Wednesday 16th March - not twiglets

 I had one of the last bread rolls, cut into cubes and toasted into  crunchy croutons and spread with marmite as my 'little snackeral' this morning. They tasted just like twiglets! 

I had the 'every so often catch up' blood tests done last week, and there weren't any real surprises except for low folic acid. So they've sent me a prescription, but I remembered from years and years ago that marmite is a good source of vitamin B so bought some in the last shopping order to have on toast.

I didn't spread butter on the croutons so that made it more or less zero fat - but I suppose all that salt will be bad for me in some other way. 

Noah's Ark; two days again;

yesterday; Storks "Even the stork in the sky knows her appointed seasons, and the dove, the swift and the thrush observe the time of their migration." Jeremiah 8;7

today; Mountain goats "Do you know when the mountain goats give birth?" Job 39;1-2

Wild, or mountain goats reminded me of  'Wild Asses' from 'Carnival of the Animals'  I learned the hard way never to play this to the children unless they were calm, sitting in their own space and completely forbidden to get up and dance. 

'Now, children', (in my best Joyce Grenfell voice), 'I would like you to let your hands move with the music, but you MUST stay sitting down and you may NOT make any noise.' 

I adopted this kill-joy approach after one disaster lesson when 30 small children completely lost the plot one wild, wet, and windy day. I was lucky to get away without having to dial 999, or, even worse, call the head.

This version of it shows the score.... do you suppose the pianists play the whole lot in one breath?

This is the BACK of my current piece of embroidery - there's still a lot more to do, some green, some grey, some black... but I'm just so pleased about how tidy this looks. So far. It won't last! I've learned how to start off without leaving any knots. I'll post the completed picture sometime next week, hopefully.

The variegated threads are all that could have hoped for.

Yesterday was so ,lovely and sunny that we got out into the garden and cleared the winter detritus of leaves, weeds, and general scruffiness from the front of the house, pulling up more goose grass along the way. I mulled over sowing lettuce and radish and planting seed potatoes, but decided against. 'Tomorrow is another day'

Tomorrow yesterday is today, today, if you follow; In the morning the sky was dusty yellow from Saharan sand to begin with, and the temperature had dropped to that seeping cold that penetrates through to the skin. I expect the sand is now coating the car and everything else after half a day of determined, persistent rain. 'Tomorrow is another day?'  

Monday 14th March - Bread

 Today's Noah's Ark;

 'As for the earth, out of it comes bread; but underneath it is turned up as by fire. That no bird of prey knows, and the falcon's eye has not seen it'

Looks more like a blackbird to me, but let's not be too picky; if I tried to draw a falcon it would probably look just like this.

I'm more interested in the first part of the quotation; 'out of it comes bread'.

Experiments with bread making are still under way. While I was looking up youtube videos about satin stitch (try this one for starters) I tripped across this one for making bread without using the oven, and now I can't find it anymore which is ridiculous.

I've just had a go at it myself, and can tell you what I did;

I used my usual recipe for no-knead bread, reducing quantities slightly because - I don't know why I chose to do that. Anyway I used 12 ounces of  strong flour and about 3/4 teaspoon Doves yeast and 3/4 teaspoon salt and enough warm water to make the dough. It was fairly wet compared to traditional dough - what they call 'shaggy'. I mauled kneaded it in the bowl for a couple of minutes, and left it to double in size. 

Then I tipped it out onto a floured board,- very sticky, but a floured spatula overcame all resistance - gave it a good sorting until it became dough again, cut it into seven pieces and rolled them into balls.

Next; arrange them in a non-stick heavy pan

cover, and leave for half an hour. I'm glad I oiled the inside of the lid. You will be too. Cook for 15 minutes, covered, on a low heat - I noticed the setting for the hob in the video was 5, so did the same. 

This is what it looked like. Now here's the tricky bit, you have to flip it like a pancake, no, not like a pancake. Using oven gloves(!) hold a plate over the pan, tip it over, so that the bread is cooked side down on the plate, and then persuade the whole thing back into the pan. Hurrah! This looked very promising.

Cover and cook for another 15 minutes.

After which time it turned out, when I turned the bread out, that I had burned the bottom slightly.

  It still looks plausible. We shall find out at suppertime.

Gardening news,

It is as I thought; the reason why the strawberries didn't do so well last year is that they were infested with vine weevils. I had my suspicions, and when I upended the pot into an old dustbin lid to take a look I saw that the soil was packed with little fat corrugated white grubs curled up nose to tail. I've disposed of all the soil into the garden waste bin where I hope they will meet their end, and shall invest in nematodes.

