Give us this day our daily bread . . .

(The new header, by the way, is a photo taken a few years back at Powis Castle.  The gardens there are amazing.  I reluctantly changed the previous roses photo from Haddon Hall as it was cheering me up so much, but I may return to a similar one shortly.  Watch this space.)

I don't make my own bread all the time - recently, whilst I've been poorly, it has been "boughten" bread, but good quality loaves.  Rhonda, over on the Down to Earth blogspot has recently posted about her 5 minute bread recipe.  I have made this in the past too, and it makes an absolutely cracking loaf - SO tasty.  It makes you think that this concept of bread making is a new one.  But no. . .  One of the books I got in Hay-on-Wye this week, mentions a similar "wet-dough" method:


3 lbs of whole wheat flour
2 oz yeast
1 tablespoonful of molasses, treacle, honey or brown sugar
warm water or milk-and-water, about a quart


Put the flour in a warm basin and add the salt.  Mix the yeast to a cream with a little warm water or milk.  Add this to the flour, with the sweetening; stir with a wooden spoon, adding warm liquid till the dough is of the consistency of cake mixture; wetter than ordinary dough.  Fill bread tins about two-thirds full and leave to rise in a warm place until the dough is almost level with the tops of the tins.  Bake in a moderate oven for 3/4 of an hour and take from the tins to col on a rack.  Do not cut for at least 24 hours: this bread improves with keeping and remains good for a week.

Taken from:  The Unsought Farm by Monica Edwards.

I am going to try that this week and will report back, with photos.

And here is a bit on bread making taken from Edward Thomas' biography of Richard Jefferies:

"They still baked a batch of bread occasionally, but not all that was required.  Cicely superintended the baking, passing the barm through a sieve with a wisp of clean hay in it.  The hay takes off any sourness, and insures it being perfectly sweet. She knew when the oven was hot enough by the guage-brick: this particular brick, as the heat increased, became spotted with white, and when it had turned quite white, the oven was ready.  The wood embers were raked out with the scraper, and the malkin, being wetted, cleaned out the ashes.  Thee looks like a gurt malkin' is a common term of reproach among the poor folk - meaning a bunch of rags on the end of a stick.  We went out to look at the oven; and then Mrs Luckett made me taste her black-currant gin, which was very good. (Note to self: I just HAVE to try making this!!!  I've been picking blackcurrants from the garden this week.  Recipe HERE).  Presently we went into the orchard to look at the first apple-tree out in bloom. While there a magpie flew across the meadow, and as I watched it, Mrs Luckett advised me to turn my back and not to look too long in that direction.  'For,' said she, 'one magpie is good luck, but two mean sorrow; and if you should see three - goodness! - something awful might happen.' "

This book is an absolute joy, and I now have to look out for books of Richard Jefferies in my travels . . .

A day out in Hay-on-Wye

 We had to go to Brecon this week to get some more Earthborn clay paint for the interior walls here (it allows the walls to breath).  As we had to go that far, and as I had been confined to barracks for so long with this wretched chest infection, we decided to carry on to Hay-on-Wye.  This will come as no surprise to regular readers of this blog . . . it is always our default setting for a day out, and it is SUCH a lovely town to visit, books apart.

It was just a quiet stroll around the town, visiting our favourite shops.  We started off at the Sandwich Cellar in Backfold, with my husband's favourite brunch of a bacon roll - proper bacon, thick stuff, not that awful pumped-full-of-water rubbish.  This is where we always start our day off in Hay and can recommend the food and the ambience.

Our stroll was leisurely, and involved my sitting down wherever possible as my legs are still aching from side-effects of the Steroids.  I'm alright as long as I don't sit/stand/walk for too long at a stretch.  Bending murdered my knees though and wouldn't you know, looking at books involves a lot of bending!

My husband found a great book on the Isle of Man.  His g.grandfather came over to the mainland in Victorian times but the Manx roots go back forever, so he's always on the look-out to add to his Manx book collection.  This one has lots of folklore in.

As it happens, I struck EXTEMELY lucky for the books this time.  Several of them had obviously been just waiting for my hand to come along and take them off the shelf. . .  Needless to say, Edward Thomas is still an important interest to me, both the man and his works.  I was fortunate enough to find a book in each category.  I had been looking for Edward Thomas' publications, and found his biography of Richard Jefferies in Booths.  A little the worse for wear, with its foxing, but I was happy with it.

This biography about him came from the Poetry bookshop, which I always look in too.  I am looking forward to settling down with that later on.

THEN, also in Booths, and below the Richard Jefferies biography, was THIS gem.  I have been looking for this for YEARS and wanted it SO much, but it was such a price on Abebooks , Amazon etc (£30 - £40 cheapest) I couldn't afford it.  This copy was just £5 and I snatched it up SO quickly, you wouldn't believe.  Both those books must have been simply keeping company, waiting for me to come along.


