Hibernation

Well it seems to be February already. I believe this happened last year too. Perhaps for me January is a time to regroup before heading into the new year for real? I've been trying to finish up overdue Christmas presents (not with great success I might add) and trying to figure out how I want to prioritise this new year. Not sure I've come to any great conclusions yet, but I'm getting there.

In the meantime there has been snow play with my daughter. She has discovered snow angels, and decided that snow is not barrier to making "sandcastles"!

Indoors we've also been crafting. While at a holiday crafting event at our local library before Christmas my daughter discovered rubber-stamping and was fixated. So I have dug out my own collection of stamps (from when my own obsession began in high school), got some supposedly washable stamp-pads and there have been some fun times stamping and experimenting with mixed media (painting then stamping, stamping and drawing with crayons etc).

I've done some knitting. This photo is of a pair of fingerless mitts that go up to my elbows using leftover yarn from my Gathered Cardi. I love the cardi, and I was glad to have the sleeves not too long for when working but I do find my forearms getting cold when out and about so this fills in the gap. I tried several patterns before spotting the simpler and gratifyingly quick one I used. I should to a proper finished object post when I've got some good finished object photos.

I also managed my first sewing project of the new year -- an addition to my cloth pad stash made with the off cuts from making pyjama trousers. Love these! I notice there's a new free pattern for cloth pads up at the BurdaStyle site, but I know there are lots of others around and about if you search. I made my own pattern based on pads I already had.

Of course all important at this time of year is the comfort of food and drinks. Tea and toast is one of my favourites. I'm loving these mugs bought at the farmers market (unfortunately this one got broken already, I'm seeing it as an opportunity to support a local business!).

In the cold weather soup and bread is a must. This is some soup made from leftover potato and cheese bake with an onion, turkey broth and some corn added in!

One of my goals, that I've really been working toward for a while as you might guess from previous posts, is to make our bread products with occasional supplementation from local bakeries (the toast with the tea is bought I must admit -- multigrain wholewheat sourdough, yum). It's going pretty well (although I did buy some crumpets at the supermarket last week... I have to try making those again and see whether I can master it).

The bread with the soup is made using the naan bread method found in the Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day book -- it's a great way to make a flat bread quickly on the stove. Cut off a small piece of dough, roll it out and put in a warmed buttered frying pan and cook with a lid on flipping part way through. So good.

Baking...

I've been baking with my daughter more recently. She's really liking getting involved especially when she can do stuff herself.

For these cookies I got the ingredients mostly ready to go in advance and she got to put stuff into the bowl and mix until bored and ready for the next addition. I would do some extra stirring as needed.

Then I cut the dough into pieces the right size for one cookie and she rolled pieces and "squished" them onto the baking sheet herself (well about half of the dough and I did the rest, these in the picture are her own work).
I found the recipe at the Baking Bites blog - Spicy, Chewy Molasses Cookies
(note the ones I made were chewier than my daughters, probably because I lightly pressed my balls of dough onto the baking sheet rather than squashing them!)

Then for dinner we made pizza. I used some basic bread dough (using the Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day book and making a dough somewhere between the basic recipe and the olive oil recipe with some whole wheat bread flour in it) and cut off a 1lb piece for the pizza for me and my husband and about 3 ounces or so I think for my daughter. She loves having some dough to work with. Unfortunately we couldn't find her smaller rolling pin and she was a bit frustrated using mine but it worked out and she did a bit of stretching and pressing it with her fingers too. I helped her spread some tomato sauce on (both of us holding the spoon) and then gave her slices of cheese and pepperoni and some olives to place on the dough as she pleased. Then I put it in the oven and she watched it cook.

chocolate stickybun

I made these using the "Sticky Pecan Caramel Rolls" recipe from Artisan Breads in 5 Minutes a Day. This is the second batch; I actually remembered to take a picture this time. Admittedly this is not the greatest picture ever but, you know, I wanted to eat!

The first time I used challah dough which was really good. The second time I used just a batch of (more or less) the master recipe which is not as rich and decadent but still really very tasty.

I make 9 rolls in a square pan (8x8 and 9x9 both work). I just like all the rolls being a more consistent shape I guess. And I make mine with chocolate because, well, I love chocolate and too much cinnamon and pecans is not necessarily my favourite.

For the caramel topping I actually melted the butter and sugar most of the way in the microwave rather than creaming because I was in a hurry. It seemed to work just as well that way and I just poured it in and spread it out a bit to evenly distribute the sugar then sprinkled on the pecan pieces.

