Category: Bread

Intense – 27 May 2023

Posted on by Zogman

Drove through some fairly heavy traffic to get to dance class and it was hard work, the driving and the class!

The traffic was heavier than normal for a Saturday morning, but we managed to pass the slower traffic and ended up in Brookfield earlier than I anticipated. The class started with a Foxtrot. We’d expected Joy’s Waltz v2 and had practised it last night, but after a few dummy runs, our foxtrot was decent enough. No fancy rise and fall, just the basic routine but smoother than it sometimes is. It took me a while to fall into the order of the steps, but by the end we were looking quite good, and able to finish the routine and start again without stopping.

That foxtrot took us and the teachers a lot longer than they had intended, but the next one, Queen of Hearts Rumba was new to us, well it certainly was new to me. It’s a sequence dance, and after a couple of walk throughs, I was getting it right most of the time.

Third was Joy’s Waltz v2 and that v2 made a big difference. None of that complicated foot entanglement we had two weeks ago. That didn’t mean it was easy. Both of us found that we were turning the wrong way, but with a few helpful shoves from Jane I got the idea of the correct way to go.

A couple of sequence dances to lighten the mood and to bring us up to the end of the class. One, of course to Scamp’s favourite ‘Shivers’, and Stewart’s favourite ‘Green Door’.

The traffic going home is always terrible, but today for some reason it was fairly light and although we went the M74 route, we could almost have made good time crossing the Kingston Bridge instead.

I went out for an hour when we came home, but didn’t get anything startling. PoD turned out to be a buttercup flower which I liked.

The prompt for today was Your Favourite Game. Mine was Wordle

For the past year or so, since Scamp found this addictive game on a friend’s page on Facebook, we have struggled to complete it every day.
Like all good games, it’s the simplicity that makes it addictive. Six tries to find the hidden five letter word with minimal clues.

One of the best things about it is that you can only play one game a day, so you have to make the most of it, but it doesn’t take up all your day. Unlike Angry Birds which is my second favourite.

One of the worst things about it is that you need an internet connection to play it. That means if you are flying or on holiday in some remote place you can’t complete the game and if you can’t complete it, you lose all the points you’ve gained. That is maddening!

Dinner tonight came from Bombay Dreams and it was a shade poorer than is usual from them. Scamp had her usual Mushroom Paneer and I ordered a Special Handhi. I’m not sure that’s what I got, because there was no mention of a tomato sauce in the menu and there were none of the onions that were advertised. However the bread was good, Tandoor Roti. Best bread we’ve had from there.

There had been a sprinkling of rain today during the morning and afternoon, but nothing serious. We may water the garden tomorrow. Apart from that, no plans.

The Early Bird – 9 December 2022

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Scamp was off to her FitSteps class and I was out too.

It was early for me at just after 11am, but the sun was shining and so was the frost that coated everything, in fact it was sparkling. I went for a walk over to St Mo’s and realised I should have brought the macro lens to capture some of the ice crystals that were covering the reeds beside the boardwalk. But it was cold. Definitely below zero and if I went back to get the lens, I’d be even colder by the time I got back to the business of actually taking photos. I soldiered on using the kit lens and the 18mm ultra wide. One of the first shots I took got PoD. It’s just a backlit bramble leaf with the sun sitting just above the tree tops.

I wandered on, but nothing I shot was as good as that first photo and so I made my way back. The poor swan, the geese and the ducks were restricted to swimming a circle of open water surrounded by ice. I didn’t envy their day on the pond.

I walked home and got a few more shots looking up the lane at the edge of the woods. I knew if I had someone in the frame to give me a composition of sorts, I could deal with the lighting later in the computer. And so it was that one a bloke was walking home from the shops and he became the second shot to be posted on Flickr. Two in the bag. All that was left to do was post them.

We had soup for lunch when Scamp came home, not happy that I’d forgotten to buy a fresh loaf. Later we walked over to Condorrat to post some cards and buy some stamps. I don’t know why we buy stamps these days. There are so few days when Royal Mail are actually working. It’s beginning to look like a general strike with the postal workers, the train drivers, the teachers, the English and Welsh nurses and now Border Force taking industrial action.

