Steel Kitten

A very happy 70s New Year to you all

Tonight will Martin and I will don our 70s gladrags, crack open the Babycham and feast on traditional seventies fare such as chicken supreme, cheese and pineapple on sticks, and chocolate fondue. There'll be Bay City Rollers on the record player and Starsky and Hutch on the TV. There is a rumour that Anna and 'the other one whose name no-one can spell or pronounce' from ABBA will be joining us in the early evening. Later on there'll be nostalgia quizzes and 'Pet Rock' painting.

Yep....we're throwing a 70s New Year 'do'!!!!!

I'm sitting here taking up the hems of the most fantastic pair of yellow and red vintage houndstooth flares for Martin and listening to strains of 'Gertcha' by Chas 'n' Dave. For the last few days I've been printing off 70s ads to pin up and cutting out peace symbols and flowers to go on the dining table. We've raided the attic for Clangers, Wombles and Top of the Pops albums. Martin is at this very moment trying to purchase a Spacehopper for timed races out on the green. 

It promises to be a very fun, memorable evening.

Happy New Year everyone - start thinking about those resolutions now!

What a lovely Christmas!

Thanks for all your good wishes and comments guys. Everything turned out fine. Lorraine at LP Vintage was kind enough to send me happy vibes and they turned up by the bucket load!

After Martin came in from work to find me waving my arms around in a peculiar, slightly manical way, we triaged all the jobs that needed doing on Christmas Eve and just did the most important ones to ensure the Christmas Day was fab. In short, that involved throwing everything we could find that needed tidying, washing or cleaning (and wasn't needed on Christmas Day) into our spare room and shutting the door.  Naughty really, but such a relief to get it out of the way so we didn't have to think about it!

Christmas Day was relaxed and very enjoyable. Even cooking and serving a three course dinner went like clockwork and hardly seemed an effort at all. Martin's parents came over and we spent three hours chatting and eating, which is the kind of meal I really enjoy. I hate it when people gobble food at the speed of light and then haul themselves into an armchair in front of the TV leaving you to do the washing up. As I only have a small galley kitchen, I end up alone up one end listening to the sound of contented burping and laughing from other parts of the house. I like marathon meals that give me time to interact with people, not super-speedy sprints, which is probably why I feel so at home with long afternoon and evening meals in Italy.

I still haven't got around to thinking about sorting out the pre-Christmas clutter in the spare room.  I've been sitting here crocheting green and purple Afghan 'granny' squares while watching one of my Christmas presents - the first three series of The Good Life. I will get to it this weekend though because we have 12 people staying on New Year's Eve for a 70s party so we'll need every spare inch of space to squeeze all the blow up beds into.

In the meantime, I intend to relax with my crochet hook and leave you with some images of our Christmas.

The first robin of the season

Martin viewed the gingerbread men with suspicion until he realised they were stuffed

We were soooooooo good this year!

My favourite colour bauble

Georgie Christmas morning - high on salmon and catnip

Fleagle following a feast of fresh tuna and clams

martin on bruskie detail. Get peeling boy!

It's everyone for themselves

Yes, hello dear. I am smiling.

Enough with the camera. Sit down and eat.

What, no gingerbread?

The run up to Christmas hasn't turned out to be quite the idyllic, gingerbread-making, mulled-wine-by-the-fire-drinking event I had hoped this year. I had this litle fantasy of floating round a clean, candlelit house sweetly scented with spiced oranges and sandalwood while dishing out mince pies and mulled wine to waifs and strays.

Instead I drowning under piles of washing and carpet cleaning products while the kitchen has gone to hell in a hand basket after a visit from a heating engineer and the sight of gingerbread has Martin and his tooth fillings running for cover.

Let me explain.

Last week my 16 year old nephew came to visit, which threw me off track completely. Thankfully I didn't have much much work on, but the relaxing week of crocheting and knitting didn't happen and I managed to squander my time on God knows what, accompanied by the dulcid tones of digital people being pounded onto the canvas in nephew's WWF Playstation game.

I remember wrapping presents for England and swearing at those little sticky bows which lose their stickiness and fall off within minutes of being attached.

