Holy Aioli!

I had a couple of egg yolks looking for a use and thought some aioli would be nice. I followed Stephanie Alexander's recipe from The Kitchen Garden Companion and it was really garlicky. Like, don't-have-too-much-hopefully-you're-not-going-out-afterwards garlicky. It was good, don't get me wrong, but less garlic next time would have made all the difference.

Nothing like making aioli or mayonnaise by hand to get the arm muscles toned!

6 cloves garlic
salt
2 egg yolks
1 1/2 cups olive oil
squeeze of lemon juice

Crush up garlic and a pinch of salt to a paste, I just did it on the chopping board with the back of a large knife.

Transfer to a large bowl and stir in the egg yolks to combine. Very slowly drizzle in the olive oil, drop by drop to begin with, whisking as you go. It will become thick. When almost all the oil is added squeeze in some lemon juice and taste for seasoning. I also added a little bit of hot water at the end to thin it out, it was very, very thick.

An Easy Weekday Dinner

This
+
this
+
buckwheat pasta
=
quick, yummy dinner after a busy day out and about.

Rocket Pesto

We got a massive bunch of rocket in our F&V box recently and I knew the boys wouldn't like it as salad leaves too spicy Mummy! so I turned it into the yummiest pesto! With brazil nuts instead of pine nuts it wasn't exactly traditional, but what does that matter!

1 bunch (2 firmly packed cups) rocket
1/2 cupbrazil nuts
1 cup olive oil
120g parmesan cheese
4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
salt and pepper to taste

Whiz everything up in a blender of food processor until it reaches your desired chunkiness!

Enjoy as dip, salad dressing, a sandwich spread, stirred through pasta. Your imagination is the limit!

Organic Homemade Ricotta

The day before its 'sell by' date the organic milk at our local grocery gets reduced to a ridiculously cheap price. Being the food hoarder that I am I buy every bottle that is reduced (sometimes three or four 2l bottles) and use it straight away for cooking or freeze it to use later.

Making ricotta is a great way to use up a large quantity of milk to give a different product that is so versatile. A sweet dip for fruit when mixed with honey, a topping on pizza, a filling in filo pastries, the uses are endless!

Here's my recipe using just milk and vinegar. Too easy!

2l organic, non-homogenised milk
3 tbls white vinegar or lemon juice

Heat milk slowly to 97C or just below boiling point if you don't have a jam thermometer.
Remover from heat and stir through vinegar or lemon juice.
Sit, without stirring for 15 minutes
Strain through a muslin cloth for 30 minutes or until it's as firm as you desire.

I don't salt my ricotta as I like to have the option to use it for sweet or savoury.

Passionfruit Ice Cream

It's an exciting time in our house when the passionfruit lady is back at the markets! Hurrah! Unfortunately do to all the rain and flooding the only crop they've got at the moment is passionfruit, she told me last week that they lost over 15 acres of tomatoes and cucumbers in the recent flooding and three lots of earlier crops over the past 6 or so months.

This is why I love going to the farmers markets. I get to talk to and get to know the people who are producing our food. They know the boys, give them a free bit of this or that every now and then. Yes, we could get all our fruit and veg from the grocery but then we'd be giving our money to big corporations and the farmers that supplied them would be getting a pittance for all their hard work. I know that when we give the passionfruit lady $2.50 for a bag of passionfruit that all of that $2.50 is going to her, her hard working husband and their children that help them on the farm.

I now have two helpers in the kitchen!

These passionfruit were the first of their harvest and oh so delicious. We decided to add to that deliciousness by making passionfruit ice cream! It's just our basic ice cream recipe with the pulp from a few passionfruit stirred through and the vanilla omitted. I can't remember how many passionfruit and even if I could it wouldn't be accurate because it was a case of 'one spoon for the ice cream, one spoon for the boy helping'!

Don't you just love chubby toddler hands?

Our Basic Ice Cream Recipe

Makes 2 litres

1 cup white sugar

1.5 cups milk

3 cups cream

2tbls vanilla essence

Whisk together the sugar and milk to dissolve the milk.

