pantry.

what to do in a kitchen with no space? we have about 5 cupboards in our teensy kitchen. and both food and dishes for cooking and eating, to store. so how to fix this?

we've put up a couple corner shelves, painted white to match the walls, and we're using glass jars.

to keep from mixing up the sugar and salt, icing sugar and flour and the different types of flour i use, i printed cute labels found on pinterest onto sticker paper (seriously, the most useful stationery item i own!). this was an inexpensive project, gets us away from using plastic to store food in and prettied up the kitchen! all with the added bonus of random food no longer falling on our heads when we open the cupboard doors!

Source: sissyprint.blogspot.com via Brie on Pinterest

i love the look, the old-time feel and the ease of it all. the kitchen is 100% more functional! which makes me one happy lady! 

glass jars from ikea, variety of sizes: £0.90 - £2.69

sticker paper: free

corner shelves (4 total) : £4/shelf

Total cost for new pantry: £30

bread.

it's such a simple thing really. bread. and yet in our home, it is essential for domestic harmony. i read an article by mark bittman years ago in the nytimes about no-knead bread. i thought it intriguing, but i also considered it to be rather impractical, what with so many hours of rising time required. but recently re-reading the articles, i realised that many people had tweaked this recipe to work for their own purposes. i've linked all the related content from the nytimes below, and here i'll go through my process.

i started baking bread out of curiosity and really, frugality. we are lovers of good, wholesome, artisanal bread. i am suspicious, to say the least, of grocery store bread, really it's the list of preservatives that i shake my head at. and while we're fortunate to live near an excellent farmer's market (wimbledon farmer's market for those who are local) with an impressive array of vendors, the bread we favour is £4 a loaf, and with le boy at the table, that only lasts a couple of days! and that's if he's distracted by other delights the kitchen has produced. needless to say, this was becoming an expensive indulgence in a daily necessity.

perhaps i could bake my own bread? perhaps i could feed our (small) family for mere pennies a loaf? and so i started experimenting. my first attempts were faltering. i started by following the quicker of the recipes to the letter. the bread was good, really an excellent first attempt, but the quick recipe calls for dousing the flour with yeast, and so the bread tasted yeasty.  we wanted perfection. in all honesty, i'm not great at following recipes and it occurred to me that perhaps i could get a loaf we were satisfied with, with less yeast, and a middling rising time. a compromise so to speak (or taste?).

and so with my willing taste-tester at my side, i began baking bread. and since i've started we've scarcely bought a loaf! i think we're spending in the neighbourhood of 40p a loaf. because this recipe calls for so little yeast the overall cost is negligible and really bread flour is about as inexpensive as any ingredient comes.

so here we go, the recipe for white bread. i'll be back next week with a follow-up of our very favourite, whole grain, seeded bread that follows on the same principles as this loaf, but with some small tweaks to accomodate the whole grains.

firstly, bread requires remarkably few ingredients - flour, yeast, salt and water.

to 3 cups of strong white bread flour, add 1/4 tsp of yeast and 1/2 tbsp salt. the long rising time allows for the small amount of yeast to distribute throughout the dough and means that the 'yeasty' taste that can sometimes characterize homemade bread is no longer an issue.


mix the dry ingredients and add 1.5 cup of lukewarm water. i mix the dough in a stainless steel bowl and use a spatula to get all the dry mixed with the wet. i'm hoping (not so secretly) for one of these for christmas. it's really important to make sure all the dry bits are incorporated, the dough will be shaggy, and nearly impossible to knead as it's extremely sticky.

at this point, cover the bowl and leave in a warm place. i put mine in the oven, using the 'rising' function. if you don't have this a warm oven from after dinner or a warm place in the house will suffice. ideally the temperature needs to be about 70 F or 21 C. the first rise needs at least 9-10 hours. i usually make the dough after dinner and leave it overnight, waking early on 'bread mornings.'


after the rise the dough will look like this

the holes are the indication that the yeast has worked.

