carry on mincing

At the beginning of the week, I actually did some gardening, who could resist a garden in the countryside with a backdrop of the mountains...i couldn't, more than that the couple who own the garden are lovely,  so it's an all round no brainer. My hours are a little shorter and it is nice to come home for something different in the afternoon, it was also a very nice temperature on the Monday and Tuesday, although hot a good temperature to work with.

Major connection, we now have a telephone line, grande perseverance from Suzanne via orange in french, and a few days fiddling with various cables in the street on two separate occasions by french telecom, and after six years we now have a land line. Hurrah!!! 

Along with buying a phone which was originally the sole purpose of our visit to Lannemezan, we decided to have a quick look in Lidl's and Aldi, to see if there were any bargains to be had. Lannemezan is our next largish town about thirty minutes away. We bought a 1000gr of turkey and a climbing rose from Lidl's, both bargains.

I have been very excited about trying out my 1950's antique mincer which i bought in Dulwich just before we left, and the turkey was just the excuse i needed. It is a Harper and came amazingly in it's original packaging complete with A5 double sided how to use, only in english!  for those that get frustrated like me, that the brochure is about fifty pages thick with only the first three in the language you require.

I cleaned it thoroughly, although apart from a tiny patch of blue enamel peeling off the nut holding the handle and a few flakes of paint missing off the wooden handle it is in very good nick and very clean. It comes with two hole plates which dictate the size of your mince. You use the larger hole plate for raw meat.

The turkey that we had bought came in one great wedge and i cut it into chunks before feeding it into the machine. it worked like a dream,  i will be posting turkey mince recipes....watch this space. After feeding meat through you then feed chunks of bread into it to help the cleaning process. Although interesting it seemed to me a waste of bread as it was easier to  take apart and clean than the average food processor.

Another bargain of the week. A very nice Minnervois from Castelanau market
at just over one euro a litre