The chooks have moved!! Much to the amusement of those having a coffee in the café on Monday Iain tried to move the hens to their new patch ‘Pied Piper’ style, it worked for 10 yards or so then the 50 hens went all directions!!
We have moved them to the pick your own strawberry patch for the winter. Why? A small bug called Vine Weevil is a big problem in strawberries, there are two methods of control –
We are getting very musical up at Craigie’s this week!
On Thursday Frank Cooper and partner are coming up to play a selection of Christmas Carols and tunes on their Dulcimers between 11am and 2pm on Thursday 13th December. They will have their CD on sale priced at £6 with proceeds in aid of St Peters Church.
On Sunday 16th between 2.30 and 4pm the Royal High School Choir will be singing Christmas Carols in aid of Sargent Scotland. We will be serving Warm Mulled Juice and Festive nibbles free of charge (donations for Sargent Scotland welcome!!)
If you want a special cut of meat for Christmas or New Year I will need your orders by Sunday 16th if you want to be guaranteed to get it. We have a couple of turkeys left at the 8-10kg range and a few in the 4-6kg range left. We also have a couple of geese and ducks left to sell as well.
We are expecting a large number of orders to be collected on the Sunday and Monday before Christmas, at the moment there are only a few orders going out on Saturday 22nd.
If you have an order to collect please email me with your surname, telephone number, the day you wish to collect and the preferred time slot you want to collect your order (9am-12pm, 12pm-3pm or 3pm-5pm).
I have attached our Christmas hours.
The Christmas Trail will still be open this weekend, fingers crossed the weather will be better than the last two weekends! It will still be free and there will still be a free goodie bag for all those that take part.
The tasting weekend went so well last weekend we have decided to get really reeking this weekend. No we are not having a Young Farmers party! The Really Garlicky Company and Arnaud (our Onion Johnny) will both be in the shop between 12 and 4 on Saturday. Arnaud will be demonstrating the art of tying strings of onions and telling you about his farm in France. The Garlicky Co will be handing out samples of their products and telling you about themselves.
On Sunday we will have samples of the Summer Isles smoked salmon, all of our cheeses, some wines and beer (after 12.30), biscuits, oatcakes etc all out for you to sample.
Since it was really wet and yuck last weekend we will be having the Christmas themed nature trail this weekend, as usual it is free and since its Christmas every kid that cracks the code will get a free goodie bag specially made by our kitchen girls. Remember your wellies!
The bronze turkeys and goose fat are now sold out. We still have some white turkeys left, however the bigger birds are getting fewer by the day.
We have a great selection of cheese in the deli counter, if you want to be guaranteed the best cheese board at Christmas get your order in now. Stilton and port always go well, but I heard a great idea the other day – buy a half stilton, pour a little port over it, leave a couple of days, pour a little more port over it, repeat this up until Christmas then enjoy!
Last Saturday we started stocking Brenda’s Jersey Cow cream and butter, it has proved to be a real hit. Especially the handmade butter, once you’ve had some spread on our homemade bread you will never have a slice of Sunblest and Anchor Spread again! Her clotted cream goes a treat with our scones and rasp jam.
On the farm we have been busy ploughing up the fields so that any frost can help us prepare a nice seed bed for sowing barley in the spring. Iain (my fruit manager) is getting a bit of peace and quiet as the last of our students finished up last week when we stopped picking strawberries. However he is preparing for the first ones to arrive in January, we will start preparing tunnels for planting raspberries which will hopefully start fruiting about the end of May (6 weeks earlier than our usual season).
After having our own strawberries in the shop every day for the last 190 days we are now finished for the season!! That is a record for us, will we have Dutch or Spanish strawberries in the shop over the winter? You have got to be joking, it will just be about 175 days before our own are ready again, I would rather wait than eat turnips from Spain!
I am afraid that my head is a bit bigger than normal this week! Last week we were named as one of the top five farm shops by The Scotsman and we have also made it into Peter Irvine’s latest edition of Scotland the Best!! Peter gave us a ‘tick’ which rates us as ‘Amongst the very best in Scotland’. His new book (to be launched in December 2007) is now on sale in our shop, it’s a great book and is a must buy it even if it is just to see what Peter wrote about us! I was chuffed to bits when I read it ;-)
The turkeys are literally flying out of the door this year, we are almost sold out of some of the weight ranges. We are having a tasting weekend in the shop this weekend (1st and 2nd December) – turkey, chipolatas, beer, wine, cheese, mince pies and lots more, we will be open as normal from 9am until 5pm.
As well has the tasting this weekend we will have a festive twist on the Nature Trail, its free, it’s fun and every kid taking part will get a tasty Christmas goodie bag made in our own kitchen!
If you have placed your turkey order on line and you have not had an acknowledgement from me please get in touch with me to check that I have your order.
We have some new lines going on the shelves this weekend– The Simple Simon Christmas Pies, Tea Pigs Tea, Chocolate Desert Shells, Ella’s Kitchen smoothies and baby food (the carrot, apple and parsnip ‘baby food’ is yummy, we will happily provide stickers to stick over the ‘baby food’ bit!!), Amaretti biscuits, Cheesey Oatcakes, and a number of products from Stichill Jersey Cows including butter and cream!
