Stock in trade

Today I realised two mini life goals in one - to cook my mother a proper Sunday roast; and to cook with game. I roasted a couple of partridges and did proper roast potatoes in goose fat - the kind that you boil first and then shake around in the pan. I felt all grown up and my mum said all the right things (whatever she secretly thought of my cooking!)

And with the leftover veg and carcass, I found another first - first time making stock. I had somehow always thought this was a mystical process and yet here I have my first batch of around 1.2L stock. I have probably made all kinds of rookie errors and the proof of the pudding is in the eating... so I will be making soup/stew in the week and I will let you know how it goes.

It's an appealing golden yellow colour (it looks darker in the photo than real life) and reassuringly clear - I passed it through a cheesecloth. It should last 3-4 days in the fridge or 2-3 months in the freezer. I am keeping back half for soups this week and half for the freezer. 

Bicycles. Who knew?

I feel like I'm the last person to discover that bicycles unlock super powers. I was under the misconception that they are simply a means of getting from A to B.

I have read often and often of the exponential benefits of riding a bike. Mr Money Mustache and The Escape Artist in particular are vocal on this subject. I have always loved the idea of cycling, but the thought of actually getting on a bike was still pretty scary - especially in London.

So I talked about getting a bike but never actually did anything about it. And lo! My boyfriend observed this, and decided to act - he bought me a bike for my birthday present. This was an awesome idea, but until last week still a slightly theoretical one.

Since last week, I have been cycling to work and back most days - and it's transformed so much more than my commute.

Benefits of bikes - the obvious:

1. Free commuting. Duh. This was one of my main motivations - smashing my Oyster card (aka public transport network) spending to smithereens.

2. More exercise and more free time. Hard to fit into the average day. Why not use the commute instead? Especially as cycling gets me to work and back faster than the bus.

Benefits of bikes - the unexpected:

1. Determination and improved problem solving. Screw you, rain, I'm not letting you get in the way of my lovely commute. Flat tyre? Internet plus bike shop equals restored speed.

2. Skills. Gradually getting the hang of pumping a tyre, and wanting to understand how the gear thingummybob works. Feeling less ignorant and more smug each time I 'unlock' another function. (And no need to defeat a boss to level up!)

3. Energy. My morning cycle is the equivalent of a triple espresso shot when it comes to waking me up and getting my blood pumping. (But also has much better impact on both wallet and health than a daily triple espresso...)

4. Better separation between home and work. During my cycle home, I focus on the road, the bike, the burn going up hill and the sense of flying as I coast down the other side. By the time I get home, I have completely unplugged from work. 

5. Independence. It sounds silly, but now I hate waiting at the bus stop. Why do I have to wait for someone else to come and collect me - when the bike means my departure and arrival time are entirely down to my choice and my leg muscles?

Any more unexpected benefits of cycling that you've discovered?

How homemade is it?

I’ve been pondering this question for a little while, after reading this post over at Taylor Made Ranch. How homemade is it?

We met up with some friends over the weekend. These friends are also living a simple life, although I don’t think they have defined it as such. They aspire towards having a farm or smallholding, they make the most amazing walnut wine, use cloth nappies with their small son, and knit lovely homemade gifts. (They gave me a fabulous hat for Christmas.) We were talking about how do-it-yourself and many of the old skills so often discussed, rehearsed and learned in the online simple living community - cooking from scratch, making your own cheese and so on.

We were discussing whether something is really homemade if you get a kit. If you don’t source and measure the ingredients yourself, but everything comes pre-measured, pre-washed, pre-prepared, and you just have to mix it and stick it into the oven. A posher version of instant cake mix.

I would see this approach as a stepping stone or halfway house. For instance, my little cousins make their own Christmas cake. They are able to do this at the age of 8 and 10 because they get a kit, with all the candied citrus and dried fruits included. When you’re learning - at whatever age - it’s a great way to get started, minimising your risk, your initial outlay, stacking the odds in favour of success.