What a brilliant name for the stuff! You mix them up in a watering can and water your pots with it.

The goose grass is just emerging, but thanks to a major effort in the past two years there is hardly any - yet. I pulled every strand I could find, early in the year before it had a chance to flower and seed, and kept at it, and managed to discourage it from getting a hold.

The little rosemary bush by the back door has just started flowering. It is one I bought from a supermarket and planted up when the old one died last Summer.

More Noah's Ark;

yesterday;

'Cast not your pearls before swine'

I've always enjoyed the quick wit of Dorothy Parker;

. According to the story I heard the other person was the glamorous socialite and playwright Clare Boothe Luce.

“Age before beauty” said Luce while yielding the way. “And pearls before swine,” replied Parker while gliding through the doorway. Is this quotation accurate and is this tale true?

Quote Investigator: There is more than one version of this story, and the earliest description does not refer to Clare Boothe Luce by name. However, the second oldest version does identify her and Dorothy Parker as the antagonists. Further, this version was written by the Hollywood columnist Sheilah Graham who claimed that she heard it directly from Parker in 1938.  (https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/06/29/pearls-before-swine/)

Do not be like the horse or the mule, which have no understanding but must be controlled by bit and bridle or they will not come to you. 

Hm. 

Monday 28th February - Looking back over February

 Knitting;

The sock is coming along - it stalled out twice; once when I picked it up after having a glass of wine and the subsequent effort of sorting out the consequences took most of the next day, and again when other projects took over. I've nearly finished the hell heel and then it should be plain sailing until I get to the toe. Now I'm hoping to get the other sock completed by the end of March.

I'm also mighty relieved to see that there is a good chance it will fit.

I put off knitting socks for years, until I could be sure that I would be able to persuade myself to knit the second sock. 'Second sock syndrome' is a well known condition in knitting circles.

I've finished the wristlets, commissioned by a friend after she saw mine. why is it, that when one knits for oneself  it all goes reasonably well, but making the slight alterations in order so make it for a friend causes endless complications, dropped stitches and other issues? 

Ah well, I'm at the stage of finishing off the loose ends - literally - and will soon put them in the post.

The greeny-blue jumper has also stalled out, but at least I got the 'hard thinking' part straight in my mind. I'm realising once again that it is probably unrealistic to start a winter jumper in Autumn, and similarly a Summer jumper in Spring. One should really be knitting thick heavy garments all through the long hot days of Summer, to be finished in time for the cold weather. And likewise creating airy-fairy items in linen and cotton all through the snows rains of December. 

As long as I don't get side tracked by the ideas currently filling my head for a wool cosy with felted steeks for my new tea pot..... the previous stump tea pot developed a crack and was leaking tea everywhere. This one is slightly smaller.

Sewing

I have been sewing a lot - another reason for the lack of progress in other areas. I completed the sewing kit, and the daffodil 'freestyle' picture, and I've nearly finished the stitchery swap postcard project I'm doing with Ang over on Tracing Rainbows. No pictures yet - I've got to wait until I'm sure she has had a chance to have a look first!

I think embroidery will be the new skill for 2022. Last year it was touch typing, which has stood me in good stead all year. Mind you, a bit of revision wouldn't come amiss.

Bread

I finished making the giant Hot Cross Bun on Saturday. Here it is about to go into the oven; 

And forty-five minutes later

And discovering we have no container large enough to store it in.

It has come out pretty well - I'm enjoying it - but himself isn't so keen. I shall slice and freeze it so that I can slowly consume it while he indulges in other more calorific treats.

I have cut one of the segments into cubes and toasted them in the air-fryer into little rusk-like bites to make snacklets for morning coffee. 

Well, I guess tomorrow's post will be 'Looking forward into March' - if I get it written -  

.

Friday 25th February - I'm on a roll

 Don't get toooooo used to daily blog posts from me.... 

Today I have made, or rather, started, a hot-cross-bun flavoured no-knead loaf. I have read various posts about taking no-knead-bread and turning it into bread rolls or iced cinnamon buns or whatever, but that's adding complexity to what is supposed to be a simple process.

I have not taken a picture, as at this stage it looks just like the olive bread - a bowl full of unlikely looking bread dough with bits in it. Once you've seen one, surely you've seen plenty? 

It will be more interesting tomorrow, when I have painted the cross on (a sort of slip made of clay flour and water, I believe; briefly got confused with the Pottery Throw Down Programme there) and baked it.

