Spring shoots

This morning, on my way back from the compost heap, I noticed little knobs of green in the earth as the bluebells push their way into the sunlight. Looking around at the only bed I've planted anything in, I saw a whole row of young plants - green shoots about four inches tall that I hadn't noticed before because I just hadn't looked. We have garlic!

Garlic shoots! And some weeds too, but never mind them

Of course it's only January and, as Ian said this morning, "Winter's probably going to come back and bite us on the bum," but today the weather is mild and the first things I planted are growing strongly. Today feels like spring.

Marmalade wine

The eagle-eyed amongst you (I'm writing this as if I have readers! Haha!) will have noticed that when I finished making marmalade I had only used two thirds of the fruit. The remaining third was still sitting in water in the wine-making bucket. Now there's an idea!

Hmm, what could I possibly do with all this fruit that happens to be sitting in the wine-making bucket?

The wines I'd tried so far both included lemons as a dominant flavour, so why not go the whole hog and try a citrus wine? Well, it would be better than leaving the fruit to go mouldy, anyway. So, I topped up the water in the bucket, added a bag of sugar (much less sugar needed for wine than jam) and a teaspoonful of yeast, and left it for a few days in the airing cupboard. That yeast really is getting old - it should start bubbling in about 24 hours, but this took three days. I must get some more - maybe I'll even get some wine yeast.

Once I could see signs of bubbles, I strained the mixture into sterilised bottles and applied the balloon airlocks. The unfermented liquid has the distinctive bittersweet tang of marmalade, so I think this is going to make an 'interesting' wine. I'll let you know...

Marmalade

In the midst of winter, when Christmas is over and spring is still a long way off, when we know the days are getting longer but can't really see it yet, at this lowest point of the year, Seville oranges are in season. This might not seem like much to get excited about, as these oranges are bitter and not very tasty, but make marmalade out of them and they bring sunshine into the kitchen.

I've made small quantities of marmalade (and other jams) from time to time over the years in a saucepan or two, but this year I decided it's time to invest in a proper jamming kettle. After all, I'll be doing quite a lot of this sort of thing. So it was that I headed off to Charlie's in Aberystwyth - a shop that has almost no shop front at all but all kinds of wonders inside - and purchased a shiny new jamming kettle. I bought the stainless steel one, which cost twice as much as the aluminium one, but I reckon if I'm buying equipment that I expect to last a lifetime, I should really get the best.

The next day, I headed off to the greengrocer's, where I overheard a lady say that she'd caught the first scent of spring in the air that morning. A bit early, I thought, but cheering nonetheless. I hadn't done much by way of calculations, but thought four or five pounds of oranges would be a goodly quantity. Grandma's recipe, which I always use, starts, "Allow one tangerine and one lemon to each pound of Seville oranges," so I duly bought six lemons (one for general cooking) and about ten satsumas (five plus some for eating. These are near enough to tangerines, I think).

Next step was chopping the fruit, which I set to work on that evening. I have a serrated knife which I use for this purpose and tomato salads in the summer, and not much else. It stays pretty sharp. I had almost five pounds of oranges, plus just over three pounds of the other fruit. Eight pounds of citrus fruit is a lot. I chopped away for a good two hours, maybe more, and although I got a stiff neck (really should have sat down to this job, but Ian was using the table), the kitchen smelled wonderful, so I quite enjoyed the task. By the time I'd finished, the kettle was more than half full.

Next, consult recipe: "For each pound of fruit add three pints of water and leave to soak overnight." Hang on, for eight pounds of fruit that's 24 PINTS of water! The kettle, which has a helpful scale up the side, takes 15 pints. Hmmm. I added nine pints (the fruit already being six, apparently) and left it overnight, to ponder the question further in the morning.

Clearly, I wasn't going to get all of the marmalade into the jamming kettle to cook. The point of buying the kettle was not to need to make jam in batches any more. Oh well. I ladelled out half of the mixture into the big mixing bowl and added water to what was left in the kettle (much calculating required here). I now had fruit and water in the right proportions, but the kettle was still too full, as I still had to add sugar and it would rise up as it boiled. OK, needed another big container. I cast around the kitchen and lighted on the wine-making bucket. I ladelled more mixture out of the kettle into that, leaving five pints in the kettle, then put that on the hob to boil. This took quite a long time.

