Selfsufficientish.com

It is similar to comments I've read on another forum (mainly from Australians) who have installed solar panels. They make more per unit selling the electricity back to the company than it costs them to buy, so they produce solar electricity all day to sell back and then use electricity-guzzlers lik...

If the leaves are still soft and supple, they're young enough. Beech is quite easy to identify ( link ), the trunk has smooth silver-grey bark, the leaf, bud sheath and twig pattern are all very distinctive. If in doubt, post a few photos of what you've found - detail of a leaf, a wider shot showing...

Make a strong, fizzy, dry cider and dilute with apple juice in the glass for sweetness. Or sweeten in the glass with a drop of sugar syrup.

Or, there are several artificial/nonfermentable sweeteners you could try. If you don't like one, try another.

Be very careful using recipes from older recipe books - CJJ Freezer is very popular, but he's very heavy-handed with the sugar for the modern palate. You mention "sweet sherry" flavour, the sweetness can mean you're overdoing the sugar but sherry flavours could be air getting to the wine d...

It could be that the forum has something like skimlinks working as an affiliate programme. Or it could be something on your end, a browser add-in that you may have unwittingly picked up. I don't see these, so perhaps it's your end. Check which browser extensions/add-ins you have running and see if d...

Todays recipe..

900 g frozen sea buckthorn berries
300 g sugar
1 litre gin
1x vanilla pod

Now to leave it alone for seven or eight weeks, except for the occasional shake.

You're charged by the water company for them accepting the rainwater from your roof into the sewer. They don't own the rain, but they do charge you to take it away. It's usually based on a percentage of your rates/meter reading. However, if your rainwater system does not connect to the sewer (ie. 10...

Look for a UFAS registered merchant of manufacturer. There's a search tool here - select "UFAS - Merchants/Distributors" for someone that will sell small quantities. You could try approaching feedmills directly, but they don't all supply bagged feed. As you don't say where in the country y...

Definitely sounds like a Magnolia, round here the Magnolia stellata are in flower, and the large cup-flowered trees have fat buds just itching to break.

Dan Person had an article in the Guardian recently on growing them - http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/ ... -magnolias

To paraphrase some social media training I was given.. Write interesting/useful content. Like other people/pages/groups with similar interests, including your customers and groups of interest to people you'd like to be your customers Write interesting content Share your content with like-minded peop...

But I'd call the sweep in the morning. I'm not recommending the sweep so you can get your flue swept, I'm recommending him as a professional sweep should be able to assess the stove and flue and determine what the problem is. One very quick check you can make is the draught, you've not recently imp...

Could be door seal, or any of the seals on the flue, or movement of the flue. Or it could be a door hinge and the door misaligning. Or a more general flue problem and flue gases escaping via the air inlets. Or it could be the CO alarm crying out for a new battery (refer to manual). But I'd call the ...

I've discovered that a group at UEA is researching them as a possible crop for the UK, not sure what there is to research as it's commercially grown in Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, and in China the scale that it's grown on is incredible. It's rather tasty, almost tropical in flavour, and once you try...

I retrieved some of the seeds from the frozen fruit before making the cordial, and they were sown in some damp vermiculite on a windowsill. I noticed today that about 1/2-a-dozen have germinated. I might not have the spuds in the ground yet (might get them in at the weekend), but I now have sea buck...

bonniethomas06 wrote:Isn't Retzina made from pine needles? I drank rather too much of it on a holiday to Greece and even the thought of it is making me feel very very squeamish.

According to Wiki, it's made by adding the resin of Pinus halepensis (the Aleppo pine) to the wine.