Don't ask for the recipe - it was the same as the olive bread, with salt this time, and 'some' brown sugar and 'some' mixed spice and 'some' mixed raisins - probably around 3/4 pint, on account of I have decided (I know this isn't quite right, but it is easier) that half a pint is roughly a cup.

I measure out the ingredients in a measuring jug - very easy, when butter isn't involved in the measuring.

The daffodil embroidery is finished; once again looking much better in the photograph, probably because the fuzzy focus does such a good job of hiding the irregularities. 

   Maybe I should sew a (protective) covering of fine gauze over all my efforts? To cover up the errors?

It's rather like when I am performing a piano piece, especially Chopin; the direction to vary the speed (rubato) ever so slightly to help make the melody more expressive can be used to delicately slow down on the approach to a tricky bit to make time to get your fingers around it, and then a careful almost imperceptible speeding up again afterwards. Ah, so poetic! Such expression!

A friend who is a gardener has started working in our garden on a regular basis from this morning. Wonderful! In an hour and a half she has given our border the 'spring chop', including the salvia Armistead plants which grew to an astonishing 7 feet tall last year. I have had to admit defeat as regards digging and weeding and all the 'bend-and-stretch' movements that gardening involves. I shall continue with my vegetable 'hobby plot'; because everything is growing in large tubs and I can sit down to work on them, or at least only bend half-way to the ground. 

We are mulling over a small extension at the front of the house to add a downstairs loo; I've had a conversation with a builder a few houses away who it currently engaged on doing just this. Unfortunately, it turns out that he is passionate about never wearing a mask, anywhere, ever; they are just for people who are ridiculously neurotic about germs and such like, and masks are totally unnecessary.

So he won't be getting the job, it we decide to go ahead. I'm still shielding, still taking precautions, still keeping my distance, still clinically vulnerable to any disease that would directly attack my respiratory system. For the past ten years I've known that catching 'flu would be worrying; catching covid would be a whole new level of concern and consequence. 

At the same time, I am glad for people who can feel more relaxed about the covid situation with the vaccinations and better treatments available; unfortunately the threat levels are not yet low enough for people of all ages in my situation - whether it's down to weakened immune systems, auto-immune disease or respiratory diseases.     

Hey ho. Whatever is going on here, it is nothing compared to what other people are enduring all over the world.

Tiny Joy of today; seeing both the the moon and the morning star through my bedroom window when I woke up!

Wednesday 23rd February - All fool's day is here for the long term

What? But yes, and this is all I have to say about removing all requirements to wear masks, discontinuing free testing for covid, and any other nonsense about 'the pandemic being over'. If you wish to disagree with me, don't. Just don't. Not here, not now - I'm too mithered about everything at the moment.

Moving on to other things....

I made no-knead olive bread the other day - the same recipe and method as before, except I added a load of olives chopped into quarters. About three-quarters of a pint. The recipe is all in American cups, which seemed dreadfully inconvenient, until you google and discover that it is 0.416337 of a pint. So that's easy. Half a pint will do.

I also left out the salt, as the olives were in a mixture of brine and oil, so plenty salty enough even after I drained them.

 I did wonder if the salt would inhibit the rise, but it all seemed fine. We had some with cold meat last night, I have given some away, we will eat some more with soup tonight and the rest tomorrow, or slice and freeze. The next experiment along these lines will be to make a giant hot cross bun. Soon; I'm not waiting for Good Friday.

Other baking news; I have dealt with some out-of-date suet by melting it up with bird seed and mealworms. Yum. Delish. I was pleased that I managed to prise it out of the dish once it had set 

(that was by no means a certainty) and have put it into the bird feeders, wait, did you think WE were going to have it for our lunch? Now I shall have to see if the birds want to have anything to do with it. 

Talking of Lent; I have restocked the chocolate box we were given for Christmas;

yup, mini-eggs and chocolate hearts from Devine, and underneath are various bars of dark chocolate. We are not giving up chocolate for Lent - I never do, because one of the New Year resolutions that I do manage to keep is to eat chocolate several times a week. 

I have calculated that I can also keep my promise to myself to buy no more than one Persephone book per month if I order it at the beginning of March and the end of April, while at the same time giving up buying or downloading any new books over Lent. (I still haven't decided if the Persephone book thing only applies to Lovely New Books, in which case I can look for second-hand books on-line as well. Watch this space.) Just recently I have been binge-reading Rom-Coms by Tricia Astley - recently? This started in the run up to Christmas, and now it is February. 'Download this book for 99p', it says, and so I click. It is still massively cheaper than going out for coffee and a cake a couple of times a week.

