Monthly Archives: March 2016

Sourdough Thursday

It’s a sourdough day on Thursday, and all the new starters (prepared after the last soda bread session) will be coming out for inspection. I have to admit that although I’m fascinated by the history of sourdough (and by the fact that various cultures can claim to trace their roots back to the California gold rush of 1849) I’m not a great fan of the bread.

Sorry if that’s heresy amongst bread makers, but it’s the truth. The flavour of a proper sourdough loaf is too intense for me and although I know there are good reasons for making sourdough, I can’t, in truth, be bothered with all the messing about when you can buy perfectly good tinned yeast from the supermarket. As an aside, I do have a use for a starter, because I use it in my presentation for schools when we show them dried yeast, fresh yeast (often identified as chicken or cheese when I ask what they think it is) and a sourdough starter. I did it last week and, as it hadn’t been opened for a while, managed a very pungent experience for the visiting kids. There were definite smells of beer and vinegar with a particularly noticeable smell of nail varnish remover.

Talking of thoughts on bread flavour, we have done several bread tastings with schools using a variety of bought and home-baked bread. The favourite is always – white, spongy supermarket bread. I’ve even bought TESCO’s cheapest white sliced and it still beats the good stuff. Makes you wonder what you need to do to promote real bread doesn’t it?

The newly made starters won’t be as strong as mine yet (or the one pictured below), and definitely won’t be covered in black liquid yet, but it should still be an interesting session.

Just a short post to start the week, as it’s a busy week and I am supposed to be working.

Correction: Due to a change in plans Sourdough Thursday has been put back by a fortnight.

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Tolkien’s Banjo

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I’ve just been watching an episode of Lewis on TV. In it, an art student was conducting tours of unknown Oxford, including telling people about a crocodile in the river and that Tolkien was well known for playing the banjo in the pub. However, a brief survey of the internet throws up several crocodile references, including a reference to fossil crocodiles. There is even a serious reference to Tolkien and banjos.

They say that truth is stranger than fiction, and in this case, though it’s difficult to measure strangeness, it would seem that this might be the case.

It is inevitable that I end up pressing more links once I get going, and as a fan of the Narnia books it seemed in order to search for “C. S. Lewis” and “harmonica”. How many do you think there are? I didn’t think there would be any but it seems there are a lot of religious people on forums who discuss harmonica playing and use quotes from Lewis in their signatures. 187,000 to be precise.

I would have loved to have turned up a reference to the Inklings running musical evenings but it seems I am to be thwarted. Instead I have managed to find that Lewis didn’t think that Pauline Baynes could draw lions, that Baynes learned her map drawing skills with the Admiralty in WW2, and that Kipling wrote a poem about banjos (it’s a long poem, and not one of his best).

As a result of this I searched for some help on concentration skills. I liked this list, and already have the “eat breakfast” and “take breaks” bits covered. That just leaves 14 more to master…

Knitting and stuff

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Main feature of the day was the woolly workshop, though the main things that will stick in my mind is the letter from Nottinghamshire County Council wanting to see all our quality assurance documentation and the call from the Fat Police.

NCC, as always, seem to assume that we have a bloated administrative structure with little better to do than produce words and waffle. I will say no more, but you can probably read my mind on that one.

The Fat Police, who aren’t really called that, they are “something for change” or something like that, rang me after the practice ratted me out as a fatty last time I visited. And what did they do? They rang me to make a telephone appointment for somebody else to call me. In two week’s time. It’s a bit of a long drawn out process, but it suits me, as I’m not that keen on the process of starvation that seems to be involved in weight loss. Bit casual for the NHS, considering they keep telling me I’m in danger of dropping dead.

All that plus home baked bread from one of the group, which went down nicely with another version of the cheap orange-coloured soup (carrot, parsnip, onion, potato, black pepper, stock cube). I like white bread, though it seems a bit like a guilty pleasure in these days of wholemeal, sourdough and spelt.

Anyway, as you can see from the pictures Jen Hunter’s woolly workshop was a great success and most of the group, plus some of the village, will be sporting snoods next week. Men in Sheds will be producing the knitting rings in the near future too. She will be talking at the meeting this evening too.

