Sourdough Redux

Posted on April 20, 2017 by nicdempsey

A couple of years ago, I baked a sourdough loaf at least twice a month, then through not so benign neglect, I killed my starter. I continued to make bread, but not sourdough.

Spring and BST has brought with it a leap in my ability to think and a couple of weeks I found myself contemplating sourdough again. It was time to start a starter…

Previously, I used the recipe on the back of the Allison White Bread Flour packet, since then, I made one for a friend using Dan Lepard’s intstructions from The Handmade Loaf and like most of his recipes and instructions, it has never let me down.

So I embarked on making the starter and I thought I’d document the process here, I didn’t use organic flour and I didn’t use rye flour because I don’t generally use either so I just used strong white and wholemeal flour. Later I discovered that that was a mistake, yeast isn’t all that keen on wholemeal but never mind. It worked and I have a starter again.

So I made some bread, this one that has yeast and is quicker than a proper loaf of sourdough and is perfect for bacon sandwiches. It’s also the first time, that I’ve slashed the top of a loaf before putting it in the oven and got the desired effect!

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Allotment Adventures: Bank Holiday Fun

Posted on April 19, 2017 by nicdempsey

I was at the allotment every day over the Bank Holiday Weekend all four days and we still didn’t do everything we planned to.

Here’s what did get done.

Ma and I Heath Robinson-ed a cage for the gooseberries from chicken wire and netting.I dug up the blackcurrant because it was infested with blackfly and covered in ants. We were on the fence about keeping it anyway and I decided that it wasn’t worth it as we weren’t going to get anything from it given it’s state of infestation. So up it came.I drilled holes in the bathtub, moved it and half filled it with compost because I’m rubbish at measuring and didn’t buy enough compost.

And while we’re on how terrible my measuring skills are, I’d moved and re-planted a rubarb to close to the other one last year and the crowns we bought died, So I moved one and bought and planted another, more alive one. I also treated the soil with lots of chicken manure, which should hopefully give them a boost. While I was at the top of the plot I also planted some anemone and fresia bulbs under the plum tree and sowed wildflowers.We also harvested some rhubarb from the one crown that wasn’t moved last year, although I’m a bit worried about it because it’s not looking so heathy, it also got a damned good water and a feed.I sowed more peas and made another wigwam for them to grow up. I am queen of the string at the moment.I thinned radishes and replanted some of the ones I pulled up because I felt bad about them!We weeded, ok, I weeded the herb and onion beds and Ma pretty much did everything else, she is a weed destroying machine! As you can see from the picture of my herb bed, the chives and the parsely either didn’t come up or did and became slug food. For this year, I’m going to buy some chive and parsley plants. The chives will (with any luck die back in autumn and come up again in spring. And I’ll make a better plan for next year! I also bought a lemon verbena plant last week, that I’ll plant out a bit later on which may or may not survive. It’s frost hardy to -5C but will lose all it’s leaves if it goes below 0CI used my rosemary for the Easter lamb which made me really happy! The strawberries and the broad beans are looking heathy.

I didn’t get to sowing any more salad and we didn’t have any drill bits so the shed base wasn’t going together either. Overall, I’m still happy and I have next week off to spend some extra time at the plot.

Indoors, I did all the sowing I planned on, courgettes, winter squash, cherry and amish paste tomatoes and I potted on the tomatoes, cucumbers and summer squash, so I’m pretty happy…

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The Golden Hour

Posted on April 18, 2017 by nicdempsey

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been struggling with motivation, and I haven’t reallly been on top of things. The house is not a pit but it’s not as tidy as it normally is. Other people probably wouldn’t have noticed it because it was subtle, but I’ve been wondering around in a state of discombobulation. I’ve had the aim of making it out of the house for work by 7.30am and I’ve actually managed to do that twice this month and today was not one of those days!

So I’ve decided to learn from my friends and introduce the golden hour. My friend has sworn that this is the only way she keeps on top of her life generally and the house in particular (mind you she also says that she keeps her house clean with bleach, vinegar and the sweat of small children – their teenagers so it’s not quite child labour!) but the idea is that the last hour of the day is the time to sort out things that haven’t been done so that you can then go to bed with a clear head, knowing that you’ll be able to hit the ground running in the morning. 

The other advantage is that you switch off the screens for an hour before bed as recommended by sleep doctors everywhere. I was doing this at the beginning of the year but as the days got lighter, my focus slipped a little and it’s time to re-start the habit.

So at 9pm each evening, I will do the following:

  • switch off the screens
  • make sure that the kitchen is tidy (washing up done, dishes away, surfaces clear)
  • pack my breakfast and lunch for the next day
  • know what I am wearing for work tomorrow
  • any laundry that needs putting away is put away
  • wash my face and brush my teeth
  • shower
  • tidy bathroom
  • set alarms
Posted in How I Live | 12 Comments

Best/Worst w/c 10 April 2017

Posted on April 17, 2017 by nicdempsey

So the theme of today’s post is the same as every Monday but has a new name!