Anyway, as well as stamps and finally, bread, Scamp also treated us to a Fudge Donut each from the Spar shop. They were delicious. None of your ‘real cream’ in the donut, no it was 100% synthetic. It tasted like the cream I was sent up to Frames for when we lived in Larky. You got it in a cardboard tub with a paper top and it tasted great. We got it when my mum was baking cakes because my Aunt Mary was visiting. Happy days.

Dinner tonight was baked potato with tuna for Scamp and for me it was the bolognese sauce I made earlier in the week, defrosted and reheated with pappardelle. A bit dry, but perfectly edible.  Later we ordered some presents from Santa, but arriving from Amazon for good boys and girls.  Present company excepted!

Tomorrow we’re intending going to dance class in the morning and then to the Christmas dance in the evening. That is, if the weather holds.

Just a normal Sunday – 20 November 2022

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It was raining and it looked like it may keep raining all day.

A lazy Sunday, because almost for all of the rest of the week one of us was going to be busy. The usual start to the day with Wordle completed and then the Pangram found in Spelling Bee. I thought it might be a good idea to make a loaf and got started on that.

After lunch the clouds parted and the sun shone. Scamp was intending to make chicken soup for dinner and she needed some veg for it, so she was off to the shops. I stayed home and messed about with the computer. When she came home, I got dressed and went for a walk in St Mo’s. It seems that my guess about the swan was right, it was dead. Now it’s up to NLC to do something about it.

A walk into the woods gave me today’s PoD. It’s just a few leaves caught between two mossy trees, but a bit of backlighting made the leaves glow. There wasn’t much else to photograph and the temperature was dropping so I walked home. On the way I chanced upon a dozen or so joggers, each one dressed up. It must have been a charity run or maybe the aftermath of a stag do. Anyway, it brightened the day because the sun was sliding towards the horizon.

Scamp was organised today, because as well as making the soup, she also baked a Dutch Apple Sponge. After it came out of the oven it was time for mine to go in, except the second prove wasn’t as successful as I’d hoped and the loaf was a bit floppy. I transferred it into a lined loaf tin and allowed it a quarter of an hour to perk up in the warm oven above the main one. After that, I reckoned it was as risen as it was going to get and put it in the main oven. Like Scamp’s cake, it turned out fine. So we had Chicken Soup with Home Baked Bread for a main and Dutch Apple Sponge with custard for a pudding.

Spoke to Jamie for just over ten minutes tonight. We had no news and he had very little. We are hoping the plumber will fix the kitchen taps tomorrow and they had just had their boiler serviced. Just a usual week.

Tomorrow Scamp is taking Isobel out for coffee and I’m staying in to supervise the plumbing.

Plant hunting – 27 October 2022

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Scamp wanted pansies and snowdrops today.

Pansies to replant the trough that hangs on the fence and snowdrops to plant around the garden. So it would be a drive to a garden centre. We chose Calders. It was the nearest one and would probably have what she wanted. Aha, but before that there was coffee to make for both of us and both Wordle and Spelling Bee to solve for both of us.

After lunch we drove to Calders. Pansies were no problem, loads of them. Scamp found a tray full that seemed to suit her, but no snowdrops were to be found. However, there were lots of snowmen, elves, reindeer (both illuminated and not), snow dogs and even Frank Sinatra singing Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas and other jolly songs. I hate Xmas. Not Christmas, that’s alright, but Xmas is just tinsel and fairy lights and spend, spend, spend. Bah Humbug!

We came home via Tesco and there Scamp found the snowdrops. She got two boxes. She also found the Good Food Christmas (see what I mean) magazine with the free calendar we couldn’t find anywhere last year. This year we’re ahead of the game. When we were driving in to the car park Scamp noticed the old fashioned Tunnock’s delivery van and that made PoD. I had my camera in the car, but my phone in my pocket. The best phone in the world is the one you have in your pocket. It’s a true saying.

Of course the phone couldn’t take a picture like the PoD. That took Lightroom and Photoshop to do that. Lightroom and Photoshop and a couple of hours poring over a computer screen. I was quite happy with the result, although if I’d thought about it a bit more and planned it better I might have been happier with the result, but I didn’t and it wasn’t. It’s still PoD.

