Bacon, Leek, Potato and cheese pie

Thought I had better give you the recipe for this as I had raved about it the other night, so here you go.  As usual I haven't stuck rigidly to the recipe (I never do!).

4oz Pastry - I used shortcrust, the recipe says use Flaky, but I don't see that it matters.  You can use frozen for this or homemade

Filling -
1 medium leek - I used two smaller ones and found that four of this size would be better
2 medium potatoes
7oz smoked bacon
1oz butter - the recipe says to use clarified, but I couldn't be bothered so used it straight from the pack
4 fl oz Milk
3 fl oz Single cream - I used double cream as I didn't have any single and it was fine
2 beaten eggs
2 tsps dried mixed herbs - I left out as I didn't have any
2 oz grated Double Gloucester cheese - I just used strong Cheddar instead, but used about 4oz
Salt and Pepper to taste

• Preheat oven to 190C / 375F / Gas 5
• Slice leeks into approx 1cm rounds and wash thoroughly
• Peel and thinly slice the potatoes
• Trim off the bacon rind and roughly chop
• Roll out the pastry and line a 20cm flan dish, trimming the edges
• Fry the bacon under the fat starts to render and it starts to go crispy.  Set aside on kitchen paper
• Cook the leeks in the same pan and set aside with the bacon once soft
• Add the butter and fry the potatoes until just coloured - you may have to do several batches
• Spoon the leeks and bacon into the flan dish
• I then added a generous layer of grated cheese and sliced a couple of tomatoes over the top
• Arrange the potato slices over the top, overlapping to cover the other ingredients
• Beat together the milk, cream, eggs, herbs and season well
• Pour over the potatoes and top with more grated cheese
• Bake for 30 - 45 minutes, covering with foil if it starts to brown too much

This is great served with a simple salad or with whatever veg you have available like we did.

Enjoy!

Stats today -

Eggs produced = 7

Sales -

1 dozen eggs £1.80

1 x 1Kg Onions £1.00

Expenses -

Nil

Good old eBay!

Thanks to eBay and Rob from Tiptree in Essex, and to his wife for the coffee, drinks and chocolate biscuits (says Michael), I am now the proud owner of a fabulous new greenhouse and five cold frames.

Michael and Rob spent the afternoon dismantling the approx 6m x 2.4m aluminium greenhouse.  I've now got to decide what to grow for sale next year.

The deconstruction process -

Glass out from the sides

Roof off

Loaded and ready to come home

Michael would like to extend a huge thank you to Rob for helping him take it down, he was extremely helpful.

Can't wait for next year now, it's going to be a huge task to get it up, the base laid, staging in and the cold frames erected too, but it'll be well worth it.

Stats today -

Eggs produced = 10

Sales -
1/2 dozen eggs £0.90
1 x 500g Carrots £0.75
1 x Cucumber £0.60

Expenses -
Greenhouse and cold frames £383.00 (that's an awful lot of eggs and veg to sell!)

Peppers V Peppers

The battle of the Peppers!

Now, I've always been told that you cannot grow Peppers and Chilli peppers in the same greenhouse / polytunnel at the same time, because they are too closely related and will not produce fruit if you do.

That sounded like a challenge to me, and always up for a challenge, I decided to see, more out of curiosity than anything, what would happen if you did plant the two plants side by side.

Sweet Peppers

Chilli Peppers

These two plants are less than half a metre away from each other and seem to be thriving, (that's the same yellow leaf of a cucumber plant in the photo's).

Having read several books on the subject of growing peppers and chillies, I find that nowhere in these books does it say that you cannot grow them together, in fact they are both in the same family as tomatoes, potatoes and aubergines and should be treated as such for rotation purposes.  Both are reasonably easy to grow, suffer from little problems - the usual slugs, aphids and red spider mite; the main problem being blossom end rot, ie. lack of sufficient water, but if you're seeing that on peppers then you'll be seeing it on your tomatoes too and bells should start ringing in your head to give them all more water.

So I shall continue to plant all my peppers and chillies together and not listen to other people's ideas until I have thoroughly checked them out.  To think I had been panicking about not getting any peppers or chillies - that'll learn me, as they say here in Norfolk!

Stats today - 

Eggs produced = 12

Sales -

1 dozen eggs £1.80

1 x 500g Carrots £0.75

1 x Oregano plant £0.50

Expenses -

Nil

Chickens and eggs

Got some figures for you today - hope your brain's working!

We've been working out some costs, I hope I can explain this right.

One bag of feed lasted us 10 days for 15 hens
During that 10 days we got 83 eggs, and a bag of feed costs £7/bag
Which means that for every egg produced it's cost us £0.08 in feed to produce it.
So, half a dozen eggs costs £0.48 to produce.

The hens cost us £5.00 each and we bought 12 at the time = £60.00; assuming after a year that they are worth nothing at all, the cost per day for 12 hens = £0.164.
Over a ten day period (i.e. the amount of days a bag of food lasts), the cost of these hens = £1.64
Divide this amount by the 83 eggs we'd had produced = £0.019, then multiply that figure by 6, to get the cost per half dozen eggs = £0.11.

So, per half a dozen eggs -
Feed = £0.48
Hen = £0.11
Total = £0.59 to produce half a dozen eggs

So by charging them out at £0.90 per half a dozen we are making £0.31.

That's all very well but that excludes fixed costs, eg, labour, housing, water etc.

It's quite an eye opener don't you think?  Michael made me put the cost of our eggs up from 1st July, from £0.75 per half a dozen and now I'm glad we did.

Have you ever done figures like this, and if so what were your costings like.  Did you include anything we didn't?  I'd be interested to know.

Stats today -

Eggs produced = 8

Sales -
One and a half dozen eggs - £2.70

Expenses -
Nil