Whisk in the cream and vanilla until combine.

Churn in the ice cream machine for about 30 minutes or frozen like soft serve. 

Transfer to a 2L container and freeze.

Lick the paddle and scoop out the super frozen remnants with a plastic spatula!

Why I should Always Cover the Cake!

We made Carrot and Almond Cake the other day, to be iced with cream cheese icing. I put the cake out to cool and went to get the washing off the line leaving the boys playing happily inside. 

Matt came home from work to find two boys "checking what it tasted like" according to Elliot.

Cheeky boys!!!

Hopefully the other Wordless Wednesday participants are a bit more interesting for you!

Basil Pesto

100g basil leaves

2 cloves garlic

75g pine nuts

75g finely grated parmesan cheese

200ml olive oil

Process basil, garlic and nuts until finely chopped.
Add cheese and with motor running add oil through liquid spout.

Homegrown basil and homegrown garlic. So easy and so yummy with pasta!

This made a thick, dip-like pesto. To make it more saucey simple add more olive oil. This quantity made plenty for our dinner and lots more for the freezer.

Pineapple and Cherry Upside Down Cake

Made by Elliot. Inspired by Playschool

This was Elliot's idea so I just provided the ingredients and he led the way after watching them make this cake on an episode of Playschool.

This is one of his favourite episodes so Elliot has dictated the recipe for you, I've just typed his words.

1. Put brown sugar and melted butter in the cake tin. Then the pineapple and cherries. Make it look pretty with the cherries in the middle of the pineapple circles.

2. Get Mummy's big mixer and mix normal sugar and butter for ages and ages. Put the eggs in (but not the shells) and mix for ages longer.

3. Put in a bit of flour and a bit of milk and a bit of flour and a bit of milk and then some 'wanilla' and keep on mixing and mixing.

4. When the mixing is finished put it on top of the pineapple and cherry and put it in the oven. It's very hot!

5. We can't open it straight from the oven so you've got to wait. When Mummy says it's ok, flip it onto a plate and eat it!

 

Sourdough Bread

My first ever attempt!

I'm not sure if it turned out right but it is yummy! It is really holey and spongey, dense and moist. And sour. I'm not sure if it's too sour. I may have used too much starter or it may have been left too long before baking. Either way, it's yummy (I think) although Elliot did tell me after a while that it hurt his mouth!

Archie devoured four slices with local jam from the markets for morning tea, so it can't be that bad!

Random Recipe Review

Well, we ended up having last week's Random Recipe last night after some unexpected take away on Friday. As a result everything on the plan got bumped back a day. The Random Recipe for last week was Pasta Primavera from Rose Elliot's The Classic Vegetarian.

As is my usual with recipes that aren't baking and don't call for exact measurements or ingredients I changed it up a bit in terms of both ingredients and cooking technique. If I followed Rose's instructions I would have used 5 different saucepans to cook 5 different green vegetables! I don't think so! I also added garlic and spring onion to the butter sauce. I omitted the broad beans because I couldn't find any anywhere, as well as the chives because our chive plants are too small yet to harvest any. I added broccoli and frozen peas too.

So here is my take on Rose Elliot's Pasta Primavera!

250g long pasta, spaghetti or fettucini

60g butter

2 cloves garlic, crushed

2 spring onions, sliced

handful of frozen peas (Rose gave exact weights for all the vegies, but I just chucked some in!)

handful of green beans

handful of snow peas

small head of broccoli, stalk and flowerets chopped

small bunch of parsley, chopped

In a large pot of boiling water, cook pasta and broccoli, adding green beans and frozen peas after a few minutes and adding snow peas just before the pasta is cooked.

Meanwhile in a frying pan saute the garlic and spring onion in butter, adding parsley at the end.

Drain pasta and return to pot, stir through the butter sauce and season with salt and pepper.

Serve with parmesan!

It was a big hit, especially Elliot who requested it for dinner again tomorrow night! We were doing our meal plan for next week at the time so I told him that we'd have it another night later in the week.