The prompt today was ‘Snack’. I drew a Piece.
A sandwich in Scotland is a ‘piece’. This one consists of a layer of buttered bread. A layer of fried pork sausages slathered in tomato sauce. A layer of bread buttered on both sides. A layer of lettuce (one of your ‘five a day’). A layer of buttered bread. Squash down and slice with a sharp knife. Please note:

  1. The bread must be from a Scottish plain loaf
  2. The jury is still out on whether tomato sauce constitutes one of your ‘five a day’.

Tomorrow Scamp is out for lunch with The Witches. I might go in to Glasgow for a wander.

No Fillings Today Mum – 17 October 2022

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Out early to meet the new dentist and let her have a look around my mouth.

Not that early though. It was one of those dull mornings when the sun forgets to get up and shine. My Fitbit demanded that I take 250 steps, so I went for a walk around the block and brought my camera with me. I saw the two rowan berries and thought about how they brightened the morning. That was the seed that sprouted into today’s PoD.

For the first time in ages I brushed my teeth this morning. I thought it was better to make an effort, rather than to present with a mouth that was BER (Beyond Economic Repair). I needn’t have worried, the dentist lady was completely unfazed. She went ahead and filled the tooth that was giving me grief. She also offered to repair a few more teeth that I’d worn down or damaged over Covid. Not right away, though. Not until the middle of next month. Thankfully the bill for the both of these repairs together was much less than that to fix Scamp’s single tooth. I’ve NHS to thank for that. As always, when someone has been inside your mouth, my teeth don’t feel like my own. I’m getting more used to my new ‘bite’, but it might take a few days yet until it becomes mine.

Back home I started to make a Focaccia, a bread that has more oil in it than Saudi Arabia, or at least that’s what it feels like. Water and oil mixed into the flour, salt and yeast. Once that’s been kneaded, more water is needed and the whole sloppy mess has to prove for an hour or so. Then it gets slopped into a tray and a second mixture of oil, dried rosemary and garlic is poured on top and holes are poked into the dough to encourage the oil to seep into the mixture. It’s left to rise again and then it’s baked in the oven. We’re not finished with the oil yet, though. More oil is drizzled on top and salt flakes are added to give a salty crunch. Unfortunately, maybe I used the wrong kind of oil maybe I should have used 20W-30 instead of 10W-40 or maybe I didn’t bake the focaccia for long enough, or maybe it should have been at a higher temperature. Anyway it ended up doughy and almost inedible. I’ll try again in a couple of days, once the oil tanker comes round and refills the tank.

That kind of limited what we were having for dinner, but yesterday’s celeriac soup and the remains of Scamp’s crumble supplemented with an apple sauce from our own apples was plenty to fill a wee space.

The prompt for today was “Salty”. I chose the ‘Salt Pig’ I was using today. It’s an unglazed terracotta pot that holds sea salt or rock salt. I needed that kind of salt to crumble on the top of the focaccia and since the salt pig was sitting in front of me when I was waiting for the bread to cool, it was an obvious subject with a link to the prompt. Initial sketch done with the fountain pen upside down (you’ll understand this, Hazy) to get fine lines, then the same pen held normally to get the thick lines. A final wash with a brush and clear water to give a bit of shading. Quite pleased, but only quite. Could do better.

Tomorrow we may be visiting another country for an hour or so if the weather is nice.

 

Baking – 21 August 2022

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A loaf was requested by Scamp. Also, the topic for this week in Flickr Friday was Daily Bread. I imagine bread would fit both bills.

With the foregoing in mind, and after a nudge from Scamp, I got started on some bread themed work this morning. I used my ready reckoner to determine the amount of water, yeast, butter and salt I’d need for the 312g of bread flour I’d measured out. It’s always good to go with the old fashioned photogs “Time and Temperature” method. Of course we are allowed to adjust as we go adding more water or flour as determined by the ‘feel’ of the dough. With the dough feeling suitably smooth after roughly 10 minutes of manual manipulation, I set it to rest and double in size while I had my morning coffee.

