Gardens Home & Garden

I love lemon curd and the home made version is the best! I was disappointed this week as I usually buy the Tesco Extra Special one but they didn't have any. I had to get the bog standard one - no comparison.
I am a pescatarian too. I couldn't live without hot smoked salmon, smoked haddock and prawns, and what could be nicer than a buttery fish finger sandwich for a quick snack!

I’m finding that buying lemon curd harder to come by to the usual jams and preserves whether it’s me and I’m not looking hard enough, I do know the big supermarkets do them, but a trip just for that seems a bit pointless to me, so I thought ‘how hard can it be?’ So had a try and it was relatively easy. I do like my lamb and beef , sorry but I couldn’t live without some sort of bacon or sausage but not pork funnily enough, I’m not a fish eater apart from cod as it has no flavour to it, but anything that smells remotely fishy I won’t eat. But one thing I’ll agree with you is a nice fish finger sarny.

I honestly don't miss meat. I add the meat substitutes mostly for the texture, substance and protein. A burger without a patty isn't very filling - add portabella mushroom or a soy patty and it's a meal.

The closest to cravings I've had were for KFC original recipe fried chicken - and I really just wanted the seasoned skin. They came out with a vegetarian version a few years back and I had it. It was enough to feed that craving and I haven't wanted it since. I do like my fake bacon with a couple easy over eggs and toast.

When I went to Nova Scotia, I did have a crab salad sandwich for lunch one day. It was OK but not great. The next day I went to a fisheries museum and saw a couple live lobsters. I felt a bit sick about it. It just wasn't worth killing a creature to eat it. I would have been happier with a Harvey's veggie burger and no guilt afterward.

With that, I think it is a personal choice for everyone. I don't try to guilt others and I don't make a fuss if someone eats meat in my presence (unless they make a fuss about my not eating meat - I've had a few of those).

I still remember the night my Mom died. I had gone up to my parents' house, my dad and younger sibling were there, and while we waited for the coroner, they proceeded to attack me for being a vegetarian. My sibling complained that I made too much work for her because I wouldn't eat what everyone else ate. Now, first, she had NEVER had me over for a meal; second, at holidays it was always my Mom and I who did all the cooking and I never refused to help cook/fix the meat; and third, I never asked for any special dishes. I ate whatever non-meat dishes were on the table or brought my own food. My dad proceeded to tell me how unhealthy I was because all vegetarians are pasty and skinny - two things that could never be said of me. (Yeah, that night brought a lot of things to light about how my family thought of me.)

@Tone Share your process for lemon curd please. Do you regular can it or refigerator can it?

I do enjoy a good lemon cake with lemon frosting and the store bought ones just aren't lemony enough for me. I never liked lemon merengue pie but think I have to try it again as I think I might like it now. I've noticed my tastes have really changed the past four or five years.

I have bought all my kids up on meat, but one year my youngest daughter when she was a teenager decided she didn’t want to eat meat anymore so I said to her yeah that’s fine, but what else are you not going to eat? She said I will eat fish and dairy but nothing with meat in it or anything with gelatine, so now when I shop I get her anything vegetarian or vegan, but I do have to read the labels to cakes and sweets if she wants them. So I tend to make most cakes at home it’s easier that way, but then when I do I make one for my dad and then my brother too, but talking to my sister in law yesterday she said yes please. I haven’t had a KFC here in years, I like the the coating but not the chicken as it still mostly has the skin on it .

This is the one I used but I tweaked it a little to my own taste by putting a little bit more sugar in it as it was a little to tart for me.


Ingredients

• 4 unwaxed lemons, zest and juice
• 200g/7oz unrefined caster sugar
• 100g/3½oz unsalted butter, cut into cubes
• 3 free-range eggs, plus 1 free-range egg yolk

Method

1. Put the lemon zest and juice, sugar and butter into a heatproof bowl. Sit the bowl over a saucepan of gently simmering water, making sure the water is not touching the bottom of the bowl. Stir the mixture every now and again until all of the butter has melted.
   
   
2. Lightly whisk the eggs and egg yolk and stir them into the lemon mixture. Whisk until all of the ingredients are well combined, then leave to cook for 10–13 minutes, stirring every now and again, until the mixture is creamy and thick enough to coat the back of a spoon.
   
   
3. Remove the lemon curd from the heat and set aside to cool, stirring occasionally as it cools. Once cooled, spoon the lemon curd into sterilised jars and seal. Keep in the fridge until ready to use.

Thanks! I'll put this in my To Try folder.

The birds have been little pigs the past week. I have:

8 feeders with black sunflower seeds
3 with safflower seeds

plus 5 bowl feeders that I put a mix of both seeds and peanuts.

I am having to fill them up every 3 to 4 days. And the peanuts are gone in hours - the scrub jays love them.

Two of the feeders are at windows. Looney2 has his feeder at the dining room window so he can watch from the table:

(Looney1 is enjoying the view from the desk)

Panther has her feeder at a day room window. She sits on a parrot perch to watch. Punx often naps on the chair underneath.


Every day when we come downstairs, Looney2 and Panther make beelines for their feeders.

The house finches love Looney2's feeder and the house sparrows prefer Panther's.

I'm currently training the scrub jays to come to the porch for extra peanuts. I'm just tossing some onto the floor for them. It's working - I just had two come and grab a peanut. And two more just came. They do a lot of talking while they are on the ground - you'd think they'd be quiet then.

