Cooking

 Coffeeshop at church is getting more and more customers these days, which is great but I need to bake more to keep up with demand. There are two ladies who come in regularly to help. One cooks one recipe each week and the other cooks two recipes. That leaves me doing everything else. I don't mind really but just occasionally I would like a week off. We have not been away at all since lockdown began in March 2020 and we are beginning to feel that we would like a few days away. It is daunting when you have to cook in bulk and pretty well guarantee that everything you make will both look and taste great. So few people seem to bake these days and the quantity required does put people off volunteering.

On Monday I baked the bare minimum of cakes etc so that I could spend the rest of the day making lasagne. We serve homemade soup, baked potatoes and a hot "special" at lunchtime. the specials rotate between cottage pie, lasagne, cheese and tomato pasta. cheesy veg pasta and pizza. We were low on lasagne in the freezer so I made more. I made 74 portions in the end but the killer is that it is all packaged into two portion foil trays to put into the freezer. The foil trays all have rounded corners but lasagne sheets all have nice sharp, square corners which all need snapped off so that the lasagne sheets fit in the trays. For the topping, I use my friend's yoghurt and egg mixture which tastes lovely and freezes well. It took me nine hours to make everything on Monday and would have taken longer if my nice husband had not done all the washing up for me and also chopped the veg that I put into the lasagne sauce.  I didn't need any rocking when I finally got to bed : )

Nose back to the grindstone again

 Oops. I seemed to have blinked and missed a month. I blame it on the church coffee shop which has opened for business once again. We only serve outside, of course, for now at least. But after being closed for 13 months, the storeroom shelves were empty and the freezers were empty too. So I have literally been starting from scratch to supply everything needed. The only problem was how much to supply for immediate use as some days have been really cold. And who wants to sit outside to have something to eat on a really cold day?

I am also finding that I don't have as much energy as I did pre-covid and can't stand for a whole day baking as I used to. I am doing about three hours at a time which is quite enough for now and I hope that some energy does trickle back into my system. At least a few three hour sessions means that there is a little store of cake in the freezer now - just in case we get an influx of customers. We are serving a much reduced menu for now until we can have customers indoors again so I don't have to cook any lunchtime "specials" like cottage pie or pasta bake or lasagne yet. I did buy some carrots just before Easter weekend when they were down at 20p for a kilo and have put over 50 portions of carrot and coriander soup in the freezer ready for September. And of course I have been shopping and got a few things on the storeroom shelves again.

I have made a note of a few new recipes for cakes and bakes as I came across them this last year. I want to try them out and see how well the cake or bake keeps for a couple of days before I let them be served to customers. Ah well, busy busy again.

Bread in the microwave

 I used to make a quick loaf in the microwave, many years ago, when the kids were all still at home. We always used to have it with soup for dinner. I had a recipe originally but I made it so often that I didn't need to look at the recipe  as I knew it by heart. Then, for whatever reason, and probably after the kids moved out, I stopped making it for a while. Then when I wanted to make some to go with some soup one day, I found that I couldn't remember the proportions to use and nor could I find the right bit of paper with the recipe on it. 

So I have spent a bit of time on the internet recently hunting for a suitable replacement recipe. The original was not a yeast bread but a quick soda bread type but with an extra twist or two to make it suitable for the microwave. I am trying to cut down on the amount of gas and electricity I use so the occasional loaf made in the microwave helps with that. Also, when you get to lunchtime and realise that you have forgotten to make a proper loaf, it helps to have a super quick microwave recipe at the ready!

