If you are lucky enough to have plenty of blackberries growing in the hedgerows nearby then you, like me, probably still have a freezer full of berries from picking last autumn!
As I was rapidly running out of freezer space I decided that it was time to deal with the backlog of berries and turn them into one of the most delicious preserves, Bramble Jelly.
We have 
this lovely Peggy Porschen Cupcake book to give away to one lucky person!
All details about the prize and how to enter are on the Competition Page
Good Luck!
Until I had discovered how simple (not to mention thrifty!) it is to make fresh chicken stock, making gravy had never been an issue – you simply spooned the granules out of the tub into a jug and poured over boiling water…nothing could be easier.
But then I did make stock and it was a natural progression to give the gravy thing a go. Now, I never have been a great lover of gravy to be honest… a splash over the roast potatoes is plenty for me but the rest of the family are all hardened gravy addicts – the thicker the better and lashings of it!
At the moment, chickens really do seem to be very good value. Waitrose (not often thought of as a bargain supermarket!) are currently running a ‘Half-Price’ campaign across their stores, which does include medium size birds. So a chicken of about 2kg is costing less than £3.50 right now until the end of January!
So, with a half empty freezer we decided to take full advantage and stock up on as many chickens as we could fit in!
For years I have always used stock cubes whenever I needed to cook anything that called for ‘a little fresh stock’. Making it from scratch seemed such a fuss and not really worth the effort but, as we had recently bought so many chickens to cut up into joints for the freezer (see the post here), I thought it was about time I really should give it a go.
This recipe comes from one of my favourite cookbooks Cooking Is Fun from Good Housekeeping.
It is incredibly easy, needs only a few ingredients and, although it maybe won’t win any prizes for it’s looks, it is incredibly tasty – not to mention very cheap to make!
You may have noticed that here at the Thrifty Squirrels we are quite fond of an occasional sweet treat! Unfortunately Brian has type 2 diabetes and so cannot indulge in the tasting process of these new recipes as much as he would like.
So when I received a pack of Sweetly Stevia