I have some activities lined up for the Observing of Lent, but we've still got a week to go. Let's not post everything on one day!

Finally; Ang has already blogged about the stitchery swap project that we have started - as she said, it is slightly scary! Embroidery is a new skill for this year for me. I have been making my eyes water stitching her address; I started with the last word so that by the tie I got to her name I might have improved slightly. At the rate of one word per day, I will have finished tomorrow. 

Oh me oh my, there's more to this backstitch than I ever thought possible! It is a bit of bravery and trust. Although we've been reading each other's blogs for several years, but have never spoken to each other or met up - yet!

As a respite from trying to be super-precise, I am doing an experimental free-hand sample, taking the needle for a walk. I did draw the outline a few times first with my vanishing purple pen, but the purple didn't really show and soon vanished so I just went ahead anyway. It is still a work-in-progress.

I'm feeling a bit chuffed though; it looks so much better in the picture than in real life! I have taken against satin stitch - too much like hard work - in a sort of ragged infilling looks much better. 'Rustic', as a friend said. It is an opportunity to try out things without minding about mistakes. I shall just leave the mistakes there as part of a 'how to (not) do it' reminder.

 

Sunday 13th February - No Knead Bread

I think I have come late to this particular party - this is bread that you make by stirring up flour, yeast, salt water into an unlikely looking mass, abandon it somewhere in the kitchen in that untidy state for six to eight hours, tip it out and persuade it into a reasonable shape;

let it rest from its disturbance, and then bake inside a very large metal casserole, removing the lid at the last moment. The result is a sort of artisan effect loaf, with a moist, chewy texture. At least. that's what I took out of the oven;

 

I didn't think to take a picture of the stirred up dough in the bowl before I put it in the fridge overnight - oh yes, that's where I had to leave mine, as time passed and it was too close to bedtime to do the equivalent of 'second rise and bake' stage. I have done this with conventional bread dough before; on that occasion I was rather alarmed to find that the dough had climbed part way out of the bowl and was making a bid for freedom. This time the dough had risen to the very top of the bowl but no further.

Here is a link to the recipe I followed (more or less).  It's American, so the measures are cups and the oven temperature is degrees F. I cooked it at about 210 C fan oven. An American cup is about 250ml; three cups of flour comes to a little over 400g, the size of an ordinary bread machine loaf..  

Here are some useful pictures from a different site showing what the dough looks like in a slightly different version;

www.jocooks.com

Looking at these pictures, I think I made the dough too wet at stage 2. I'll adjust the amount of water.

Searching onwards, I find that once can make 'no-knead' Hot Cross Buns. Now there's a thought.

I also made a yogurt pot cake the other day, possibly the first home-made cake since Christmas. I decided upon ginger this time, adding several chopped lumps of stem ginger in syrup and a serious shake of ground ginger, and using light brown sugar. The secret of making a cake last, is to cut the slices and bring them through on a plate, AND PUT THE TIN AWAY. Also, if you make your last mouthful or tea-and-cake or coffee-and-cake to be the tea or coffee, there is just the faintest chance that the cake might not be the lingering taste in your mouth.... 

 

Tuesday 31st July - Another Useful Day

Last night, towards suppertime, Himself appeared with an oozing jar. My sour-dough starter had been over-enthusiastic and managed to make it's way up and over and out of the jar, in spite of the (loose) lid. As the jar was on the top shelf, at his eye-level, it had appeared rather threatening when he had opening the fridge in search of supper. So, the final tasks before bed time were sorting out the sour dough starter into a loaf, a batch of overnight sour-dough pancakes, and a smaller, more manageable jar of starter.   

Today I managed to clear another load of tasks that had been cluttering up my head...

I had a letter and two cards to write, the loo to top-to-bottom clean (yes, as there is no alternative to the upstairs loo you are permitted to use it - carefully) and the downstairs floors to hoover.

I managed all this - and some bonus items as well; dusting the upstairs book case and my bedside table, sending off a music certificate straightaway within minutes of receiving it, and remembering to make the sour-dough pancakes with the mix I stirred up last night. (If you leave the "overnight sour dough pancake recipe" longer than overnight, the results are deeply unpleasant and go straight in the bin. Moral - taste the first cooked pancake before you put yourself to the trouble of making any more)

The sour dough loaf that I had put on overnight was less successful - if I make enough of these we could build an extension. I console myself with the thought that rye bread tends to be a bit solid and chewy, and it does have a very good flavour, especially with Jarlsberg cheese, or even honey.

