Ideas 4 Hobbies

How to make a perfect pond in easy steps.

How to make a perfect pond in easy steps.

1. Shape

It is very important to establish at the start what kind of pond you want. Fish, plant life or simply to listen to the sound of the water. If you have a small area located this could limit you to how many fish you can have.

Koi Pond needs to be no less than 1000 gallons in volume, the bigger the better. It also needs to have an area of the pond at least 3 feet deep, 4 – 5 may be better.

Water Garden needs to be 2 feet deep.

The below are simple directions for a basic plant pond
2. Where do we put it

I know it sounds daft but put it somewhere you can see it all year round. Think about the surroundings you don’t want to be collecting leaves off it all the time but you need to make sure that is some shade for part of the day if you want to have fish. The use of a pump pond will allow you to keep more fish, and also the sound of the pump / running water adds to the pond effect!

3. Get digging!

Mark out the ground and basic shape. Dig down ½ foot only from the outer edge to create a rim. Move roughly in one foot and dig down a further 2 feet to create a step. Move in another foot then dig the remainder of the pond.

4. Lining

Cut to fit the pond and put small pieces of tape to stop from moving when the pond liner is placed. Try to avoid folds and wrinkles. After the water is added the folds should flatten out.

5. Make it pretty

Place stones, sand and pebbles around the edge of the lining and pond.
5. Place the stone or other coping around the edge of the pond or water garden. Fill the pond with water to within a few inches from the top

Roasties

PERFECT ROAST POTATOES

To go with any roast diner as part of the trimmings, great roast potatoes are an essential part of any roast dinner, this is the way I like to cook them, give it a try and tell me what you think.

Ingredients as with all cooking is very important as any person that chooses cooking as a hobby should know. Chose a flowery potato, I find maris piper is a good variety, also the fat that you use to roast the potatoes in is also very important. For every day use normal vegetable oil will be fine but for those special occasion try goose fat, believe me it does add that extra depth of flavour to these roasties.

Put your roasting pan in a hot oven with the oil, whilst putting your potatoes on the hob and let them boil for a few minutes until they are just starting to become soft. Drain the potatoes and shake gently in the pan, this helps to give the potatoes a rough edge and makes them more crispy.

Put the potatoes into the hot roasting tin and baste in the cooking oil/fat, season and for the extra flavour add some chopped fresh rosemary. Then leave to roast in the top half of the oven turning the potatoes every half hour or so to ensure crispness all over.

Yum Yum!!

Sunday Lunch

ROAST CHICKEN DINNER

Cooked Sunday dinner this weekend, had a free-range chicken and the usual trimmings. Now chicken at time can be a little bland at times so here are my top tips for ensuring you get a flavoursome bird!

You pay for what you get, try and go for free range corn fed chicken, the cheaper ones that you get at the supermarket tend to be grown inside in confined spaces, get no exercise etc A happy chicken is a tasty chicken.

Mix up some herbs, what ever takes your fancy with some butter, lemon thyme goes great with chicken, I also like to mix in some garlic, salt and pepper. Then make a pocket between the skin and the breast meat and push the butter in smooth it out to get an even covering. Smooth the remaining butter over the chicken, this will help to baste the chicken whilst cooking whilst imparting a great flavour. Inserting half a lemon into the cooking cavity also helps to keep the bird moist.

Then stick the chicken in the oven around gas mark 5, about 45 mins per kilo plus 20 mins, once done leave to rest for 10 minutes under some foil to keep it warm.

Couscoustastic

I mentioned before about couscous that I had with my lamb tagine that I made the other week, so what is couscous?

Couscous is actually made from semolina which is sprinkled with water and rolled with the hands to form small pellets it is then sprinkled with dry flour to keep the pellets separate, and then sieved. The pellets which are too small to be finished grains of couscous fall through the sieve to be again sprinkled with dry semolina and rolled into pellets. This process continues until all the semolina has been formed into tiny grains of couscous.

To cook the couscous take a large cup fill it with water/stock and then pour it in a pan and heat (do not boil), add the same amount of couscous, stir then place on the lid and leave for 5 mins. Remove the lid then stir, the couscous should now be cooked but it can be fairly bland so you need to add flavours, depending on what you are serving it with.

Here are some of my favourites

• Oilve oil, pomegranate seeds and coriander
• Tomatoes, spring onions, pepper, coriander and diced dried fruit
• Cashew nuts

Basically use your imagination and add whatever you like!

Lamb Tagine

One of my favourite hobbies with which I like to experiment with , is my love of cooking, we had friends around for dinner the other week so I decided to go for a Moroccan influence and cook a lamb tagine. Well it went down very well so here is the basic recipe which is easy and simple to follow.

Chop up two onions a place them in a casserole dish along with two teaspoons of cumin, ground coriander seeds, turmeric, cinnamon, 2-3 cloves of crushed garlic and and about two inches of grated ginger.

