This is amazing! She bakes the words into the cake. Ignore the mushy sentiment if you like, and admire the stunning genius of the technique.
This is amazing! She bakes the words into the cake. Ignore the mushy sentiment if you like, and admire the stunning genius of the technique.
17/02/2010 at 03:37 PM in This hedgewitches' kitchen | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Tags: baking, baking techniques, baraka, cake, love, valentines
Meet Brian. He's my wild yeast culture. He's now just a little over three weeks old and already he has a son, who is growing strongly and currently living with my parents, and he has donated several portions of himself to make bread. I eagerly await the news that his son has also brought forth bread into this world. It should be any day now.
Brian started life as a spoonful of wholewheat flour and tap water, mixed into a stiff paste with a non-metallic spoon and left to his own devices in the airing cupboard for several days. At first he was an unpromising greyish colour with a bit of a fishy hum (sorry Brian, but you did whiff a bit my dear!). Well I persevered, and after feeding him regularly every 12 hours with more of his beloved wholewheat flour and tap water, he soon rewarded me with his first bubbles. My baby Brian was alive!
I lovingly transferred Brian into his new home (a rather swish commemorative Mason jar complete with his own calico cap) and took him to meet the grandparents. Ah, they were so proud. He was even given pride of place on the radiator - at least until he disgraced himself by overflowing and oozing paste all down the back of it. (I won't tell the grandparents if you won't!) Well he travelled with me all that weekend and into the following week where he sat patiently behind my computer monitor at work and fermented his little heart out. He got so big that he outgrew his jar, leaving more pasty ooze inside my rucksack. Naughty boy.
As he got older he learned to behave, and I learned how to recognise when he needed a change and to make sure that his little jar never got too full. He grew and matured, and I finally felt confident enough to take a few spoonfuls of his little self and make a sponge. Within 24 hours I had made my first truly wild yeast bread. Oh, and my mother had passed on her glee at finally being a grandma! Awww, Mum, who knew you wanted grandkids so badly?
Well little Brian continued to grow, and with regular feedings every 12 hours he eventually moved onto big boy's white bread flour and there was no stopping him. He had a son, which I left with my parents to coo over, and now he divides his time between the fridge and the airing cupboard. He snoozes in the fridge for days at a time, but once he gets settled in the airing cupboard and warms up, he's as hungry as anything and it's back to his regular feeds. He does his Mummy proud, and within 2-3 hours after a feed, he has more than doubled in size and I just know he's going to make delicious bread. He's such a good little thing.
And speak of the Devil, I can hear him calling me now. His bread must have risen and I'm sure he's hungry. He's a shy little guy, preferring to live in warm dark places, but I'm sure he won't mind me sharing just one or two pictures. See his cute little bubbles? Isn't he just darling?
Awww, my own little wild yeasties. How I love you my baby.
10/01/2010 at 11:07 PM in This hedgewitches' kitchen | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Tags: Sourdough, traditional baking, wild yeast
http://www.wildyeastbakery.co.uk/index.html
There's dates on 13th Feb, 13th March, and 10th April.
03/12/2009 at 02:42 PM in This hedgewitches' kitchen | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Little by little I am getting my spark back. It started as a trickle, then a pop and fizz, and now I occasionally have moments when I actually feel like myself. I do not kid myself that these are real just yet - I'm still heavily medicated. And we take our pleasures where we find them, and I celebrate days when the muse strikes and I can feel some juice in the marrow of my bones.
One of the unexpected benefits of having my cranium all to myself again is that I have become quite a focussed cook. Somehow I seem to have reached critical mass with my knowledge, experience, materials to hand, and focus, and meal after meal is slotting into place. If last year I was tottering along with my stabilisers on and ocasionally falling off and scraping my knee, this year I am freewheeling downhill with the wind behind me and enough speed to make it up the coming slope. It feels lovely. A welcome surprise (and precious few of those have I seen this year).
I've been dipping my fingers into so many pies that I almost don't know where to start. I suppose I could list a whole load of links to the Wikki pages of the things I have made, and that would take time and probably be a little impersonal and dull, so instead... cue photo-montage!
Homegrown carrots and wet garlic
More of that lovely garlic
A close up of my gloriously knobbly homegrown sweeties
Homemade spaghetti - not bad for a first attempt if I do say so myself!
And my piece-de-resistance - my very own butter mountain
Almost a kilo of fresh butter made with my own fair hands. Utterly delicious smeared on my own warm scones with homemade apple and blackberry jam (neither of which hung around long enough to be photographed).
I'm salivating as I type this! Now why wasn't I born in a bucolic country farmhouse in about 1880?
22/11/2009 at 04:41 PM in My bramble patch, This hedgewitches' kitchen, Visit the stillroom | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Tags: allotments, baking, butter, cooking, creative inspiration, dairying, gardening, grow your own, homegrown, homemade, pasta, vegetables
As the wind whips the rain against the glass and the leaves swirl and tumble to the ground in fiery, brittle heaps my thoughts turn inward. The difference is that introspection is natural at this time of year - it is allowed. As I huddle on the sofa, sipping hot buttered rum by candlelight I can truly revel in my hermitage. This is my time of the year, and in spite of everything, I love it.