Golden citrus fruit in a shiny new pan. What could be nicer?

Next part of the recipe: "For each pound of pulp, add 3/4 pound of sugar"... a few more calculations... HOW MUCH?! I have 8 lb fruit and 24 pints water - say one pint weighs one pound (it doesn't, but near enough. Some will have evaporated), that's 32 lb pulp, so a total of 24 lb sugar (why couldn't Grandma have just said, "To each pound of fruit allow 3 pints water and 3 lb sugar"? I guess that just wouldn't be Grandma). I'd bought a 3 kilo bag...

No, really, that has to be too much sugar. I looked at a more modern recipe, which called for 2 lb sugar to each pound of oranges, plus lemon juice (not whole lemons). Much less sugar. Many calculations later, and I'm not at all sure how I arrived at this, I decided on 5 lb sugar for my 5 pints fruit-and-water (one third of the total quantity of fruit).

Boiling the first batch took a lot longer than the recipe said, and that was long enough. In fact, it took most of the day. I probably could have turned the heat up to spead it along a bit, but I was in the kitchen anyway, baking for a party the next day, so I didn't mind just leaving it. I did notice rather a lot of condensation on the kitchen windows by the end of the day, though.

I had clean jam jars in the oven, sterilising nicely, and eventually dripped a bit of the mixture on a chilled plate and decided that it was looking distinctly marmalady when it cooled, so ladelled it into the jars. Eight jars (of various sizes) and this was only the first batch!

I got straight on with the second batch, after some complicated pouring of mixture from one container to another to get the right amount of water and the right amount of fruit. With the heat a bit higher it cooked faster this time, and I was still baking anyway. I had to use some smaller jars for the second batch and ended up with eleven, so nineteen jars of marmalade so far, plus a ramekin dish, plus a small saucer, because I hadn't heated enough jars.

This is a lot of marmalade, especially as Ian doesn't like it. Can I get through nineteen jars in a year? Probably not. Some relatives may be getting home-made marmalade for Christmas next year - sorry folks. Alternatively I could call it two years' supply, but that would mean missing out on the kitchen-based sunshine that is marmalade making next January. I don't think so.

Note for future reference: 'four or five pounds' of Seville oranges is too much.

It's delicious, by the way, with the reduced sugar content. There's really no need for that much sugar, but then Grandma always did have a sweet tooth.

Digging

Today's task was digging. I really should have been doing the bookkeeping and VAT return, but the day dawned bright and clear, and for the first time in weeks the ground was neither frozen solid nor buried in snow. I checked the weather forecast and it looked like this:

Mon : sunny
Tue : light rain
Wed : heavy rain
Thu : mist
Fri : heavy rain

One sunny day - an opportunity not to be missed!

I've been feeling daunted by the garden since we got here. If I think about digging and planting the whole lot, which is the task ahead of me, it seems like a massive task. Worse, I keep thinking of extra things like, 'replace that leylandii hedge with native species' which in itself is about three weeks' work. What I needed was a managable task that would get me started, and soon.

The garden's divided into raised beds, the smaller of which could be easily dug over in an afternoon, but the one nearest the house is huge. It was this one I set my sights on - I reckoned I could dig the weeds out of half of it in a day. I took a line from the sprawling rose by the wall to the plant-which-might-be-comfrey by the path and set to work digging everything on the house side of that line.

The soild in our garden is lovely - rich, dark and friable. It's very easy to dig. So easy, that as I started I got a bit carried away and thought I might get the whole bed done in the day, but that was when I had only shallow-rooted weeds. As I got to the deeper ones I slowed down a bit. Still, I kept going, alternating digging with ferrying weeds up to the compost heap. Robins started taking an interest, though the first one to turn up quickly got chased off by the second. This presented a dilemma - worms are good for the garden, so I don't want the robins to eat them, but who could chase away a cute little robin that sits and watches you dig?