Best

First crop of the year. Rhubarb!Easter. He is Risen which is enough in itself but we also get 2 bank holidays, an Easter lunch, daffodils.

Worst

Work. It was a four day week and busy, next week is also a four day week and I’ll be really busy because minutes need to be done by Wednesday..

Rubbish. I helped Dionne clear the ‘compost’ heap on Sunday. It was grim because it wasn’t compost, it was rubbish. You can’t compost cassettes!

 

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Friday Links

Posted on April 14, 2017 by nicdempsey

It’s Good Friday and this is very late but I won’t wish you a happy one, however, Sunday’s coming. So I’ll start of with this….

 

Here are this week’s links….

His emotions have been stirred – but Trump’s bombs won’t help Syria

Iris Elba is a good actor and a Londoner and even if he wasn’t those things, he’s right about homelessness and what the government is doing.

The Tories are failing the poorest through benefit cuts – by choice. It’s a petty and vindictive policy and it’s class war. Also I’m going to say it again. The rent is too damn high and the wages are too low. We need to address this first, then look at benefits. I was there in a much better climate, it was very difficult and people don’t chose to live like that. I would also argue that if they do, then we also need to look at why. Living like that is hellish and if you think that’s the best option, what does that say about your options?

Incremental tyranny. When your security chiefs start saying stuff like this, maybe you should listen. Israel sunk in ‘incremental tyranny’, say former Shin Bet chiefs

Antonio Conte tells Chelsea to assume Tottenham will win all remaining games. As a Chelsea supporter, I’ve watched Chelsea snatch defeat from the jaws of victory more times than I’d like, so I’m loving that Conte doesn’t presume its in the bag. I also love the polite and calm way he and Guardiola talk about the game.

Jay Rayner’s review of Le Cinq, is magnificent.

The dining room, deep in the hotel, is a broad space of high ceilings and coving, with thick carpets to muffle the screams. It is decorated in various shades of taupe, biscuit and fuck you

Born to be wild: the baby pandas destined for freedom. This is fascinating and also BABY PANDAS! I try really hard not to be soppy about wild animals but baby pandas are the best!

 

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Allotment Adventures: Baby I’m Back

Posted on April 12, 2017 by nicdempsey

After last week’s gloom, I gave myself a good talking to and got back to work.

I tackled that rubbish heap and we dug out all the weedy bits. We’ve covered it and I’m going to plant squash straight through it.And you know how we feel about tidy!

We got the beds prepped adding compost to the raised beds and weeding, adding pelleted manure and covering the beds that had been left over winter. We won’t do that again but as Ma pointed out, everytime we do or don’t do something, we learn. This year we learnt that we need to spend some time in October preparing the beds for spring and I learnt that I prefer to overwinter garlic, onions and broad beans because it’s been good to have them growing through the winter. Although next year, I’m going to have the broad beans under cover.In other news, the borage is finally coming up, we have gooseberries, our first strawberry flower and the potatoes are doing alright!As ever there are things we didn’t get to, but Ma did order the shed, it’s coming on 21 April and I’m very excited.

This is the rough list for next week. The indoors stuff I hope to do in the evenings, but it’s quite a list, and I have next weekend to do it. The weekend after that, it’s shed weekend, it’s weird because it feels like I’ve been waiting forever and we’re so close now. Then’s it’s May and we’ll be really busy!

On the plot

  • Cage for the blackcurrant and gooseberry bushes at the bottom of the plot.
  • Sow wildflowers
  • Set up the bathtub for carrots
  • Sow another lot of peas
  • Build shed base
  • Re-sow parsley and chives
  • Sow coriander and dill
  • Sow more salad

Indoors

  • Sow courgettes, more cucumbers and winter squash
  • Pot on the cherry tomatoes
  • Sow more cherry tomatoes and the amish paste ones.

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Things you find when you use your camera for the first time in a year

Posted on April 11, 2017 by nicdempsey

I took the little camera down to the allotment a couple of weekends ago, I downloaded the photos and found a bunch of photos from Paris last year.

And it made me all nostalgic for Miss T and her stroppy face! Also it was a lovely weekend.On the wheel  Miss T and the ice cream!  Josephine Pont Alexandre III, it’s slightly over decorated…Sore feet (that left toe looks very straight!)WheelEmbassy. Bought by the Duke of Wellington…

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Good/Bad w/c 3 April 2017

Posted on April 10, 2017 by nicdempsey

Happy Monday! This week is the run up to Easter and the Bank Holiday. The sun is shining but it’s not as hot as it was over the weekend, that and the schools being on holiday has made the commute into work much more pleasant! My plans for this week involve getting on top of the house and it’s a busy couple of weeks at work so surviving that and re-committing to getting out of the house at 7.30am, something that hasn’t been happening over the past couple of weeks!

