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 : )

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.