baybeasts

I love it when a recipe calls itself bread instead of cake. It means you can put on a bog load of butter and not feel guilty. I made this ‘amish cinnamon bread’ in a loaf tin - well, it was called bread! But it is definitely cake and next time I will make it in a round tin. It was my first go at using my sourdough starter without any yeast, and it rose! (a bit). Yum. (Recipe at end of post.)

I have started using my expensive Epi-No. At first I couldn’t keep it in very successfully - it kept popping out. So we fiddled with some different positions and have found something workable (all fours). I managed a 6cm diameter at the perineum fairly comfortably, but the goal, of course, is 10cm.

More Nigella bread…

This one is a wholemeal maple syrup-pecan loaf. It was just awesome with cheese and scrambled eggs (laid by our lovely girls of course - best scrambled eggs ever). Rustic and hearty.

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Amish Cinnamon Bread Recipe

1 cup sourdough starter
1 cup vegetable oil
1 cup white sugar
4 eggs
3 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
¼ cup powdered milk
¼ cup cornstarch
pinch of salt
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 cup chopped pecans
1 cup peeled, cored and chopped apple
1 cup raisins

Grease a large cake tin. Place the starter in a bowl, stir in the oil, sugar, eggs and vanilla and mix well. Combine the flour, baking soda, baking powder, powdered milk, cornstarch, salt and cinnamon. Add the flour mixture to the starter mixture and beat by hand. Add the pecans, raisins and apples and mix well. Pour batter into the prepared tin. Bake at 165 degrees C for 1 hour.

I was 36 weeks last Friday.

The first 20 weeks limped by but the second 20 weeks have flown. We are scared shitless, but can’t wait to meet this little person who is nearly cooked.

S has made her first ‘butt sweater’. It is so small and sweet - we think we’ll only get a week or so of use, but it is just delighting us.

It is made from pure felted wool, so I am going to treat it with lanolin and then it will be quite waterproof over a newborn cloth nappy.

Last weekend, we made a chicken run, with the help of our friends S and K and Az. We fox-proofed the coop (bought off ebay), made a path, and put up a fence around their territory. It looks like this:

(The green bits are frames for covering up seedlings when we let the chickens out into the wider yard.)

Last night, we drove down the highway out of the city, to one of those housing developments with big houses and tiny yards. We drove around roundabouts and through gates that said something like ‘Fairlea Village’, and eventually found the house of the daughter of the farmer whose wife had brought four Australorp pullets all the way down from their farm (2hrs away). The cardboard boxes they were in were too dark to see inside, but they were warm, and on the way home they emitted a series of gentle boks and a rather sad keening sound. We put them in their coop, lifting their soft, heavy bodies out of the boxes, and went inside. Later we went out with a torch but they were wild-eyed and huddled in the corner, and it didn’t feel right to have a good look at them.

The next morning we took them warm bran mash and silverbeet and other treats, and they seemed much happier:

In the daylight they are stunning - huge and black with the faintest sheen of green, with bright red engorged combs and shiny eyes. They have the funniest fringing of black fluff on their bottoms, like layers of tulle underskirts, and the most incongruous, dinosaur-like feet. We’ve decided to call them ‘the girls’.

To our surprise, two of them lay eggs today.

We ate them soft-boiled for lunch with salt and slices of toasted Norwegian Mountain Bread (the next bread in bean’s Nigella journey).

Home grown eggs and home-made bread - it was a glorious day indeed.

Below is an email from my 85 year old grandmother who is such an excellent person. It is written in response to our request for letters in support of the recommendations of the Victorian Law Reform Commission (VLRC).

I finally was able to access my emails. John had forgotten to plug in the telephone and although I could turn on the computer I couldn’t reach the emails. So thanks for all of yours. Very pleased you are both feeling well. I have written a letter to the Attorney General and sent the information on to a few of my friends so they may send something off too.Thanks for the pattern for pilchers. You didn’t say what size needles or what ply wool. You know you have to wash woollen things very carefully, probably hand wash in luke warm water.

Your aunt and I are interested in going to Canberra for your Mum’s concert and then we will all come down to Melbourne to see you two and B 1. We think we will stay in a motel or hotel near you and just visit. Looking forward to it. No more news, Love Gran.

She’s 85 and just back from a trip to Alaska!

No copyright on this pie recipe so here goes. It’s a winner!

