Cheesy Soda Bread (and 52 Weeks of Creative)

I’ve just joined the new Flickr group ’52 Weeks of Creative’ where you aim to make (and post a picture of) something creative once a week. Now my personal work output can be variable and I think most weeks I do at least one creative thing and a lot of weeks I do more than that, but it’ll be nice to keep myself on track and working more consistently (and I quite fancy being able to look back over the year to see all the different things I’ve (hopefully) done). But because of the whole doing more than one creative thing a week, I’ve decided that for me my weekly photo to 52 Weeks of Creative will be of the first creative project I start and complete that week, sometimes I’ll be posting on a Monday and sometimes I’ll be looking round desperately for something to post on a Sunday. Also for me personally I’m going to rule out posting projects that I had started in a previous week.

So having said all that, the first creative thing I’ve started and finished this week is making cheesy soda bread from Rachel Allen’s Food for Living. It’s the first time I’ve made it and it is absolutely delicious, except Girl Lacer didn’t like it because it had rosemary in it, how can anyone not like rosemary? She wants me to make it again but without the rosemary, that to be is like being asked to pull my own teeth out, I adore rosemary and it’s the best bit about the soda bread, I can foresee having to make two separate batches. Mr. Lacer, Boy Lacer and me all adored it, rosemary and all.

The recipe is very similar to this one, except the recipe I’ve linked to makes a whole loaf and they use olive oil to grease the baking tray and to brush the top prior to sprinkling on the cheese. The recipe I used dusts the baking tray in flour and you flatten the dough to around 2cm thick and then cut it out shapes approximately the size of a scone. No olive oil on top (and I certainly didn’t notice it missing) and cooking for around 20 minutes, the first 10 minutes at 250 C and then lowered to 200 C. My temperamental oven didn’t help me with this, not helped by having  two trays in with the bread, I swopped the trays over at the 10 minutes mark but even then the tray that had been originally at the top came out first (after the full twenty minutes), then the tray that had been at the bottom had an additional five minutes and then I checked again and three out of the six buns on the tray sounded ok (you have to tap the bottom of each bun to see if it sounds hollow), so the remaining three went back into the oven for another five minutes at 175 C, after that they were ok. Basically trust your judgement and get tapping!

Will definitely be making these again, I think they’ll make great lunch box food, specially for Boy Lacer who is not particularly fond of sandwiches. They’re also, like all soda bread I seem to make, nice and filling (not being a big fan of shop bought soda bread, I don’t know if all soda bread is that filling or whether I just make soda bread of a possibly brick like tendency).

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In other ramblings we had our last shopping trip into town before Girl Lacer goes back to school on Thursday (Boy Lacer starts later in 2 weeks), it seemed everyone else had exactly the same idea and the whole place was heaving and as much I’ll miss having the kids around I’m not sure I’m going to miss herding two cats (ahem my children I mean) round the town centre. We went in for plimsolls (why oh why do I always leave those to last minute) and it was basically a scrum, plimsolls flying everywhere, must remember that next year.

Allotment day 2

We had a whole family trip down to the allotment today, as Mr. Lacer was doing a tip run, so we thought we might as well make the most of that and get rid of some of the allotment junk at the same time. We took away three bags of rubbish and garden waste but there will need to be a whole lot more. The problem at the moment is that there’s a large amount of stuff on site and some of it may be useful; bricks, wood and the like, so it’s a question I think of clearing space to start making piles so that everything can be organised and we can see what we’ve got.

We did manage to identify more fruits and vegetables, there’s a lot of potatoes gone wild, a lot of strawberries gone wild and an apple tree that looks a bit diseased and is I think about 85% likely to go, although it may not, I have to consult some books, but it’s not too much in the way I think as it’s in the corner where I’m planning the compost bin and both could go there, hmmm. The potatoes and the strawberries are going though. I do want potatoes and strawberries but I want to grow potatoes that I actually know what they are and the strawberries look like they’ve been there for years, so I have a feeling their yield is not going to be very good and anyway, they’re in totally the wrong position.

So, anyway, first things first, me and my slave labour (ahem kids I mean) all need new gardening gloves (our gloves were ruined by our leaking shed roof), so we’ll buy those tomorrow. I also need to order a compost bin tomorrow and once that’s up the weeding can start in earnest.

Writing in the school holidays is a bit hard

I have finally just sent off a set of instructions I had to write for the mystery embroidery project, luckily I made the deadline (which was 1 September) but oh I would have done it much much sooner if the kids had been in school (or back when Boy Lacer was in nursery and Girl Lacer in school), but as it was I had to fit the writing into exhausted evenings and then when it came to proof reading it, I’d think “Ah got half an hour, I can do it now!” but then of course that half an hour turns out to be an illusion. Even after proof reading the actual document so that I was happy with it and then writing the very brief e-mail to go with the attachments I had to send, that took me several days because every time I sat down with my laptop open, opened up my draft e-mail folder, then of course the phone would ring or something would happen. But it’s sent now, now just to wait till September 2011!

