Supermarket Price Shock.

We do little shopping in supermarkets but this week we had to make the trip to Tesco to stock up on Organic butter, it's about the only place we can find it. For some reason we found ourselves in the fresh meat aisle and spotted Organic lamb on sale, we know how much we pay for our Organic meat, lamb beef and pork in the farmers market but were staggered to see the Tesco price, 25% more than we pay, we then looked at the conventional  fresh meat which is in the same unit, this was only 5% less than the Organic, still 20% more than we pay. They did not have Organic Pork. I know their motto is 'Every Little Helps' I had always assumed this meant  that they helped the customer with low prices, it seems  that what they do mean is 'Every Little Helps' to keep their shareholders happy. We certainly could not afford to shop for our food there, and will stick with the Farmers Market, we know where it has all come from and in the case of the meat we know several of the producers. The fruit and veg is always so fresh, nothing prepacked so you can pick out what you want, we were very surprised and pleased today to find that Mike the fruit and veg man already had

Seville Oranges in, normally they arrive over here in January, we had finished our last pot of Marmalade earlier in the week so they have arrived just in time for us. All I need now is two free days to get it made.

We have bottled the first lot of this years wine, the pea pod, although very young yet it promises to be good, but we wont know for a year as that's how long it takes to mature.
We have also been eating the salted runner beans, this was the first time that I had done them this way, we gave up freezing beans some years ago as they were never very nice, well salting them is a success, they do take a bit of rinsing, but they taste almost as good as freshly picked beans, so we will continue to use this method in future.

I have now made the first batch of mince pies, I still had mince meat that we had done last year, I then realized that a dozen mince pies would not last us that long, unfortunately we like mince pies. Pigs that we are, the first doz mince pies were eaten in the first day, which meant more had to be made.
For some reason I decided that we would buy a pot of mince meat for our this next lot of  mince pies, possible thinking that as we are so close to Christmas I didn't have time to make the mince meat and let it mature. Anyway Simon went shopping and brought back a jar of a very well known brand. We both have a distrust of things already made, especially if they have come from a factory and we read labels, normally in the shop and the item then ends up back on the shelf. This time the label didn't get checked until it reached our kitchen, after all what can they do to a pot of mince meat? It seems quite a lot, gone is the suet, replaced by palm oil, ( yet another rain forest destroyed) sunflower oil, ( well that counts me out as I'm allergic to it) and rice flour? no spirits of any kind, and a wondrous selection of spices including fennel and coriander, not things that you would normally add to mince meat. So the jar remains unopened, hopefully we can find someone who will be able to make use of it.

I then set to and made five jars of traditional mince meat, the next batch of pies are made, and tested, they taste great. I wonder how long these will last?

I am still continuing the glass painting in between baking. I am fairly pleased with the last piece I've done, a Mandala, a regular pattern repeated within a circle which is used as an expression of oneself and as an aid to meditation in some Hindu religions. Hopefully it will restore a feeling of calm to us.

I have also done a couple of small lanterns, which look nice when lit.

What is that? Can I catch it?

Yesterday we had a leak from a water tank in the attic, the cats were fascinated, why are cats so interested in water I wonder.

Susie's Box.

Boxes are also a source of interest to them, once investigated they get taken over as beds even though they have lovely cat igloos, cardboard boxes are better.