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The great idea

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Well , it seemed great. If I do away with oil or sprinkled flour on the baking trays whilst cooking pizza, I reasoned, I could do away with washing the trays, cycle the equipment faster between groups and, by writing initials on the paper, could identify the pizzas more easily.

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Great in theory.

In practice I did avoid any washing up, so that was a plus.

But the green marker pen I originally used (because you never really use the green one do you?) proved unequal to the job. I’m tempted to say it faded badly, but that would be unfair because it actually faded really well. In most cases it disappeared or left a faint green shimmer.*

The black was far better. Not sure whether to try the blue or the red next time, or stick to black.

Not that it really mattered because we had a 100% identification rate for the pizzas anyway. No arguing, no tears and no tantrums (from me or the kids). It’s all going too well.

Meanwhile, back at the photos, I can’t get titles on them. It shows pizzas, black writing, green writing and a pizza in the shape of Italy. That would have been really imaginative wouldn’t it. Then he spoilt it all by telling me it was a football sock.

Ah well!

*This is similar to the rhetorical question I often heard asked on campsites in the days I fought with the Sealed Knot. Some broken wreck, usually male, would shamble past groaning “Do you know what’s good for a hangover?” to which I would perkily reply, “Fifteen pints of bitter and a kebab usually does the job for me.”

It didn’t go down well.

What the poor addlepated coxcomb meant, of course, was “Do you know what’s good for getting rid of a hangover?”

Sometimes we can be very unclear in our meanings.

Goats and Diplomas

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We have our first school visit of the year tomorrow. Having misread the calendar, I thought it was next Tuesday. Now, though I’m not exactly in a panic, I’m not quite as relaxed as I could be.

News just in from the allotment, that the comfrey patch has been wrecked, has helped to further elevate the stress levels.

You wouldn’t think it was hard to manage a site where you can see (and even shout) from one end to the other, but it is. You’d also think that most people, knowing that we have a butterfly garden, would leave buddleias as butterfly food. But they don’t – although they haven’t actually pulled any out this year they did try to weed them out several times in the last couple of years.

To be honest, I’m beginning to wonder if I’d be better killing a few of them and burying them in the bean trench. The volunteers, that is, not the buddleia or the comfrey, which, unlike the volunteers, are both useful in the garden.

The good news is that the goats are looking good, that the potato and leek soup went down well, that we are having home-baked bread on Wednesday and that we are embarking on an exercise in scientific poultry management.

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I am putting some kit together and by next week we should be in a position to monitor egg weights, bird weights and food consumption. We started by counting the birds today. We’re going to do it again on Wednesday just to be sure (they will keep moving!)

So that’s it, our customary halting progress, with one step forward and two steps back, but at least we’re doing it in the sunshine.

I will leave you with that positive thought, and a selection of goat pictures.

No, actually I’ll leave you with a picture of Julia and her new Diploma in Human Nutrition. I’m suspicious, but she seems to think it qualifies her to pass comment on my diet (apparently “chips” and “fried food” aren’t recognised as food groups by the awarding body) and who am I to argue? I’m at an age where I wouldn’t be able to find anyone else to put up with me if she kicks me into touch so looks like I’ll have to grin and bear it (at least until I perfect the art of slipping out for illicit burgers).

Note serious expression and scholarly spectacles.

The sun is shining…

A day of mixed fortunes

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Turned over, got up late, drove to Peterborough, saw a buzzard and a red kite on the way (both good sightings), helped sister, saw father, drove long way home, another good kite sighting, shopping at TESCO in Corby…

That was when it became slightly surreal when I decide to buy three of their 35 pence carrier bags.. They are security tagged. Yes, security tagged 35p bags. It seems they aren’t the only ones though.

Got home – Number One son microwaved my evening meal – pie, potatoes, green beans and creamed spinach. Ate spinach, wiped beard, tried a bit of pie.

A microwaved pie, even after the delay whilst eating spinach, stays extremely hot. Hence the blisters…

Then I ate some sugared almonds and broke a tooth. Luckily it was the one I’d had repaired with some sort of resin a couple of weeks ago. It hadn’t seemed like a very durable repair at the time, so I’m unhappy but not exactly surprised.

A day of mixed fortunes indeed, and now I’m also getting grief from WordPress about using 91% of my capacity. Anyone think it’s worth paying for an upgrade or should I just start deleting old photos?

