a few sticks of celery, chopped

a bit of butter
2 carrots, chopped
1 large parsnip, chopped
handful red lentils
1 big potato chopped
chilli sauce

creamed coconut

salt/pepper/lemon juice

Sweat out the onion, garlic and celery in the butter.  Simmer the whole lot together (I leave soup in the slow cooker on high for a morning) and whiz (I mean use one of those hand-held food processors- I'm aware that in various parts of the country this word means pee).  Technically I suppose you should put your creamed coconut and seasoning in last. 

And before anyone accuses me of not being thrifty because I use creamed coconut, I buy it from the chinese supermarket where it's 40p a packet.  I think I only use about a 1/3 of a packet in this.  So ner.

Easy hot water bottle cover

For the first crafty post, here's something anyone can make, whether you feel you have talent or not. It needn't cost you a penny, embodies the notion of recycling, and is a perfect thing to make on a cold Sunday in February. I don't claim to be the first to think of this idea. I've seen it around in various forms for yonks.

You will need:

An old jumper
A hot water bottle
other fabric scraps for decoration (optional)

First raid your wardrobe, or in my case my Husband's wardrobe, to find an old jumper. The garment donated to me (under slight sufferance) was not the most cheerful of colours but beggars can't be choosers. By the way, the best jumpers to use for this are knitted ones with nice ribbed cuffs.

OK, stuff your hottie inside the arm of the jumper with the bottle neck at the cuff end to test for size. Chop off the arm of the jumper an inch or so below the bottom of the bottle. In my case I decided to leave lots of extra space at the cuff end so I could turn it under to make a sort of polo neck effect.


Now turn the severed arm inside out and sew along the cut edge. If you are doing this on a machine then also zig zagging over the cut edges will avoid any fraying.

Essentially that's it. Told you it was easy.

We decided to embellish ours with some felt shapes. Sew them on or use fabric glue.

Because our sleeves weren't very stretchy we made cute little ties for the neck. To do this cut off either the neck band of the jumper or the waist band. We sewed on little felt covers to the end of the ties to stop fraying and to co-ordinate the colour scheme.

Insert your empty bottle through the neck hole, and tie the waistband ribbon around the neck to finish. Ta daaaaa!



Eleanor doesn't really do crafts at all - she's the foody one - but even she managed to make one of these with my instructions. We each had a sleeve of the jumper. She complained that mine looks better than hers, but for a first attempt at something like this I thought she did brilliantly.

Below is Eleanors hot water bottle cover. She went for explosions instead of flowers. What would Freud say about that? (Actually the real reason is that Eleanor is left handed and struggled to cut with my scissors. She needed a shape with straight lines!)

Comfort food

Here's a stolen idea, with a tip thought up entirely by yours truly. Ahem. Jacket potatoes filled with red lentil dahl covered in grated cheddar cheese.

This is so yummy you won't believe it, but the best thing is that it takes about 5 minutes to cobble together (and that includes getting the potatoes in the oven) at which point you can go out for an hour and a half and come back to instant food. It does worry me that I should use a word other than 'dahl' as this is probably a totally unorthdox way to eat it, let alone make it (done properly, you'd stir the onions, ghee, mustard seeds etc through the lentils once they're cooked). But doing it in the slow cooker (my tip!) means you don't have to watch the stove, and the lentils don't break up during cooking.

Incidentally, I always have plenty of red lentils on hand in my kitchen. An incredibly cheap source of protein, they also don't need soaking as other pulses so you don't need to have planned ahead. On a hot stove, they'll cook in only 15-20 minutes. Buy them from an indian shop instead of the supermarket for extra thriftiness, and always buy in bulk as they'll keep forever.

Cheat's Red Lentil Dahl

Red lentils

Onion, chopped

Garlic, finely chopped/crushed

Butter to fry

Curry powder or mixture of spices to your taste (in this I like more body and less chilli)

Vegetable stock

Salt

Lemon juice

Fry the onions and garlic in butter, stir in the spices, and put in the slow cooker with lentils and very hot stock. In my slow cooker (which is small and hotter than Rach's) it cooks to perfection in an hour and a half. Add lemon juice and salt to taste.

Put in jacket potatoes (maris pipers are well worth the extra pennies!) and cover with lots of cheese.

Yum.

Sorry, I have never weighed anything for this recipe and have no idea of how much I use of anything. So: don't be afraid of using plenty of red lentils, but do be aware that they swell up and absorb plenty of liquid (they'll need covering in stock).

Ok Rach, your turn.

Photo by Justin Cormack

Let's start at the very beginning - pastry.

Where to start?  I feel my first post should be something that encapsulates our reasons for starting this blog, wows you with our domestic insight or at the very least is truly original.  But I get nervous at the very thought of having to live up to such great ambitions, and so here's just what I was doing this afternoon.  It's not original, it's not all-encompassing, but this is something that will save you time, money, and from having to eat rubbish.

I was making pastry (recipe below).   Have you seen what goes into shop-bought frozen pastry?  Truly disgusting.  Make it in big batches and then freeze it in quiche/pie size balls so next time it just needs de-frosting and rolling.  Make jam tarts with leftovers (use up jam that you've had to scrape mould off - it's going in the oven at 200 degrees so don't worry!).  But here's the best bit: instead of faffing with baking beans, put your rolled pastry in it's dish into the freezer until it's gone hard.  Then you can either bake it blind just like that and it won't collapse (as long as your oven is properly pre-heated) or just stuff your filling in and bake it all together.  Something about the very cold to the very hot means that it will go crispy on the bottom.   Brilliant.  All credits to my friend (who has to remain nameless until I've asked her!) for this fantastic tip.

Here's a piccy of dinner just before being popped into the oven, compiled by my brother-in-law using my pastry and eggs from the chickens in the garden.  Scrumdiddlyumptious.

Basic Shortcrust Pastry

Essentially, you need half the amount of fat to flour, and a little water.  Easy.  The following amounts will line a flan dish to feed 4-6.  Sweet pastries will add more butter, egg yolks and sugar, but this is good for starters.  

75g butter (well chilled)

150g plain flour

2 tbsp (roughly) water

Cut the butter up and rub into the flour until it's like fine breadcrumbs.  Sprinkle the water over and mix gently with a table knife.  Add more water as needed a little at a time until it starts to bind.  Stick  your hand in the bowl and gather into a ball, kneading very lightly.  Roll out using a bottle if you haven't got a rolling pin on a floured surface.  

The above picture is goats cheese and grilled pepper quiche, and was cooked for about 40 minutes at 200 degrees.