now back to our normal broadcast...

does anyone else find it oddly coincidental that ed posted a rabbit recipe just after i refuted the idea that my vegetarianism stems from a love of 'fluffy bunnies'? i tend to notice the tiny similarities in things, something perhaps heightened by the fact i've been devouring books voraciously over the past week; my lust for narrative seems to have doubled after my brief literary dry spell, and i'm sort of glad, actually, as i did worry that moving away from academia would dull my critical instincts somewhat. um, anyway, if i was possessed of a little less iron will than i am, that pasta (or more properly, pretty much everything ed posts) probably would have made me cave and turn back to eating all things dead and beautiful. i am, however, excellent at being stubborn even in the face of deprivation, a fact that many people who have been given the silent treatment by me will attest to.

i wish i had something a little more exciting to talk to you about today, but i guess the purpose of this post is really just a catch-all for the preserving and breadmaking i have been doing over the last week or so, a 'back to the routine' sort of roundup.
i kind of fell off the wagon in terms of preserving for a while. i think partly it has to do with how very pissed off i am that my preserving pan from amazon failed to show; partly due to my now reaching child-in-the-face-of-broken-promise levels of disappointment at the impossibility of getting any forced rhubarb (seriously, it is full-on 'but mummy i want to make pink jam and vodka!' kind of sulking, it's not pretty). in other words, i have been having a preserving tantrum, and have let my stash of jars and bottles grow without remotely thinking about what to put in them. however, this was brought to an end by the burst of life-laundry energy i get directly after celebrating my birth. i realized i still had a rather large amount of sloes in my freezer from my october picking, and they weren't going to turn themselves into anything. the sloes were what started it all, the preserving, actually. miserable about what at the time felt like my life falling apart (see for reference horrible breakup and masters quitting at the same time) i took to stalking the villages in my fake fur coat, restless for something to do. being also a bit of a nature freak at heart, when i stumbled on what i thought were sloes, i spent my evenings reading up on them online, consulting as many pictures and sources as i could, and set off the next day armed with as many tupperware boxes as i could to pick them.

my sloe picking adventure took me two hours, much of it taken up talking to an 81 year old lady who had stopped and decided to accompany me because it reminded her of being younger. and as she put it, talking to someone on her walk made her 'feel less lonely in the village'. i haven't ever seen that old lady again but i think if i do i will tell her that it worked both ways. that the pale girl in the fake fur with the tears-hoarse voice felt less lonely too, afterward. i ended up with a freezer drawer full of sloes, and after making four gin bottles worth, which aged and were ready just in time to hand out around christmas time, and get drunk on after heavy december shifts, i still had three or four tubs left in the freezer.

i don't know why i put off making more for so long, but i did. until the nagging from my mother reached monumental levels about freeing up freezer space, i put it off. the sloe gin recipe i use is from the cottage smallholder and i can't help but feel since they put up the recipe in it's entirety, it might be a bit remiss of me to print it here. so this is my sloe gin literally just after it was bottled (i ended up having to buy another bottle of gin and make more, as this used only half the sloes):

if you recognize these bottles you drink too much, so hats off to you, cos i definitely belong in that club too. i use plymouth gin in my sloe gin, as i find the fact it has orange peel and cardamom in it's makeup lend it a sweetness that marries very well with the sweet, almondy taste of the sloes. but i am a gin snob, so if you wanna use the overly citric gordon's, or, and here i shudder, cheap supermarket hooch, do it, just don't tell me about it, because i don't want to know. as you can see the gin takes a while to colour, but after several shakings over the course of a few days it purples up rather rapidly:

so yeah, see you in three months guys, when i'll be enjoying one of the best sloe comfortable screws money can't buy (you can decide exactly how intentional that pun was for yourselves). i will also definitely be trying repurposing the sloes with medium sherry as the recipe suggests, and since i've been raising my game work wise, expect more booze infusions to happen over the next couple of months as i bring my work home with me and turn amateur cocktail artist. because what's better than a ground-up approach to what you put in your mouth? it having the capacity to get you drunk, of course.

right, so onto my adventures in breadmaking. despite my birthday flatbreads success i have still been using the river cottage basic method for breadmaking, just in order to see how different flours behave. i decided to try my hand at spelt bread, and here are the results:

okay, so as you can see, i made smaller loaves, and only shaped them into rounds. why? because spelt is low gluten, so shaping and slashing it wouldn't really do anything. stevens recommends smaller loaves for a better rise, and i do everything he says, as we well know, so i obeyed. these little loaves were monumental with a quick homemade tzatziki to use up an excess of yoghurt, that i totally forgot to take pictures of. i would definitely work with spelt again, although not having stretchy glutens to guide me in kneading was a little unusual.

my next adventure in bread was a little more interesting. while out shopping my mother picked me up a bag of dove farm's malthouse blend; malted flour, rye, and oats. i tend to prefer to mess about with grain blends on my own, but i'm not going to complain about a family member uncharacteristically taking an interest in my cooking, so i decided to use it. having seen the softening effect of using half water, half yoghurt, in my flatbread making, i decided to use that as my liquid, but otherwise, the basic recipe and technique was not deviated from slightly. and look what i was rewarded with:

possibly my most aesthetically pleasing loaves yet. and they were perfect in the eating, too, light brown and studded with chewy oats. i gave one to aled at work, since he enthuses about my bread, and he was incredibly pleased with it. i am getting to the point with my baking where i feel i have mastered yeasts to a foolproof level; and am now pondering alternate methods of working with dough. possible ideas involve buns (it is after all nearly time for the hot cross variety to make an appearance), bagels, and moving on to the slightly nerve wracking environment of oil based doughs. in the meantime i am content to enjoy home made bread with home made soup and the best company i know in this village:

the soup pictured is a tomato based affair flavoured with garlic, onions, oregano rosemary, and fennel seeds, containing white cabbage, savoy, and kale, to clear out the fridge, basically. i just kind of improvised it and finished with oil and freshly ground black pepper. the book pictured is the best thing i've read in about a year. anyway, until next time guys.