Gin, vodka and soup

I mentioned in a post yesterday that I had discovered a large quantity of blackberry vodka, sloe gin and gooseberry vodka in jars in my garage. I had made far more than I thought, especially of sloe gin. The reason for the excessively large quantity of sloe gin was due to the Horticultural Channel (launched on Sky channel 166 on 6th March - I am one of the presenters). They came up in October to film me making it. I had to create a jar of it for each different stage of the filming so that we could get through all the clips we needed in one afternoon. I then stored it all in the garage, gave each jar a shake each day for a month and then went off to do other things. It was a nice discovery, sorting through the garage to try to make space!

The pheasant we had on Sunday was stripped this afternoon of any remaining meat. I used the bones to make a stock. Never ever ever throw away bones without using them for stock. Another tip to avoid waste: put peelings from vegetables aside for making stock. We put them into a bag which we store in the freezer until we have enough to fill a pan. We also added to it leaves from leeks we picked on the allotment. I bought 2.5kg of cheap bacon last week so I added in 300g to the soup mix, along with some lentils and the pheasant meat. The result was vert pleasant.

Having just consumed the soup, I'm now getting ready to head off to the Hexham Beekeepers' Association meeting.