at this time you need to heat your oven to full whack - 450 F or 230 C. and you need to heat whatever you're baking your bread in at the same time. this is an essential aspect of this bread. it needs to be baked covered. so a dutch oven or a covered glass pyrex would work. i use my le creuset ovens. caveat: technically le creuset knobs are only recommended to 400 F or 200 C, but i've been using both my ovens at this temperature for months now with no problem - plus i have absolutely lovely, wonderful ovens that deserved to be used and why not use them? i'll just replace the knobs if they ever get damaged. 

here's what i do next - pour a tsp of oil onto a flat surface, a kitchen board would work well, i cover my dough with aluminum foil, so i turn that over onto the counter, and smear some oil on it. 

pull the dough out of the bowl, kneading it a couple of times in your hands, and then shape into a round loaf form. turn the loaf form in the oil and return to the bowl, covering again. allow to rise for another 30 minutes - 1 hour, this is about how long it takes my oven to heat. 

once the oven is heated, take the baking pot out of the oven (CAREFUL it's very hot!) and drop the dough in - it should sizzle as the oil hits the bottom. 

bake for 30 min with the lid on, take the lid off and bake for another 15-30 depending on how brown you want the crust. 

according to what i've read it's the hot oven and the lid which makes all the difference. because this is a fairly wet dough this creates a steam action inside the pot which is why you can get a fabulous crust from this recipe (it's hard and crunches when you eat it). 

remove from oven, and place on rack to cool (i just use the stovetop as it's gas and sort of rack-like?)

and really, make sure you enjoy this with butter, there's nothing better. nothing. 

recipe: 

ingredients: 

3 cups strong white bread flour

1/4 tsp instant/fast acting yeast

1/2 tbsp salt 

1.5 cups lukewarm water

instructions: 

• in a large bowl combine flour, yeast and salt. add lukewarm water, stir to combine thoroughly, cover and leave for 9-10 hours in a warm place. 
• preheat oven to 450 F or 230 C - making sure to also preheat whatever you are baking it in, form dough into round loaf, turn in oil and rise for further 30-60 minutes
• carefully place inside hot pot and return to oven for 30 minutes with lid on, and further 15-30 minutes with lid off
• remove from oven, allow to cool, and serve warm

because of the high water content the crust will eventually become more soft, it hardens again if toasted or if the loaf is put into a warm (350 F) oven for 10 minutes. 

nytimes links: i very much recommend you read these articles if you're looking to develop your own technique, they gave me ideas and confidence to stray from the original recipes...

original article - 20 hours rising time

faster no-knead bread - 4 hours rising time

reader's comments - this was very helpful for tips and tricks!

palletting.

we've got a large open space in our living room. the room is shaped in such a way that all the furniture needs to go on the edge of the room, i know, it's a design no-no, but really we're not able to do much else. so the centre of the room needs something to fill it. i have a love of reclaimed things, (which is awkward when combined with my love for ikea) but rarely do i approve of the price tag associated with such items. so when i saw this on one of my favourite online shops i thought - i can do that...

and so began my obsession with pinterest and pallets. my pallet board is here. and i found some ideas i liked.

but how does one find a pallet?

firstly, i should say that pallets are pretty big, about nine square feet, so one wouldn't fit in our car. but when you start looking, suddenly pallets are everywhere. i've seen at least five in people's trash in the last couple of weeks. what is most fortunate is that we live down the street from a carpet warehouse (bizarre, i know, but that's london for you) and i was pretty sure if we asked nicely they'd let us have one. so i dispatched le boy one morning, and indeed, he was allowed to take his pick!

and this is what we started with.

it was in pretty good condition, considering it's former life as a warehouse storage item. but pallets are made from rough wood and have some not so nice parts (read: big splinters). i'll outline what we did but i didn't take step-by-step photos because, well, i wasn't planning on a tutorial and i'm a bad blogger and i had paint all over myself and it was cold and really we all know how to sand and paint, right?

pallet transformation:

materials needed:
wooden pallet
sandpaper (coarse and fine)
dropsheet
paint for interior wood & brushes
pre-painting wash solution
wheels

steps:

• start by wiping down pallet with wash solution, we found some handy wipes at the hardware store, but even just rag with some water and vinegar would do the trick, allow to dry 
• sand entire pallet with coarse sandpaper, this will take quite a bit of time, but is worth doing well so that you get a good finish 
• wipe down again to get rid of all the dust (very very important!) 
• paint your first coat and allow to dry. because the wood is untreated it sucks up quite a lot of paint, consequently we painted it on quite thickly - if you are going for a fully professional look it's better to do light coats and more of them, but i'm ok with (and indeed want) a slightly more rustic look, so as this gets used, i'll be happy for paint to chip etc. 
• sand with light sandpaper (this allows the second coat to bind well to the first) 
• paint second coat and allow to dry 
• attach wheels, we used castors from ikea, 2/£10, easy to attach and they have brakes so the coffee table doesn't go flying across the room! 

total cost: £35

paint & supplies - £15

castors - £20 

pallet - free! 

pretty great savings. and i LOVE LOVE LOVE it. a lot. 

i'm linking up to take it on tuesday.

food friday :: bangers & mash

it's the ultimate british dinner. bangers & mash. (translation: sausages and mashed potatoes, smothered in gravy). and it's exactly the kind of food you desire as you walk home from the train station on a cold and rainy thursday night. it's also exceptionally budget friendly. a few months back we bought 24 sausages for £8, which means that this meal might have cost £3 total. but being budget friendly does mean that taste was sacrificed. bangers and mash is a british institution - friends of ours served it gourmet style at their wedding last year - and it was DELICIOUS!

the key to this simple, but incredibly satisfying, supper is ingredients and taking your time. and this is sure to be met with lip-smacking approval from any man who happens to reside at your house. which always makes it a winner in my book!

gourmet bangers & mash with red onion gravy
serves 2

this recipe is easy to scale up to feed larger groups, if pan space is an issue, consider browning sausages in the oven and then using the drippings in the gravy.

ingredients:
4 gourmet sausages
1 tbsp olive oil
1/4 cup red wine
2 medium red onions, thinly sliced
1 cup chicken stock
1 sprig rosemary, leaves picked and roughly chopped

4-5 medium potatoes roughly chopped, skins on
2 tbsp butter
2 tbsp heavy cream

salt & pepper

instructions: 
heat olive oil in a large frying pan over medium heat. once shimmering, add sausages, being careful of spatter. cook over medium/low heat, being sure to get brown and crispy on all sides.

meanwhile, bring a medium pot of salted water to the boil and add potatoes. cover and boil until knife-tender.

once sausages are browned, remove to a plate and add wine to pan, deglazing with a wooden spoon - be sure to get all the crispy bits on the bottom of the pan into the sauce, that's where the flavour is! once deglazed and slightly reduced add onions and allow to sweat over medium-low heat for 10 min. add chicken stock and rosemary, and allow to reduce by half. season with salt & pepper. once reduced return sausages to pan to warm.

drain potatoes and roughly mash with butter and cream. season with salt & pepper.

serve sausages on a bed of the mashed potatoes with onion gravy ladled over top.

be prepared for minimal dinner conversation as everyone is too engaged in eating!

twenty-four::newlywed::food

::: to see all 31 days of posts please click here :::

it's something i do. freeze food for later. use up old bits from the vegetable bin. recently, i was on a train (a daily occurrence around here), and two men were having an interesting, if slightly self-congratulatory conversation about wastefulness and food and how people no longer know how to do simple things to conserve, things that people from previous eras would have done without thinking twice. i should probably pause and say i completely eavesdropped on this conversation, but it was a grouping of four seats, so it was hard not to hear. on this particular morning i was knitting. most mornings on the train find me knitting or reading. and i'd like to think of myself as semi self-sufficient. i do try, earnestly, to converse food, and make good use of household products and needs. i'm investigating homemade bath and body products, trying to make informed decisions about the foods we eat, the cleaners we use, the products we buy. 

after a little research i've found that in the uk we throw away 8.3 million tonnes a year of food from our homes, which costs the average family more than £50. as much as possible, we try to throw away nothing. with a little forward planning, and a freezer, most food can be kept good until later. most food can be used for multiple meals, and most food is not bad once it's past it's 'use-by' date. one prime candidate is milk and dairy products.