About two-thirds of the way through I took a break for lunch, then went back to it and indeed, got the half-bed finished as the last of the sunlight disappeared from the mountains. So there we are. I set myself an acheivable task, and acheived it. Having got started on the challenge that is The Garden, it feels less daunting now, even though I haven't yet figured out what's going where. I think I'll put potatoes in the big bed, though I haven't yet worked out whether half the bed will be enough or whether I'll need the whole bed.

Next, I have to investigate the free horse manure I've seen advertised in the next village (fresh or rotted is the key question) and find a decent source of seed potatoes.

New Year's Destruction

What better way to see in the new year than by taking a hammer, chisel and crowbar to the sitting room wall?

Here's the sitting room fireplace as it was when we bought the house.

The gas fire was removed ASAP, when the man came to fit the cooker. That left us with a chilly draught, so as autumn turned to winter (it did that quite early this year) we bought some wood and started lighting fires in the empty fireplace:

However, the plan is to have a woodburning stove with back boiler in there, powering the central heating. I've been pretty sure there'd be a good big fireplace hiding somewhere in there. If there is, we can set the woodburner back into the wall so it doesn't stick out into the room too far. Only one way to find out, though:

After a couple of hours of happy destruction, we have a lintel!

Yes, it's big! I was going to expose it all, but gave up before I got to the left hand end. It probably goes all the way to the wall, and I don't think we want a firelace that big.

The next step is to find/choose the edges of the old fireplace then remove all the brickwork etc that's filling the gap. This will have to wait until we're pretty much ready to fit the stove, as once we've done it we'll have a very large gaping hole in the sitting room wall. The tricky thing is knowing what size register plate to get to go across the chimney before we've opened up the space to find out how big the chimney is. I foresee a rather chilly few days in the middle of that job.

Soap - first attempt

I was quite scared of soap making, to be honest. It's not particularly difficult, but it involves caustic soda, and if you get the quantities wrong you can end up with caustic soda in the soap, which is really not something you want to be washing with. However, I'd decided to give it a go, so after much procrastination I pulled myself together, gathered up my ingredients, donned safety goggles and rubber gloves, and started measuring things.

Ian found the goggles and gloves highly amusing, so he took a picture

Part of the procrastination was lack of internet, which slowed down the research. I'd seen some information - and there's plenty out there - but hadn't settled on a recipe. Being me, I didn't just choose a recipe then set about following it, because most of them include some fairly exotic ingredients, like coconut oil. I'd read some general introductions and learnt that basically, you mix alkali (or lye - either sodium hydroxide or potassium hydroxide) with oil or fat in the right quantities and you get soap. Too little lye and you get a sloppy mess; too much and you get something that will eat through your skin. Unsurprisingly, most recipes build in a margin of error in the direction of the sloppy mess.

The decisions to be made were which oils and fats to use and what quantities of the various ingredients to include. I found excellent websites that told me what kind of soap to expect with various ingredients, calculators for what quantity of lye to use, and one that even adjusted the quantities to suit the dimensions of my mould.

I had thought to use just oils, but with research got worried that the soap might not be hard enough, so chickened out and included some lard (I did attempt to render this myself from leftover bacon fat, but didn't keep an eye on it and ended up with brown, smoky smelling lard. Not so good for soap). I also had some hemp oil, which apparently makes luxurious soap, so that went in. I ignored the bit about it having a short shelf life - seemed fine to me. I'd bought peanut oil for moisturiser, but what little information I could find suggested this was quite similar to olive oil, which I had in much larger quantities having restocked twice by mistake at some point. I also found someone eulogising about sunflower oil, which appears to be much less available in the US (rarity value possibly contributing to the eulogy), whereas this is my main cooking oil, so I was pleased to be able to include some of that.

The recipe I finally used went like this:
Lard: 7 1/4 oz
Hemp oil: 3 3/4 oz
Olive oil: 8 1/4 oz
Sunflower oil: 3 3/4 oz
Caustic soda: 3 oz
Water: 7 1/2 oz

I'd played with the recipe resizer to get a nice round number for the lye (how deep you fill the mould is somewhat flexible) and rounded the other ingredients (mostly up) to the nearest quarter ounce, because that's the smallest weight I have with my scales. There was also a minor adjustment due to adding-up failure; the original version had less olive and more sunflower oil.

