Men at Work!

This is where I turn into a smug married!  My wonderful husband, not a phrase that trips easily out of my mouth yet, or will ever at all I don't think! ..... So...   The very clever MrP has made this

Our new Hen House, complete with sunbathing deck!

The strips of wood running the length of the roof are so we can grow a 'living roof' similar to that on Pigton.

This is Pigton with it's growing roof


* Disclaimer the pigs you see are not real, nor do they represent any real life pigs *

Honestly we do not condone pigs running feral, climbing on rooves, it's just irresponsible

He is currently outside constructing the run.  So now we have the big decision of which hens to get.  My original 3 ex-bats have sadly all gone.  The three replacement witches - Darth Vader (the broody Blackrock) Ginger (a fiery, sulky Columbian Black Tail) and not so snow white ( an adopted, troublesome light Sussex) are with my parents. 

Questions have been asked, books have been ordered.  We ideally want hens for egg laying, chicks to rear for the table and guinea fowl that isn't as battered, as bruised and as tough as the poor thing we tried to eat this weekend that waitrose delivered.

So it was only fair that I kept up my side of the marriage and provide something to keep him going.

We had breakfast.  I'll rephrase, he had his mountain of cereal and then came in for lunch.




Some of our own bacon with home made ricotta cakes and poached egg.  The picture with the egg is mine, he likes his eggs absolutely bastardised.  And when it comes to poached eggs he likes them done in those horrible little poach pods till they could bounce.

Ricotta Cakes - From Good Food Eat Outdoors

100g Plain Flour
1 tsp Baking Powder
200g Ricotta Cheese
2 tsp Chopped Thyme
1tsp English Mustard Powder
100ml Milk




Sift the flour and baking powder into a bowl, the mix in the ricotta, egg yolks, thyme and mustard powder. 

Slowly drizzle in the milk and beat to make a smooth mixture.  Season well with salt and lots of black pepper.

Whisk the egg white until stiff and forming soft peaks, then fold into the ricotta mixture, in batches, with a large metal spoon.  Don't batter it and knock out all the air and lightness.

Melt some butter in a frying pan.

Now the recipe says to dollop 2 tbsp for each cake, I did this with the first one and it spread and spread across my pan, so I got out the fried egg rings.

They take about 2mins each side, don't have the heat too high as they do colour quite easily.

The recipe says they can be frozen.  We had some yesterday morning, I froze two to see how it would work out this morning.  Wrapped the frozen cakes in foil and put in a 160 fan oven for 20 mins, then because MrP was still outside working on his run construction they had to stay in the oven turned down to about 80 for another 20mins.  They  were edible, nowhere near as nice as the freshly cooked ones, but that could have been down to trying to keep them warm.

The original recipe had them served with bacon, drizzled with balsamic vinegar and creme fraiche mixed with wholegrain mustard.

In future I would swap the thyme for parsley, but at the moment I am really off thyme, it's just too stuffy.  Funny how tastes change from month to month!