But I think you should ideally want to move past this. If you are baking your own cakes but ALWAYS buy pre-measured kits, for years, then this feels a little like cheating. It also undermines the cost saving side of doing it yourself, which I feel is important.

However, how far should you take this? Where is the line? Is a half-baked loaf which you bought in the supermarket and finish off in the oven for ten minutes homemade? (By the way, whenever you see somewhere offering sandwiches or bread ‘baked in store/here’, this is what they mean.) I bake bread using flour, yeast, water and salt - but I don’t grind the flour myself, or grow the grain. The yeast is shop-bought, not a homegrown sourdough starter.

I frequently find myself wanting to take things ‘back’ a notch - to go from mending a jumper to knitting a jumper to dyeing the wool to spinning the yarn to carding the fleece to shearing the sheep… At what point is it homemade? It’s a sliding scale, rather than an either/or.

I sometimes feel that it’s not enough, I’m not doing enough of these things, but I keep reminding myself that as with a cake kit, it’s a stepping stone. My first cheese will probably be made from shop-bought yoghurt, but my second might be from homemade yoghurt using shop-bought milk, and maybe one day I will have a goat for milk in the back garden.

Simples: a simple living challenge

Since I started this blog, I've been on a journey. The focus has shifted slightly but significantly.

When I started writing, I wanted to live an eco-friendly lifestyle. But I quickly found that as soon as any conflict arose, I abandoned by alleged green principles. Green is awesome, but I wasn't about to turn down an invitation to spend a month in Argentina with my boyfriend to meet his parents and his friends. Plus I love hot baths too much.

Of bandwagons and baking soda

I so want to go no poo. I so want to do it. I want to walk into a room and have someone go, wow your hair looks nice, and feel smug about my no-poo-ness. I have been trying to master this for years. There is generally a 2-6 week transition period, while your hair gets used to the no-poo. I once went three whole months without washing my hair in anything but water, and it was still yucky. I have switched over to other methods (baking soda and vinegar rinses, conditioner only, good old fashioned soap) countless times and always end up back on the shampoo.

No poo: Week three and a half

So three and a half weeks in to the no-poo experiment - it's beginning to look a bit greasy (but then I did last wash it two days ago). I've been trying to get as little baking soda as possible on the length to avoid stripping them out, but I think that's making my scalp greasier quicker, too, as the oil accumulates on the hairbrush.

Bread successes

This week, I had a go at making bread more simply - used more water, warmed it up first, and added extra yeast and a few linseeds. It worked better! Felt more bread-like after kneading, and it actually rose!! I think there were definitely too many linseeds in the other loaf, and also not enough water, so somehow the magic couldn't take place.

Yay! for minor successes - do you think I can keep this up?

Homemade shoe polish

So this week I had a go at making this from a recipe in my new book - it's just beeswax and olive oil melted together. One thing I learned by trial and error - it needs to be stirred while cooling, otherwise you get a layer of olive oil floating on top of a layer of solid beeswax.

Today I had a go. I did the right shoe of a pair of black court shoes and of a pair of brown boots - and it's come up a right treat! Chek 'em out:

Progress on my knitted socks

Ok so this really is abysmal! This is the sock I started knitting last August, and I have done almost nothing! It's mostly my fault - for choosing an elaborate pattern with thin wool and small needles, so it's taking aaaages to knit up. I've thought several times about ripping it out and making something else with the wool, but so far no brainwaves so perhaps I'd better just finish.

Making the unusual habitual

It is so easy to feel that whatever we are doing is not enough - there are so many fantastic examples out there on the web of things people make themselves. I recently saw a tutorial for making a seriously professional-looking wallet. I fully expect to see someone posting about making their own umbrella at some point.