This week’s special offer!! Print a copy of this email out, come to the Café between 2pm and 4.30pm from Monday 3rd to Friday 7th December 2007, present us with a copy of this email, buy a coffee or a tea and get a free tray bake or a slice of cake with every tea/coffee.
I hope to see you up at Craigie’s this weekend, you will find me beside the beer sampling!
It’s not often that I get to spend a day doing almost nothing and remain guilt free. But the grey sky when I woke up on my Thursday off, was just the excuse I needed. Still full from supper the night before. We’d eaten lasagne, which benefited enormously from a few large bits of tallegio laid on top, once it was already smothered in cheese and white sauce (which I failed to get quite thick enough, much to my distress). It was followed by a pavlova, made with Craigie’s strawberries, which was far too good to leave for the next day.
By lunchtime however it was time to begin again. It was delicious, though haphazard. We ate some Mature Dunlop with the windfall chutney from the Jam kitchen. The two were delicious together, though I think the sharp plum chutney would’ve been even better, whereas the windfall would be just the accompaniment to a piece of Bishop Kennedy, or Caerphilly. We also ate a hastily assembled bean chilli, cannelini beans and tomatos with cumin and coriander. Nothing snazzy, and rather incoherent; quite the best kind of lunch.
In the afternoon we explored Tollcross, our new neighbourhood. The weather remained petulant, and the delis we intended to visit were perfect shelters as the rain came down in fits and starts. We bought a hot and sticky chutney from the African deli over the road. With plans for crispy chicken wings at supper, it was hard to resist. For the rest of the afternoon, I loafed, thinking about supper. Before long I couldn’t wait any longer.
I put oil into a couple of roasting tins (neither quite large enough for all six) and put several handfuls of flour along with generous amounts of salt and pepper into a plastic bag, though I’m told a paper one does the job better. Then, one by one, the chicken wings went into the bag to be shaken until well coated with flour and put into the pan, (we had six wings, probably too many, but I could’ve eaten more). I had to add more flour and seasoning to the bag as I went on. They went into a hot oven, about 220 C. A few minutes later my girlfriend Rachel’s consultation of the internet led me to put a little butter on top of each wing. This is certainly not a meal to eat too often. About twenty minutes later it was time to turn the chicken over, it was already beginning to brown.
Rachel made rice to her American mother’s recipe. She melted about a tablespoon of butter, in a pan with a decent lid, we think you’re supposed to fry onion in it too but we forgot; it was delicious without. Then she added a cup of American rice and stirred it until it began to go translucent, about a minute, at which point she added a cup and a half of water and brought it up to the boil before covering it, and turning the heat down. Ten minutes later it was time to turn off the rice, but leave it covered. The chicken was coming on nicely, so I chopped a carrot and cooked it in a little butter, adding an onion and the rest of the beans from lunch, just because they were hanging around, normally I don’t bother. I turned down the heat and covered the carrots, stirring them every now and then, checking that they didn’t burn. Cooking carrots this way, rather than in water means that they stay much sweeter, and don’t go soft so readily. They stayed on the stove until the chicken came out, about ten minutes later, though I suppose that includes preparation and so on, but use your judgement.
After forty minutes in the oven the chicken was deep golden brown, crispy all over, and ready to eat. I put it all onto a plate, and used one of the chicken tins to make an unglamorous gravy with just water flour salt and pepper, thick and anaesthetic it was just the right accompaniment for this trencher’s feast. We ate keenly; the hot sticky chutney that we’d bought earlier that day was just the thing. A simple and delicious meal, utterly unglamorous, but so good. I think one could probably make it more genteel by cutting the wings into three and discarding the wing tips before cooking, with something to dip them in it would make a good starter. Or served with the rice and carrots, with a little aplomb it’d make a good supper for guests. If you’re feeling summery, a challenge at the moment, the wings would be lovely alongside a decent salad; though best not serve it up to people you need to impress, as this is a difficult meal to eat without making a mess, although it might just be me.
Four years of extremely hard work could not have ended on a better note.
Our first day trading in our new building went extremely well, with all credit going to our staff who coped with the first day extremely well.
I am over the moon with our new deli and café. Algo, the main building contractor, have made a fabulous job of the building work, I would recommend them to any one. There are so many people that have been involved with the ‘growing’ of this new building I can not name everyone individually, but thanks to you all!!
Gin and her kitchen staff have started to turn out some mouth watering dishes. The home baking is to die for; I can see the lbs starting to pile on already!!
Kirsteen stocked the shop up until it was bursting with the best and freshest of local produce, it must have been good, the shelves were nearly bare by the end of the day!!
The new deli counters have been stocked with salads from our own kitchen, from the best of local meats (and a couple of not so local ones) and of course a carefully selected cheese board. The cheeses were selected by our very own Audrey (who is French) and Pierre (also French) from Clarks. The fact that we have 5 Scottish Cheeses in our selection just shows you how good they must be if they were selected by two French people!!