I remember comforting Martin and helping him find a nice dentist after a shop-bought gingerbread man trashed one of his teeth completely. At £50 for the repair, it was one of the most expensive afternoon snacks we've ever had and has tarnished the whole gingerbread thing.

I remember going out Christmas shopping one afternoon and being cheesed off that a stocking present I wanted for Martin wouldn't be in until the New Year and then being talked into giving the shop my details so they could ring me when it came in. I didn't really want them to because I wanted to go elsewhere and find it and now feel obliged to wait. Fume, fume.

I remember not having water for a whole day when a heating engineer came and moved the boiler and its flue so we can put up our conservatory in the New Year and after he left finding brick dust on every surface and inside the kitchen cupboards.

I remember finding one of the cats - disturbed by my nephews visit and cowering at the sound of the engineer's masonry drill - had peed extensively in fright on a pile of white washing. Which contained my favourite rosebud covered, cheesecloth shirt. And my best, new set of underwear.

I can tell you with certainty there was no mulled wine, mince pies, warm fires or reindeer dashing through the snow.

So it's currently 6:29am on Christmas Eve and all I can think about is how much lies ahead of me today.

I have trifle and red cabbage to make and curtains to hem and carpets to clean and beds to change and washing to do and tablecloths to iron and the Christmas table to set and oh! So many, many jobs.

Honestly, you wouldn't think we were just having Martin's parents over for Christmas Day!!!!!!

Ah well. I'm off to make a cup of tea and develop a sense of perspective. And figure out what I can get away with not doing so I can knock off early today and eat mince pies and drink mulled wine.

Merry Christmas one and all. May Santa brings you everything you wish for!

The Prosperity game

It's been a while since I've done a post about money beliefs. A few months ago I was very much into emotional tapping through the Money Beyond Belief course and manage to sort out some of my twisted thinking about money.

Since then I've been tackling my feelings about money in the scheme of learning about the Law of Attraction. Long story short, the Law of Attraction says you are what you think about most of the time. You attract into your life what you think about. If you think negative thoughts, even subconsciously, you sent out negative vibes which end up reflected back at you in the form of the very negative events you were worried about in the first place.

It is very difficult to stop thinking and speaking negatively about money because we're all so deeply entrenched in doing it. After all, we never seem to have enough money and everything is so expensive yadda, yadda, yadda. You see how negative those commonly spouted statements are? Those two little phrases are enough to stop you from ever doing anything that might change your situation. The words 'never' and 'everything' make you brain give up hope and you end up convincing yourself there's no point in trying anything.

Around the same time that I realised the positive thoughts in my brain were essentially being cancelled out by the stupid things that came out of my mouth, I came across the teachings of Esther and Jerry Hicks. Slightly scarily, Esther claims to vocally translate blocks of thought for a group of non-physical beings who call themselves Abraham. Now hang in with me here and don't disappear after reading that because that's as weird as it gets on this blog I promise!

'Abraham' claim that we create our own reality through our thoughts, that our emotions are constantly guiding us toward where we want to go and that life is supposed to be fun, which sounds very sensible to me.

Anyway, after trawling through some of Abraham's thoughts on money, I came upon a rather good game they teach called The Prosperity game. Every day you get a set amount of theoretical money to spend on anything you wish for yourself. I started off on Day 1 with £1000 and every day after it increased by £1000 ie by Day 8 I had £8,000 and so forth. You have to spend it all or you lose it the next day and if necessary you can borrow a few days in advance if it's something you really want.

I'm playing the game as part of one of their 30 day courses and I tell you it's not the easiest thing in the world to do. Your emotions get in the way and try and stop you from doing it. It's literally stunning to hear some of the things your brain tries to come up with to make you feel guilty for spending the theoretical money. I've been writing them down and pushing past them to spend it though.