Speaking of meal plans, here is our plan for the week:

Monday

Roasted pumpkin risotto

Tuesday

Boiled chicken with aioli

Random recipe from The Mediterranean Collection p72

Wednesday

Pasta primarvera

Thursday

My birthday dinner - surprise!

Friday

Lamb and spinach curry, brown rice and steamed veg

Saturday

Fried rice with egg and veg

Sunday

Pepper steak with mashed sweet potato and steamed veg

Over The Weekend We ...

made a start on the chicken coop

continued edging the herb garden with recycled bricks

decided it was time to try out making a sourdough starter

watched new life springing up in the veg garden

played on the verandah

planted two more fruit trees in the orchard

A lovely quiet weekend pottering around the house.

Kenny Gets His First Workout

Now that we're all (mostly) settled and I'm back to getting the good, bulk wholemeal flour I've started making our bread again. And boy, how I missed homemade bread! I'm sure my waistline hasn't missed it though!

Elliot loves Kenny too! And yes, my benches are normally this cluttered!

I'm not using the breadmaker anymore, I now much prefer to use Kenny to mix and knead the dough and then shape by hand. For our everyday loaf (which I make about every second day) I get two loaves from the following recipe. I've also been making raisin/fruit bread too so I'll post that recipe once I've perfected it.

The verandah is a great, sunny place for the bread to prove. Especially when Matt is out mowing the grass!

The original recipe that I used was from the Kenwood recipe book that came with Kenny but I've tweaked it a bit.

Everyday Wholemeal Bread

Makes two 700ish gram loaves

750g wholemeal flour

150g white flour

3tsp dried yeast

1 tbls salt

1 tbls bread improver

2 tbls honey

500-600 ml warm water

Mix dry ingredients together. Mix through water until it forms a dough. 

Mix on minimum speed setting for 1 minute and then turn speed up to 1 and knead for 4 minutes or until dough is smooth and elastic.

Let rise for 1 hour.

Knock down dough with hook on minimum speed and then slowly knead for another minute or so.

Remove from bowl and shape into two loaves. 

Place in oiled bread tins and let rise for at least 30 minutes.

Bake in preheated 230C oven for 10 minutes then reduce 

temperature to 200C and bake for another 15-20 minutes. 

Remove from tins and cool on wire rack.

For All That Ails You

We've all been hit by the flu this weekend. For Archie it started last Thursday, I was down on Saturday, Matt was Sunday and Elliot has fared pretty well really with just a bit of a sniffle and slight cough in the evenings.

I made this wonderful chicken soup over the weekend that we've been eating for lunches. It was inspired by a recipe from Nourishing Traditions, but I've changed it up a bit, adding a lot of garlic and fresh ginger to help us get over this bug. It is soothing and warming and was oh so easy to make because I had stock and soaked, cooked brown rice in the freezer. I put the chicken breast in whole and shredded it at the end so all I had to do was cut up the veg while the chicken was poaching away. Super easy, super good for us!

We had it again for lunch today, except Archie now has a bit of a funny tummy so he wasn't very interested. He has been surviving on toast, rice crackers, water and breastmilk. I hope the poor wee man is feeling better soon!

Chicken and Brown Rice Soup

2l chicken stock
1 chicken breast
3-4 cloves of garlic, crushed
a good grate of fresh ginger
1 1/2 cups of soaked and cooked brown rice
1-2 cups of diced vegies (I used cabbage, carrot, corn, broccoli stems and green beans)

Place stock, garlic, ginger and chicken in a large saucepan and simmer gently until chicken is almost cooked through.
Add rice and vegies and simmer until cooked.
I also added snow peas for the last minute or two so they were still crunchy.

A Fabulous Recipe Book

A while ago I borrowed Nourishing Traditions out from the library. Unfortunately the Fraser Coast Libraries don't have a copy in their system but they inter-library loaned it for me from Mackay! How awesome is that! The unfortunately bit is that because it is an inter-library loan it takes ages to organise and there is a limit to how many times I can borrow the same book. The plus side is that I have been dropping hints to Matt left, right and centre about this book and a certain birthday that is coming up in a few months.


