surprise snazzie snake shoooos

I came across these whilst looking for smart dresses. I think these are nifty.

LK bennett

dear jaeger....

....could I have one of your ric rac satchels please? I see they are in the sale so maybe you could spare one as a present? Thank you very much, kind regards to you.

Jaeger

doing the spuds

Busy busy, keeping things watered. I got sunburnt and then caught in the brilliant rain. I've put in the main potatoes. We'd prepared for doing them no dig, as I mentioned before, but then the deliveries of compost finished and I couldn't find anywhere to get straw bales from so I was a bit behind. In the end I made do with comfrey, straw from wilkos and the manure that we get at the plot.

Chitted spuds down, a layer of cut comfrey leaves, a layer of straw and then all covered with manure. Please note my nice spiral design. You can see the layers quite well below. Fingers crossed that they grow. We'll see.

dough

The sourdough starter has been plodding along, it's really quite exciting to have the beast in the corner, to chuck it some food and experience the stink go from bad to pleasantly odd.

In this picture the beast is hungry.

I made the first loaves and they worked really well, I was surprised so well. Unfortunately we ate most of them (yes, two big bloomers) before I took a photo. This is the tiny end that is left. The bread is definitely a sour one, it has the twang. I think it will take a bit of experimenting to find the best things to eat it with. It was really nice as toast. But definitely sour.

weiging in, having a big go

I have new scales that weigh tiny amounts, down to 0.01g. This is good when one is trying to make small amounts of moisturiser for example as it will only need tiny amounts of some ingredients. It seems to get such scales you have to buy them from ebay or amazon from places where 'folks who also purchased this item also bought" tiny zip lock baggies or herb grinders. It's quite funny, I guess the market to people hand making face cream or toner is a small one, compared to teenage boys with a "supply business".

Anyweigh (ha ha) I had great fun finding really small things to measure on my new scale before getting on with proper business.

New face cream, cleansing bar and a tester hair clay for ralph.

Cleanser is a bit of a mis-match version of the ones I like from lush, it's good to know I can make something for myself though. It seems to work well so for a first attempt I'm really pleased. The hair clay is too solid so will have another go with that.

leggings again

Great, frontier, hair metal, tie dye.

I reckons they are too expensive but I suppose that's not a surprise.

topshop

eat more herbs

I have been getting the mentor emails from learning herbs after reading a bit from them and watching some videos about getting more nourishing herbs into your meals.

Today I watched 'way of the herbal ninja', ha! Stealthy use of herbs, I like it. It's a nice video, I guess I didn't learn anything I didn't already know but I think the more bit and pieces you watch the more the wisdom becomes second nature and assured.

Apparently if I link to it, so others can go see I get some books to download. So here goes.

herb nija!

I'm fond of tumeric, currently trying to get some roots to grow.

crackers

Finally I've conquered one of the last processed food mountain. The dilemma at the supermarket will be no more. We have struck crackers in the kitchen.

I've very nearly eaten them all now. Wow, I made crackers. They are quite firm but not so much it hurts your teeth, a bit curvy so they snap if you butter them but I'm happy to know I will now never be without a cracker. Unless we run out of flour.

I used this recipe from 101 cookbooks but added some sesame and poppy seeds in honour of the sainsbury's ones I shall no longer be buying. Mine are thicker I think than the originals but I did plan that. I see now an oatmeal (is that just porridge in english?) cracker recipe that is next on the list. To be fair oatmeal cracker sounds nicer than porridge cracker.

I was just looking at mightyfoods following mention of the midnight hummus. Looks to be some nice food one there. I do love hummus.

hat needs

After having to lay down with my head in the shed, it being too hot and me getting all warm in the brain, I think I'll get a sun hat.


I'm not convinced that I like hats, I don't like having a hot head so I have to see if the hat or the sun does the most warming. I like this one from topshop.

bee lodgers

There are bees in the belfry. There are bees in the compost bin.

Big bumbler mamma bee came out and buzzed around cross that I had disturbed everyone. Sorry guys. So I'll have to get the compost later, more carefully from the other side of the heap.

salwars done

I've made the salwars. It took me a while to get around to it, silly really as they were pretty easy to put together. I think they might need ironing now I've washed them.

I'm pleased with my big pleats, more at the back than the front, but went a little bit funny working theses out...now if I know how big I want the waist to be and it is now this big.....I put little buttons on the ankle cuffs, it's possible I'm too fond of buttoned cuffs.

The pattern worked out well, I think they are a bit too full but not in an unwearable way. Also they fall a little stiffly due to the volume of fabric and look a little bunch at the back but wearing and washing might relax this. I'll be using a lighter fabric or making the legs less full next time I think. Fabric is organic cotton from here, aubergine crossweave.

Not bad.

path to trouble

We are doing well with the allotment. We had some purple sprouting broccoli which was so exciting I had been trying to hoard it in the fridge to show to ralph's mum when she visits. Seeds have been going in on time and we have been making progress with the works to fix the years of neglect, dealing with the huge bramble hedge and working through the patches of bindweed roots. The bindweed grows everywhere so we have been working in patches to fork over and remove as much of the root as we can. It's a really crap job, no fun at all and made even more frustrating by the knowledge that we have to do it because the people who had our plot before were neglectful and had no consideration for the future people who would take over the plot.