Cook the onions and spices till soft, then add some diced lamb, two table spoons of tomato puree, two tins of chopped tomatoes and a two table spoons of honey or more if you like it sweeter.

Bring it to the boil then place on a low heat in the oven for 2-3 hours until the lamb is tender.

Serve with cous cous, which I ,like mixed in with coriander and pomegranate seeds

Enjoy!

One of my favorite pass times when I was younger was the Girl Guides. Unfortunately for me it now seems like long and distant memory
I thought I would look back. I remember all the bib bib dob dob or was that the Scouts……
History of guiding?
Well there was this fella called Robert Baden-Powell basically what he did was start up a boys club originally in on Brownsea Island in 1907. Following its success and after publishing a manual documenting the club, Baden-Powell soon found himself organizing the Boy Scout Movement.
Of course us girls wanted to get in on the action and following a relay at the Crystal Palace and what with us women not wanted to be left out some girls turned up too.
Because of the obvious interest that it seemed to generate from the Boys, Baden wanted to emulate the success for the Girls and asked his sister Agnes if she would manage the Girl Guide club. A few years later his wife Olave became involved
Did you know that’s the name however was originally the Girl Scouts, but it was changed as Baden did not want to encourage a tomboyish image for the girls and wanted a separate identity for the girls, independent form their brothers!!!! Baden-Powell decided that ‘Girl Guides’ would be a good name for young women following a trip to India where the word Guide referred to men going on very risky dangerous missions. Bring it on us women are prepared to take on death defying antics!

Up up and away….

I remember wanting to try a hobby that would take to the great outdoors a few years ago, so I looked up a number of options and found something called paragliding.

Paragliding is a hobby where u strap a big parachute to your back run off the side of a hill and hope that the wind takes you up in the air. I thought this looks great so I booked myself on a 1 day taster course, the benefits of this being that you don’t have to fork out on the equipment which can be quite expensive. Paragliding is also a cheaper alternative to hang gliding, gliding or flying one of those small one man planes.

Well I turned up on the day and was surprised how soon I was kitted out, I then spent most of it running up and down and hill. I did manage to get some 30ft up in the air for a few seconds before slowly drifting to the ground.

Would I try it again ? Yes, however to get the most out of it you need to invest a lot of money and training (£2000 +) as safety is very important especially when ur a few thousand feet off the ground !!!

Scoop it up !!

One thing that really annoys  me when I am out walking my dog is the lack of consideration to other people, by some individuals when scooping up the mess that there dog’s leave behind.

Its great that they do use  a bag to scoop it up but for heavens sake, don’t just throw the bag on the floor!!! The bag of dog mess will then just sit there for eternity until some poor sole decides to pick it up and remove it. If they just intend to leave it there anyway then don’t scoop it and give nature and the rain a chance to wash it away.

What doesn’t help the cause though is the fact that our local council cant be bothered to empty the bins they provide to dispose of the dog waste. Often the bins are overflowing  with a number of bags discarded on the floor.

Come on High Peak Council – sort this out!!!

On a lighter note a I was amused when on a recent trip to prague, the local council actually provides little paper bags and cardboard scoops for dog walkers, perhaps we could take a leaf out of there book !

James Bond

James Bond, a famous spy that we are all aware off, but if your Hobby revolves around computers then there are other Spy’s that you may not be aware of that you need top look out for.

A while back I noticed that my computer was starting to slow up a bit, I also noticed that the SPAM emails had started to increase in frequency more than the usual daily torrent.

This is usually down to spyware, which are essentially little programs or cookies that sit on your computer and pass information about you and your surfing habits back to websites or 3rd parties on the Internet. They  usually get on your computer through websites you visit or any programmes or applications you may download. The best way to get rid of them is to install a free programme of which there are a few on the Internet, this will then scan your computer a remove any of these unwanted annoyances. Two great programmes out there are spy-bot search and destroy and ad aware, both free. Windows also has a free built in programme called windows defender, as do most anti virus programmes, however I would recommend one of the stand alone free programmes.

Spam Spam Spam

If you use your computer at part of your hobby which I do, one of the biggest problem that can soon escalate is SPAM.  Now Ihear you saying what has a tin of meat got to do with a computer, SPAM is actually a word for junk email that you get sent, similar to what arrives through your front door every day but in an electronic form, not a tin or meat as featured in well known Monty Python Sketch.

So how do you deal with SPAM, well hear are some top tips that I use.

• Use an email client that has a built in SPAM filter, this should automatically place any unwanted emails in a separate folder
• There are a number of specific add-ons to filter spam that you can purchase, some free, some not
• Most anti virus software has built in spam filters
• Be careful who you give your email address to! this simple step is the most effective, have a web based email address that you use when filling in forms or purchasing goods etc and a separate one for friends and family and important sites etc. SPAM is usually sent from firms  that have  obtained your email after it has been sold on for marketing purposes.