Nothing But Onions

We finished off the Warninks Advocaat recently, so I thought I'd have a go at making my own. I thought it might be complicated, but after seeking out a few recipes on the Internet, it appears to be little more than a very alcoholic custard. Most recipes I saw were to make vast quantities of the stuff, so I came up with my own variant which produces a more manageable quantity. It has lightly cooked eggs in it, so won't keep forever, but should keep for a few days in the fridge.

So what's it like? Well, it's really rather nice. It tastes quite similar to the Warninks variety, but fresher and stronger. It sets just like custard, and so is best served as a pudding rather than a drink, although I guess you could add mixers such as lemonade to it to make the usual drinks and cocktails.

The chickens arrived yesterday - four to start with, two Black Rock and two White Star, all supposed to be good egg layers. We drove down to the Domestic Fowl Trust on Tuesday and selected a house and some birds, and they rang up yesterday asking if they could deliver that afternoon.

They haven't started to lay yet, but are just about old enough to start in the next week or two, although it'll probably take them a few days to settle down from the traumatic day yesterday of being driven up from Honeybourne.

The two Black Rocks have settled in well and look completely at home already, but the White Stars seem a little less at ease. We put some corn down for them earlier, and three of the birds leaped down and started hoovering it up immediately, but one of the White Stars seemed a little confused by the whole thing - she'd put her head down and poke around at the corn, but couldn't quite get the hang of actually eating the stuff. She seems fine with the pellets, it's just the corn that seems daunting for her. I'm sure she'll get the hang of it eventually.

Assuming they all start laying, it looks like we'll end up with a couple of dozen eggs a week from these four birds, so I think I'm going to have to start digging out all those egg recipes. Lots of omelettes, a baked egg custard or two, and I can feel some more Advocaat coming on...