How to: clean a bathtub with a lemon

My homemade cleaning tips come from a variety of sources - from books, blogs and tv series. This one comes from the tv series How clean is your house, in which the Queens of Clean Kim and Aggie tackle the dirtiest houses you have ever seen. Often the inhabitants suffer from asthma and other respiratory problems (probably in part from the dust), so the programme often demonstrates non-toxic cleaning techniques.

This tip for shiny bathtubs with minimum cost comes mostly from Kim and Aggy, with one addition from me.

Booky cleaning inspiration

After five months of waiting, Amazon has finally come through for me and delivered this thing to my door. "Self-Sufficiency Household Cleaning", by Rachelle Strauss.

The self-sufficiency guides look pretty good - they've got volumes on soapmaking, beekeeping, weaving and cheesemaking. The principle is, as the title suggests, self-sufficiency - doing things from scratch, in enough quantity or with enough regularity that it can become your only source of whatever is in question.

Baking bread

I love baking bread. I love the feel of the dough in my fingers. It's much the same reason that, when I make a cake, I enjoy beating all the ingredients by hand - the world disappears for a few minutes, and I get to watch all the chemical changes in the batter.

Overambition?

I know it's not only me - I read several blogs about people doing much the same thing. Simple living, thriftiness, the new home front - call it what you want, it essentially comes down to trying to buy less and make more, to do things for yourself rather than paying someone else to do it for you.

It's easy to feel disheartened by the number of things not yet achieved. I look around and see the housework not done, see the things I still buy instead of making, things like bread and soap which are among the first things that you start making for yourself, as well as cleansers and make up and toothpaste, containing chemicals I would rather eliminate.

Smugness

Does anyone else feel smug about knowing that they've cleaned behind and underneath the cooker?*

This morning, finally - finally! - FINALLY! - our oven was repaired. We may actually be able to bake and roast and things. I took advantage to hoover underneath and to clean up the grease spills left by previous occupants of the flat.

This is very good news, because one of the things I really want to embrace as part of building a 'simple life' is baking bread - aside from the fact that I really enjoy kneading the dough, the magic of watching the bread rise and the smell of baking bread, I also really noticed the difference at lunch. The few days I have managed to bring in a sandwich made from homemade bread, it was much nicer and much more filling, meaning less temptation to battle in the afternoon. I am really looking forward to the day when I will be able to say that I only eat homemade (or locally baked) bread.

Another of the small changes I hope to make is giving up bought-in cakes and biscuits. Aside from the fact that homemade treats are nicer, cheaper and contain less crap, because they are time-consuming to make I appreciate them more and will probably eat them less often!

When the oven was repaired, the leaky tap** and the dodgy lightbulb on the stairs were also fixed. I am a very happy bunny, and my sister would despair at how happy this makes me. Most of my family look on my attempts to make my own, do it myself and go without as amusing idiosyncracies which I will grow out of.

*Please note - I have not yet cleaned inside the oven, a prospect which looms before me with no little amount of intimidation.

** The now not-leaking tap makes me VERY happy, because the leak was causing a build-up of residue on the sink which I CANNOT get off. Lemon juice helps but hasn't got it all - does anyone have any tips?

My first dress

Well, this is obviously not my first ever dress, but it is the first time I have tried to make a dress. My addiction to craft programmes and passion for doing it myself have prompted a friend more than once to suggest I try sewing, and even gave me the Cath Kidson "Sew!" book (which, like almost all of my craft books, is in storage...)

Well, after working up the courage through two hand-stitched tablecloths, I bit the bullet. Following my friend's recommendation, I thought a Vogue Very Easy pattern was definitely the way forward, hopefully offering a balance between doability and wearability. Then fabric from my new favourite shop in Brussels, which HAPPENED to be having a buy 1m, get 1m free sale - it's called 'Le Chien Vert' (the Green Dog), and has a section out back for odds and ends called 'Les Puces de Chien Vert' - the Green Dog's Fleas (Market)!