When I rolled out the dough I spread it with a little softened salted butter and then some ganache (which I made using a mix of semi-sweet and unsweetened chocolate so it's not too sweet) and sprinkled on some chocolate chips before rolling up and cutting. The first time I did also sprinkle on a bit of cinnamon which I forgot the second time, I like it both ways.

Porridge Bread

My daughter's choice for breakfast most often is oats and raisins. Partly this is habit, and I suspect she also likes that she gets to do cooking (I measure the water and oats and she pours them into the pan, puts the lid on and watches for the bubbles).

Sometimes she'll devour her bowl of oats and raisins and sometimes she'll pick for ages and eat very little. I hate to throw out the leftover oatmeal but it's not something I like to eat myself and I've been meaning to experiment with making bread with the leftovers. I came across a recipe online the other day that prompted me to give it a go. So here's what I came up with.

Porridge Bread
(modified from this recipe, and I already forgot where I found the link I'm afraid, and influenced by my ABI5MAD experiences so far)

I had 1/2 cup of leftover oatmeal and raisins (had a little milk mixed in but was made with water)
to that I added 1tbspn walnut oil, 1/2 tsp cinnamon and 1/4 cup molasses

In the measuring cup I had measured out the molasses in I put 1/4 cup warm water and 1/4 cup milk then sprinkled over 1tspn yeast (if I'd thought about it more I would have used the warm water to dissolve the rest of the molasses and then transfered the liquids to the mixing bowl before adding the yeast)

Mixed wet ingredients in the bottom of a mixing bowl then on top added 1&1/2 cups AP flour, 1/2 cup whole wheat bread flour and 1/4 cup oat flour plus salt

Mixed until flour all wet, I needed to add maybe another 1/8 cup water and also decided to throw in a handful or two of currants (next time I might add even a bit more water as the dough seemed a bit denser than I might have ideally liked). No kneading.

This made about 1 1/2 lbs of bread dough.

Allowed dough to rise in the bowl for about 3 hrs (it was a cool day), shaped quickly and placed into small loaf pan and left the dough to rise maybe another hour until it was poking up above the top of the loaf pan.

Baked at 375 degrees for about 45 mins (this may not be the best temp/time configuration for the crust so I'll have to experiment).

I've been eating it lightly toasted with butter, I'm thinking it would also be good with some of the apple butter I made last year too.

More Bread and some Thrifting

I've continued trying different things from the Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day book. The oatmeal bread worked OK although I think I may have given it too long in the initial rise, it tasted good which is the important thing.

For dinner last weekend, on a night when my husband and I would be out in the evening and need to eat dinner soon after getting home, I made pizza. I mixed up half a batch of olive oil dough (I used whole wheat bread dough for one of the cups of flour) right before we went out which meant that when we arrived home it was time to heat the oven and make the pizza. While the oven heated I cooked up some onion to which I added kale, beet greens and scapes (all from our farmers market) and some balsamic vinegar. That mixture went on one of the pizzas along with mushrooms, tomato paste with oregano and basil and then topped with fresh mozzarella. The other pizza (which I thought my daughter was more likely to eat) had tomato paste and pesto, cheddar cheese and pepperoni.

Today I had a go at making bialys with some of my second batch of bagel dough.
My daughter and I shared one still slightly warm from the oven, she declared it good and did eat some of the onion and poppy seed topping even. I really liked the texture of the bread, and love the onion and poppy seeds (I really want there to be more of it than the recipe suggested so might think about that for next time, there will definitely be a next time).

Do you like the plate the bialys are on? It's one of my latest thrift store acquisitions. I've been trying to go less often but on Wednesday my daughter encouraged me in there as we passed by (she knows where to find all the toys and heads straight in that direction). We actually found a couple of things for her, not in the toy department though. Firstly I spotted a couple of ceramic birds which I guessed she would like as she has always enjoyed watching the sparrows when we're in town. She was very happy to see them and got herself a basket to put them in and carry them around until it was time to pay. (The birds are now perching over one of our doorways where she can, and does, spot them and point them out at regular intervals.)
Then while I was looking at fabric she spotted a little tiny "mug" which she got very excited about it has "humpy dumpy with a bue balloon" on it!

In addition to the plates I came away with two interesting looking books, two sheets and a lovely tablecloth (white with pink embroidery and appliqué). The table cloth is a bit stained but it's the kind of stain that I hope might come out, if not I'm sure I can make good use of the unstained parts in some crafting projects.

Birthday Presents

My birthday was a week or so ago and one of my presents was Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day (thanks mum). I'd been hearing of it around the internet. Having had success with the No-Knead Bread recipe, and finding that my daughter always needs my attention just when I'd trying to get something time sensitive, done this method seemed intriguing. So far I haven't been disappointed.