I've search the net for items I want and print them off to go in a file. I've even go so far as putting them into a shopping basket and taking the transaction through as far as possible before having to confirm the order so I can print off that page and have a physical record in front of me with all the numbers. I'm sure the Egyptian Cotton Store would have been delighted to receive an order from me for £1057 for 500 count bedlinen. Likewise As So To Bed for the £8,000 carved sleigh bed, although if I'm honest I would have preferred wood from a sustainable source (oh shut up Sarah's excuse-making brain. Not to mention husband who claims it won't fit up the stairs. IT'S A GAME!)

Anyway, if you want to get a deeper insight into your negative feelings about money (not to mention those around you), try playing The Prosperity game for 30 days. You'll be astonished at the results.   

I'm here.....

I am here! To everyone who emailed me or left comments wondering where I am, I've just had a brainful of stuff to contend with over the last 2-3 weeks and had no time to write anything other than client work. In the back of mind though I have still been writing posts - they just never got as far as here!

So, I'm going to carry on where I left off last time and talk a bit more about breadmakers. This is going to be an epic post as it's such a big topic, so if I were you I'd go get a cup of tea.

Why own one?

• If you're a fiend for fresh bread but can't be bothered to make it by hand....
• If you don't like the idea of a hundred strange people handling your supermarket loaf...
• If waking up to the smell of crusty, fresh bread makes you feel ridiculously happy...
• If bread has got so expensive in your country you need a loan to afford a loaf....
• If the idea of manufacturer's cooking bread by steaming, not baking, just doesn't seem right....

....a breadmaker is for you. I qualify on every one of those points above.

When you first get your shiny breadmaker, you will feel a sense of excitement at the prospect of producing fresh bread within the hour!!!

Squash that feeling down.

To start off with you and your breadmaker will have a few turbulent moments getting to know one another.The success you have producing your first loaf will be tempered by the blood, sweat and tears you suffer for the first few times getting the bloody thing to rise. Making the perfect load of bread is a marathon, not a sprint.

The recipe

The breadmaker manufacturers usually include a recipe book in with their machine. To start off, consider this your bible until you are confident you can make a simple loaf of bread every time. Don't try and add in your own touch of flair here and there in the beginning by flinging in extra ingredients or re-arranging the order of ingredients. It doesn't work and will sap your confidence with every non-risen loaf it produces. If the troubleshooting section of the recipe book isn't adequate, buy/borrow a breadmaking book that has a good one or hunt on the internet for one to help you work out the likely causes of any disasters.

Now, there are a few golden rules in the beginning. Like everything, when you've learnt 'a craft' you can push the rules, but until you have, don't.

1) Don't swap ingredients in the beginning or tinker too much. For example, if the ingredients tell you to use fast action dried yeast, don't swap it for yeast that you have to mix with warm water, sugar and let ferment for five minutes just because you have that in your cupboard. Use fast action yeast.

If the recipe tells you to add, water, flour, milk powder, salt, sugar, yeast and butter in that order it's for a reason! Some ingredients in bread don't mix well together on their own. Classic example is salt and yeast. Yeast needs sugar to work and is killed by salt in large quantities. So if you add salt, yeast, then sugar, your loaf probably won't rise because you've killed the yeast by sticking it directly on top of the salt. Put the salt in first, cover it with the sugarand sit the yeast happily on top. Once the machine starts mixing, the concentration of ingredients will be dispersed and it isn't a problem.

2) CHANGE ONLY ONE THING AT A TIME. I can't stress this enough. You'll never get the recipe to work if you change two or three things every time and you'll never learn what parts of the recipe are the most sensitive to change. Some breadmakers are also sensitive. Now I have to confess, I bought my breadmaker about five years ago so it's possible that the early ones are a little temperamental and their sensitivity doesn't exist in the later models (yeah right and pigs might fly). It took me many goes to get a good loaf of bread, a bit of tinkering here and there and now I stick to that recipe.

3) Make the smallest loaf you can until you get a good result. Don't try making a 2lb loaf of bread straight off the bat as it's a waste of ingredients. Start small - maybe a 1lb or less - and then work up to 1.5lb and 2lb.

4) Once you've conquered bread, try cakes and rolls, but once again stick to the ingredient quantities and order. If it doesn't work you can make changes. My last post dealt with the problems I had making chelsea buns for the first time despite sticking to the recipe. Next time I make them, I'll decrease the amount of water a little and try again. If you make anything with eggs, stick to the size of egg recommended where possible. If it says use a small one, don't fling in a large one and think it will be ok. Large ones = more fluid which could throw off the recipe.