The recipe I have found is from wiki:

www.wikihow.com    How to make bread in the microwave (simple method)

However, I have been tweaking the recipe so that the bread is more how we like it. Also, the wiki recipe is plain white flour and as that does not brown in the microwave, it looks very "anaemic" which is not so appetising. The white version also tastes a bit "woolly" because of the texture. The wiki recipe also allows for 2-3 tablespoons of both oil and milk so that could make for a very moist dough. I also found that the wiki version stated 5 minutes in the microwave to cook the bread. In my microwave, 4 mins 20 secs was quite sufficient for these quantities. If cooked for longer then I found that one end of the bread gets a little dry. It is quite edible but just like a slice of bread with a little bit of rusk attached to it : )

So this is my version:

3 heaped tablespoons wholemeal flour

2 heaped tablespoons plain white flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 egg, beaten

2 tablespoons milk

2 tablespoons oil

3 tablespoons water

• Add baking powder to flours in a bowl and mix well with a whisk or a fork
• Add egg and mix
• Add milk, oil and water and mix well
• Knead the dough for 2 - 5 minutes until you can stretch a piece of the dough quite a way before it breaks
• Shape the dough into a round ball and flatten slightly
• Score an X in the top with a knife so that the bread does not crack when rising in the microwave
• Put in a microwaveable dish with a flat bottom
• Microwave on high for 4 minutes 20 seconds

Notes:

- Aldi have wholemeal bread flour at 55p for 1.5 kg as well as 45p for 1.5 kg of plain flour

- If your heaped tablespoons of flour are bigger than mine, you may need to add a touch more water

- Your microwave will be different to mine so your bread may need slightly more or less time. You can always give it a 10 or 20 sec burst extra but if you give it too much, then the rusk texture is quite pleasant, especially with cheese : )

- I have a silicon "bowl" which I found in the Lidl reduced section for 50p. It is a flexible bowl which can be used for mixing, kneading and baking and although my husband thought it a very weird thing to buy, it is invaluable for making this loaf

- I intend to try this recipe without the egg and with a little extra water and see how it does as this will make it cheaper

I have found this a very useful loaf to have in my repertoire. This quantity is sufficient for my husband and me for both lunch and breakfast the next morning. It is lovely fresh but it does not keep very well but it toasts nicely. Enjoy!

Blackberry cake

I have made three cakes with blackberries in this year. I have made them before but I found a different recipe this year and it was lovely. It is a low fat cake made with yoghurt and it is really nice. It also keeps better than I expected for a cake with so little fat. My youngest granddaughter's favourite fruit this year is blackberries so I made her one of these cakes for her birthday this month. I made one to try out the recipe and we liked it a lot so I made her one and of course, since the oven was on anyway, I made another for us at the same time : )

I found the recipe on Ang's blog and copied it. I expect this will turn up at regular times during the coming year because I have put a few bags of blackberries in the freezer. Ang originally got the recipe from the Dairy Diary. I used to have a copy of this book but I think it must have ended up in a charity shop pile by mistake because I don't seem to have it any more...

http://angalmond.blogspot.com/2020/08/berry-good-cake.html

Back to the old routine

Yesterday I spent down at church in the kitchen, cooking yet again. I had lots of broccoli that I had bought in Asda at 20p each and almost a kilo of stilton that I had bought on super special offer so I made 54 x 350ml portions of broccoli and stilton soup. I wanted to get it made while the broccoli was still fresh enough. I don't normally make that flavour of soup because it is just too expensive. I do love it though and brought home the pot scrapings to have as my lunch today. Yum!

I also baked three lots of cake to go in the freezer which was just about bare. Too many Christmas shoppers calling in to have a cuppa and to recoup their energy for the next round of shopping. I shall be back in the kitchen on Monday as usual to try and get that freezer stocked a bit fuller. The coffee shop is closed for a week between Christmas and New Year so there are no customers at the moment to eat everything I am making. The staff are doing a deep clean of everywhere while they have the opportunity. I have been looking on the internet looking for a few recipes to broaden my menu. I have my regular basics but I am looking for a few more recipes that are not complicated to make but look and taste good and are inexpensive to boot. As a charity, we don't aim to make a profit but we do need a small surplus as our chairs are about ten years old and are suddenly starting to look it, as furniture often does. Last year the chairs were all looking fine but this year they have needed to be mended frequently and there are cracks starting to appear on the seat pads. so we need a little bit of profit to buy new chairs with. If anyone has a favourite recipe that would be useful to me at the coffee shop, then please do share it : )

