Somewhere in MFK Fisher's extensive oeuvre, she mentions - I think it might be specifically in connection with kasha? but I may be confabulating - buying some and looking at the instructions on the packet and going, well, not exactly WTF, but being a bit surprised at the proportions of dry ingredient to liquid given. And shrugging her shoulders and ( Read more... )

Does anyone else have phases when material objects manifest hostility towards them?
(There was an English humourist of the mid-C20th who posited a philosophical school concerning what Things Think About People - unfortunately I can't remember what it was called - Object - something - 'Objectivism', of course, comes up with massive hits on Randian ( Read more... )

First lines of first posts in each month (excluding birthday greetings):
What I read Finished Dreams Before the Start of Time, v good.
Am rather tempted by this exhibition Unbound: Visionary Women Collecting Textiles, 25th January 2020 - 19th April 2020 (and did get to it, yay)
Bread made during week: brown oatmeal (strong white and wholemeal flour ( Read more... )

But over the past several weeks I have been making as is my usual wont, yeasted breads, and I am finally coming to the end of a supply of fresh yeast laid in well before everything locked down -
- and really, it has been the fresh yeast supply That Could, it is still going strong, which is fairly remarkable given that it must have been early ( Read more... )

I'm not sure the shelves at any given Waitrose are necessarily diagnostic, but my impression from today's shopping expedition -
- hey, maybe I could work it up into one of those opinion pieces based on vague impressions? -
- is that this part of N London has got heavily into Panic Home Bread Baking.
Because the flour shelves, where I was ( Read more... )

I was going to remark that that is not so remarkable these days but given the runaround I had connecting to LNER wifi, perhaps not.
There was actually bread made during the week: the Collister/Blake My Favourite Loaf, wholemeal & white spelt + einkorn flour, turned out v nice.
Yesterday afternoon while we were taking tea and and a short break in ( Read more... )

I daresay I am not the only person sighing and rolling my eyes at the intelligence that the humble and ancient art of breadmaking is being disrupted: bread-baking in America has, of late, found a friend in the unlikeliest of people: engineers, technologists, and the Silicon Valley-centric and adjacent.

I.e. blokes who need a whole lot of very ( Read more... )

Kitchen revolution: how Nigella Lawson changed food writing: yet another of those articles that makes yr hedjog grumpy by being about 'revolutions' and 'the one and only' when there is a longer history and broader tradition. Okay, there is a name-check to MFK Fisher, but nothing about Laurie Colwin, and on the 'designed for the home cook' type of ( Read more... )

Looking at the posters for the zumba classes at the local community centre, of which several adorn the approach to the pocket park behind the house, I discover that I have aged out of the possibility of going to these, as beyond a certain age-group they cannot get insurance.
(It is possibly the thought that zumba classes require insurance that puts ( Read more... )

But, being away visiting family over the Bank Holiday weekend, have not done much other cooking.
However, early last week I made an einkorn flour loaf, the 'quick einkorn bread' recipe from the back of the packet. V nice.
For Saturday breakfast, the adaptable soft rolls, 4:1 strong white and rye flours, with dried cranberries.
Made this evening a ( Read more... )