 

To anyone who didn't grow up reading Monica Edwards' wonderful childrens' books, it might be hard to fathom the attraction of this one, but I always felt that somewhere like Punchbowl Farm was where I belonged, and it actually imprinted me into the sort of house I always wanted . . . which is why I ended up in a falling-down Welsh farmhouse all those years ago. Punchbowl Farm has beams, inglenooks and character - just like this house.  I am delighted to find that some of her animal characters in the books were truly her animals in real-life and I am about to sit down and read this book from cover to cover.

Finally, I chose these two food/cookery books.  The first, because I intend to lose 2 stone in weight.  There, I've written it down, so there's no getting away with it.  I am too heavy and it is doing my asthma no good, nor anything else for that matter.  There are some gorgeous recipes in it and I will try and share them on here as I make them.  I am going to aim at a largely vegetarian diet in future, as that has been proven to help asthmatics.  I am really enjoying trying out new recipes and enjoying cooking again (my menfolk like plain and boring food which is, let's face it, plain, boring and repetitive to cook!)

The Immunity Boosters book is an essential too, as I want to boost my immune system (much-weakened at present) to fight any infections in future.  For £2 it seemed like a good investment to me.

So far today we had to go into Llandeilo as my husband had an optician's appointment, and I found a big vegetarian cookery book in one of the charity shops, and two long skirts which I hope will fit me.  I am going to pick more gooseberries and the blackcurrants, so I have soft fruit in the freezer for puddings and to mix in with yoghurt.  Then I am going to read about yoghurt-making again and get the ingredients when we shop on Saturday.  I have gotten too far away from my chosen pathway in recent years, and it is time to get back on the straight and narrow again - self-reliant and as home-made as possible.

Time to stand on my head then . . .

Purple vetch.  Isn't it gorgeous?  One of my favourite wild flowers.  Seen here growing in a hedgerow between the A40 and our house.  I wish I could go out for a walk to take some more wild flower photographs, but the steroids are bringing out all their worst side-effects to have an airing, and now my Kidneys are having a break from overworking, I now have terrible aches in my legs (yesterday it was hips) which is probably connected with the Steroids.  Long term it would be Steroid Myopathy.  Deep blardy joy.  So I can't lay down/sit/stand/walk for very long.  That's it then, I will just have to stand on my head . . .

Thanks for your lovely supportive comments.  I am on the mend, but there is going to be a HUGE lifestyle change in my diet (a lot less meat and dairy, and even more rainbow veg), and which rooms we live in over the winter here, as the wood burning stove may be the major culprit - apart from recent family stress - in the downturn in my asthma and all those infections. (Causes particulates in the air which set up inflammation in my lungs).   I can't wait to get back to walking again, but in the meantime I just have to mooch about and take things steadily.

As an afterthought, I wish I could keep my photos the size they initially load on the page, before they shrink again.  Does anyone know how to do this?

Sewing in progress, btw, and I've pieced the 9 piece block for the seaside cushion fronts.  I'm just off in search of some suitable material for the border and then I'll take photos later.

Ozone and chips . . .

OK - so I lied about the chips!, but I did get some ozone today and it perked me up no end, despite the tide being right out and a few, ahem, rainclouds being obvious. We popped down to Swansea to see our daughter G and drop some tickets off for her, and then after a slow crawl around her local charity shops (2 plates, a book on antiques and a pasta jar) we drove down to the Mumbles (posh end of Swansea leading into the Gower peninsula) so I could get some sea air. After a very poor night's sleep, I wasn't feeling too clever, and my legs were very feeble again, but it was just so lovely to get out of the house and for it not to be actively RAINING, that I didn't care.

We got stuck in a queue of traffic on the way to Swansea, but I had a good library book (nearly finished now - a Ruth Rendell which wasn't too demanding to my sleep-deprived brain) and as we were at a standstill for a good while, just looking at the uncut wild flowers down the central reservation was a joy.  Most people would call them weeds, but to my eyes they were so beautiful.  Lots of ox-eye daisies blowing in the breeze.  Tall stately lavender-purple thistles ditto.  Pink and white clovers, yellow vetches, and brambles flowering everywhere which if you turn off your mind to brambles, are such pretty flowers, especially the deeper pink varieties.

When we got to the Mumbles, the tide was a fair way out.  We managed to park, and had a wander along the seafront, with the "breeze" now upped to a blustering wind but the ozone in it flung itself into my lungs and gave them a step up in the breathing department and even put some energy into my legs again too.  (One of the side effects of the steroids is weak muscles.)  You can just see in the right of the picture above, looking across Swansea Bay, the remains of a couple of old fishing boats - all that's left is the main rib along the bottom and the keel.  Nearly reduced to just shadows in the mud.  I wonder what the fishermen who used them would think if they could see them now? The popular novels of local writer Iris Gower were set in Swansea and the Mumbles area.