I have been "putting things up" (a wonderful, Deep South expression) with a sense of vigour and purpose. I have made jams, cordials, fruits preserved in rum, curd cheeses and dense, rich fruit cake. My cupboard shelves are groaning under the weight of jewel-bright jars of preserves and I have finally paid a carpenter to come and create a larder-cupboard under my worktop. He ripped out the old boiler and has replaced it with shelves. the doors are still bolted, and I have a pleasing sense of security that my precious wares are under lock and satisfyingly weighty key. Chateleine, chateleine.
More prosaically I learn that what comes naturally to me is now fashionable. The larder is making a comeback, and people are rediscovering the joys of preserving foods for the winter. About bloody time! I'm pleased, and even a little smug, although ultimately all it means for me is that I can now find jars and old time equipment more easily, and the books that I buy and cherish may be recent reprints rather than osbcure, older tomes.
This is how life ought to be. It feels like a change for the better, even if my own personal tragedy means that I am not living this life quite how I wish. It is unutterably sad that I am doing all of this alone. I share my discoveries and small victories with my friends and I count myself blessed, but the fact remains that I come home to an empty house and I drink, and eat, alone.
My house is finally becoming a home - in a way that it never was previously. Sarah and I have fallen into a comfortable and easy routine, and I feel comfortable enough to express myself unguardedly and to display my natural thoughtfulness and generosity. How much easier and rewarding it is to do that now! I have remembered how to live. And yet, we are not really close. We are not intimate - and nor should we be - and that is what is lacking in my life. It feels a little like a worn and comfortable marriage of the sort that inevitably, one partner wakes up from and claws to get out of.
What I seek is that intimacy. I seek excitement, companionship and comfort. I want a kindred, a man who sees me, and values me, and with whom I can rebuild a life. Today I count myself a widow, because I found that man and he died. The quiet moments in my life are tinged with grief, because somewhere in the dark recesses of my heart I am living this life with him. My soul mate. And yet he does not exist. He never existed. I came close - exquisitely and excruciatingly close - but no cigar.
And so I sit in candlelight, drinking hot buttered rum and I contemplate. I smile a secret smile to myself, because he will come. And when he does, I will be there waiting, inviting him in. Come and join me in this rich and beautiful life, I will say, come and live a life of joy with me, and he will. He will.
01/11/2009 at 01:35 PM in The wheel of the year, This hedgewitches' kitchen, Visit the stillroom | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Tags: autumn, canning, intimacy, introspection, love, marriage, preserving, relationships, romance, voluntary simplicity
To say I was upset by my relationship breaking up is to put it mildly. I was crushed. Devastated. The news came out of the blue, and then it took a further 8 months of agonising separation to finally lay the beast to rest. My ex is a bastard and a coward. And I never thought I would say that aloud, let alone publish it for the world to see.
The hardest part to accept for me has been the death of our dreams. We had big plans for our future together, and they really were the stuff of my dreams. I have always felt that there was something more to life than this, that life should be more, more involved, more satisfying, more self-sufficient. The 9-to-5 slog of office life just didn't seem right. Separating work from pleasure, needing to make time to exercise outside the working day because work is so sedentary. I felt (and still feel) like a hamster in a wheel. Like I'm running and ultimately getting nowhere. What sense of progress do I feel when I lay my head to rest on Sunday evening, knowing that on Monday morning I will get up to start the whole routine again? Maybe I need kids. Maybe I need to see something growing and changing and developing to mark the time and give it meaning. I know I need to feel that I am somehow making meaning out of my life, moving forwards, not simply shuffling around this mortal coil unto death.
And that is what our dreams were. To put meaning into life. To live an embedded life. To have witchlets, an allotment, a smallholding. To raise veg, and livestock and a couple of humans, and to be happy.
After much soulsearching I now realise I can have those dreams again. But like Sysiphus, the rock at the bottom of the hill feels so large and heavy. The sense of loss I have is of having nearly reached the summit only to watch the rock roll inexorably back down the hill. I trudge after it, spit on my palms and put my shoulder to it once more. Heave! I heave with all my might. I can feel it budge, and I know in my heart it is an easier task for two.
That is my great sadness. Not that I had these dreams and lost them; that I found someone else who shared these dreams, and whom I loved, and who wanted to realise these dreams together and I lost him. He took away that special connection. I now know I can have these dreams again. What I do not know is who I will find to share them with me. Who will I find to connect with and love and make these dreams real?
My first step has been discovering WWOOF and seeing this.
Food: Self-catering in shared field kitchen (buy your own food-but can help yourself from a well stocked veg and fruit and salad gardens and eggs and lamb. Accommodation: Yurt, 12ft canvas bell tent, gypsy bowtop wagon, barn. Earth loo and rustic shower. 3 acres, sheep, chickens, veg, 2 polytunnels, salad business, horticultural therapy medicinal herb garden. A chance to learn about medicinal herbs in a working herb garden and dispensary, where herbal medicines are made. Frances is a qualified herbal medicine practitioner who makes her own medicines from the fields, green lanes and herb garden. 2 days work required if bringing own tent. 3 days work required if in my accommodation. In exchange for the work you will get a unique chance to see a working medicinal herb garden. |
It's exciting, beautiful, meaningful to me. And I want to share it.
10/08/2009 at 12:00 PM in Hedgewitches' abroad!, My bramble patch, Personal, This hedgewitches' kitchen, Travel | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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