I'm on the home stretch now, and it is starting to look recognisably like a dress - albeit a rather shapeless one... Still, I will remain hopeful until the whole thing is finished, and even if I do look like I'm wearing a potato sack, I can still wear it around the house and enjoy doing so!

At any rate, I've got some scraps for patchwork and rag rugs!

Tardiness

Well, it's been a long time since I posted here but to be quite honest, between moving into a new appartment and starting a new job, a new Spanish course and taking up several additional activites, I've barely had time to breathe!

I have been very active on the crafty front. I have long wished to dive into the deep end of sewing, but lacked a sewing machine. I looked at second-hand and cheap options, decided that even if I had the money I didn't have the space, and squared up to my options: handsewing or handsewing.

Now, there's not a huge amount of information about handsewing kicking around on the web - a bit of embroidery stuff, and that's pretty much it. I also felt that many of the free patterns were rather uninspiring (in direct contrast with free crochet and knitting patterns in places like Ravelry). My family already have this rather negative stereotypical image of me as some DIY-ecofreak-hippy nutcase, so if I make my own clothes, I really want them to look (at first glance and from a distance) as though they are good enough to be bought. Mostly for that - "where did you buy that?" - moment.

The daunting prospect of spending lots of money on patterns and fabric only to never get around to finishing the stitching then loomed before me - I am very bad at procrastinating and rarely finish projects. So I started simple (but not small) with a tablecloth - fun fabric, very basic stitching. And voila! I am sitting at my kitching table, writing this, with a red cotton with white polka dots cloth which delights my soul everytime I see it.

So now the second tablecloth is in production, and most exciting of all! A dress pattern I ordered has arrived - Very Easy Vogue. (I'm stacking the odds in favour of success!) And I've just found a funky independent not-too-expensive fabric shop. Three guesses what I'll be shopping for on Saturday? :D

Again, I am reminded by how much I love making things. There is such a sense of satisfaction from creating something, from leaving behind me a small legacy of (hopefully) pretty and functional objects which would never have existed had I not decided to make them. The thrill of the tablecloth was even enough to make me do the ironing this week, for almost the first time ever, because I couldn't bear to leave it rumpled...

Self-sufficiency: A Disadvantage?

While I'm interested in the green movement and would like to think that I live a relatively eco-friendly lifestyle, what really motivates me to take the 'DIY' option is an idea of being self-reliant, of not being dependent on anything I can't influence. This has tied in very nicely with the work I am doing at Imperial War Museum North on clothing in World War Two on the British home front. While my main focus has been on the Utility scheme, I have come across a lot of the Make-Do-and-Mend bits and bobs, including borrowing a reprinted edition of the booklet of the same name.

This has contributed to a vague longing to be able to darn my socks. More concretely, it has partially inspired my decision to knit myself a pair of knittens, using double-pointed needles for the first time. (This decision was also inspired by the very cold mornings and my lack of gloves, combined with a limited budget and an availability of cheap wool.) Exploring some of the interactive games aimed at children at the museum, I was thinking today that Make Do and Mend, like more modern Self-suefficiency, is really a state of mind. When something you need is missing, you first see if you can manage without, and if you can't, you improvise with what you have.

This is fantastic when it comes to putting together a patchwork skirt like a few I've seen around the city centre in recent weeks. However, less useful in a more mainstream commercial situation. I work at a fairly standard coffee-and-sandwich shop in a train station for most of the week, and there is a perpetual sequence of obstacles, most of which involve someone-or-other having omitted to order something vital, or said item not being available for some other reason. I instinctively react to this situation by assessing what there is in the cupboard, and making something from that. If there's no brie, use mozzarella. However, some of the people at work look at me like I'm an idiot and ask why I didn't just borrow from one of the other coffee-and-sandwich-type places in our vicinity.

The change in mindset is great for my personal, private life. Less good for my job. Do you think I can persuade the rest of the world to join me? 'Excuse me, sir, we don't have those baguettes in today. Can we interest you in this weird combination of unusual ingredients which happened to be what we had lying around this morning?