The broad beans overwintered really well and I'm in love with the peas.

As part of the our progression through the plot, clearing areas and establishing a layout, we have been pulling up the carpet-matted roots-soil-weeds 'weed suppressant' that has been left to become one with the earth. There's nothing quite like attempting to dig a hole only to find that several inches into your stride, under what you think is earth, is a size indeterminable layer of matted plastic that is impossible to break through. We have been finding the edge and pulling it up. One of these areas is the main path onto out plot, we pulled it all up, cleared out the roots and set out a new edge bed for flowers and crops and put clover seed for a new path.

And then..... we are told that all is not well with this. The lady next door is worried.

She has contacted the secretary to find out what we are doing/complain/fuss. Apparently she needs to walk on this area of our plot, because she has ME, to water her plants and now our plants are in her way. We were told that our plot came up to the edge of her raised beds, we checked with her and yes, "that is yours, do what you want there" etc etc. We had a meeting with the secretary and explained this and asked to confirm where our plot ends, which actually is all that matters in this discussion. Off the top of her head, there and then she appointed our boundary about a foot into out plot, you know, the width of a path for our neighbour. We can't argue with this, we don't know where it's meant to be as we can only go on what we are told but it doesn't half seem like a haphazard way to divvy up the plots. Just tell people whatever with no offer to check plans or anything. To argue about this would be painful and to ask for clarification would be seen as us being difficult and unfeeling. But now we know the 'official' boundary we'll just have to establish some kind of stompy-footed-sneaky-selfish-fag butt dropping-neighbour protection. I'm annoyed that she made it all our problem rather than looking at her own bed layout but hey, she wants all she can get. All she needed was to leave a walkway down the middle of the bed she needs to water. And maybe not build her greenhouse right up to the edges of her plot (another part of her argument as to why she needed access). Bah to her.

Our crimson clover is lovely.

I've been working on the potato experiment, no-dig potatosie planting. With a think layer of newspaper and card, manure then a compost well-trench. Spuds in, a layer of cut comfrey and then compost over the top.

Seedlings in the bed of contention. Calendula, spinach, love-in-a-mist, borage etc.

Ralph likes to do the digging with the adz.

question cat poses

The hornsea saffron biscuit crock is a kind of functional model of question cat. We did a photo shoot to try and capture this. I don't think I explained the concept well to her.

'kraut

The experiments began. I have a book on wild fermentation which is brilliant and spurred on by the cabbage mountain in our fridge we started with sauerkraut. Possibly the least scary sounding thing in the book for ralph who has issues with off/squishy/furry food. This book is brilliant, it has some really great instructions and introduces a wide range of techniques, none of which seem out of the grasp of people with a sensibly stocked kitchen. Most do not need any special starters although some will require an exciting parcel through the post. Thank you to ralph's friend sophie who sent us a kombucha mother all the way from japan and started all this nonsense.

The coffee crock and beer bottle set up for attempt number one. This has hand grated red cabbage in it with a jar top held down by the water filled bottle.

I mentioned before the hunt for hornsea pots and these are the crocks I got from ebay. There is another saffron pattern jar too. Some scrubbed pebbles and a flattened out bit of milk bottle hold down the contents.

For this batch we used white cabbage, carrot and apple grated in the magimix. I had more trouble with this one, it didn't yield much water and it was hard to keep it under the liquid. The milk bottle plastic is a bit flimsy, something more rigid will be needed I think.

The cabbage was in the jars for a pretty long time, 4 weeks for the red maybe and 3 for the other one, maybe a bit more. The red one mostly just tastes like very salty cabbage but the second one with the carrots actually has a kind of tang which I think is the ferment, it's nice. Ralph likes it.

Success.

slave to the dishes

I just lost an hour or so wondering if anyone has thought of a pleasant way to let your dishes dry. Our ever overflowing draining board, which does have a flat rack, but then spills over onto a tea towel on the side is starting to make me a bit sad. We are pretty regular with the washing up but I guess if you actually cook real food you are going to use many pots and bowls. There is always a mean dish mountain.

It seems that at some point dish drainers got new fangled, but as yet are to become aesthetically welcome. Apart from this one, you can get it from john lewis. But where does the actual washing up go? Obviously some people's food is dispensed from a nozzle directly onto the plate. It looks nice though.

 

I think it'll have to be something along the lines of this one...

This plastic coated wire does have a kind of utilitarian charm. It seems they are made in britain too which surprised me. Good.

Glad to share my dish washing accessory knowledge.

bucket

This place seems to be a little like plumo.

These would be good on the 'stead or as I should say urban homestead. I say that as some mean folks are trying to stop people calling their places urban homesteads, they want the term all for themselves. If you do a web search I'm sure it'll come up, oh or look here.

Anyway, leather bucket at nkuku.

cook

I was telling ralph about this and he asked me was it for camping. We don't have a car so the answer is no. I described it as 'for the little building off over the other side of our compound for when we are hanging out over there'. This is for the future, we have no "compound" as yet.

wildstoves have lots of good things to cook with too.