So to work.

Step 1: Mix the lye with the water. Yes, it does get hot. Yes, it would have been a good idea to do this in a well ventilated area.
Step 2: Melt the lard then mix with the oils in a bowl.
Step 3: Wait for them all to cool down to about 110 deg. farenheit. This is boring. Also, I didn't have a thermometer that I was willing to put into caustic soda, so I had to guess. 110 is a bit above body temperature, so should be fairly easy to judge, though the rubber gloves did make it a bit harder.
Step 4: Add the lye and water to the oils and stir. The usual advice is to use a stick blender for this, alternating blending with stirring. I don't have a stick blender and thought I might use an electic whisk instead, but one site helpfully explained why this isn't a good idea - air bubbles don't make for a nice soap texture. I started with a tiny manual whisk that I could keep completely submerged, so whisk without drawing in air. This proved difficult in rubber gloves, and before long my hands got tired, so I gave in and used the electric whisk. I should point out that the stirring took a VERY long time. At one point, I took a break and went to off to consult John Seymour's self sufficiency book. He gives very sparse instructions (no warning about how long it might take, for example), but advises adding the lye slowly, otherwise it won't mix, which I hadn't seen elsewhere. No mention of a stick blender here, either, just 'stir gently'. I wondered if the blending was necessary to compensate for the too-fast addition of lye at the beginning. Too late to do anything about that now.

Eventually, after about an hour and a half, I saw the first signs of 'trace', which is what I was waiting for. This means that the spoon leaves a trace in the surface of the mixture as it moves through it. It came on gradually - at first only visible when I flipped drops across the surface. Bubbles from the blender became more evident, so I stopped using it at that point and just used the spoon to mix. It also started to smell less like oil and more like soap, which was encouraging. Even better, it smelled like Grandma's soap, and she only ever bought the best.

Once I was sure I could see the trace, I added some fragrance (but not too much - I didn't want to lose the Grandma's soap smell). I'd bought two bottles - just cheap stuff for scenting rooms - so had a choice of white musk or rose. I had chosen white musk, but the mixture was a soft peach colour, which I thought suited the rose better. I had plenty of time to think about it! (Actually, it finally set to an ivory colour, which would have suited either - I'll know next time).

I have to say, I was very excited to see the mixture finally turn into soap - all that time stirring it must have built up the tension!

Step 4: Pour into mould, cover and leave for 24-48 hours to set. Within 24 hours it was hard enough to remove from the mould, so I cut it up and, as instructed, wrapped it in a towel and...

Step 5: Leave to cure. The amount of time for this varies a lot between recipes. For some it's as much as six weeks. A bit of research told me that the time required varies according to the choice of oils, and that olive oil takes as long as any. Oops - these are supposed to be for Christmas presents and I don't have six weeks until Christmas. Doh! I'd really like to test a piece before giving it to people, but I guess I'll just have to give it with instructions not to use it for a few weeks. Oh well.

"It sounds like you're just a housewife"

This was said by a friend concerned that I might find the new life a little short on mental stimulation - "But will you find it fulfilling?" I'm sure it was said in a spirit of loving friendship, but it bothered me quite a lot. For a start, it's a bit late to be expressing concerns after I've left my job and moved house, but there was more to it than that.

All of my adult life, my career has been central to my view of myself - "I'm a psychologist," or, "I'm a scientist," or sometimes, in earlier days, "a philosopher." I've recoiled from the idea of being a housewife. This was partly because my first husband never seemed to take my work seriously, and assumed I'd drop it all and be a stay-at-home mother at some point, so there was something to recoil from.

Grandma once said to me, "It's all very well being so clever, but what's important is that you're a good cook." At the time I found this quite objectionable, but now I'm moving round to, "Well, that's an interesting point of view."

I'm trying to work out why I was so bothered to be thought, "Just a housewife." Perhaps I've spent more of my life than I appreciated fighting to be recognised as something else.