To say my new allotment “requires some work” would be an understatement

So, I got to see my new allotment today after a weekend of trying to find a suitable time in both mine and the allotment supervisor’s schedules. We arranged a final time this afternoon and he goes “oh you’ll need £15 deposit for the key”, which meant I had just enough time to walk to the nearest cash machine and then back again to get to the allotment. I looked out the window just as I was about to head out “hmmm, it doesn’t look like it’s going to rain,” (and none was forecast) but as I was still reeling from the effects of the last torrential downpour I got caught in (my phone still isn’t working properly), I borrowed Mr. Lacer’s umbrella just in case. Good thing I did because by the time I was walking back from the cash machine the heavens opened with a repeat showing of last Wednesday’s rain. So I turn up sopping wet at the allotments (umbrellas not too good in heavy rain and wind obviously) and find the allotment guy hiding in his car. Luckily the rain starts to slow down a bit and we go and see my new allotment, I’ll let pictures describe it.

Taken from one corner of the plot

Taken from the other corner (couldn’t take photos from the two opposite corners as they were too overgrown)

*Gulp* (and actually I don’t think the photos do the amount of overgrown-ness justice).

The bushes you can see at the back are raspberries, now I was planning on growing raspberries but not quite that extensively, chives have also grown rampantly and I could spot some rhubarb to, other than that it all seemed to be weeds, weeds and junk. But work starts tomorrow, Mr. Lacer was hoping for a family trip out, well it’s going to be a family trip out to the tip! Mr. Lacer has been very good and has been doing some garden maintenance today in our back garden and has accumulated huge piles of garden waste bags to take down the tip, well now it looks like he’ll have to make two trips, so at least then the allotment will go from weeds and junk to just weeds.

Work will begin in earnest though when both kids are in school, I have a lot of plans for that plot, too many plans, which could be a problem and they will have to stay in my head a little longer until we get the site cleared. My fantasies last term about the kids’ going back to school in the autumn term and me sitting down straight away and starting work on the book and on Etsy shop stuff  (which I have so many plans for to, I know the shop has been neglected a bit but I found I only had time to craft for me and the family’s need with Boy Lacer still home in the mornings), those will be delayed. They were already delayed, as on Mr. Lacer’s suggestion (which I agree with), when Boy Lacer starts school I need to use the time to give the flat a real deep clean and organise and then start work, and actually I do think it will be easier working when everything is in its place but now the deep clean and organise will have to be combined with plot clearing. I may alternate, flat deep clean one day, plot clearing the next, just to give my digging and forking muscles a rest for a start!

Cupcake plushie

Just a quick mention of a plushie I’ve just made from a free embroidery pattern here, I’ve blogged about it over on Feeling Stitchy today. The teddy about to commit cakeicide is the very cute Pagan, a teddy I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for because he’s never really made it to the upper echelon of my kids’ toys, so I feel sorry for him. I don’t think the fact that he makes a moaning sort of noise which I think is meant to be a growl, whenever he’s moved, helps.

The Road

I’ve finally caught up with reading Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and what a brilliant, beautiful book it was. Several reviewers at the beginning of the book recommended reading it in one sitting (and oh to have a life where I could read a book in one sitting) but I can imagine if you did you’d emerge from the book blinking in amazement at the still blue sky and the still green grass. As it was I did manage to read this book quite quickly (it’s unputdownable) and I read a lot of it yesterday whilst I was travelling round London and it was quite disorienting walking round the bustle of the city after reading segments of a book so bleak and desolate.

The Road tells the story of a man and his son, the boy born a few days after some sort of catastrophe which possibly could have been a nuclear war. Whatever the catastrophe was it resulted in great firestorms that blanketed the world in a thick blanket of ash, killing all plants and animals, leaving just humans left, surviving off the scavenged remains of food made and stored before the catastrophe and when those stores began to run out some humans started to eat each other.

The man and boy were living in the north but it was getting too cold so they decided to go on the road and move down south to get to the coast. On their road trip through the country they scavenge as they go, occasionally meeting other humans, most of them dangerous. Several times the man and boy are days away from starving to death before they manage to find another store of food and the weather all the time is getting colder and colder.

It is a stark, beautiful book that makes you realise how fragile what we’ve got is. It’s about carrying on even though you know the inevitability is death and about how sometimes that death is attractive. It’s about being a parent and how you will do almost anything to protect your child and the anger that sometimes even that is not enough.

Monster making

I was at the Alternative Village Fete this lunchtime helping to make monsters at the Make Lounge stall. It was quite fun and some very cute monsters were being made. In between helping others make their monsters, I made my own, he’s called Sad Monster and he’s already been adopted, so maybe he’s not so sad now.