Friday 24 July 2009

Domestic Goddess

Only kidding! ;) This post should be titled "In The Kitchen", but I can pretend ;)
When it has been too wet to be in the garden, I have been playing in the kitchen. This bubbling cauldron is a sourdough starter. I love sourdough, but have never tried making it before. After watching it being made on a recent River Cottage programme on television, I though how hard can it be? I'll let you know as the weeks go by! Yesterday I started it with flour and water and the fermentation began quite quickly. I fed it in the evening and it is bubbling nicely.
In the hedgerows the wild cherry plums are ripe and beginning to fall to the ground. I couldn't let them go to waste, so we collected 3 lbs of them and I have made some jam.

Each type of wild plum tastes different. Previous years I have used the red ones that grow near our home and they are quite sour, although my OH and Jay loved the jam. This year I used only the yellow ones, growing elsewhere in the village, and the jam tasted of apricots. I'm picking some more!

Besides all the cakes that I have been baking, I made these individual strawberry cheesecakes. I had to take a photo as I thought they looked pretty. I based the cheesecake on a Nigella Lawson recipe, but used smaller quantities.

On the savory front, we are eating beans, beans and more beans! I think I planted too many at the allotment, and there are still the runner beans and borlotto beans to come! We are also eating a lot of lettuce!


2 comments:

MrsL said...

Funnily enough I started a sourdough starter this week too :) I use the fermented apple juice one from the book By Bread Alone, with great success last time. Looking forward to gettins baking with it!
We're all Doemstic Godesses really.............

MrsL

xx

thesnailgarden said...

Hi MrsL, I'm looking forward to the eating part ;) Best wishes, Pj x