A blog for heart matters and natters.
We have picked quite a few blackberries but the season seems to be over early this year and no it's not a climate emergency con.
And what goes well with blackberries? Apples. We have three separate trees to pick from. One a large and well established tree with cooking apples - not sure of the variety. Another a dwarf tree with eating apples - Elstar and a second one with Laxton's Superb,
So we do plenty of cooking, sieving and freezing.
Bristol is fortunate enough to have a Lego shop. There are so many wonderful kits to chose from and helpful staff.
If you are as old as me you may have been lucky to have had one of the first kits. In a wooden box with separate compartments. I think that mine had a mixture of red and white bricks, fairly basic shapes but it also had some slopes - used for roofs and some basic windows and doors. So it was imagination that was the main requirement there weren't detailed instructions.
Now there are kits to build specific models with some alarming prices!
We made our second attempt at a totally gluten free sourdough bread today.
The first attempt was not too bad, quite springy and tasty but it did slump a bit when being cooked then more slumping in the middle whilst it cooled.
It seemed to be a combination of over-proving and not a hot enough oven. Maybe too much liquid could be a factor too. But the fun is adapting the recipe.
So today's attempt had a packet of powdered egg white and a hotter oven. It came out better and not as much slumping - is that the correct term? It is still tasty though!
During the craziness of Covid lockdown a lot of people started making their own sourdough bread - I wonder how many of them are still making it?
We had started our sourdough well before Covid was ever heard of.
But what we had never tried was a gluten free sourdough. So we are now trying to make a starter. We are using a mixture of a ready made gluten free flour mix and adding sorghum flour and finely ground up quinoa.
It is starting to bubble so hopefully we will be trying gluten free sourdough soon.
Does anyone else get odd illnesses?
The latest one has made me poorly, nothing specific just poorly. The main side effect was that it was very hard to eat or even drink. Having zero energy too.
At least the weather has been good.
We went to the market in Clevedon today then on to Nailsea. An old chap we met asked us almost incredulously why we were going to Nailsea. Well why not?
A few different locally owned shops to look around is a bit of fun and hopefully shopping there keeps them solvent. The death of the high street will be yet another backward step for communities. Amazingly there were no roadworks in Tickenham!
