Right, I am nearly up to date. You might have noticed the flurry of blog posts about days out, plant shopping, bread making, bird watching, cake making and posies.  I haven’t included the gardening and the green wheelie bin filled to the brim or anything remotely to do with knitting or knitting groups.  This week has been pretty busy and the only way to catch up on blog posts is to wake in the early hours and start writing.

But along with all of those creative exploits there has been a little light quilting. Its still in its early stages, but I know where I am going with it now.

This was the initial idea.

And this is trying to get the right look with the lights and darks.  I think its okay, if its not perfect, well, it will still be beautiful.

And this quilt is being taken slowly and gently, which is a rarity for me, because normally once I start sewing I will sew and sew and sew, but this time I want to take it gently and thoroughly enjoy the process, one tiny step at a time.

For many years I’ve been asking and hoping for a bird feeding station at home but have always been scuppered by my attempts to purchase one – mainly by hubby.   We had one at the allotment for a while which I really enjoyed but for some reason it was lost when we gave up the allotment.  There has always been an excuse or reason not to have a feeding station at home, chickens, cats, etc, etc, but I was listening no longer and set about loading up the trolley with the bird feeder and food last time we were in B & Q and told hubby it was an early birthday present.

After having it for two weeks you’ll be pleased to know that the cats ignore the birds or at best see them as light entertainment and simply lay there and watch them flitting in and out.  So far we have attracted a pair of blackbirds, a couple of fat pigeons, an adolescent group of about 6 Great Tits and a family group of Great Tits, the parents feeding their two offspring the seeds that they collect from the feeders, which is a delight to watch.

My bird photography is still very much in its early stages, but its fun trying to learn.

So the experimentation continues. This time I started the bread in a cold oven in a dutch oven. It produced a light bake and whilst this loaf was baking I held back the other loaf in the fridge.  Both doughs weighed exactly the same.  Then I placed the second loaf into the hot oven on a tray.  The next experiment will be cooking the second loaf in the preheated dutch oven.

As you can see the cold oven dutch oven bake produced a larger loaf and a paler bake than the the hot oven on a tray version.

And the bake itself produced a lovely soft loaf, it was delightful, I really enjoyed this loaf.  I think there may be something in this idea for the home baker.

I was invited to a barbecue last weekend, I had a brilliant time.  I decided my contribution should be something sweet and home made and I settled on these as an idea. I must say they came off very well and rapturous moaning of sheer joy could be heard as they were being eaten.

They are simply a basic Victoria sandwich mix, I did an 8, 8, 8, ounces of flour, butter and sugar by 4 eggs mix with finely grated lemon zest.  And then for the centres a good quality lemon curd, topped with a butter cream that had lovely big dollops of lemon curd mixed in, followed by the merest sprinkling of fairy dust. 

Oh look, there is one that I couldn’t squeeze into the cake tins.

Its a real shame.

Oh Well.

(We shared it )

You might have heard me wittering on about the wonderful plant shop I discovered a few weeks ago.  Well I resolved to take a few piccies for you, just so that you can see what all the fuss is about. So when I was down there a couple of days ago, out came the phone to take the snaps.  I think its amazing, it closes mid July until the winter trade of Christmas, I must come here for a Christmas tree, if only to see the wondrous display that I am sure they will put on.

Enjoy. (I would live here if I could) And there were big chunks that simply weren’t photographed.

Yes, I thought that was quite amusing too.  I mean to say, ‘I wonder how much that would cost?’.  We happened to be tootling around central London last Sunday when we came across Magnum’s most amusing event, there was Magnum dipping, a most tasty part of the proceedings, a walk through a secret door to find two flapper girls telling us about their exploits and jewels they had acquired, including a diamond encrusted Magnum.  Followed by a walk through a floral garden.

There were 1950’s dancers and then a pink double decker to finish off with, most amusing.

During my reading about all things sourdough bread and otherwise I came across the concept of cooking the bread starting from a cold oven.  This made alot of sense to me, my oven doesn’t keep the steam, it is made to vent any steam and it seems to do this very effectively, as all modern ovens are designed to do, that’s how we get our nice roast potatoes after all.  And as such when my bread goes into a super hot oven it seals the dough and it then becomes a battle as to who is going to win the ‘oven spring’ war, will the crust have already hardened too much or will it still be soft enough that when the interior of the bread has heated up nicely and the gas bubbles expanded allow for those exciting few moments where the bread springs up an inch or so, I love to watch out for this.   But if one was to put it into a cold oven, the yeast would love the warmth and the gas bubbles would expand gently and the crust would still be soft.

I decided to give it a go.

Fresh out of the oven,

you can see the spring.

The bread was amazing – this is a walnut and sunflower seed loaf.  It had a lovely texture, the density felt correct and everything about it seemed right and it tasted good too!

Quick recipe –

375g white bread flour

125g wholemeal bread flour

10g salt

10g yeast

350g warm water

50g sunflower seeds

50g walnuts chopped

extra sunflower seeds for topping.

I later tried the technique on a sourdough bread.  I’ve yet to cut into this as it was popped into the freezer.

Over all I think its an exciting development in my bread making skills.  If you wish to try it in a modern oven, start timing from the moment the oven hits temperature, I baked these loaves at 190c but I think I pulled them out a few minutes early, as with all things you know your bread and oven better than I.

And next time I’m going to try a cold start in a dutch oven – that will be interesting as it will retain any moisture from the loaf and I won’t have the absolutely terrifying ordeal of handling a red hot cast iron dish that has been heating up the oven for half an hour whilst at the same time trying to slip a lump of dough into it as quickly as possible.

I took these photos a couple of weeks ago before heading off to leafy Warwickshire, I’d best post them before I need to update them.

The lawn is looking patchy as creeping buttercup threatened to overtake the lawn and the border – cleverly identified from a smudgy photo sent to Noelle, so I’ve added a couple of plants in the big gaps in the border and am dabbing the weeds in the lawn with roundup, once a week.  The new plants came from a shop I spotted and went back in search of some weeks later, I found it and came back on the tube overladen with plants. I love London, the competition keeps the prices down, 6 perennials and 6 annuals all of a good size for £23.00.

I am very pleased that the white lilac is just starting to flower, this means it will survive in the dark corner I poked it in as it will only flower when the branches hit sunlight and I wondered whether it would die before it managed to do that.

We put up an archway and will have a purple and a white passion flower on one side with an outdoor jasmine on the other.  Various types of clematis and climbing roses will adorn the shed and climb through the lilac.

There is still the end corner to do, but when you consider there wasn’t even a blade of grass in this garden two summers ago, we haven’t done too bad.

Hubby and I have been waiting for this day since we bought our pad in London, we are at long last on the map of the underground.  See that imaginary dot between Silver Street and White Hart Lane, yep, that’s us, just a short walk away from either station. What was Greater Anglia is now London Overground with an improved service and most importantly our very own station(s) on the Underground Map.