It is December now

Well it is December now and five minutes ago I was saying that it was almost December and now Christmas is nearly here. I've been to one grandchild's school concert and we are going to another tomorrow. I missed one on Friday when I was in school all day invigilating. I spent most of last week in school again and felt like the red queen in Alice in Wonderland who had to run just to stay in the same spot. To progress, she had to run even faster. I only had a short morning to bake at church for the coffee shop. And guess what?  All those Christmas shoppers came in for a cuppa and went and ate all the cake I had made and all the cake I had stashed in the freezer. And I did not really have time to go down and make more. So I went down early for the church service on Thursday evening and got some traybakes in the oven and then nipped out to the kitchen halfway through the service to take them out of the oven. After the service we stayed to ice them and finish them off. We left at 10.45 so we got to sleep really late and I had to be up shortly after six. It takes several early nights to make up for lost sleep these days, I find. And tomorrow I am back baking again because they ate all the cake on Friday and Saturday that I had made on Thursday. It looks like I am going to have to put in a bit of overtime in the kitchen after Christmas to get a little bit of stock in the freezer...

More blackberries

I've just been having a look at the blogs I follow and Kev Alviti has posted on his blog about a blackberry cake:

http://www.englishhomestead.com/2019/09/blackberry-cake.html#more


That looks so tasty. I must give it a go.

Feeding folk in February.

It is February now. I've made lots of soup and baked six cakes for our church coffee shop and iced two cakes. Our coffee shop manager usually does most of the baking but she was ill and you can't have a coffee shop without cake. So I got summoned. Last week I made five gallons of soup and made and iced two cakes and I was quite tired at the end of that day. This week my husband was free so I got him to come along and help with the chopping of the veg and washing up. I wasn't nearly so tired at the end of that session but my husband was : )

We've been having a really good go at clearing out things since Christmas. I've lost track of the exact numbers but several hundred things have gone - either to the charity shop, in the bin, been recycled, given to family or on Freecycle. It is a very good start but there is a long way to go yet.

For the last few years, our church has been helping Operation Christmas Child. One of our members used to work for them and we have been a collecting point for our area for people to bring their filled shoeboxes to. This year, however, the charity has put up the money that you have to include to help pay for shipping. Last year it went up from £2 to £3 and this year it has gone up to £5 per box. A lot of people at our church feel it is a worthwhile cause but that the charity is pricing itself out of the market. It can cost quite a lot to fill the shoebox and then another £5 on top now. I've always kept an eye out for bargains through the year, the same as I do for family and friends' birthday and Christmas presents so that the cost of filling the shoebox(es) was kept down. And I knitted the hat, scarf and mittens usually with wool bought in a charity shop. We also found out that the head of the charity is earning a six figure salary. Yes, he has a big job because the charity is international, but people who live on just a pension felt that perhaps some of their money might be going to help pay his big, fat salary......  So now we are looking round for another worthwhile charity that will use our collective talents.

I've been knitting hats since Christmas because we have a local charity that uses them. Lots of them are stripey because I have a really big bag of oddments. I like having some knitting in my hands when I am watching a film on the tv. And these colder evenings are great for sitting in front of the woodburner and watching a film with my knitting in my hands. I recorded a stack of films over the Christmas period and am working my way steadily through them.

I've had one of my cats at the vet this last week. One of the cats in the neighbourhood has been terrorising my two. One of my two is of a particularly nervous disposition and he is obsessively cleaning himself and pulling out fur. He has quite a few bald patches and the skin is practically licked off in those areas. So the vet has given him an injection and we have bought another cat flap which is activated by the chip in the cats' necks. So Nasty Cat can no longer come into our house when he wants to, as he was prone to do. I've even found him in my bedroom on the top floor! But what I really objected to was his habit of spraying in my house, particularly in the kitchen. I didn't like starting to do some cooking and finding that he had sprayed up my saucepan rack...... I'm sure you quite understand that! So we just have to convince my two that they are quite safe in our house because Nasty Cat can no longer come in.

