02/03/2014

This week LSS bought some packets of lamb chops in the supermarket, because they were on a special offer. I remember that when we were in Britain, we found it very difficult to find British lamb; instead it was always from New Zealand. Unless one goes to a proper butcher, of course, but those were becoming rare. Well, we’ve discovered where all the British lamb goes. It’s in France! I wouldn’t be surprised if the only lamb available for sale in New Zealand turned out to be French.

I have been busy constructing a framework for a poly-tunnel, using some thick-walled polyethylene water pipe to form four large hoops. It’s four metres wide and five metres long. We were waiting for a non-windy day so that we could cover the frame with the plastic sheeting. As yesterday was, for once, not windy, we took advantage of these conditions. The sides have been tacked into place with battens, but the ends still need to be fixed. It’s not an easy task, folding a semi-circular end neatly.

Yesterday evening we opened a bottle of our home-brewed pea-pod wine. Did you know you could make wine out of pea-pods? Well, you can. And as we had lots of garden peas this summer, I just had to make some. Once it has finished fermenting, it is bottled, and then needs to be kept for six months before it is ready to drink. Well, the waiting period was finally over.

It had a lovely white-wine colour.

It had a slight taste of wine.

But, perhaps unsurprisingly, it had a very strong flavour of pea-pods. Actually, it wasn’t that nice at all. We tried diluting it with some pink grapefruit cordial, and whilst this made it slightly more palatable, it then tasted like pea-pod flavoured pink grapefruit cordial wine. We won’t be making it again! Thank goodness I only made four bottles.

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