I'm really enjoying looking through the book and giving some of the recipes a try. I started out (as suggested) with the basic recipe (although I did sub a little wholewheat and a little barley flour in there I must admit) and ended up with a very nice loaf of bread. My daughter has been more than usually excited about having toast and marmite for breakfast recently.

I'm liking not worrying about finding something to cover my loaf while it's baking (as in the no-knead method) and the multiple variations. What I will be on the lookout for is some different containers for the dough while it's residing in the fridge since I'm currently using my large (4.5 qt) mixing bowls which aren't quite big enough for the initial rise really, and take up more room in the fridge (widthwise) than is really ideal. I'd love to find something not plastic.

My second batch of dough is from the bagel recipe (here I subbed one cup of wholewheat into the recipe and used malt extract instead of sugar). Despite some slight water logging issues a couple of times while boiling, the results have been very tasty. I may have a go at pretzels with what's left of this dough, but I definitely want to try the Bialys which sound so good (onions and poppyseeds, mmm). Next up is the oatmeal bread (I actually baked some already but haven't tasted it just yet).

Sort of related (and possibly TMI for some so stop now if you'd not into girl talk), for my daughter's second birthday (almost to the hour which I find very interesting) I got my period (as in the first one since my daughter arrived on the scene)! While I'm not so much enjoying the cramping and other less enjoyable aspects of being (presumably somewhat) fertile, I'm excited in so far as we want to have another baby sometime and this would seem to be a step in that general direction. Time to sew some cloth pads, and perhaps invest in a new thermometer I do believe.

Links for 2007-08-20 [del.icio.us]

• Woolgathering: Mad Color Weave pattern now available
  sock pattern found via Needle Exchange's Saturday Pattern Day #9 post
  
• domesticrafts - Get your Drunken Bees here
  another sock pattern found via Needle Exchange's Saturday Pattern Day #10
  
• domesticrafts - Zephyr Socks
  and once I was at domesticrafts I saw this sock pattern that I like even more!
  
• Stitch Catalog - Stitch Count Listing
• Stashmina - knittywhipped: Wrap it up
  Idea for a wrap, love the fir cone pattern.
• Clapotis pattern at knitty.com
  Another wrap/shawl/scarf pattern I want to make. I've seen so many pictures of this pattern at flickr and it sounds simple and looks great.
• 1x umrühren bitte: Ein Brot macht die Runde: Hokkaido Milchbrot
  this bread looks very tasty (I especially like the idea of the variation with Nutella, and guess I could alternatively use some kind of ganache and chopped nuts perhaps). Just need to brush up on my German so that I can understand more of the recipe!
• Culinary in the Desert: Mocha Mudslides
  Saw a picture of these cookies at flickr. I'm not a fan of the flavour of coffee (love the smell though) but I can think of a few people I know who would like these a lot.
• Swirl socks for Mom and MIL…and you? « Sulala
  Another aesthetically pleasing sock pattern (yet more socks for my to-do list). These socks have a swirl that spirals around the leg and foot. I suspect it would be look very interesting to babies exploring feet! Found via Needle Exchange's Saturday Pattern Day #10
  

Links for 2007-07-27 to 30 [del.icio.us]

• Corrections: The Bread Bible - Real Baking with Rose Levy BeranbaumA handy link for me. I've had this book for a year or two now (having got it out of the library and baking lots of bread during my first pregnancy). I've made some of my most succesful sliceable loaves from this book. I'm feeling like baking more bread again (perhaps because I've been eating more bread because of frequenting our local bakery) so the book is coming out again.
• BBC NEWS | Health | Sunshine 'protective' against MS
• BBC NEWS | Programmes | From Our Own Correspondent | When suffering gets personal
  
  "On his return from Afghanistan, BBC world affairs editor John Simpson reveals how his attitude to covering stories about violence and suffering has changed."
• BBC NEWS | World | Europe | Veteran, 109, revisits WWI trench
  
  "The last known surviving British soldier to have fought in the trenches of World War I has revisited the site where he fought 90 years ago."
• Vinnland socks -- ¡The AntiCraft!
  
  I saw a pair of these in some striking yarn at flickr. Nice cable pattern for warm socks.
  
• David Lebovitz: Making Ice Cream Without A Machine
  
  Definitely want to have a go at doing this sometime. I think maybe we tried something similar once when I was a child. Anyway, ice cream is very popular in this house so it seems as though it would be a fin thing to try.

I've been slowly catching up with my backlog of links (they're showing up in the past here because they're automatically generated posts that I edit a bit so they're all backdated). Meanwhile a new backlog is building and I haven't been good about blogging about what I'm actually doing.