I've been to babysit my two youngest grandchildren this evening. Their big brother was playing the cornet in his first concert this evening and mum and dad wanted to go and see/hear him. I am very pleased that some of my grandchildren are turning out musical. I do so enjoy singing and playing and I'm glad the tradition is being carried on : )

Losing a month

My goodness me, where did August go?  I seem to have blinked and missed nearly a month here.

We had holiday club at church. So that took up a week.  I was working with a group of six year old and my husband had seven year olds. My goodness were we tired by the end of the week! We had over 80 kids in total, aged from three to ten but with a couple of twelve year olds as well. It was a good week, though, and we enjoyed it and the kids did too. We had all the parents in with the kids for a bbq on the Friday. That was very popular. I ended up serving burgers. I don't thing I have ever even seen so many burgers in one place before. Think 80 kids with parent/s and sibling/s...

I have been making lots of jam and also a jar of pickled eggs.  I have been updating my previous "Preserving Year" post so that I know what varieties of jams I have made. The family will be pleased as none of them make jams at all.  I have been dithering about investing in some Kilner jars and trying my hand at bottling. I have got as far as looking up the price of the jars on Amazon and Lakeland. The thing is that the rings or metal discs have to bought new each year and that sounds expensive.  I know the food would be fresh and if grown yourself then you know what fertilisers etc have or have not been used. The food used would have to be cheaply acquired but then there is all the gas used and the cost of the seal not to mention the work involved.  Tins of tomatoes are on offer at four for £1 at the moment in Asda. That is cheaper than the cost of the seal and without any effort involved other than carrying the tins home.  I don't know anybody round here who does any bottling and I would love to have a chat with somebody who does. My freezer is always full and this would be a way of preserving some fruit for the winter without using the freezer.

Do any of you do any bottling?

We have also been trying to tackle our wood pile. In the spring, our chop saw broke. Then the chain saw developed a fault and needed a new part. It was still under warranty and we had a bit of trouble but eventually we got the part replaced and had a working saw again. And we got the chop saw sorted. The thing is that we were into exam season by the time we had the saws working again so my husband had no time at all left over to do anything with all the wood we had collected. So yesterday, our son and son-in-law came round and the three of them spent the whole day cutting up wood with both saws and also with the axe. They got through a lot of wood and we are very grateful to have such help and to have a good amount ready to burn : )

Our granddaughter came round in the afternoon and acted as gofer for the three of them. My job was to keep them all fed and watered. No easy job with the amount of physical labour involved in cutting up the wood.  I went shopping on Thursday evening and was delighted to get some of our favourite bread rolls reduced to 10p a pack. I would have made some nice bread in the breadmaker for them but these were posh rolls for less than it would have cost me to make the loaf. My secret weapon was a plentiful supply of cake and a huge pile of scones served with homemade jam and cream. There were only three scones left by the end of the day so I know they were appreciated : )

And then there is the allotment. Blink and you can't see the plot for weeds. The war is on!

And my little hens are laying well now. And eating for England, just like teenagers with hollow legs. Yesterday was the third day in a row that they have laid an egg each. Hence the pickled eggs mentioned above as it is a means of preserving some for the winter (for my lunches, probably in a salad) without using the freezer. I expect I shall be pickling a few more now that they are getting into a rhythm with laying.

220 items gone

Cake : )

It was my turn to take some cake to church for a particular event.  My hens are quite old now and are moulting.  Hens can either put their energy into making eggs or making feathers but not both. So as I am really short of eggs, I wanted a cake recipe that didn't use eggs. Sue from The Quince Tree published a recipe that she had found and a couple of others had posted that they had tried the recipe and liked it so I tried it too.  It is a really easy recipe and it was indeed lovely.  There were a couple of pieces left over after the meeting at church so I brought them home and forgot about them. It was about five days later that I found the tub with the cake tucked behind something else and to my surprise, it was still really moist and lovely.  So I commend this recipe to you:

http://thequincetree65.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/cheap-and-cheerful-cake.html

I made one and a half times the quantity in the recipe and that took about 45 minutes to cook.  There are also some variations at the end of Sue's blog post.  You can be sure that this cake, or a variation, will be made again soon : )

654 items gone

Bread and jumpers

It is almost a month since I posted so bang goes my resolution to post just about every week.  The problem with not posting for a while is that I forget the minutia of life that I wanted to record so that I won't forget...

