Sourdough, cake and inspiration

This weekend it was time to try out my rye sourdough starter which has been slowly fermenting for the last month. It had gone from smelling of paint stripper to boozy, sharp apples so at last I could experiment with the sponge method and get baking.

This technique involves mixing together a ladleful of your starter with some flour and warm water the evening before you want to bake and leaving it in a warm place overnight. The next morning it had transformed into a frothy milkshake and was good to go. The next stage was making the dough by adding more flour and salt and kneading until smooth and shiny. This took me about 10 minutes using the satisfyingly aggressive and noisy French kneading technique to which I am now a firm devotee.

You then leave the dough for an hour or two, before deflating and re-forming into a ball, then repeat the resting, deflating and reforming stage 2-3 times until you have a lovely fluffy, smooth pillow to play with. The final stage is to divide the dough and form into loaves to pop in proving baskets for the final rising stage (again another 2-3 hours). Finally by tea time they were ready to go in the oven and by supper time we were tucking in to some delicious fresh sourdough.

This is definitely a technique for a long lazy weekend, rather than when you want bread in a hurry but the results were amazing. My best sourdough yet.

It also gave me a chance to try out my new signature slash to the crust. The H for Hels' Bakehouse looks great, although much to the delight of my husband, who works at the SECC, it also looks like the new Hydro arena in Glasgow and has now been christened 'Hydro bread'. I spy a marketing opportunity!

In between all of this bread making it was the usual weekend mixture of dog walking and child ferrying. My son goes to a drama class on a Saturday so whilst he was busy becoming a star, I took advantage and headed off for a coffee and a cupcake at The Butterfly Bakery & Cafe in Bearsden. I've been driving past for a while and looking for an excuse to pop in and I'm glad I did because the cake was delicious and it's the perfect sneaky treat for busy Mum's looking for a sanity saving 20 minutes peace and quiet.

To keep my motivation levels up (with less calorific side effects) I've also joined the ManicMums group on Linkedin and would definitely recommend this and the website mumandcareer.co.uk for anyone struggling to balance work, family, career, guilt and ambitions for a better way of doing all of this. It's full of inspiring advice from like minded people and there's nothing like feeling you're not alone to give you the confidence to keep going.

Autumn life on the West Highland Way

I've not posted anything for a while, which is a sign that things have been progressing too slowly on the mission statement and that 'real' life has taken over for a while. This weekend, however, the sun has been shining (a miraculous three whole days in a row) and although there is a chill in the air and the leaves are starting to change colour, it's put me back on track a little bit.

Saturday was all about starting to do the big autumn garden clear out. This was the first year of the veggie patch, and it's been a mild success although not quite the self sufficient idyll I had envisaged. I blame the weather, but I have a sneaking suspicion it may also be down to my lack of knowledge about what I'm doing. However, there's still been plenty to eat and I decided we would have a weekend mini harvest festival with some of the successes. I dug out the potatoes, rescued the last of the sprouting broccoli and rhubarb and lifted some of the miniature carrots and onions. This was more than enough to feed us for the weekend on some tasty warming autumnal fare. First up was some lentil soup - the only soup both my children will eat without looking like I am trying to poison them. Next I made some rhubarb and apple chutney (our apple tree is awash with fruit which I am thinking of selling on the black market to all the hard pressed English cider makers), then in the evening a chilli which I washed down with a glass of West Highland Way beer from the Loch Lomond brewery.

After a fine night's sleep I woke up to see the sun shining again and felt the need to take a long walk so, clearly influenced by last night's beer, I set off on the first leg of the West Highland Way. Our house is just a mile or so away from the path, so I grabbed the dog and set off up the hill and enjoyed every step of the way to Drymen in beautiful autumn sunshine.

My husband and I walked the West Highland Way three years ago, and I've only done little parts of the route since, but it really is a great thing to do and my walk today was a reminder that maybe it was time to plan a new challenge.

If you're a whisky lover, or just visiting Scotland and feel you should check out a distillery, you should definitely stop off at Glengoyne. The first leg of the West Highland Way goes right past, and it's a lovely spot with great whisky. We loved it so much that 18 months ago, we chose to get married there in the tasting room which overlooks the waterfall. Such a great day, such a bad hangover. Every time we go past it brings a smile to my face and when real life is bringing you down, it pays to have a little reminder of the things that are really important.

Tonights evening meal of sausages with home grown roasted potatoes and onions, followed by apple and west highland way blackberry crumble with my family was the perfect end to a lovely day in a lovely part of the world.

Cookbook heroes

If you could marry a chef who would it be? It doesn't matter if they are male or female, straight or gay, fat or thin, nasty or nice, this is all about the dinner they'd make you every night at the end of a long day whilst you sipped a glass of wine in your ever expanding, elasticated trousers.

These are the ones whose cookbooks you buy just to imagine eating the food within them, spending hours drooling over the pictures. It wouldn't make a difference if you never made any of the recipes, but when you do, you love them just a little bit more each time.

My husband and I have an agreement that we would leave one another instantly if Nigel Slater or Bill Granger offered to shack up in our kitchen. There is a similar (slightly more one sided) policy in place about any member of Take That or Michael Buble.

I made Bill's char sui ribs from his Asian cookbook tonight with oven baked ginger, lemongrass and pea rice. As I watched my normally annoyingly fussy four year old wolf it down, I knew he'd also be up for the agreement. Now we just need to track him down.

A weekend of local living

So this weekend it was time to put my money where my mouth is and start doing more to support local businesses whilst shunning the supermarket baddies. I started with a trip to Sainsbury's (whoops) but I kept my spending down to a minimum and only on the things I would struggle to get elsewhere. Still, I felt like a bit of a sham so I tried to make up for it from there.

On the way home I picked up my first Mollinsburn organic fruit and veg box from the village deli, Pestle & Mortar. It's a brilliant wee shop packed full of interesting things and it felt great to be using it for more than just an emergency supply or special treat. The veg sack was great. Definitely good value, the produce tastes wonderful and it has been fun playing ready steady cook with the contents all weekend.

Next up was back to the home baking to keep us stocked up on goodies. On Friday I russled up an orange and almond cake, a batch of chocolate chip cookies and two loaves of Bertinet rye, caraway and raisin bread using the flour that had arrived in the week from Shipton Mill. I also got some more sourdough on the go, which I baked off on Sunday with mixed success. Both loaves tasted great but one was a flat pancake as I've still not mastered getting them out of the proving baskets.

On Saturday I went to top up the fridge and my tummy from the Loch Lomond Food Festival at Lomond Shores. My bags were full of tasty sausages from the Extraordinary Sausage Company in Kippen, pork pies, juicy olives, salami and beer from the Loch Lomond brewery.

Meanwhile I'd sent my son and husband on a mission to Fantoosh Fish in Milngavie to pick up some lemon sole for our dinner on Sunday. I cooked it in a gram, ginger and garlic batter with spiced home grown potatoes, beetroot raita from the veg bag, and some steamed organic spinach and sat back to sip my bonny n' blonde local beer in a very smug and contented way.

A good start to a new way of doing things.