This book is right up my alley, real food! It is basically a different way of looking at nutrition and food with the focus being on 'old fashioned' food from many different ethnic backgrounds, most of which have lots in common despite being from different corners of the globe. The thing that struck a chord with me most is the use of wholegrains in different ways, in particular the soaking of grains before cooking. The author advises soaking all grains in whey, yoghurt or lemon juice for several hours before cooking to start to breakdown and partially 'digest' the grains so that it is easier for our bodies to digest and process.

As I had been wanting to eat more brown rice instead of white, I tried the soaking before cooking, what a difference!!! We've had brown rice a couple of times before but I never knew how to cook it properly and I obviously never cooked it for long enough either. Following the recipe in the book I soaked 2 cups of brown rice in 4 cups of warm water with 4 tbls of lemon juice. I just put it all in the same saucepan that I'd be cooking it in later. They say to soak it for 7 hours, but I just put it on to soak in the morning and then cooked it at about 4ish in the afternoon. To cook it is simply a matter of bringing it all to the boil and then turning the heat right down and leaving it to do it's thing with the lid on for 45 minutes to an hour. It is just as easy as the rice cooker and makes much yummier rice! The two cups from the recipe is way too much for one meal for us so I divide it into three and freeze the other two for later meals in soup or fried rice. I cooked it again yesterday but had run out of lemons and the only whey I had was frozen in 2 cup packets so I just soaked it in plain water. It still cooked up beautifully, but wasn't as soft as when soaked with the lemon or whey.

Because I had to return the book and our library hasn't gotten it's own copy yet (despite my asking ;) ) I had written down a couple of recipes when I had it out. But the other day I was googling and found this great blog by a lady who is cooking and blogging about every recipe from the book! Awesome! She gives the recipe and her little tips and tid-bits along the way. So far she has cooked 53 and has 720 to go!

I'm hoping that someone is picking up on my hints and the book will magically turn up under my pillow on my birthday morning. If not I'll just have to buy it myself, there goes my secret squirrel savings again!

Oh, the other thing I love is the cover art, beautiful wee pictures of traditional women from around the globe. I know the old saying, but I completely judge books by their covers!

Introducing Kenny ...

my new Kenwood Chef Mixer!!!

Actually, our Kenny is not the above model, he is the model below this one, but he looks exactly the same except white.

As you can probably tell, I'm very excited. Very, very excited. I have been wanting a stand mixer for ever and after much researching I decided a while ago that the Kenwood Chef was the one that best suited my needs. I needed something that was powerful, sturdy and could accomodate different attachments. If I was going to part with hundreds of dollars of my hard-saved money, I wanted it to be for something that I was going to get lots of use from!

My secret squirrel stash of savings has been growing slowly but steadily lately. I get a certain amount of money out every week for groceries etc and if there is anything left over at the end of the week it gets squirreled away. Some weeks it's $5, some weeks its $50, some weeks it's nothing at all, some weeks I have to sneak a bit out of the savings! When I started putting the money aside I said to Matt that I was going to spend it on something just for me. Not the boys, not the house, nothing that we needed, just a frivolous want. It's horribly selfish but I spend so little money on myself!

When we were at the shops on the weekend a big department store were having 15% off all their kitchen appliances. We looked, ummed and ahhed, looked again and then decided to have a look at a big electrical store across the road to compare prices. They had a better model with a free attachment on sale!! It was such better value for money than the department store lower model with no attachments and 15% off! So we made a completely spontaneous purchase, even though I've been saving for over a year and researching for a while too!

Now my secret squirrel savings is $0. I've got to think of something else to save for but as it took over a year to save the cash for Kenny, I think I've got a while to decide!

In the meantime, I'm not even taking him out of the box until we move in a month! I'll just go downstairs and look at his unopened box in the "ready to move" pile and dream of the cooking that will be done.

Reducing the Waste

After reading this post about how little rubbish we had in our wheelie bin a friend sent me a text message asking me to share some tips on reducing the amount of rubbish.

So over the past few days I've been making a list lof what we do. Here goes!!

