I decided to have one of the new sausages for tea so I got them out of the freezer this morning to let them thaw. Unfortunately, I'd forgotten to wrap them up before freezing so they were frozen into one solid mass to the plate I'd put them on. I put a big knife to the bottom of the heap to break them loose but, of course, the lot just skipped along the top of the table.

So I braced them up against my stomach and got ready to have another go. It suddenly occurred to me that, minus the sausages, I was in a perfect seppuku position! Ah, better idea, brace them against something other than my stomach when I'm going to smack a really sharp object into them with some force!

Eventually broke them all apart, with the help of a kitchen steel used as a lever but broke one of the sausages into 3. Well that saved me picking one, the broke one was first to be cooked. I had it with potatoes and pickled red cabbage, which I think is traditional here or my translation was off.

Saturday

Interesting morning. Yesterday we had a bit of a power cut and I forgot to reset the alarm. I still woke up at 6am due to a terrible noise coming from across the street. I've only heard it twice before and its the noise a pig makes when it knows the next 5 minutes aren't in its best interests. Bloody dog was barking like a good 'un too.

I think it was the bang that finally persuaded me that I wasn't going to have a lay on so up I got. At least the dog stopped barking.

I cleaned the verge in front of the house of grass clippings. The grass had been cut a couple of days ago and I decided the let them dry a bit before picking them up. I noticed that not all the houses did the same but seeing how much grass was in the drainage ditch I thought that it was best to clear it out as the was easy enough to cause a blockage if we had rain.

It never occured to me until the evening but Lajos the carpenters mum lives opposite but when he came to the back door with a load of sausages (thats the hungarian name, they're actually a species of black pudding) that I connected with the pig killing this morning. Very fresh sausages indeed!

Bin Day

Set both alarms so I wouldn't sleep late and got the bin out in time. For some reason I managed to fill it this time. Normally its only half full and I chuck in some packing from old parcels in to make it up.

Mowed the lawn. that was a pain. Took ages to get the petrol mower going and the strimmer completely failed to start. Had to use my electric one which is a bit fiddley and seems more like a toy compared to the petrol one.

I also racked off my cider into bottles. Funny I thought I had more than 3. I expect I'll find them in a box in the barn when I take a look tomorrow. Still, it left me with the problem of what to do with the last pint of cider at the bottom of the carboy...

Rhubarb

Rhubarb
Originally uploaded by A John Walters

Out of the 21 seeds I had last year, this is the only survivor. Only half actually germinated and the rest died when i re-potted them. Been meaning to post this for a while so here it is.

10/10/10

Won't have another day like this for a hundred years!

Racked off my 1st beer brew for ages into my keg. I had to sample it :)

Brew Day

I'd sterilised one of my new fermenting bins so I started off another brew. (I also dry hopped the one I started last week) I now have 10 gallons of beer on the go and a gallon of cider.

I'll bottle the 1st batch of beer next Monday and the week after I'll put todays new brew in the barrel/keg. I'll probably bottle the cider too but I'm not too sure how long it needs to ferment.

Körmend

Went shopping in Körmend today. One of the things I wanted was some apple juice.

I was reading up on something called "turbo cider" which is cider made from apple juice and bakers yeast. Since I only had 3 pints of the real stuff I thought I'd just as well add some stuff from a carton just to bulk it out.

I got a 2L carton for just over a pound and added that to the carboy with my juice in it and it started bubbling quite nicely.