You’re welcome.
I have a couple of crows follow me around the field where I walk the dogs and I throw them a few dog treats which they like but they are bring this years baby with them and teaching it that if they sit on the fence to the kids play park I will throw them in there so the dogs can’t get them, not that they will as one of them pecks the doxies backside if he’s not moving out the way quick enough, when they first done it I thought he’d twisted his leg and yelped, but then I realised it was one of them as it flew down near me trying to get to him. Here they are beginning of last year when I had the other dog too, they would stand near him like they knew he wouldn’t chase them away, they just happily hopped behind him

The crows used to drive me mad when I was teaching Eddie to track. I would tie Ed to a post and walk a pattern on the sports field. I hoped to grow his confidence by leaving a treat approximately five to seven paces from each change of direction. It didn't take the crows long to learn what I was doing. They would waddle round after me, picking up all of Eddie's rewards.
I keep reading of crows bringing presents to people who feed them regularly. Is this true? Have they ever left you a gift @Tone ?

Crows are extremely smart. I'm not sure if they truly "leave gifts" or if it's just us connecting two unrelated things.

Kevin McGowan with Cornell University has stated that WILD crows do not collect shiny objects - collecting objects is a juvenile behavior teaching them how to forage and in the wild they collect sticks and leaves and pebbles, etc. In captivitity, they collect anything small and portable which is likely to include shiny objects like coins, keys and jewelry.

He makes no mention of their leaving gifts. I would suspect a lot of the "gift giving" is simply young crows playing with objects and then abandoning those objects when they find food. So if you leave peanuts out in one spot, it would be likely that a young crow would drop its toy stick there in order to grab the tasty peanut.

https://www.birds.cornell.edu/crows/crowfaq.htm#shiny

Well they haven’t left me anything yet Carole and if they have I haven’t found it. but they say it’s nothing exciting if they do, it would a bit of rubbish or twig or stick so I believe, but I found they don’t hang around if other people are around, they fly off and then come back if I’m still there to the point they follow me home sometimes and stand in the middle of the road or on the front lawn waiting for more food and I have noticed that if I haven’t been across there then they are on the rooftops or even the back garden fence looking down as if to say ‘ where you been? Are you coming to feed us? ‘

The jays really like their peanuts. I toss a bunch out onto the front porch and watch from just inside.

They've been at this for about 30 minutes now.




Some will tap the peanut on the ground to see if it's a good one. Others nod their head to check.

We don’t see blue jays around here so much, although saying that one year there was one on the field for a couple of weeks and I haven’t seen any since. Magpies and crows in abundance, but every now and again a little white egret. But this morning it was frosty and there was a murder of crows of about 5/6 of them tucking into something all waiting to take turns, so I went and had a nosey and they moved out the way apart from the 2 that I regularly feed and it was a pigeon carcass that either a cat or fox had caught, I thought great now the dogs going to see this and go pick it up and bring this headless bird to me and I don’t really want it but anyway luckily enough I managed to keep him away from them and what they was eating, which was a bonus as he really does like to annoy them just for the fun of it.

The crows don't hang around but they do come through. They use one of my bird baths to marinate their food. One time I found a rat tail. There have been other various pieces of meat and bone in the water.

I'm really enjoying the scrub jays. I watched them for over an hour yesterday. Tornado-dog watched them for a bit as did Looney1. Then a house finch female came up to eat sunflower seeds out of the small stand you can see in the first photo. She sat there for a good 15 minutes. Then just before dusk, one jay came to grab a last peanut for the day.

The dog chases them out my garden, I have a seed and a peanut feeder that they use in the morning and last thing in the evening but I’ve not really seen many birds about at the moment as there is a lot of blackberries and fruits about now but the robin should soon start coming back over the winter as they do nearly every year. But my cats just sit at the window and watch them.

Tornado-dog used to chase the doves off because "they are on the ground and fair game". But he's too busy hunting for the vole now - of course the doves don't realize that so they still fly off when I let him and Cat-dog out.

Looney2 and Looney3 have their own feeders at their windows. As soon as I open the door to downstairs they make a beeline to their windows for the day. Looney4 will often watch with Looney3. Looney1, who considers himself one of the dogs sits at the front door and watches the scrub jays.

Op, the jays ned another handful of peanuts...

Beau will let the pigeons land in the garden and slowly move step by step up to them and then stand still until they carry on with what they are doing and then move a little bit closer and wait then all of a sudden he will run but they fly off and sit on the fence and look as if to say hah you missed me, so he just walks off again. Buddy isn’t even bothered, like nah that’s way to much like hard work to be running around when I can be laying in the sun. But yeah we have a field mouse that lives under the top decking of the garden and runs along the borders collecting the seeds the birds have dropped, sometimes buddy catches a glimpse of it and will try and get it or try and find it, but it’s long gone

Tornado-dog follows the vole's scent all around the yard. If it's a fresh scent, he goes nuts over it. He has seen it a few times but isn't quick enough to catch it.

Funny, he will sit at the front door with Looney1 and watch the jays grab peanuts and won't try to scare them off.

Saw a vole running up my block paved drive yesterday. Not their usual territory.
Tally searches in the her stone chipped toilet area, I think this must be their route to get under the decking.
@Toedtoes Your Jays are much bluer than our blue Jays. Ours are brown with just a blue band - though it does show up well. Our Jays are more secretive than crows, spending more time in cover.

I was surprised to see that blue jays have less blue than the scrub jays. Our jays are pretty tough. Years ago when I had indoor/outdoor cats, my Raoul was laying on the lawn watching a jay dancing on the fence. While he watched, the jay's partner would sneak around from behind and dive bomb Raoul. It was really mean.