Hurrah! I don't know how long all this industriousness will continue, but oddly enough, clearing the to-do list is lifting a weight off my mind. I've checked the scales - and regretfully I have to admit that it is not clearing any weight off my body.

I watched yet more watercolour painting videos yesterday and this morning. I'm finding the whole thing completely fascinating. You can click the back button and find something else on the internet if you are bored, because all the rest of this post is going to be pictures.

Here's an apple, drawn last night with Inktense pencils that I bought about five years ago... it is startlingly like the one in the book.

 
Here's a whole selection of different brush strokes made using a smallish flat brush

Here's a random flowery sort of page - the exercise was to paint imaginary flowers "fast and loose", not bothering with accuracy, but to just get the paint onto the paper. It gave me a chance to try the Rose and the Hookers Green that I bought yesterday. I am wowed by the rose colour.

 
I'm doing all these pictures in what I have taken to calling my "Book of Mistakes". It is the Journal that I was given several Christmases ago, and hadn't started yet. The paper is truly unsuitable for water colour, which is a great comfort because if I manage to produce anything half-way decent then that is a success indeed. The creator of the journal, Susan Hable, has obligingly filled half the pages with random designs and quotes, so my plan of completing the journal over the Summer is made that much easier. 



We had a phone call from our Canadian friends, bringing us up to speed with all their news - "ah well," they said, "time for us to get some breakfast". I looked at my watch - half past two.

By the way, the Fiat Panda is 0.9 l, not 2. Although it has 2 cylinders and is turbo. That sounds as if I know what I am typing.

Sunday 1st July - A busy lazy Sunday

Starting from last night, indeed; to Ightam Mote for "A Theatrical Event, talked, and themed meal" on the subject of John Singer's Sargent's "Girl in a white dress". Follow the link for all the blurb. The Grand Man (shall we leave out "old"? I think we should) arranged for us two, and himself, and a freiend to go, the caveat being that we provided the transport. All our fears of a beastly M25 journey were null and void - I think we had the smoothest, fastest, easiest trip there and back ever, (Oh the power of prayer, or was it crossed fingers that did the trick?)

The whole setting and story put me strongly in mind of "I Capture the Castle" by Dodie Smith, and I shall have to listen to it on CD again, (or even read the book).

The setting is just delightful, beautiful, magical, timeless - you choose. We will be going back.

Today I have be conscious of the double meaning of the word "render" while attempting to navigate through "Dear Lord and Father  of Mankind" at church - six verses are too many as one looses concentration halfway through. I reckon I did a decent job of getting round most of the notes for the first couple of verses, and managed to pull my self back together in time for the last. But no brainspace left for "Oh still small voice of calm" at the end.

I have made another sour-dough loaf; it's a lengthy process that I started yesterday evening, resulting in a little loaf this afternoon.

I have taken "an interesting photograph" (challenge for July - take an interesting photo every day, draw something every day, sit out in a green space for ten minutes (or was it 20 minutes? weather dependant, I rather think) every day.

This is the photograph;

   
I sense your puzzlement. But it is interesting to me; I have often pondered how all those petals fit into the tight buds, and un ravel themselves into flower. The agapanthus are just about to flower; you can see the tight, point buds, wrapped in a sort of papery kind of cover, and inside are all the little florets, bunched tight like a tub of cotton buds, and then different stages of sorting themselves out into the beautiful flowers that are about to happen. How? (And yes, that's my thumb. Edit it out yourself if you like).

I've been dabbling with watercolours, not to any great effect. I need to work on colour mixing, as my main area of expertise seems to be mixing mud.

I've been working on a Chopin Nocturne, no 1, off and on for a week or so. I put in some proper time and now first page is beginning to come together, sometimes. Hoping to have got it working more reliably in another couple of days

I've completed week one of my www.futurelearn jazz piano level 1 course. All going swimmingly until I tried recording it - the extra pressure sends all my improvisations in unexpected directions, and then I forget the main tune and end up improvising that as well. We're working on "Things aint what they used to be", and I'm a leetle tired of that now (so is anyone else sharing the house, I suspect).

Only three weeks of term left... survival becomes a possibility.

 

Sunday 24th June - It's been a while since I wrote...

Looks like the last post was a long week ago...

I'm in that phase of the term where Summer concerts loom and schedules disarrange themselves. Which is what has been happening over the last ten days. I shall be S-O-O-O GLAD when I have reduced my school teaching next term. Most of the lost income from giving up those three afternoons a week has been reclaimed in piano teaching. Already. That's great, except I haven't actually given up the school teaching yet. Slight mis-match in timing? I should say so!