This has not a little to do with the death of a friend which I mentioned in a previous post. I feel as though I'm doing so little to help, but even what I am doing (mostly relaying email messages) seems to be taking up most of the writing time that I have at the moment. As usual I am very behind on household tasks. (Sigh.)

Tomorrow I'm going to be cooking lots of food for the potluck lunch at the memorial celebration. (Well, I will assuming my delightful daughter co-operates. It seems she's often happy to amuse herself in the corner of the room until I'm actually trying to get stuff done and then she NEEDS me. Oh well, that's the way it goes! Hopefully my husband will be able to look after her for a lot of the day.)

I'm actually in a bit of a cooking phase at the moment. Have been for a while actually, I think it's partly where my need to be creative finds an outlet in these days when I have no opportunities to get into my sewing room (I have been knitting too, even have some finished objects I should blog about sometime). Now with grief and the desire to do something to help (even if that's only providing comfort food for us) on top of general frustrated creativity the cooking's necessary. The other day I made a cake even though we still had leftover birthday cake to finish and at the best of times cakes tend to end up moldy in our house (we enjoy them and then forget about them before they're gone, I don't know how we manage this). It came out very nicely.

It's a banana bread recipe I hadn't tried before, I came across it drifting around the internet (as I do in all the spare time I don't have) at Orangette, it's got coconut and rum in it plus I added chocolate chips because I can't let well enough alone! It's very tasty.

Also I'm entering a bread making phase I think. I have them now and then. Someone got me The Bread Bible a while back and I haven't used it much since for various reasons. I've been starting to itch to make bread again so for one of the parties we had for my daughter's birthday I made the cheddar loaf (very tasty) and some crumpets (slightly disappointing but I have some ideas about how to do better next time). I also made a sandwich loaf a few days ago which came out so-so, it tastes yeasty and I'm thinking I let it go too much in at least one of the risings. It's good toasted with butter and marmite though.

Links for 2007-07-24 [del.icio.us]

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Nerve gas antidote made by goats

Multi Grain Rolls Recipe at Mothering.com

Wendy Cooling: I want to get every child in the country reading for pleasure - Independent

Identity theft: parents who steal from their kids - ParentDish
Well this is horrible to contemplate; sabotaging your own child's life.

The peace of paper » Little Boxes
A tutorial for making a cute little gift box.

Medical Imaging News Articles | Cholesterol-lowering diet can modify fetal Doppler velocimetry in mid-pregnancy | Radiology News

Links for 2007-07-19 [del.icio.us]

• No-Knead Bread - OregonLive.com
  I made some of the no-knead bread after it was in the NYTimes a while back and the second batch came out really nicely and I've been meaning to make more. It's a great way to make bread for someone like me who doesn't have much time to bake, but plenty of time to let things hang around to mature for a day! And I'm entering a bread baking phase at the moment.
• BBC NEWS | UK | Education | The dead parrot curriculum
• Guardian Unlimited | A precious provision
  "We were unlucky in the tragic hand dealt to our son, but blessed to have had British healthcare "
  This article resonated with me. It made me remember after my first daughter died at birth (I had a 40% placental abruption at 23 weeks) getting the hospital bill for the delivery and the autopsy and everything: Obviously those people who took care of us and our baby and were doing there jobs so well deserve to be paid, but (especially as someone who grew up in the UK and still hasn't got used to the way it works in the USA) it seems unthinkable that I should have to look at a bill for that when my baby just died. And thankfully we have good health insurance, but what if we didn't? In the midst of that experience or some other unexpected turn your life upside-down event I think people should be able to focus on the very real things happening in their lives and not have to worry about what their insurance will cover, and how to afford the rest. The money wasn't really a headache for us in our situation, but it could have been, and it certainly made me think.
  
• Knitty: Spring 2007 - Clessidra Stockings
  I think my mum would love these, she likes nice long socks. The question is should I just send her the link to the pattern or should I attempt to make her some for Christmas?
• Summer Express: 101 Simple Meals Ready in 10 Minutes or Less - New York Times
• Warming Report Warns of Increased Flooding - New York Times
• Dewey? At This Library With a Very Different Outlook, They Don’t - New York Times
• V-Neck Hippie Dress w/ 6 Strips - theElektron
  found via :Craft
• Top 7 Tutorials for Making Your Own Shopping Tote
  found via :Craft
• Tickle Turdle Wool Wrap Pattern
  I've been knitting wool soakers for my daughter since before she was actually here to wear them but I've never tried to crochet one. I'm definitely much more of a knitter, but I do crochet sometimes and I hear the crochet soakers make up faster and may be a bit denser too. (Of course I should also work on my ripple blanket again one of these days.)