We:

# make as much food from scratch as possible. I make all our stock, bread, bread rolls, pasta, pastry, pizza dough, pasta and pizza sauce, cakes, muffins, desserts, sweet biscuits, ice cream, grated cheese, dried apple, dried banana, hommus etc

# buy in bulk. Every couple of months I go to a bulk whole foods store in the next town and get big lots of nuts, seeds, rolled oats (5kg at a time), and I order in 20kg bags of organic wholemeal flour. I then store this (except flour) in our chest freezer. I put the bag of flour into the freezer for a couple of days but then decant it into a big storage container to save room in the freezer. I also buy 1kg blocks of cheese, 1kg tubs of yoghurt, the biggest packets of sugar etc from the grocery store.

# don't buy prepacked, individual or convenience foods. My one regular exception to this is a treat for the boys, the individual Babybell cheeses. They absolutely love them and are fairly healthy too. We go through 1-2 packs every fortnightly shop depending on how much we go out. They are only for snacks when we go out, not at home.

# try and buy foods with as little packaging as possible. I hate that some foods come in a package within a package (the rice cakes I buy from Aldi do and it drives me bananas) or like cereal in a bag in a box!

# try and avoid putting fruit and veg in those plastic bags they have for you to use. It probably drives the checkout people crazy when I put my big pile of bananas or 5 loose avocados on the belt, but it saves a bag! The bags I do get I reuse later.

# buy meat in bulk from the butcher. They use the same bag for 500g of mince as 1-2kgs so I get more and then freeze it, generally in a reused fruit or veg bag. If we don't have any of them I use a reuseable plastic container.

# shop for fruit and veg at the farmers markets. I take our reuseable bags and just load up the pram. It's not unusual for Elliot to be holding a pumpkin or two or a watermelon in season! He refuses to hold pineapples though, they're too spikey!! I also don't get things indiviually bagged unless they're fragile or I'm buying a lot of something ie 2-3kg of apples. I'm also mindful that many people I buy from are farmers local to the area and that every bag I use, they have to pay for it. It saves me rubbish and them money if I don't get a bag!

# buy things in reuseable packaging ie glass. Then we wash it well and put it in a box in the laundry to be reused to store something (cable ties, loose screws etc) or bottle something (jam, chutney etc). Moccona coffee jars are great for storing food in the kitchen (sugar, dried fruit, nuts etc) because they seal so well! It is an expensive brand of coffee, but whenever it's on sale I get a couple of bottles. Also an op shop in town quite often has the jars for sale for a dollar or two.

# reuse other packaging eg storing homemade washing liquid and spray & wipe in old vinegar bottles

# make some of our cleaning products, or use general household/kitchen items for cleaning eg vinegar, bi-carb. Then I just top up spray bottles or shakers in the bathroom, kitchen and laundry.

# compost all of our fruit and veg scraps

# feed most of our food scraps that can't be composted to our dog. She is very tiny and doesn't eat a lot though so we do chuck some out, especially bread crusts!

# give our egg cartons to friends with chickens. We are often gifted yummy free range eggs too! Yum!

# use boxes for craft activities

# collect newspapers to use as weed control in the garden or tear them up into the compost

# use paper on both sides for shopping lists etc

# recycle envelopes (mostly for when we go to the dairy and leave money in the box)

# use cloth nappies and cloth wipes. We do use some disposables too, very few through the day 2-3 a week and one every night.

# use face washers to wipe the boys hands and faces after meals

# put leftovers or things to store in the fridge in a container with a lid instead of glad wrap or alfoil

Most of our rubbish is tins from tomatoes, chickpeas, beans etc and milk and cream bottles that I don't like to reuse. It doesn't matter how much I wash them they still smell like sour milk! We also get junk mail delivered. My days of devouring the catalogues for bargains is over but I still haven't gotten around to putting up a "No Junk Mail" sign. We'll have to wait and see if the junk mail gets delivered to our new house out of town. Lots of my friends that live out of town don't get junk mail, and I'm sure it is one thing we won't miss!!!