Finnish Blueberry Pie (Mustikkapiirakka)

Crust:
100 g butter or margarine
½ cup sugar
1 egg
¼ cup cream
1 ½ - 2 cups plain flour
1 tsp Baking Powder

Filling:
500g frozen blueberries
2 Tsp potato flour or breadcrumbs
½ cup sugar

Cream the butter and sugar. Add the egg, then the cream. Mix the flour and baking powder together, and then add it to the batter. Don’t beat it too much or the dough will get tough. Form into a ball and put in the fridge for half an hour or so. Roll out the dough and place on the base of a buttered pie pan (diameter 26-28 cm) and sides.
Combine the berries, potato flour/breadcrumbs and sugar. Spread the berries over the dough. Bake at 210°C in the mid section of the oven, for about 30 minutes – until the pastry is golden brown.

So easy, so yummy.

In gestational news, S is 20 weeks today - halfway! I finally felt a good strong kick the other day. Her tummy is just starting to become beautifully rounded and we have relaxed no end since seeing the little one on the scan. Our four chickens are arriving this week, followed by B1 in only a matter of weeks and B2 in 20. Life is not going to be boring…

OK, so it’s time to start documenting the expanding belly. Hard to believe that all that cuteness fits into this insignificant bump!

Well, I already did know there was a baby, because it kicks me most delightfully. And seeing blurry pictures on a tv screen didn’t actually make it seem any more real. It was a pretty interesting experience nevertheless.

I had been anticipating this scan for a long time. Like many pregnant ladies, I have been pretty worried that there might be something dreadfully wrong with b2, like not having a skull, or hir insides being on the outside. I was counting on the scan to allay some of these fears for me. Unfortunately, the ultrasound technician was not very talkative - she was nice enough, but she didn’t talk us through what she was doing, and so as she spent ages focussing in on different blurry bits and not saying anything, I was lying there staring at the screen thinking ‘oh god it must be bad because she’s not saying anything and she’s waiting for the more senior fellow to come and break the bad news’. When the senior fellow did come in, he must have picked up on my anxiety (maybe because I said ‘you’ll tell me if there’s anything funny, won’t you?’), and as he checked out b2’s brain and heart and other important bits he kindly talked us through exactly what he was doing, pointing out everything that looked as it should - which was was everything. Of course b2 is absolutely fine!

Ze was playing hard to get though! Firstly, my placenta is on the front, which made everything a bit harder to see - and also explains why bean hasn’t been able to feel as much of b2’s kicking as I was able to feel of b1 at the same stage. Secondly, b2 decided, much like me, that ze is camera shy, and so kept hir head determinedly turned away from the ‘camera’. Little bugger! The nice fellow did manage to get a couple of profile shots though. I think b2 looks a lot like a monkey. But i am ok with that, because not that long ago ze looked like a fish, so I suppose ze looked like a dinosaur at some point too! And by the time ze comes out, I am sure b2 will at least look vaguely human (I’m just sad I won’t get to see the neanderthal stage).

This loaf, despite making me feel quite confused when it came out of the oven, has been one of my favourites so far. The flavour and texture have been extraordinary. It is a cheaty sourdough as the recipe uses a bit of yeast as well as the lovely fermenty starter which I brewed. The only problem is that I made it yesterday and it is nearly all gone!

Aren’t our roses splendid? They smell just beautiful too.

We are getting chickens! We bought a coop off ebay which has settled into our garden nicely and has nesting boxes off the end for ease of egg collection. In two weeks we are collecting four Australorp hens. We did a good bit of research, and reckon we have picked a winner for our style of garden and lifestyle. They are quite placid, and don’t tend to fly into vege patches or over fences.

It’s very exciting! We hope we’ll make good chicken parents. I think I might have to get some chook pens too…

The Auditor-General has finally made public the Victorian Law Reform Commission’s report on access to assisted reproductive technology and adoption. Thankfully, the recommendations are pretty good - if they were all made into law, we’d both be considered legal parents of our children, and they would be legally siblings; and a lot of women wouldn’t have to go through the expensive and heartbreaking process of travelling interstate to access fertility treatment. There are also some sensible recommendations about adoption and surrogacy. The hardest step now is convincing the politicians to actually change the law.

Sadly, the homophobes are already out in force, including our fearless leaders John Howard and his lackey Tony Abbott. It never ceases to amaze me how mean our opponents are about our little families - we create them with such love and care, and yet all they can spout is hatred and bigotry. Why?

Is it wrong to love bread so much?

We had a wonderful four year anniversary dinner at Yuu - an excellent Japanese restaurant in the city. Fantastic food, lovely service and the best company. My favourite.