Next on Scamp’s list was ‘shopping’ or to be more Scottish, ‘messages’. We drove up to Tesco in her wee red car and made a fair fist of trying to buy the shop. Unfortunately some articles were not available, so a complete buy-out wasn’t possible in the time available, but we did try. We even forgot to get rolls, but I bravely volunteered to go back and buy some while Scamp took the rest of the purchases to the car. We’re used to watching the ‘Penchies’ (pensioners) groping the plain sliced loaves to find the freshest feeling ones, but today I met a twenty-something doing the same thing with the rolls. The first one he tried was obviously well fired, but too crispy. The second one, medium fired was better and he nearly accepted it, but put it back in favour of a ‘not so well fired’ batch. The Goldilocks Rolls. Not too hard, not too soft, just right! Once he was finished with his inspection I finally got a change to grab a lightly fired bag of six that would suit my two butterflied sausages. It’s a challenge buying the perfectly baked morning rolls.

By the time I’d chosen and paid for my rolls, Scamp had unloaded her trolley and was waiting in the car. We drove home and unloaded the back seat, because I’ve not fixed the boot lock yet. Then we could start on lunch which was Black Pudding and Egg on a roll for Scamp and two butterflied sausages on two rolls for me.

Scamp spoke to June and found out that yesterday at Hamilton Racecourse had been a brilliant night. Pity we didn’t make it, but as we found out later, we did make the right decision, based on the information we had. Glad everyone, especially June and Ian had a great time. Glad the birthday surprise was indeed a SURPRISE for Crawford and Nancy.

In the afternoon I sorted the dough and on a whim I poked a two holes for eyes, one for the nose and a curve of more holes for a smile and left the dough to do its second prove.

I went for a walk in St Mo’s with a camera that never came out of the bag. I sat for a while on a seat in the park watching the world go by and then came home, empty handed. Not one photo. I photographed the rising dough and turned the oven on. After the mandatory fifteen minutes warming up time I pushed the bread into the oven and set the timer for 20mins. That gave me time to go and photograph Scamp’s miniature tomatoes in the garden. When the timer pinged I turned the bread over and baked the bottom for another 5mins. When it came out, I photographed the bread, the Happy Bread!

Time to start the Pea and Prawn Risotto. Hand made, like the bread. Peas from the garden with the pods chopped up and boiled to make the stock. The whole risotto turned by hand using the custom made risotto paddle. It tasted almost perfect although Scamp thought it lacked salt. She always says that. The bread was lovely, with no sign of a soggy bottom! PoD was a picture of the sliced up bread, with the smiling face just visible.

Spoke to Jamie later and heard all about his new job in a new company with new people. Good to hear that there’s at least another Scotsman in the management team!

Tomorrow we have no plans, because it looks like it might be wet.

 

One Hot Day – 18 July 2022

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We were well warned about today. It was going to be hot. They were right.

Last night we slept under a sheet. No duvet, not even our summer 1 TOG. It was going to be one hot day.

Scamp wanted to drive to Tesco to get veg and fruit because we were making a salad for dinner. That was the furthest we went. There was an enormous queue for the petrol station. I wondered what it was all about, then I remembered Scamp saying the other Tesco store in the town was closed for ‘essential maintenance’ and everyone was flocking to our local one. When we got back we put the lounger and the chair out in the back garden where we sat and read for a while. Even I found it too hot to sit for long and wandered in and out of the house trying to find the coolest spot. I didn’t find it. As usually happens with this house in summer, the inside was cooler than the outside.

After an al fresco lunch we went for a walk round St Mo’s for something to do. I took a camera, but find anything worth photographing. However, when we got back to the house we saw lots of Soldier beetles on the Sea Holly (Eryngium planum) in the garden. That was to be PoD. I have no idea what the beetles below are doing! Probably something to do with their alternative name!

Later in the day we walked down to the shops to buy some ice lollies, Mivvies! Just the thing for a hot summer’s day. When we got back it was beers in the garden. Just relaxing in the sun this time with a gentle breeze to cool us slightly.