Give a man a fish…

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Give a man a fish and you will feed him for a day, the saying goes, but give that man a fishing rod and you won’t see him all weekend.

It’s a bit like that for Men in Sheds – from what I saw today there will be many puzzled women wondering why their days are no longer cluttered up by husbands getting under their feet. Membership is growing and they are now looking to open on another day.

That’s good for us, because today we had a site meeting and we now have a design for our loaf of bread installation (I hesitate to call it a sculpture and it definitely won’t be art.)

If we can secure funding the loaf will be the centre-piece of our Open Farm Sunday display and the education tent at Flintham Ploughing match. If we can’t secure funding we will have to work round it, probably by recycling something. It won’t look as neat, and someone always end us saying “I was going to use that…” but it will still go ahead.

After looking at the cost of new wood it strikes me it will be cheaper to buy a garden shed.

The workshop is looking good after the new sockets were fitted and the Community Payback team spent a couple of days doing things up. It helps that their supervisor is into Health and Safety and has a lot of workshop experience.

We now have two donated chicken sheds well on the way to restoration, someone has just given us the contents of their store shed (which included roofing felt for the chicken sheds – how lucky was that?) and a local livery stable has donated work benches and various other things. We are now in the process of enlarging the back doors so we can get the benches into the workshop.

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Back to Basics – Soda Bread

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Bread Group again today and we were back to that old favourite – Soda Bread. I’ve made a lot of soda bread over the years, and, as chive soda bread scones, it formed the basis of my early teaching sessions in the kitchen. It’s quick and easy to make and, as scones, it bakes quickly. You can also include cheese or sultanas (when it is known as Spotted Dog).

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However, the bread can range from stodgy to downright unpleasant (if you don’t get the baking soda distributed properly) and pizza is a lot easier to eat. On top of that, it’s not really much of a learning process for people who are used to making yeasted breads.

Fortunately, It’s always fun in the Bread group, whatever we make and there were plenty of stories and photos from India now everyone is back. so everybody got on with the job, even though a number of people declared in advance that they didn’t want to eat the end result.

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Ironically, the person who asked for it wasn’t able to come today.

The trick with soda bread is to have the oven ready, the dry ingredients mixed thoroughly and sieved, and then pour in the buttermilk, mix it, shape it, cut it and bung it in the oven as quickly as possible. The reaction between buttermilk and baking soda is quite quick and you need to be as organised as possible to ensure you get the maximum benefit from it.

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If you want the recipe it is here.

There are plenty of other recipes out there if you want to look – including those using plain milk or yoghurt.

Days of whine and roses

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Press this link if you want to see a rant in defence of rugby, which is currently under attack from various people whining about how dangerous it is for kids. It’s more dangerous for adults. I crocked myself quite badly during the practical section of the referee’s course where a child would merely have bounced up and carried on running.

Here are some pictures of the cookies we were given at the meeting yesterday, which were still warm when we ate them. They were from the recipe given at the cookery demonstration last week, but as I wasn’t there I’m not sure what the recipe was. My verdict – good and chocolatey and probably good for me as they seemed to contain fibre. As usual I didn’t remember the picture until the end. They were the best bit of the meeting.

I’ve been writing the minutes today, and still can’t believe we did so much talking about so little of importance.

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Today we took some photos of the new goats (seven born in one weekend – no I can’t tell you how it was done, and I doubt I could do it again).

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We followed up with soup (sweet potato, potato, onion, chilli and garlic) from the soup maker and made bath bombs with dried roses roses on top and Mother’s Day cards with foam flowers.

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And yes, I’ve been waiting for the right time to use that title! The only problem now I’ve used it is that I may have used it before – on going to find a link for Ernest Dowson it seems familiar. Not the poem, the finding of the link to the poem. If I have done it before I apologise, if not, maybe I should reassess my stance about sports which lead to repeated blows to the head.

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Life after the Care Farm

Monthly Archives: March 2016

Sourdough Thursday

Correction: Due to a change in plans Sourdough Thursday has been put back by a fortnight.

Tolkien’s Banjo

Knitting and stuff

The great idea

Goats and Diplomas

The sun is shining…

A day of mixed fortunes

Give a man a fish…

Back to Basics – Soda Bread

Days of whine and roses