Which means I am currently teaching 59 assorted lessons a week, and instead of getting irritated when some of the piano pupils cancel, I'm relieved...

Assorted lessons?
46 x Piano, 2 x Recorder, 1 x Samba, 1 x Ocarina, 2 x Ukulele, 4 x Teaching songs for school shows, 1 x Teaching soloists for school shows, 1 x Theory, 1 x Drumming and 1 x Guitar. I think that's the lot.

On Monday last week I had the second of three annual osteoporosis treatments; an intravenous infusion of zolendronic acid. With a name like that it sounds as though it should cure everything. The actual treatment was a bit of a non-event, and I happily taught all the morning and evening piano lessons. Then, at seven-thirty pm, I just completely ran out of awake-ness, and had to go to bed. Just like that. Extraordinary. But I was fine again the next day, and the rest of the week. So far so good!

Today, the sour dough starter that I have been nurturing for nearly 2 weeks was ready for turning into a loaf of bread. Ta-da!

That worked ok! I've tasted a bit, and it seems to be a sour-dough loaf. I used the make-it-in-a-bread-machine process, as doing it by hand would have occupied most of the day, off and on. The remaining starter is in the fridge, where it is supposed to hibernate, not try and climb out of the jar. I shall have to find a larger container.

I'm still brewing up batches of kefir, so the fridge tends to be full of weird-looking substances, fermenting, or separating, or just in a jar.

The kimchi has gone though. I tried my version, and wasn't that enthusiastic. Then I had a brainwave - let's go to Wagamama and try theirs! We went last Saturday. Now, you can't just go in and buy a single side order of kimchi, so we had lollipop prawns, bang-bang chilli cauliflower, and a main meal each as well. I have to say I didn't like their kimchi either, so I've lobbed the lot into the compost bin. Let's hope the worms like the taste, otherwise I shall find a load of foul fermented sludge in there when I come to extract the compost! I was rather embarrassed when I came to pay the bill - I had intended to give a £4 tip, but unfortunately pressed the wrong button so they only got 4p. at the wrong time. That's a bit of an Oops.


What else to report? Ah Yes. Reports; I've been grumping over the amount of unpaid admin that seeps into my life, courtesy of "the office". Like music reports. Well, I've done them now, only three or four hours time. It's a rubbish system, getting the reports written, countersigned, separated out into individual pupils and emails to the parents and the school, especially for someone like me who is not gifted in the areas of accuracy. I've spent a good deal of the time double checking that the correct report is going to the correct person with the correct email address and the correct parent name... klaxon KLAXON DATA BREACH DATA BREACH but no, I think I've avoided that catastrophe... fingers crossed...

So, another week (or thereabouts) has passed, and I have just four more weeks and two days of this term left. And counting...

Monday 11th June - Sourdough loaves, Breadmakers, Haikus

This is just a random hurdy-gurdy of what's filling my brain at the moment;

Working backwards... (why not!)

Haikus

Last night, before I went to bed, I did some work on the "Making Poetry" free online course from www.futurelearn.com that I'm part way through.

So far I've dabbled with sestinas and villanelles, and now it was the turn of Haiku. They hadn't been heard of when I did English Lit at school (I don't remember that we did much in the way of poetry anyway!)

The current poetry task is to take two words to use are "prompts" and make a poem. The haiku is a terrible, terrible thing!

Haiku (or hokku) A Japanese verse form most often composed, in English versions, of three unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five syllables. A haiku often features an image, or a pair of images, meant to depict the essence of a specific moment in time.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/learn/glossary-terms/haiku-or-hokku

Terrible, in that when you are lying awake at night, trying to get to sleep, to have your mind invaded by haiku-mania is a sure-fire way of staying awake for ever.

I find a haiku
is rather more difficult
than I thought at first.

"You'll be surprised",
they said in the instructions
"at what you'll achieve".

My head's full of words
in never-ending circles
that create nonsense.

Please, please, make it stop!
I'm desperate to be sleeping!
not counting the words.

and so forth.

At one point I started a villanelle


I'm lying awake
Turning words round in my head
Constructing haikus

words filling my mind
do not encourage slumber
I'm lying awake..

It's quite a puzzle
to choose the perfect phrase when
Constructing haikus

And a villanelle!
It's no wonder that I find
I'm lying awake.