I hope this list helps give people one or two new ideas on how to reduce their rubbish. If we all do a little (or big) bit, it can only help our precious planet Earth.

If you do other things to reduce your rubbish, please let me know in a comment below. I'd love to get a few new ideas!!

Wholemeal Orange Muffins

The original recipe was from The New Muffin Cookbook by Family Circle and for Lemon and Poppyseed muffins but I think I have changed it enough to call my own! Obviously I used plain wholemeal flour with baking powder instead of white self-raising flour, I reduced the amount of sugar, I used yoghurt instead of sour cream, I used half poppy seeds and half chia seeds and I had to use significantly more liquid than the original recipe, 8 tablespoons of milk, plus an extra one of orange juice.

They are very yummy and very very morish! Luckily I made mini-muffins so if I *happen* to eat 3 or 4 while typing away at the computer it's ok! Making mini-muffins is great for the boys because I know they'll eat a whole muffin, instead of just picking at it in bits and pieces. They also take next to no time to defrost from the freezer! Great for sticking in lunchboxes for trips out and about or when friends drop by!

Next time I'll use some orange zest and just orange juice instead of the milk and see how that goes. I would have done that today except I'd already given Elliot the leftover orange juice to drink!

Wholemeal Orange Muffins

2 1/2 cups wholemeal flour
5 tsp baking powder
1/4 cup mixture of poppy and chia seeds
1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 cup natural yoghurt
3 tbls orange juice
8 tbls milk

1. Mix flour, baking powder, seeds and sugar in a large bowl.
2. Whisk together eggs, yoghurt, milk and juice in a separate jug.
3. Add wet ingredient to dry and mix just enough to combine, it should be lumpy.
4. Divide mixture among greased muffin hole tray (I used 2 x 24 mini muffin trays)
5. Bake for 10-15 mintues in preheated 180 C oven or until muffins come away from sides of tin.


In the original recipe they were to be iced with a cream cheese icing, but I didn't bother and they were lovely!

Musical Dinners

As I'm sure many of you know I love Menu Planning! I love planning our meals, lunches, any extra things to make in the kitchen. I love making lists. I love paging through my many cookbooks hunting for ideas and inspiration. I even love grocery shopping!

Sometimes though, I chuck it all in and think 'stuff it, I can't be bothered tonight!' and tonight was one of those nights. I had planned to make chicken schnitzels, the whole box and dice. Walking to the butcher to buy chicken. Pounding chicken. Making bread crumbs. Crumbing chicken. You know the drill: flour, egg, crumbs. Repeat.

Today was the first day since Mum and Dad had gone home so we all felt that their presence was missing. El was a little off, Archie was tired and clingy. We went to music, which both the boys love and the plan was to go for a walk to buy the chicken after Archie had a sleep. Well, he slept for almost two hours (unheard of for him!) and then I was on the phone to a lovely friend for three quarters of an hour (she had a car accident this morning, luckily both her and her gorgeous son are ok, but the car isn't!). We were going to have a play at a friend's house at 3, so the trip to the butcher just wasn't going to fit in around everything today. Not to mention actually making everything with two boys worn out from playing with some little friends all afternoon!

Luckily I keep a stock of meals in the freezer for such days as today! Whenever I make a pasta sauce, casserole, curry, soup or anything that will freeze I always make a double or triple batch and keep it in meal size portions in the freezer. All that needs to be done then is pop some veg on, or boil up some rice or pasta. It is so easy and just as yummy as a slaved-over dinner! It also goes without saying that it is far cheaper, yummier and healthier than take-away too!

So tonight we had pasta bolognese from the freezer. Matt had to stop and buy pasta (it's on the list to make tomorrow). But speaking of tomorrow, Matt just remembered that he has to go down to Brisbane for the day (a 3.5hr drive each way) so he'll be leaving really early and home really late. I'll probably give the boys something easy for dinner and then Matt and I can have something special once he's home and settled and the boys are asleep. We'll probably have the laksa I had planned for this coming weekend.

So this week we're playing Musical Dinners.

