baybeasts

Thank you for your kind and supportive words. We are trying to be mature about this grandparental neglect, but not succeeding terribly well…

Anyway to show my thanks, I’ll give you an…

Easy lump-free white sauce recipe

35 grams butter (1.2 oz or 2.5 Tbl)
35 grams flour (1.2 oz or 1/3 cup)
500 ml milk
1/2 tsp nutmeg, salt, pepper

Heat milk in a saucepan. Melt butter in a fry pan and add the flour when it crackles. Whisk for a few minutes on low heat but don’t brown. Add the hot milk all at once and continue whisking while it thickens. Add nutmeg and seasonings as you will.

S made the knits below…

Can you see it? Can you see it? At nine and a half months, complete with drooly, rashy face, our biggest beast is cutting his first tooth. There is more than a little grief about the impending loss of his gummy grin, but we are excited to see what toothiness will do to his eating style…

And in baking news… I am back on the horse and getting the hang of sourdough. After a couple of shaky moments making the starter, I finally made a 100% sourdough loaf that rose beautifully. No commercial yeast added. Today - sourdough muffins. Tomorrow - I’m thinking sourdough pancakes. It’s very addictive setting out the sponge to proof overnight and seeing it all bubbly and risen and yoghurty smelling in the morning. I feel very protective of my ‘mother starter’. It’s my new little pet who happens to live in the fridge.

I made marmalade!

It has four kinds of citrus - grapefruit, tangelo, orange and lemon. And it used up every single skerrick of sugar in the house.

But somehow we still have a bazillion grapefruit left. So next up is grapefruit and ginger marmalade…yum!

The other night, S changed the sheets on the bed. I went in to put the new doona cover on, and when I looked at the fresh thick flannie sheets, I felt you know - a stirring in the loins.

yes.

sleep is the new sex.

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.

******
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.

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…

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!

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.

All the bread I have been baking comes from Nigella Lawson’s ‘How to be a domestic goddess’. I am going through the bread section, one loaf at a time!