Flynn's blog

My husband recently got shower gel dispensers for the bathroom when we (finally) had it redone. You know the sort that go on the wall and they have in hotels. Having previously squirted the stuff willy nilly from a bottle I'm amazed at how little shower gel you actually need to use, and how much you waste by using a flannel - today's green tip!

I never knew until now that if you put leftover salad leaves in a bowl of water they keep all fresh and crispy and you can eat them a couple of days later. Of course you have to drain them off and shake them well to get the water off but I'd despaired of what to do with left over salad. I take out the tomatoes and peppers and throw them in a spaghetti anglaise but the leaves, until now, have had to go on the compost heap. And, since we're eating salad faster than we're growing it at the moment, it's saved me a quid too.

I've spent about the last 10 days experimenting with making my own wholemeal bread for husband's sandwiches. It all came about because he got himself a new stand mixer with a hefty dough hook attachment. Started off with some leftover Allinson strong bread flour, which rather usefully had a recipe on the back, and Hovis sachet yeast for breadmakers or hand baking. Tasted nice but didn't rise as much as I'd hoped and was a bit solid, also a tad overdone. (Fan ovens are great for cooking evenly but you do have to knock the temp done a bit, my recipe said 230°c, I'm now using 200°c and for a bare half hour instead of 35 mins.) Very definitely edible though. Continued tinkering - tried the recipe on the back of the yeast sachet which said 500gms of flour instead of 650gms and less water, better but still didn't rise as much as it should. The other problem with the lower amount of flour was it made less dough which meant the dough hook just rolled it around the edge of the bowl instead of kneading it and I had to keep stopping it and shoving the dough back over the hook. It did seem better with slightly less water though.

So I did a bit of a net search for bread advice and discovered that you can add a bit of ascorbic acid (vitamin C). Holland and Barrett sell it, the net assured me - not in my branch they don't, but they directed me to Healthy Pulses in Sidwell Street (in Exeter) who did have it, oddly I thought, under the counter (I guess because it could be used to dissolve heroin but I don't know). Tried a loaf with a pinch of vitamin C in it, not a huge amount of difference.

Anyhow, as the object of the exercise was really to save a bit of money I got back on the net to track down the most competitively priced wholemeal bread flour (at time of writing both Sainsburys and Tescos do a stoneground 1.5kg bag for 99p. Coop, Aldi, Lidl et al. are not on the price compare site I used) I had been using an organic one from Seasons in Well Street. In my research I found that Sainsburys do Allinsons dried active yeast at a lower price per gram than the sachet yeast so I got some of that as well. You have to reactivate this stuff by dissolving 1 teaspoon of sugar in 150mls of warm/hot water - they say 1 part boiling to 2 parts cold and then sprinkling a level tablespoon of it on top and whisking well (by hand - try it with an electric whisk and it goes f**king everywhere - I used a fork in the end) then you leave it for 10-15mins in a warm place until there's 2cm of froth on the top then you rewhisk it and add it to the mix. Today's loaf has just come out and it certainly looks bigger - it rose further when it was proving too. So, for the record, here's Flynn's current wholemeal bread recipe.

650gms (nearly one and a half pounds) strong wholemeal bread flour
2 tsp salt
large pinch ascorbic acid
tablespoon vegetable oil
150mls (5floz) warm/hot water
Further 270mls (9floz) warm/hot water
1 tsp sugar
1 level tbsp dried active yeast

Mix the flour, salt and ascorbic acid together in a bowl (the bowl of your mixer if you use one)
In another bowl dissolve the sugar in 150mls warm/hot water and sprinkle the yeast over the top, whisk with a fork and leave in a warm place for 10-15 mins until it has 2cm froth on the top.
Rewhisk the yeast mixture and add it to the flour mixture with the vegetable oil and a further 270mls of warm hot water.
Mix this all together by hand with a spoon at first and then use your hands to make an even dough
Knead the dough in a mixer with a dough hook for 5 mins OR knead by hand for 10 mins, you should end up with a ball of dough that is warm, damp and elastic.
Put it in an oiled 2lb (large) loaf tin, cover with a cloth and leave it somewhere warm to rise for at least half and hour (I do mine for an hour - it should double in size)
Put it in an oven at 200°c for half an hour - when it's cooked the bottom will sound hollow when tapped.