Dinner was a salad feast. Tuna pasta, Potato salad, Little Gem lettuce, Prawns, Carrots matchsticks in orange juice (try it!), Beetroot, Olive oil and Balsamic vinegar. Dessert was jelly and fruit with ice cream.

More reading and relaxing after dinner and eventually we had to call it a day at about 9pm. It’s almost 10.30 now and the temperature is still 22ºc. It was 28.5ºc in the afternoon. Tomorrow the weather fairies predict it will get even hotter. Oh, to live in Shetland where it was 16ºc!

Hopefully more of the same tomorrow. I had hoped to go for a walk with Alex this week, but the whole family are down with Covid … except Alex. He was negative!

The day that the rains came down – 8 June 2022

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And stayed all day.

I decided that I’d let the day simmer along and hopefully the rain would stop or maybe I’d find something useful to do. The latter came first, but ultimately the former happened.

I had at least half a dozen boxes of bread ingredients that have been sitting on a unit in the living room for, well, ages. I picked the bottom one and started mixing up a loaf. The actual loaf was a Swiss Farmer’s Loaf and it started out as a sticky dough and ended up looking nothing like the picture in the booklet said it would. I think this is only the second failure I’ve had. I say failure, but it was perfectly edible, it just didn’t look like the book said. Probably my fault more than theirs. It was a good way to while away an hour or so of a day when I’d no intention of going out anyway, so no real loss.

After lunch it began to look as if the sun might just make an appearance, but there were no guarantees. Scamp had started making a couple of sultana cakes. She was halfway through the process when the mixer made a strange noise. When we let it cool for a while and tried again, the problem was still there. Another one with no user serviceable parts inside, so it was down to hand beating the mixture. Of course, I couldn’t do that, so Scamp did it all by herself. Probably better really. I’d just have made a mess.

I went out for a walk in the drizzle with the Sony. Thankfully the rain soon dried up and left behind clouds of little flies that got in my eyes up my nose and into my mouth when I was walking. I did get a photo of a much less invasive fly. It just sat on top of a desiccated weed and allowed me to photograph it. It also gave me a chance to use some of the more esoteric functions of the camera. Only available if the correct buttons are pressed in the correct order. That’s the Sony way! The fly became PoD. It was really tiny, about 3mm long. Got home to find Scamp’s bread coming out of the oven, smelling lovely.

Dinner tonight was Fish ’n’ Oven Chips. So much easier than deep frying and almost as good.

It was really dull for most of the day, but tomorrow looks a bit better. Hopefully I’m taking Scamp’s wee red car down to the village to get a new exhaust, then we’re booked for taking Shona to Falkirk. That’s where the planning ends. We’ll see what happens.

Time to tidy up – 1 May 2022

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Scamp returns today and that means the kitchen must be returned to its pristine condition. Oh dear.

As it happened, Scamp didn’t return to around 6pm which gave me plenty of leeway to make an even bigger mess of the kitchen by attempting to make a dozen English Muffins as advertised by Simon and Garfunkel in Punky’s Dilemma. Water, sugar, salt, yeast, flour, melted butter. What could go wrong!? Well, the answer was “Not much, actually.” It all went quite well considering how long it is since I’ve done any baking.

With the dough made, I left it to its own devices while I loaded the washing machine with stuff and set it to work. Then I went into the garden and planted some seeds. Teasels and a sort of Cowparsley or Hogweed called Ammi majus. The first is now in the greenhouse and the second is in the raised bed.

Lunch was another of Hazy’s “Crimpits”. This time the filling wasn’t so successful. I used grated cheese, cooked ham and beetroot. Maybe I overloaded it. Maybe it was because I was using white ‘Thins’, rather than wholewheat. Maybe it was because it was Sunday and Sunday should be a fried lunch. Anyway, I’ll try another mixture of fillings later in the week.

The dough was having a lazy Sunday and needed a bit of a talking to, so I gave it a last warning and told it to get rising or it would get kicked out, then I left it to consider its future while I took a camera and a couple of lenses to see what was hiding in St Mo’s woods.