• i sniff most days before i pour milk, why? i've had 'good' milk go bad, and i've had 'overdue' milk, that's still perfectly fresh. keep your milk inside the fridge and not in the door, keep your fridge cold and food stays fresh longer. 
• use veg that is a little 'off' for soups, stews, sauces. the slightly wrinkly red pepper languishing in your crisper can be chopped up and used, maybe not for eating raw, but it can definitely be added to something cooked. wilting celery, stand in a mug of water with fresh cut ends for an hour - and it's revitilised! and in the end, when in doubt, freeze it. spinach (add to sauce), most vegetables (soups and stews), meat bones (stock), ends of bread (whizz in the food processor for breadcrumbs).

in honour of using up old bits: 

chicken soup. 

use as the recipe calls for soup. reduce for chicken pot pie filling.

ingredients:

3 cups chicken stock
1/2 lb cooked chicken, shredded (i had some extra bacon frozen, so i added that too!)
2 carrots, diced
2 leeks, sliced
1 lb green beans, trimmed
2 large potatoes, cubed
large onion, diced
*or really any vegetable lying around the kitchen in desperate need of cooking
2 tbsp olive oil
1/4 cup heavy cream

 heat olive oil in heavy stockpot, sautee onions, carrots and leeks until soft. season with salt and pepper.

add potatoes, chicken, chicken stock. simmer over medium-low heat for 1 hour. 

add green beans. stir in cream. simmer for a further 5 min.  check seasonings, adjust as needed.

serve hot with toasted bread.

fifteen::newlywed::food

::: to see all 31 days of posts please click here :::

it's pantry week here. we're hoping to trim a little off the grocery budget and use up some of the stuff that's hanging about, just waiting to be created into something delicious.

i came up with this 'recipe' for soup when i was in university. it's nothing fancy, but with the colder days setting in, i find a deep need for soup. for warmth. bonus: it's cheap. and healthy! 

bacon vegetable soup. 

this soup instantly warms you up, is filled with lots of vegetables and tons of flavour! don't worry about a chopping the veg nicely, this gets whizzed with a blender at the end...

ingredients:

2 tbsp olive oil

1/2 cup red wine

6-12 rashers of bacon

2 onions, roughly chopped

4 carrots, chopped

4 sticks of celery, chopped

4 potatoes, rough large dice 

3 tins tomatoes 

3 cups chicken stock 

salt and pepper 

cream (for serving, optional)

cook: 

in a large, heavy bottomed stock pot, heat olive oil over medium heat, add bacon and brown, scraping at bits that get stuck to the bottom. add in onions, carrots and celery, allow to soften (3-4 min). 

add red wine, simmer until at least half the liquid has evaporated. add potatoes, tomatoes and chicken stock. simmer for 40 min, or until liquid has reduced and thickened. (the volume in my pot reduced from 3.5 qts to 3qts).

season to taste. take off heat and allow to cool slightly (10 min). blend until smooth (i use an immersion hand blender). 

serve warm with fresh bread, and if feeling indulgent, a drizzle of cream! 

this recipe is really just a starting point, i often use whatever i have around the kitchen that needs to be used up. 

happy weekend! 

dishwasher.

if there is one thing i hate in terms of housework it's dishes. i am the girl for whom the dishwasher was invented. and i am overjoyed that our new flat comes with a dishwasher! but it's a small dishwasher, a plates and glasses kind of dishwasher. so we'll have handwashing. we'd have handwashing anyway, i know, but i don't like it one bit.

i'm hoping to improve my attitude toward dishwashing. i thought i'd start by making some long-lasting, hard-wearing, pretty-looking dishcloths. my grandmother made dozens of these every year and dutifully supplied her daughters with a new set for christmas. i grew up with homemade dishcloths and was utterly surprised as a child to realise that not everyone had such things hanging from their kitchen taps. in my humble opinion handmade dishcloths are superior to all other cloths, they don't fall apart, they've got great nubby bits to scrub with you can make them in bright and fun colours...and they are SIMPLE to make. plus their fairly inexpensive, seeing as they last for years and cost less than $2. oh and they make great gifts - people get genuinely excited about them!