I walked a couple of hundred yards at a steady pace to visit the Quilt and yarn shop I had noticed when we drove past looking for somewhere to park.  There were some gorgeous fabrics and having bought wool earlier in the week, I blew my last £5.50 on this little Seaside charm pack.  There are 20 5" squares in it, so I should have enough for two pretty seaside cushion covers which I think I will hand-piece as it means sitting down quietly to do so.  I was absurdly excited over such a modest purchase . . .

As my husband and I walked back to the car, I managed a couple of stand-on-a-bench photos of some of the older property in the Mumbles.

Below: Isn't this a pretty little cottage?

We had hoped for chips for lunch, but settled for a steak pie instead, and another wander round the charity shops, so I am all charity-shopped up for this week.

I am slowly on the mend but dare say I have overdone things a little today and will have to really rest up tomorrow. . . with my sewing.

In search of healing . . .

Well, how strange that I should find an incredible synchronicity this evening when I was merely searching for something to help me heal.  A while back I had found a couple of excellent sites for meditation (on dear old YouTube).  I first tried Caroline Myss, but couldn't find the link I remembered.  Another site came to mind - a white horse against blue skies - but who was it linked to?  I typed "white horse meditation" into the YouTube search engine, and amazingly I found this . . .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1S-WcoWLoY

Note - a reference to Edward Thomas's South Country (on my little Edward Thomas bookshelf with many other books by and about him) and to the chalk downland of Wessex which I know so well from my childhood.

I can't manage a picture of the Uffington White Horse, so Avebury will have to do . . .


Meanwhile, suitably relaxed, my breathing has eased again.

The sounds of summer

 (An oatmeal plait loaf I managed to bake last week).

I am just reporting in to say I am hopefully feeling slightly more alive today.  My breathing has eased.  How much is due to the cornucopia of medications and drugs I am taking and how much I can put down to inhaling Thyme essential oil in a sink of hot water last night I can't say, but I do know that the moment I inhaled the Thyme fumes (which made my eyes water!) they percolated into the nooks and crannies of my lungs and my breathing eased.  I breathed easily the rest of the evening and repeated this before bedtime.  I was still awake in the night with breathing problems but nothing like as bad.

I have not been idle whilst I have been laid up, and have now done more than a hundred rows on my Sweetpea Granny Stripes lap warmer for the winter.  I am debating whether to carry on with it and make it long enough to go across the end of the bed, but I think I will stop now and edge it.  I am just printing off some "how to's" from Lucy's wonderful Attic 24 blog.  I will start edging it today I think, and then I want to get started on trying my hand (and brain!) at a Ripple cushion.  Watch this space.

A close up, to give you a vague idea of the colours (though they blend better than this than under the stark brightness of my camera flash.)

Outside, our sodden summer carries on much as usual - rain, rain, rain, and slugs, slugs, slugs.  I have just about given up in the veg garden as nothing is surviving.  However, I DO have brilliant crops of Gooseberries and Raspberries (best ever rasps), and good pickings of Blackcurrants, the most Blueberries I've had, and crops on Redcurrants, Loganberries, Wineberries and Boysenberry.  All is not lost.  Just the Courgettes, and the Carrots, and the Runner Beans aren't looking good - lacy is the word I want . . .

Outside there is the steady patter of rain, sparrows chirping - they sound like they are passing the time of day as they rear their broods behind the facia boards.  A blackbird is singing in the paddock, and there is the soft moo of a cow to her calf.  The swallows in the barn are not happy with the weather, but in dry moments they sit on the power line and chat metallically, ending each refrain with two long notes, Dahhhh-Dehh with a slight question mark ending.

 If you would love to win one of Em's beautiful drawings of Dartmoor foals, please visit her blog Dartmoor Ramblings and leave a comment.  She has a wonderful blog and makes my heart yearn for the moor with every photograph.  Good luck.

A note from my sick bed

Just a brief update to say that the tests have come back to say that my current chest infection is resistant to the first two lots of anti-biotics I was given.  No wonder I felt like death warmed up this morning and my peak flow was the lowest yet . . .  My Doctor called me to tell me the results and ask how I was feeling . . . I think she must have known the answer to that one . . .  Anyway, have new anti-biotics which, touch wood, should be turning the tide of infection build-up in my lungs.  And thank de Lord, I don't have to take any more of those filthy things the Hospital gave me.  Ye Gods - SIDE-EFFECTS?  I had half a dozen of the nastiest, including turning my saliva to battery acid.  You just couldn't get rid of the awful taste (Clarithromycin).

I think my liver is on its knees, begging for respite too.  Anyway, I am going back to my sick-sofa now and will be available to give lectures on daytime television from next week onwards . . .

The posy above is one I picked from my garden last week.  Sadly all the rain we've had has done for the Paul's Himalayan Musk now and that's gone right over, but the Kiftsgate is about to start unfurling for a brief week of glory.