So am I going to suffer from lack of mental stimulation? This morning, after a stroll down to the local shop to buy milk and matches, and a chat with the neighbours on the way back, I had a look at facebook (it's so nice to have the internet again after being deprived of it for a couple of months). My friend Amanda, of Realize Beauty, had posted a couple of links. The first was to an article about the effect of adverts on women's self esteem. "That's interesting," I thought, and started looking for the original research article to read more (isn't the internet great!)

The second was a rant about an article highlighting - shock horror - that beauty products contain lots of chemicals. I share Amanda's frustration with the media demonisation of "chemicals," but I'm also quite keen on using natural ingredients. I've made moisturiser using a very simple recipe - just oil, water, beeswax and scent, and am planning to make another batch very soon. "Hmm," I thought, "I wonder how many chemicals there are in beeswax?" A quick google search (have I mentioned how nice it is to have the internet back?) gave me a rough breakdown of the chemical composition of beeswax - enough to confirm my suspicion that the answer is "lots." A little later, I looked up a psychology research blog, read a few entries, and bookmarked it.

The answer, I think, is no, I'm not going to miss out on mental stimulation so long as I have the internet and interesting friends.

The second part of the question is, is this fulfilling? These are recreational interesting things. I don't have to engage with them and they make no demands of me. I probably won't find fulfilment in that direction if fulfilment equates to a sense of achievement (a question I may consider further some other time). On the other hand, fulfilment may be found in other avenues.

Returning to my day, come lunchtime, I decided that the bread dough hadn't risen enough to be cooked for lunch, so opted for chicken pies instead. I made pastry using lard I'd rendered from leftover bacon fat (rejected for soap-making purposes on the basis of a brown tinge and smoky aroma - turned out to be fine for cooking) and filled the pies with leftover chicken from the roast we had on Saturday with stock made from bones of the same roast. That's something I find very fulfilling - making delicious food out of leftovers, some of which - offcuts of fat and bones - would certainly be thrown away by most people. I take great satisfaction in making food out of rubbish.

There is certainly fulfilment of a sort to be found in this new life. It remains to be seen whether this is more or less satisfying than the intellectual challenges and achievements I had in my old life.

Festive home-brew

Sometime in early November I started to wonder whether there was time to brew some wine for Christmas. There really isn't much available at this time of year, but I had a look at some recipes and found rosehip and nettle, both in John Seymour's book. I'd picked some rosehips and failed to make fruit leather out of them, so they might do, but the recipe said it would take up to three months to ferment, so that was no good for Christmas. On the other hand, the nettle wine would be drinkable after just a week, so that was a much better bet.

The recipe looked remarkably similar to the elderflower wine I'd made in the summer: Sugar - check. Lemons - check. Bits of plant - check. I wasn't sure about the quantities of bits of plant, though. For two gallons of wine, JS asked for 4 lb of nettle tips. Four pounds - that's ridiculous! I collected a bucketful, squashed down a bit. I have no idea what it weighed, but it definitely wasn't four pounds. When it came to boiling it down I had to fill the pan four times, though, so it really was quite a lot of nettles.

After the exploding elderflower wine incident, I'd promised myself I'd get demijohns before the next attempt. However, in the meantime I came across advice for budget airlocks, and really, it was the airlock I needed, not the container. The trick is to put a balloon over the neck of the bottle with a pinhole in it. As the gas builds up the balloon expands until there's enough pressure to open the little hole, then the gas escapes. On the other hand, there's no way any air's going to get in, because there's no pressure in that direction. Brilliantly simple - whoever thought of that was a genius!

Nettle wine with comedy balloon airlocks

Being the cheapskate that I am, I went round to the local shop and bought two packets of balloons ("I'm not sure if we've got any - what kind do you want?") for the princely sum of 55p a packet. Balloon airlocks are quite comical, especially the long, thin ones (if you have a juvenile sense of humour).