i'm working with a new pattern this time. called 'chinese waves' it's making a denser cloth than i'm used to, but i think it will be built to last.

the pattern is from maggie's rags. i'm going to try out many different patterns and decide which ones i like...

apps i love.

i'm totally in love with my iphone. i like that it's the epicentre of all my technology - my handbag has lightened considerably! recently, i've been using my iphone to 'track' things...

two new favourite apps are

mynetdiary 

food diary, calorie counter, exercise tracker and water tally - in one handy app. you set your daily activity (because i have a desk job, i am sedentary) and then add in additional excercise - ie: i walk 45 min/ 5 times a week from home to the station and the station to work. exercise that varies (gym work, runs, sunday hike) gets added as and when. you programme in your current weight and your goal weight, and the plan comes up with a reasonable timeframe for the weight loss - i get about 1600 calories a day plus any extra i earn with exercise, if i want to lose a pound a week...inputting food tracks my calories and lets me know how many i've got left for the day. i'll be very upfront and say, i'm not looking to lose a lot of weight, but i am getting married this summer and with my recent knee injury i have been way more sedentary this winter than would be normal. now that i'm allowed back in the gym to rehab, it's time to get serious! and this is really helping me! i'm not going crazy and actually, because it does all the calculating for you, and has such an extensive list of ingredients/products, it's a snatch to do this quickly. there's also a feature where you input all the ingredients you used for a recipe and it calculates the total for meal and per serving!

iXpenseit Lite 

i've decided to get REAL about my finances. i want to know on a daily basis where my money's been going, and how much of my budget is left for the month. the great thing about this app is i can get up categories (think dave ramsey envelopes) and input my expenses as i go. a sandwich bought at lunch, automatically gets taken from the 'food' budget, which is separate from my 'groceries' budget. i'm able to see where my money is going, download reports and really tackle my budget!








both of these apps are available as paid or free. i'm trying each out in the free section to see how it goes - if they prove worthy, i'll pay for the upgrade to the full app with all the bells and whistles. my only caveat is that each take a bit of playing to understand fully and set up - but once you're done, it's super simple to keep it going!

value.

the second reflection on marriage from an engaged girl. read the first one here.

we've spent time recently thinking through, talking about, and getting our heads around money. our money. for two fiercely independent souls such as ourselves - money in many ways represents one of our biggest challenges. not because we don't agree. or because we spend differently. or even because we come from diametrically opposed places...none of these things categorize our conversations about money. but because we both like having 'my money,' and having 'our money' well that just seems too intimate.

and so we are stumbling through this oh-so-big aspect of marriage, determined to talk and think and eventually act in a way that is rooted in love. that recognizes and celebrates our differences, but that also finds a common ground. money fights (to me a non-married) seem incredibly pointless - i'd really rather use the energy for something worth it. and really when you're fighting about money with your spouse - are you really fighting about money? or are you fighting about the value they are placing on something that you are not comfortable with?

at the heart of it all isn't actually the balance of the bank account, or really even our personal money independence - at the heart i think is that money most frequently points directly to what we value. where our money goes - is where our hearts live. a newly-married friend of mine once said that conversations about money are often the most vulnerable - yes, i spend this much on dry cleaning, and clothing and make up. but you, you spend that much on sports gear and lunch? it is so easy to become defensive of our way of life - of how we live - of what we value.

learning to be vulnerable is so difficult. it hits at the centre of all you think and do and believe. but in so many ways these conversations are opening up much bigger truths to us, about us, than about how we use our money. because the conversations become about how we will honour god, and how we will bless others, and how we will sacrifice and serve each other, and how we hope to build our family. the questions and conversations become centred on who we dream ourselves to be. who we believe god dreams us to be. and how we value what we have been blessed with. money is completely uncertain, while christ is completely certain. the question becomes what do we value most?

 ^17-19Tell those rich in this world's wealth to quit being so full of themselves and so obsessed with money, which is here today and gone tomorrow. Tell them to go after God, who piles on all the riches we could ever manage—to do good, to be rich in helping others, to be extravagantly generous. If they do that, they'll build a treasury that will last, gaining life that is truly life.  (1 Timothy 6:17, The Message)