The words I should use,
'Hope' and 'loom', won't flow when
constructing haikus.

criss cross threads of day, warp, weft
hope in my story's loom while
I'm lying awake
Constructing haikus

It's not great, but it will have to do!

Breadmaking Machines

I've just put this into today's blog as this is a link to making sourdough bread in the bread machine which looks promising. I thought if I posted it here there was a chance I might not lose it.

http://blog.rachelcotterill.com/2014/04/making-sourdough-in-bread-machine.html

Sour-Dough Loaves

I've rashly begun a second starter.

The first one comes from a book all about "healthy fermented foods". It (the starter, not the book) is made with rye flour and will take 14 days to be ready. It involves an awful lot of discarding most of what you have brewed up every couple of days while you are growing it.

The second one uses "all-purpose" flour - I'm hoping that white bread flour will do the trick, and came from here  This should be ready in five days and doesn't involve chucking most of it away, which is probably why they stipulate a 2 quart (? of, four pints. why didn't you say so) bowl.
I've hidden it at the back of the counter so maybe he won't notice it...

But then I read the recipe for making the actual bread. What a faff! Making puff pastry from scratch would be less tie consuming! The whole process takes several days of kneading and proving and shaping and proving and turning and rising...

which is why I started wondering about bread machine recipes. I'm not bothered about healthy or authentic - just let me have some home-made sour-dough bread!

All these sour-dough loaves
are needy, demanding and,
attention-seeking.

Thursday 5th January - Nigel Slater's Bread

This isn't really a proper post - I just liked the look of this recipe and didn't want to lose it.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/jan/01/nigel-slater-new-years-day-knead-free-knobbly-loaf

Nigel Slater’s New Year’s Day knead-free knobbly loaf

 Start 2017 with a crunch: linseed and treacle bread. Photograph: Jonathan Lovekin for the Observer

Nigel Slater

Sunday 1 January 2017 12.00 GMTLast modified on Sunday 1 January 2017 12.29 GMT

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Ibegin the year with flour on my hands. Something of a ritual. The kneading of dough is the way I have started the new year for as long as I can remember. This time though, a change of step. A dough that requires mixing, cake-like, in a capacious bowl, rather than pummelling on a board. One that requires little kneading – only one proving, and keeps like an old friend.

This is a sticky dough, too wet to push and stretch with your hand. The texture is akin to Christmas cake and almost as generously stippled with fruit and seeds. The bread itself is sweet with sultanas, has the soft crunch of pumpkin and sunflower seeds and is as dark as a ginger cake.

A dose of black treacle ensures the loaf is a keeper: four or five days if wrapped tightly. The pebbledash of seeds ensures not only an interesting texture to each cut slice, but a sprinkling of fibre and a handful of the sort of good things you find listed on the side of a cornflakes packet. The golden linseed, especially when lightly crushed, brings with it the gift of omega-3 fats.

Once the fruit-freckled dough has risen to almost twice its size, I lift it carefully from its bowl, trying not to disturb its dumpy, dome-like shape, place it straight down on to a hot baking stone and then into the hot oven. Its shape returns like a plumped-up cushion. Use a loaf tin if you like your toast neat.

As much as I enjoy trickling olive oil over black-crusted sourdough, for densely textured, slightly sweeter breads such as this, it has to be butter. A pale, unsullied butter is ointment enough, but this time I go to town seasoning a pack of sweet, almost white, unsalted butter with onions cooked to a deep bronze, snipped dill, juniper and crystalline flakes of smoked sea salt. It’s a butter that stands up well with a breakfast kipper, melting sweetly over the mahogany surface of the smoked flesh, and is just the job to fork into the fluffy heart of a baked potato on a frosty night.

Linseed and treacle bread

I heartily recommend putting a baking stone in the oven to heat up first. Makes a medium-sized loaf.

rye flour 200g
strong white bread flour 200g
barley flakes 50g
sea salt 1 tsp
black treacle 2 tbsp, lightly heaped
warm water 350ml
fast-acting yeast 1 x 7g sachet
rolled oats 40g
pumpkin seeds 35g
sunflower seeds 25g
golden linseeds 30g
golden sultanas 75g

Warm a deep, wide mixing bowl. The warmth will help your dough rise more quickly. Combine the flours and barley flakes then lightly crush the sea salt flakes in the palm of your hand and stir them in.