Ingredients

1) Once you have selected your ingredients stick to using those all the time. Sometimes buying a different brand can throw the whole process off. As far as possible I tend to use non-branded ingredients because chances are they'll stay on the shelves a lot longer than a branded one might and they are cheaper. Also, the quality of branded products change between supermarkets so, for example, if you usually buy your yeast from Tesco and then get some from Sainsbury's, you might find it doesn't work so well. You might need to use more or less Sainsbury's yeast to get the same result compared to the Tesco yeast.

2) Running out of an ingredient should strike fear into you as substituting an ingredient or trying to go without can lead to trouble UNLESS you approach it a bit logically and scientifically. Once I ran out of milk powder and decided to add some normal milk, BUT I didn't just fling it in. I knew I had to add it to the wet ingredients on the bottom so I reduced the amount of water I used by the same amount of milk that I added, so the overall amount of liquid was the same. I then held my breath for a few hours until it had finished and luckily it had made the perfect loaf of bread. However, it may not work for you.

3) Changing ingredients. I used to leave out the butter in the beginning on the grounds of health and then wonder why it never rose well. Bread needs fat in it to rise properly. I tested healthy marg compared butter, which worked ok and now I add it every single time. If you have a problem with something in a bread machine recipe, try and substitute it rather than leave it out.

Timing

1) To start off use the standard time recommended by the manufacturer's recipe book. It's very tempting to use Fastbake if you have it - don't. It's just one more factor in the mix to contend with if the bread doesn't rise. Start off with the standard timings and once everything is working, try Fastbake.

2) Timer programmes are temperamental. Most machines have a programme that allows you to put all the ingredients in and start baking at a time you can dictate. So if you want to rise at 7am to the smell of freshly baked bread, you can set the timer to start the programme so it will finish at this time.

My bread machine pointedly refuses to work on this setting. I have a hunch that the dry ingredients end up a gunky sodden heavy mass when they have to sit in the wet ingredients for about 5 hours before the programme starts, but I can't prove it. So, I just don't bother. I put the machine on before I go to bed at around 10:30pm and Martin takes the bread out at 5am  to make his lunch. It does mean that it's not as crispy as it might be because of condensation as the bread machine cools down, but I can live with it.

Costs

Ok...I'm going to try and work out costs here for a 1lb loaf which lasts Martin and I about 2.5 days. I use a combination of strong white bread flour and wholemeal flour for a half and half loaf.

• Water - 275ml; don't ask me to work it out in pence
• Milk - 25ml; 2p (based on 6 pints of milk at £1.96)
• White bread flour - 0.5lb; 8p (based on 1.5kg or 3.3lb at 48p)
• Wholemeal flour - 0.5lb; 9p (based on 1.5kg or 3.3lb at 60p)
• Salt - 1.5tsp, 0.003p (based on 750g of salt being 24p)
• Sugar - 2tsp; 0.01p (based on 1kg of caster sugar being 84p)
• Yeast - 1 sachet; 6.25p (based on 8 sachets at 50p)
• Margarine - 1oz; 3p (based on 1kg of marg being £1.09)

Total cost for one 1lb loaf = 28.25p

Martin and I get through three of these 1lb loaves a week so that's a total bread cost of 84.75p. Any left over ends that we can't cut up goes in the freezer and I make bread pudding at a later date. The equivalent loaf in tesco would be an 800g Hovis half and half loaf which would last us a week and which costs £1:20.

No contest. For size, quality and taste I'm for making my own bread every time.

By the way, if you want to try a breadmaker without buying one, go onto your local freecycle and place a free ad to see if anyone has one stuffed in their cupboard they don't use. A lot of people get put off when they can't make the recipe work and store them away for ever. The same goes for a lot of kitchen gadgets like doughnut makers and cheese toastie machines. I wouldn't ever buy these unless I absolutely had to as there's too many floating around one step from being thrown away.