I'm still knitting the "fish and chip" jumpers for babies. See this link:

http://cottonreel.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/no-apologies-im-re-hashing-but-please.html

Angela from Tracing Rainbows has also written a post about them.  I've knitted a pile and given them to my friend down the road who added hers to the bag and passed them on to another friend of hers who passed them on - and so it goes.  That way, we don't have to pay the postage to get them to the charity who are sending them to Africa.  I have nearly finished the yarn that I was given.  It is machine knitting yarn really so I'm using four strands at a time with a coloured stripe in the body of the sweater to make it a bit more interesting.  I've knitted 27 in the last 6 months and have enough yarn to take it up to 30.  I'll stop then because it is a nice round number and my enthusiasm is definitely waning.  I need to be knitting something else for a while to make a change.  Although it is very useful to have a pattern that is so straightforward that I can do it while watching a film or a whodunit on the tv on a winter evening.

The friend that I pass these jumpers on to, was given a sourdough starter just before Christmas. She put in at the back of the fridge and forgot about it as time went on.  So she brought it up to me to see if I wanted to have a go with it.  She thought it was probably done for but wondered if my magic touch might resurrect it. I let it come to room temperature and fed it a couple of times and it started bubbling away merrily.  I've made my first loaf with it this week and given my friend back a good jarful of the starter.  The bread is lovely and I had a slice of it toasted for breakfast this morning spread with some homemade marmalade. Yum! I was surprised at how well it rose. 

I've experimented with sourdough before but not with a starter like this.  Before, I did it the way that Shirley Goode talked about in the early days of her blog.  She made a  loaf in the ordinary way, with yeast, but kept back a piece of the kneaded dough about the size of a small apple.  This is put into a bowl and just covered with water and left (covered with a teatowel) on the kitchen side. After 3 or 4 days, the lump of dough collapses down into the water.  Stirred up well, this is used as the liquid to make a loaf with a bit extra water to make it up to the right quantity if needed.  You keep a piece of dough back to prepare the starter/liquid for the next loaf and so it goes on.  Obviously, yeast is used for the first loaf, but there is not much of the original commercial yeast present in the next loaf and even less in the next etc.  I found this way of starting the bread to be very straightforward but our house is very cold and in the winter half of the year, it was taking forever for the wild yeast to work.

The bread takes a long time to prove when made by either of these methods but that means that you don't have to be around all the time but can go out and leave it.  It is very tolerant as regards time and this is another point in sourdough's favour.  Normal yeast bread doesn't like to be left to prove overlong.  It can even be left to rise overnight in the fridge.  Anyway, I'm pleased with my bread and my friend is pleased to have a fresh starter although we are both amazed that the starter hadn't been killed off by neglect. On the frugal side, each loaf only costs the price of the flour (bread flour in Aldi is 65p for white or wholemeal) and a bit of salt and sugar (and oil if liked) and oven time as the yeast is now free because of the starter. That is several pence off the cost of each loaf for a while.  Every little helps.  My next thing will be to make two loaves at a time and freeze one so that will halve the cost of the gas. The freezer is going to be in use anyway so the cost of the electricity doesn't really count.

There are a lot of articles available on the internet about sourdough and some of them are rather fancy.  I like plain and straightforward methods of doing things and this is a link to one of my favourite articles about sourdough.  It is American and the chap obviously lives in a warmer climate than is found in our house : )  He also has a useful FAQ section.

http://www.io.com/~sjohn/sour.htm

Mentioning gas reminds me that I sent in our meter readings and had the bills back this week for gas and electricity.  Apparently our use of gas has almost exactly doubled in Jan-April as compared with the same period last year.  I am puzzled by this as I just can't think of anything that we were doing which would account for this. One of life's little mysteries albeit an expensive one.