Last night I had a recurring dream I haven’t had for ages, years. It’s the one where I have committed a murder and the police are gradually closing in. It not a horrific dream, the details (or even the broad outline) of the actual murder or any clue as to the identity of the victim are absent. The dream is just about the inevitability of the net closing and, unlike most of my recurring dreams, has different plots on the same theme. Last night it mostly involved sneaking in and out of a church, moving things around in a car, two different leather motorbike jackets and a packet of cigarettes which for some reason had to be in the correct leather jacket’s pocket. Finally I emerged from the choir stalls, hoping I’d fooled the police, and got arrested. Its not even frightening just a sense of calm inevitability.

That’s not a particularly common one. My most common is to do with water and recurred throughout most of my late teens and twenties and periodically up until now. There are two of them both locations, one a beach with huge waves crashing into a corner where I dive in and swim through the waves or get washed up onto the beach again. The second is a bend in a stream in the countryside with a bridge and a small weir, occasionally I swim round the bend.

And there’s a building with a circular tower on the corner. Winding round inside the double wall of this tower is a staircase, it leads from a landing into the room inside the tower. Sometimes I go further and climb out through the window onto the roof or the gable windows. The whole building is very big, it has a large central room downstairs with rooms all round and an almost separate side wing with lots more rooms downstairs and upstairs. Sometimes there are people I know living in the rooms or parts of the building subdivided as flats. There’s always somewhere for me to live and to put other people up. I don’t think the house is ever mine, but I always want it to be.

The worst dream is the neglected gerbil one. I have a gerbil in a cage which I keep forgetting about and have to retrieve from the bottom of the wardrobe where it’s got full of bedding. I dig through the bedding in terror of finding the gerbil dead, but it’s always alive, I’ve always got away with it again. This is the only one that disturbs me, I used to have it a lot when I was worried about mum. Since her death 16 months ago I haven’t had it at all.

Caught a grand total of 18 slugs over one 24 hour period in my slug pub in the veggie patch yesterday! We also went out at the weekend and got a cage structure and netting because of the devastation with cabbage white caterpillars last year. Hopefully we'll get to eat some of the vegetables we grow this year instead of just feeding the local wildlife. The bluetits are back to ripping the hanging basket liners apart for their nests as well - bunch of freeloaders in my garden . . .

Finally got around to building the greenhouse I got for my birthday at the weekend. Some engineering project, no wonder I went off meccano as a kid. Anyhow, there it is, all four foot six square of it round the back of the house. One piece of glass was too big so have made a couple of trips to Exeter Glass on Sowton Industrial Estate to get a bit shaved off, great company, they didn't even charge me. So this weekend I'm all ready to get my seed planted, got tumbling cherry tomatoes (which will go in three hanging baskets in the end, alicante tomatoes, italian plum tomatoes (will try bottling those), chilllis, Chris from work has offered pepper plants (in addition to the 12 broad bean plants he's already given me) and there's cauliflowers too. I read somewhere that it was a good idea if you don't have much veg garden space to concentrate on things you eat all the time so have salad leaves and rocket (I must spend 6 or 7 quid a week on those at the moment) to go in and cut at all summer (free seeds from the Daily Mirror collected from Somerfield - bit disorganised - the branch in town didn't have any seeds at all and the one near home never knew what they were supposed to be handing out, so I ended up with two sets of vegetable and herb seeds which is what I wanted anyway so no problem there). And I've got one of those turned wood paper potters where you can make planting pots out of newspaper instead of buying peat pots or using those throwaway plastic seed trays.