The Difference A Week Makes

Title shamelessly stolen from Carole Matthews' book, 'The Difference A Day Makes', which I recommend to anyone out there as a book to curl up with for some me-time and a cup of tea in front of a fire under a homespun blanket. Failing that, under the covers on a grey Saturday.

So last Tuesday I planted some seeds and seedlings in various places. And lo! they have grown! I feel like a child, giddy with excitement. They've GROWN! That may sound obvious, but I haven't done any gardening before, pretty much ever. The seedlings have got so big I'm going to have to move them to bigger containers (which the Mother Goddess of Noobie Gardeners has provided for me. In the basement.) I'm thinking I'll be able to start harvesting yummy salads from them very shortly.

The seeds have sprouted, and are nearly ready to be planted up into bigger pots. (I'm using pots made from newspaper, for which I shall provide instructions at a later stage.) I put them in my bedroom cupboard to germinate, it being warm and dark in there, and I was really surprised by (a) how quickly they grew and (b) how quickly they turned green once brought out onto the windowsill. It took a matter of hours. This morning they're already looking lush.

So I've located some containers - notably the boxes you get wine bottles in, as my landlord buys a lot of wine and never seems to throw away the boxes. He has kindly donated a couple to the cause of a fruitful-looking terrace. I've still got to get some potting compost, but I've found a really cheap source, so that looks like it might still be doable. And I think I might let myself get tempted into buying some rocket seedlings, if any look nice. Given that seedlings are €1,10 for six, and the last bunch have flourished like nothing you've ever seen before. I might, in fact, be able to have a proper salad garden this year. I wonder how much a tomato plant costs...

For future reference, I think it is probably advisable for people in my position to buy seeds of things you want multiples of (salad leaves, carrots in my case) and young plants of things you only want one of (herb plants) as I now have about ten very small oregano plantlings, but still no usable oregano. But, going by the miracle of recent growth, it may not be long before I've got more than I know what to do with. How do you go about drying herbs, I wonder? And what crafty things can I get up to with oregano? Hmm...

Make Your Own: Butter

When life gets you down, churn butter. It somehow tastes so much better than shop-bought, as well as being cheaper. This is the second time I've churned butter, and this batch is even better than the last! I still need to work on my butter-making skills, but I'm definitely on the way.

For those who have not yet discovered this, butter is made from cream. You take normal cream and agitate it, traditionally in a butter churn but in my case in a sterilised used jam jar. The cream becomes whipped cream, then gathers together and then you can hear the lump of coagulating butter sploshing around in the buttermilk. Agitate until the butter and buttermilk are, like, totally separate. Pour off the buttermilk and retain it for later use. Add some water to the butter in the jar, agitate further, pour off the buttermilky-watery mixture. You've got to wash all the buttermilk out of the butter to stop it going rancid quickly. (This is one of the bits I haven't perfected yet.) Then you squeeze the water out of the butter by smashing it around with a wooden spatula on a wooden chopping board held at an angle over the draining board/sink, and pat it into, well, a pat of butter with two wooden spatulas (or Scotch hands, if you have them!). This is another of the bits I haven't perfected yet - my butter is still wet. But it tastes fine!

You can add salt, as a preservative, and herbs and things for flavour. I have not yet experimented with this, as my herb garden is still in the nursery stage.

Churning the butter can take ages, but the two key things are to use cream that's a few days old, and not too cold (ie not straight from the fridge). Good thing to do whilst sitting in front of the tv.

Regarding the buttermilk, it has many potential uses. You can drink it, although I don't like the taste. It is good for use in baking, making pancakes and similar, and is apparently also good in ice cream and smoothies. The internet tells me it is good in 'cream of' soups and in sauces. It is also apprently good for your skin, and I've seen it used in cleansers, moisturisers and treatments for sunburn. I'm going to try putting a bit on my face this evening, and seeing how that feels...