Our Week in Short

We have just waved off Nan and Pop after a wonderful week with Nan and a wonderful long weekend with Pop. As always it was so sad to see them go but we will be down to visit them in a couple of weeks. And we have Skype in the meantime!

We had a lovely week. So here it is in short! The highlights and surprisingly, no lowlights! A whole week of no lowlights! Archie has even been sleeping really well! Not sleeping through mind you, but good for him!

* a great trip to the Fire Station with Playgroup. We went last year and Elliot was still talking about it a year later so I knew he'd enjoy it! Archie was big enough to get into it too this year, he does love a good hat!

All the children had a turn of the fire hose and getting dressed up in miniature Fire Fighter's hat and jacket.

* lots of time at home playing with Nanna! The books and puzzles and toys and games got a real workout!

* a trip to the local animal park when Matt took a day off work! The boys had a great time patting joeys and admiring all the native and introduced animals. Elliot's favourite was the camel called Boris! Archie loved the emus!

El especially loved the guinea pigs and sat so patiently and quietly waiting for them to make an appearance. They were very timid though so the man lifted the lid on their house so El could see them! How lovely!

* lots of yummy cooking! The highlight was a special Roast Chicken dinner with Apple Crumble and homemade ice cream for dessert. Sooooooo yummy!

* a special 'second birthday cake' for Nanna, a double decker chocolate cake with ganache (homemade of course!)

* we think we've found 'the house' and will be going for an inspection early this week. It is vacant so we had a good wander around the grounds and peeked in windows and it looks amazing!

I'm looking forward to getting back into our routine this week although it will be a lot more quiet and lonely now Mum has gone home.

Third Time is a Risen Charm ...

... sort of.

I've been making our bread for a couple of years now. Every now and then I hand-make it, but 99% of the time it's in the machine. If we're just using the bread for sandwiches I bake it in the machine but if I want to make rolls or a fancy shaped loaf I let the machine to all the hard work then take it out to shape and the final prove. For a while I was using these pre-mixes, just adding water and yeast. The Germain Grain was hands-down our favourite, dark and grainy and really really yummy. After a while I started experimenting with different recipes and finally found a good one and have stuck with it. That was until this weekend and my fiddling hasn't really stood me in very good stead.

Gathering ingredients to begin baking.

The other week I bought myself a book. That's right, something just for me, not the boys, not the house, ME! Well, the title of the book is 150 Recipes for your Bread Machine so everyone benefits, but you know what I mean! It has gotten me very inspired to make different kinds of bread, heaps of different things to do with the machine (English Muffins or Naan anyone?). Feeling inspired I used the recipe in the book to make a basic 100% wholemeal flour bread (Our usual is 100% wholemeal too). It was unequivocally a disaster. Too dry, not mixed properly and completely not risen. Not even a smidge. So it got chopped up and put in the freezer to take to the park to feed the ducks. Who knows if they'll even eat it?

The next day, take 2. I used my old faithful recipe and the same result! This time everything was mixed and cooked properly but completely not risen! All I could think was 'What is going on?' I started troubleshooting. Bad yeast? I tested it, nope perfect. Different ingredients? Nope, same batch of flour (I buy 20kg at a time), same batches of bread improver, salt, sugar, everything! I then remembered that when I took the pan out of the machine it had dripped some black, grease-looking stuff onto the bench. It also made a different 'knocking' sound when it was kneading. I'm hoping it's not our machine. It's at least 15 years old and was my Mum's before mine. It sat in her cupboard unused for years before I 'borrowed' it. It gets used at least three times a week, so from it's point of view, I understand if it's had enough, I probably would be thinking of packing it in too if I were it!

V2.0 Not risen, but properly mixed and cooked. V1.0 was such a disaster it didn't warrant a photo!

This morning I thought I'd give it one last go, and the third time was almost lucky. The bread this morning had risen, but not as much as it normally does. The machine made the funny sound again while kneading and I think it's on it's last legs. The bread is edible and it'll do until I can figure out what is going on.

V2.0 and V3.0 next to each other, there is an obvious difference but V3.0 is still not as risen as usual.