Here are the best and worst bits from last week.

Good

  • Four day week and the prospect of the next couple of weeks being four day weeks.
  • Being able to help. For the past two Sundays, I’ve been spending time helping my friend Dione tidy up her allotment. It’s good to do something for someone else and it’s been really lovely to spend time with Dione!
  • Weather. It was glorious this weekend.

Bad

  • Sunburn. Ridiculously sunny April day and my pale Irish skin. I did put sunblock on, it was mostly effective, until it wasn’t!
  • Not being up to speed at home. I’m in the middle of some kind of mental block, I’m struggling to do anything at home other than read or sleep.

 

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Friday Links

Posted on April 7, 2017 by nicdempsey

Happy Friday!

This week John Sentamu went all out to prove the irrelevance of the CofE and showed that he has no knowledge of how Quakerism works, Theresa May got involved in the same issue  and I need the vicar’s daughter to explain whether Jesus would object to not referencing Easter when hunting for eggs more than selling arms to Saudi Arabia. I think both of them should have a quick read of the New Testament and then have a think about what Jesus would actually do! Because in the midst of the cuts her government has just made to benefits, lots more people are going to be going without this year. She seems to practise Christianity, without any of the bits that Christ preached about you know love, kindness to the stranger, sitting with the sinners….

Anyway, here are this week’s links…

Speaking of faith….Which hipster megachurch is right for you? The answer for me is none of them. You can be Christian and have tatoos but I just can’t do the handwaving*, my love of God has not yet overcome my English reserve.

This cricketer beat his wife with his bat. So, why isn’t he going to prison? Because the judge is a sexist, racist pig (that crack about the woman not being vunerable is clearly because the woman was Asian) and it’s completely not on.

Housing class war. I’ve been saying for a while that the problem is class not age. The Tories aren’t even pretending that they care about everyone having a fair start.

The people who need help least, the minted with parental help available for purchasing homes, get a tax-free lump sum to make their lives even easier. The people who need help most are completely cut adrift, and have any hope of becoming solvent and achieving not even comfort but basic shelter destroyed by actively cruel policies.

There’s a food poverty crisis in the UK. And the government is starved of ideas. I read the comments on this article and I shouldn’t have. No, it’s not easy to cook if you don’t have time, money, skill or cooking facilities. Try cooking well if you’re living in a B&B or don’t have money for electricity. It’s only possible to do it cheaply if you have resources. Food poverty isn’t the result of a single issue. Low wages and insecure work, insecure housing and benefit cuts, all feed into it. It’ll take some joined up thinking to truly solve it. Labour ignored the causes and threw money at the problem and that worked for a bit, but when the money was withdrawn, the problems were still there.

 

___________

*I also have a real issue with the socially conservative agenda which includes being against gay marriage and abortion.

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Allotment Adventures: Indecisive and Inadequate

Posted on April 5, 2017 by nicdempsey

I’m feeling a bit lost at the moment. Mostly, I’m just a bit lost because I don’t want to make a mistake and I don’t really know what I’m doing, I’m feel indecisive and inadequate. So I need not to worry too much and remember that I have done really well and that in a month’s time, it will all be very different.

The living room is full of seedlings and there’s no room to sow the next set until I get some of these out of the house and they can’t go out yet. I need a greenhouse but I can’t do that until the shed is up and that won’t be until the end of the month.

However, the potatoes are planted, I sowed some peas, spinach, raddishes, salad and beetroot. The broad beans have flowers…

The garlic and onions look amazing….

The sweet peas are planted..As are the first lot of peas. I bought the obelisk for sweet peas but Ma thought we should use it for peas, so we did that and make a wigwam of canes for the sweet peas. (Ma also weeded the raspberries again because she is determined not to let them get a grip again!)The gooseberries have flowers and the plum tree is in blossom. We got the birdbox onto the tree.The herb bed has sprung into life and I have tiny flowers on my rosemary.It’s all going pretty well.

Next week, I want to concentrate on preparation and learning.

Preparation. Weeding and tidying up, I will clear and bag up the rubbish pile. I also want to weed and prepare the empty beds and line and start filling the bath as that’s going to be my carrot bed this year and the boxes for the squash. I won’t start putting plants in until May so I have a month to make sure that the plants and seeds are going into good soil with lots of food for my plants. I’m also going to work out a cover for the blackcurrant and gooseberry bush at the bottom of the plot and sow wildflowers at the top of the plot.

Learning. How to make compost, I’ve got a rubbish pile and a box of dried out things, which are not composting down. I get the theory but in practice, it’s not working. I need to refresh my knowledge and put it into practice.

 

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