I left it in the bottles until the balloons started to go limp, then put them in a cool place for a bit (the conservatory - it's a massive spare fridge at the moment) because I'd heard that helps the yeast settle out. Then I decanted it all into fresh bottles and put lids on. I was rather hoping for 'secondary fermentation', giving me a fizzy wine, but that didn't happen.

I rather nervously tested it after a couple of weeks or so. I know you can make nettle beer, too, so I wasn't at all sure what to expect. Once I'd got the idea that it tasted more like cider than anything else, it was really quite nice. Good enough to give as Christmas presents, I thought. I hope the recipients agree!

Bread

Bread is not very expensive to buy, but in the spirit of self-sufficiency, I'd rather make it myself, even if it's not much cheaper. OK, it's not really all that self-sufficient if I'm having to buy flour and yeast, but still...

I've noticed that friends who make bread, and they tend to have bread makers, get very enthusiastic about variations on the basic receipe, and serve up bread with fancy ingredients such as olives, or sun-dried tomatoes in it. Very nice, but not really what I'm aiming for. Apart from the fact that this would ruin the bread for Ian, the point for me is just to make bread. You know, the kind you toast for breakfast in the morning, or make sandwiches out of for lunch. I'm not trying to improve on what I can buy in the shops. I should clarify that: I'd like to get something better than the soft squidgy stuff than comes in plastic bags, but if I can match a standard loaf bought from a baker's shop, I'll be very happy with that.

As a start, I went online to investigate recipes and found that some people get really passionate about this! In the course of my investigations, I learnt about 'no knead' bread. This takes a lot longer to rise, which apparently improves the digestibility of the bread, requires little or no kneading, and uses half the yeast of a normal recipe. All sounds good to me! The method sounded a little complicated, but I kept browsing until I came across a blog* saying, "I tried these recipes then cut corners until I came up with this." This is my kind of cook.

*Edit: I just rediscovered that blog - The Really Good Life - and inserted the link.

The recipe goes:

Mix 1 lb flour with 1/2 tsp dried yeast, 1 tsp salt and 340 ml cold water (can be mixed with a spoon)
Leave approx 12 hours/overnight at room temperature until doubled in size
Add a bit more flour and fold the dough in on itself (this is easier done with hands than a spoon)
Put in a tin and leave for another two hours, also at room temperature, to rise again
Cook at gas mark 6 (that's what my oven needs. I forget what this is in degrees) for about 45 min
Test by removing from the tin and tapping the bottom. If it sounds hollow, it's ready. If not, put it back in the oven (won't need the tin any more) for another five min.

I bought myself a bag of white bread flour but didn't bother buying yeast as I have an old tin of yeast in the cupboard which still seemed to be alive when I used it for elderflower wine, so I thought it would probably be OK. I tried the recipe and it was fine. Rather dense, but still tasty bread, so fine. I tried varying the kind of flour I used - strong bread flour is fairly expensive, standard flour cheaper and, obviously, 'value' flour cheapest of all. Although I know in theory strong flour has more protein in it, so makes better bread, I found that the kind of flour I used didn't make a huge amount of difference to the resultant loaf. They were still rather dense, though.

I was chatting to my friend Sam, who's a farmer's wife and knows about these things. She said that she'd done much the same and found that old dried yeast, while it works, isn't terribly enthusiastic. She encouraged me to get some more yeast, so I did. While I was at it, I thought I might as well get actual fresh yeast instead of dried. The result was dramatic - a light, fluffy loaf of bread. It even smelled better while it was cooking.

Demonstrating the difference made by fresh yeast

So there you have it. It's possible to make a decent loaf of bread with the cheapest flour, but the yeast really matters.

"Even if you're poor, you can still have cake"

This is what my friend Helen said to me when she gave me my leaving present from work, and I think it's a lovely thing to say. The present was The Great British Book of Baking, which has cake recipes and many others, so what she said was literally true, but it's more than that.

Cake.
Not a very good cake, nor a very good picture of it, but it is a cake that I made.

We may be choosing to live on much less money than we used to, but that doesn't mean we have to go without the good things in life. We shall sit by the fire, we shall go for walks in spectacular countryside, and when we have cake, it will be home made, still-warm-from-the-oven cake!