It is sweet with sultanas, crunchy with seeds and dark as a ginger cake

Put the black treacle into a jug then stir in the warm water, dissolving the treacle as you stir. Tip in the yeast, let it dissolve then pour into the flour and barley. Using a wooden spoon rather than your hands – the dough is sticky – stir in the rolled oats, pumpkin, sunflower, golden linseeds and sultanas. Mix for a full minute, so the flour, liquid, seeds and fruits are thoroughly combined. The texture of the dough should be very moist, poised between that of a bread dough and a cake mixture.

Dust the surface lightly with flour, cover with a tea towel and leave in a warm place for an hour or so. Any warm, draught-free spot will work. Check the bowl occasionally to make sure it is warm, but not too hot.

Get the oven hot – it will need to be at 220C/gas mark 8. If you have one, place a bread or pizza stone, generously floured, in the oven to get hot. Failing that, a baking sheet will do. When the oven is up to temperature and the dough has risen to almost twice its original volume, transfer it to the hot baking stone or sheet, reshaping it into a round loaf as you go. Bake for 35 minutes, until the crust is lightly crisp and the base sounds hollow when tapped.

Transfer the warm loaf to a cooling rack and allow to rest for a good 30 minutes before slicing. The loaf will keep, wrapped in clingfilm and foil, for 4 or 5 days.

Monday 1st August - Lammas Day

Lammas Day? What's that? A Cross-quarter Day.

The Quarter Days are

• Lady Day            25th March
• Midsummer        24th June
• Michaelmas        29thSeptember
• Christmas Day    25th December

when traditionally servants were hired, rents were due and so on. The tax year starts on "Old Lady Day", 6th April, from when the calendars changed (all that Julian/Gregorian calendar stuff that I've never got to grips with.)

The Cross-Quarter days are

• Candlemas          1st February
• May Day             1st May
• Lammas              1st August
• All Hallows        1st September

and Lammas is also the first day of the harvest,

Sir George Clausen, 'Harvest (Tying the Sheaves)'

when you bake a special loaf using the first of the harvest and take it to be blessed. (And then use it to work protective magic charms for the rest of the year!)

This is the place to go to learn about all things to do with Lammas  and also where I found this picture.

Well, here are our "first fruits"; well, nearly all the first fruits - there were five wild strawberries the day before yesterday, and four cherry tomatoes, but I didn't know about Lammas then, so we just ate them. It doesn't look as though there will be any more strawberries this year. Blackberries won't be an issue - as usual the flowerbeds are full of brambles.

I also baked a loaf - because we had the two last, rather dry, slices from the old one as toast with our fry up at lunch time. I also made a cake, as I noticed that the eggs we had needed using up. The only strawberry jam I could find was a brand new jar of  Tiptree "Little Scarlett" wild strawberry jam -  not what I would usually lavish on a Victoria sponge, but, my word, it tasted good! 

Monday 16th May - Garlic Alert

Quick and Easy Garlic "Bread"

Make fairly thick toast
Cut a garlic clove in half across the middle
Rub the surface of the toast all over with the cut side of the garlic; be generous
Spread the toast with butter
Eat

You can make this into a tapas snack as follows;

before you start toasting the bread, skin, de-seed amd chop some very ripe tomatoes and put into a sieve to drain.

Make the "garlic bread" and spread it with the drained tomato, sprinkled with a litte salt and papper and torn fresh basil leaves.

Garlic Croutons

Pre-heat oven to about 165C (fan)
Cut thick slices of bread - it doesn't have to be too fresh.
Remove crusts and cut the slices into cubes.
Put the cubes into a bowl, sprinkle with salt, pepper, herbs, crushed garlic and virgin olive oil - about a desert spoon of oil per slice of bread.
Toss everything around so that all the cubes are coated.
Line a baking sheet or roasting tray with baking paper, spread the cubes out in a single layer, and bake for around 10 minutes. Set a timer - it is easy to let them burn.

Sunday 26th April 2015 - Sour Dough, episode 1

Last week I had enough spare energy on Monday and Tuesday to make Oaty Chocolate Brownies (that used up the last of the Easter chocolate very nicely) and make an attempt on Muesli biscuits. No pictures, because we've eaten them all. The Brownies weren't bad - a little dry maybe -  and the biscuits tasted good but were dangerously tooth-breakingly hard towards the end. I need to work out how to make them a little gentler - less syrup, more sugar, maybe.

Over the Easter holidays I wanted to try making sour-dough bread - that was going to be the holiday project.

It was not to be.

So, a couple of weeks later, I'm going to have a go.

Here's the "starter"; a mixture of four, water and fast-action yeast. Now it has to be left, covered with cling film, at room temperature for about 24 hours.

(to be continued...)