There was a deer hiding there, but it saw me long before I saw it. It was last seen heading in the general direction of Glasgow at a fair rate of knots. PoD was a shot of a larch branch with fresh green needles that had captured some of yesterday’s rain and was holding on to it. I liked that.

Back home the dough was more than doubled in size. It’s amazing what a threat will do. I chopped it up into 12 little 77.33g balls and rolled them until they were smooth, flattened them and dusted them with a mixture of flour and semolina before cooking six of them in the frying pan (without oil),then baking them in the oven. As usual with our gas oven the timing was a bit hit and miss, and more miss than hit in this case. Some worked ok, some were underdone. There are another six in the fridge chilling tonight. Hopefully I’ll be more successful tomorrow. I suppose it doesn’t help that in Scotland we don’t eat many English muffins, so I didn’t really know what the texture should be like.

Halfway through the cooking and baking I got a WhatsApp from Jamie asking if we could do a FaceTime from New York. I explained that Scamp was still on the way home from St Andrews, but I was available. The next thing I knew, I was looking at Jamie with skyscrapers in the background. It felt such a surreal thing to do, to talk to someone I knew, thousands of miles away and in real time. I know this sounds incredibly old fashioned to some folk, but I’ve never had the need to do Face Time over a long distance before. It quite took my breath away. Thank you for that opportunity Jamie. Such a pity Scamp couldn’t have joined in too. And then he was off to catch his train to the airport to fly home. Safe flight home Jamie.

Scamp arrived about half an hour later, with lots of interesting foody things. Duck eggs, Ginger and Leek sausages, an interesting looking quiche, a jar of garlic piccalilli and two sticky cakes that we’re keeping for tomorrow. The sausages and a duck egg with some bacon became my dinner and mixed well with the piccalilli. Scamp said the quiche was ‘just all right’, but the pastry was lovely.

It’s great to have a bit of freedom, but its even better when you’re back home again. Lots of stories still to tell, I’m sure.

Somebody is coming to see us tomorrow to invite us to swab our throats and noses, then ask us those difficult searching questions.

We asked for rain and got it today – 12 April 2022

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It was dry for a while in the morning, then the rain came … and stayed all day.

Not the best of days weather wise. It was just a wet day. All day long the rain continued. Sometimes lighter, sometimes heavier, but always there in the breeze.  The garden need the rain, so we shouldn’t complain too much.

Since we weren’t going anywhere important today, I got some thread and a needle and started sewing on a pair of elbow patches that I’ve been promising to fix for at least six months, probably more. They’re supposed to be iron-on, but the glue isn’t very strong, so it’s much better to stitch them on. Finally with the help of a needle threader that Scamp had, I managed to get both of them sewn on. It’s amazing the things you do on a wet day.

Lunch was a highlight. Hazy had given me a “Crimpet” for my birthday. It’s a two part press device for making sealed little bread parcels using bread ‘Thins’. I’d never heard of ’Thins’ before, but Scamp had and we bought some yesterday from Tesco. Basically you put one slice of ‘Thin’ in the black bottom tray of the Crimpet, then load it up with your chosen filling. My first one was cheddar cheese, chopped tomatoes and wafer thin beef. Next put another ‘Thin’ on top. Place the yellow Crimpet part on top and press down firmly. What comes out is a beautifully sealed bread parcel that can be toasted, fried in a frying pan or baked in the oven. We toasted ours (Scamp’s was cheddar, tomato and turkey breast) and we both agreed it was a winner. I don’t know where Hazy gets these amazing gadgets from, but this is one of her best so far. Thank you my dear. I think we may try dry frying them tomorrow to see how that affects the taste.

After lunch we went down to the shops in the rain to get some messages and the makings of tonight’s dinner which was to be Stir Fry. It really was a miserable day, but when we got back, I took the camera out into garden in the drizzle and got a few photos. The best one, if slightly out of focus was Scamp’s sweet peas growing in a tray in the greenhouse.

Tomorrow we’re off on our travels taking Shona to the hospital in Falkirk where the orthopaedic surgeon wants to have a look at a wee bone she broke in her arm. It happened last week when she had a fall.

We might go for a coffee at Torwood while she’s at the hospital.