Bread and beauty

The gorgeous Abi has started a fabulous group over on Flickr called Day2Day- Take Five Ordinary Beauty.
It's made me start looking at things the way we were taught to when I was an art student, to see the beauty in the ordinary, to seek inspiration through the commonplace. Of course, back then, we didn't have digital cameras: we had sketchbooks and cameras with film *the music to the Hovis adverts starts up in the distance*
Anyhoots, here is my visual bounty for the past couple of weeks:


1. snack (d2d, day 1), 2. in the kitchen (d2d, day 1), 3. cworfeee (d2d, day 2), 4. in the night garden (d2d, day 3), 5. treasure (d2d, day 4), 6. bite (d2d, day 4), 7. day2day, day 5, 8. alium seed head2 (d2d, day1/week2), 9. alium seed head (d2d, day1/week2), 10. sunbathing lavender (d2d, day 2 week 2), 11. peppermill (D2D: 3/wk2), 12. waiting (d2d 3 week2), 13. i heart recycling (d2d: 4/2), 14. comfort eating (d2d: 5/2), 15. english summer (d2d: 1/03)


Would you like to know how to make that delicious looking bread from photo 14? Of course you would, for you are hungry for knowledge and easy-to-make baked produce. It's a Nigella recipe (oh, for a change...) from this tasty book.
Are you sitting comfortably?
Then I'll begin...
She's called it 'Lazy Loaf' but I prefer the far more catchy name of

'Sweet Mother of Holy Fuck! That is a Damn Simple Loaf to Both Make and Eat!'

200g ridiculously expensive but ridiculously tasty sugar-free muesli (I used Dorset Cereals Organic Fruit, Nuts and Seeds)
325g wholewheat bread flour
1 x 6g packet of easyblend yeast (or, in my case, a 7g sachet of Sainsbury's Fast Action Dried Yeast)
2 teaspoons Maldon salt or 1 tablespoon table salt
250ml semi-skimmed milk
250ml water

1. Mix together the muesli, flour yeast and salt in a bowl, although you could use a bucket or other recepticle should you wish, if you want to be a bit wierd. Here is how I stir:


2.Pour in the milk and water. I like to do it like this:

Obviously, if you have access to a cow on a diet (remember: its semi-skimmed milk we need here), you may want to administer it straight from the udder.

3. Mix this unholy cacophony of staples so that it looks like one mahoosive bowl of porridge, like this:


4. Grease or line a loaf tin and pour the porridgey goo in.
5. Put in a cold oven then put it on at 110*c / gas mark 1/4 for 45 minutes.
6. Turn the oven up to 180*c / gas mark 4 for 1 hour. Spend this time berating the fact that you didn't make it last night and should have had something for breakfast before embarking on this bread quest. Take the butter out of the fridge so that it is soft and ready (insert your own crude metaphor here)
7. Hallelujah! That annoying 'beep beep' of your timer heralds the dawning of the Age of Sweet Mother ... bread! Release the loaf from its 180*c prison and allow it to cool for, if you can manage it, a few minutes. Warm, fresh bread is fabulous: mouth burnt by fresh bread is tedious.
8. Slather in butter, jam or just adoration and try not to eat the whole loaf before your family gets home: that's the trickiest part.

Bon appetit!

Welcome to my Jam Hostel!

Jam Hostel?! Yes: either that, or Mr Yumptatious has sneakily been writing on my forehead 'Please give me homemade jam' whilst I am at one with my slumbers. Again. How else can I explain the current (currant? ouch!) trend of friends giving me homemade jam? I'm not complaining, although I expect to be surfing a wave of sugar for the next few months, so should we meet, don't let the sugar-fuelled tremors scare you. You may want to keep me away from kettles, small children and the elderly (not because I might damage them, just I never know what to say to old people and I may accidently bore them to death with my lack of sparkling repartee. Unless they're into the 'Mighty Boosh' and the early films of Woody Allen, in which case we'll be fine n dandy!)

For those you with short attention spans, here's the first bunch of jam orphans put up for adoption by the wonderful, yet ruthless Helen:

I love their gingham hats! Hamish ate all the quince
jelly: the ONLY jam he likes. I haven't tried the
redcurrant yet.

delicious breakfast of fresh coffee, multigrain bagel with butter and loganberry jam

A decent jam demands a decent jam spoon: this was given to me (and all the other pupils) at primary school to commemorate the wedding of Charles and Di in 1981.
First person to tell me they weren't born then buys me a car.

I then felt suitably jammed up to actually make something!

A Valentine wip (not literally...but its an idea....)

After going through my blog list (not on here but on a now deleted list in my 'Bookmarks') I came across a recipe for some sweet evil, which, of course, I had to make myself. I would post a link, but to be honest, I can't remember where I saw it, but google 'pretzel rolo' and you'll discover it features in many blogs. Fearful as I am of original thought, here is my effort:

do you think I overdid the photo with the Cath Kidston plate and crushed velvet? I tried to get a couple of songbirds to sit near the plate but they were preoccupied with a forgotten glitterball hanging forlornly from a dusty old anglepoise lamp.

Here's how to make them:

1. preheat oven to 180oc (I have no idea what gas mark that is)
2. put pretzels onto a lined baking sheet
3. realise that the reason the pretzels are in the 'be good to yourself' range is because they are half the size of normal pretzels. Put 2 pretzels side by side.
4. break up a bar of Sainsburys (or any other own brand) chocolate caramel. (there was a Rolo drought in Tonbridge earlier on this week. I guess.) Put one square on a pretzel twin set. Marvel at just how small the pretzels really are.
5. thwack the goods in the oven. Leave them for about 5 mins but keep checking every 5 seconds for signs of extreme meltdown.
6. remove from oven just after extreme meltdown has occured: if you haven't said 'ahhh, bollocks!' when you've opened the oven door, you're too early. Great cooking must have an air of failure about it (besides, the burnt caramel tastes delicious when cooled and peeled from the tray)
7. get your pecans (ooops! forgot to say that you need pecans. Grab anything to hand: Smarties, walnuts, aspirin etc) and squidge one into each chocolate evil, but not too hard else there will be projectile caramelling.
8. put in the fridge and leave to cool.
9. pace the kitchen for an hour. Every 10 seconds, open the fridge door and poke the nearest evil with your finger to see if its set. You may want to ask your evils questions for the last 10 minutes such as 'Are you ready yet?!', 'How do I know when you're ready?' and 'Feeling lucky today, punk?!'
10. eat straight off baking sheet, preferably before the kids / husband /dietician comes home.

Yesterday, the beautiful and marvellous KT came over with a hamper of homemade wonders and shop-bought trinkets-'o'-joy:

she had filled it with tissue so it looked all profesh and snuggly but I heartlessly put it in the recycling.
The big jar has Sunset Chai mix in it from the Happy Campers book (see my book list) and the jams are cranberry, apple + blackberry, plum+ apple, and pumpkin + ginger.

We then spent the afternoon doing what we have always done best: eat, drink tea and talk: bliss!

delicious fresh Scotch eggs with KT's spiced plum chutney, my evil brownies



KT's white chocolate and cranberry cookies: you cannot have just one. Or just five. I think she's put drugs in them: something addictive like crack or Calpol.

So who's coming round for tea next?