Finally I have achieved a solar powered phone! I bought a solar Freeloader in November which charged my ipod and nintendo ds but the listed connector for my Nokia phone was wrong. After some research, and (finally) sending off the hands free kit as an example I got hold of a Unified Micro USB connector. The advantage of a Freeloader is that it stores the power from the sun so you can leave it charging during the day and plug the phone into it at night. Some years back I took a solar charger on Woodcraft camp to keep my phone going, but it didn't store any power - your could only charge when the panel was in the sun, which was during the day, which made the mobile phone - well immobile. So definitely worth going for a Freeloader over cheaper solar panels. (If you need to take an extra schlock of power with you when travelling you can also still charge a freeloader from the mains with a USB adaptor which was what it was originally designed for). And, since they have been a good company to deal with I will also tell you I got the Freeloader from a company in Tewksbury called Solar Technologies. www.solartechnology.co.uk

From Exeter Flying Post issue 306 Aug-Oct 2008

Nicola Beglin reports on an exciting initiative in the city to forge a new alliance between farmers and the local community.

Edit: Friday 24th April 2009, Exeter CSA now have a website www.exetercommunityagriculture.co.uk

An exciting new food initiative is setting up on the outskirts of Exeter. Following in the footsteps of many similar projects around the country, this initiative bases itself on the concept of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) - a term first used in the USA to describe a partnership bewteen farmers and the community.

Why the need for such an initiative? Food production in the UK and beyond has become increasingly intensified with centralised distribution and sales – mainly through supermarkets. Small farmers and growers are struggling to survive. At the same time we have lost connection with both the land and how our food is produced. Although we can buy almost any food we want at any time – at least in Europe – we no longer recognise the seasons.

Fresh, nutritious, affordable locally grown food for local people is at the heart of this project. So much of our food is transported thousands of unnecessary miles around Britain, whilst at the same time we face the challenges of increasing carbon dioxide emissions and oil depletion. Figures vary on the contribution made by food production to CO2 in the atmosphere – but it is significant.

The project aims to create real partnership between producers and consumers – where the responsibility and rewards of farming are shared. It is an opportunity to create a pioneering economic model that will supply local food to our tables. It will also give people the chance to re-connect with the land, enjoy the health benefits of fresh local food and provide security for the farmer.

It will enable people with no farming experience to have access to the land, and, in the longer term, training possibilities. At present our agricultural system does not encourage young people to get involved in farming and with the average age of UK farmers being 58 this is one aspect of farming that needs to change if we are to rise to the challenge of producing more of our own food.

A small group of people concerned about these issues came together in January and has been working with two local farmers on ways to turn this vision into a reality. The group has been offered 4 acres of high grade, uncultivated, organic land to rent on the outskirts of Exeter – equivalent space of 100 standard allotments.

We will be involving the community in its evolution, growing a range of produce according to the needs and interests of the members. Members of the project will be able to contribute to its development in whatever way they choose. Some people may wish to subscribe a receive produce; other may wish to help formulate the direction of the project and/or work on the land. by joining this project you'll be able to know where your food comes from; support the local economy and help build a future based on sustainable agriculture.

A launch meeting will be held on Tuesday 16 September 2008 at Alphington Primary School, so come along to find out more. In the meantime for further information please email: nbeglin@ukonline.co.uk

Yes, well that was Time Team meets the Da Vinci Code! They've tried a lot too hard to make archaeology really dramatic for non-archaeologists. I'm sure archaeology is fascinating for people who know all about it but dramatic? not often I would think. And is it just me or could you drive a bus through some of the plot holes. First of all this fight between the Knights Templar and the 'Saracens' in Bath was an amazing discovery and then, all of a sudden, everybody knew about documentary evidence and where to find it from the Grandmontine monk, written in books, and the fact that the 'Saracens' were English mercenaries. So how come the fight was such a mystery in the first place?.

Young archaeologist gets trapped in flat by modern day Knight Templar with huge sharp sword - and she didn't grab her mobile and ring the police?!!

Group of moslem students seriously threatened by guys with big sharp swords in a mosque - and neither did they!

Heroes win in the end by trapping the baddies burning to death in a newly discovered vault and decide to go to the pub - even in Midsomer Murders Barnaby would have required a few statements before people were allowed to get the rounds in.

Kinghts Templar (the originals) collected loads of crucifixes from the Holy Land in case one was the true cross - OK but the KT's were collecting at least 1000 years after the event - masses of crosses had been lying around that long? and the locals hadn't incorporated them in buildings or cooking fires in ten centuries?

Ah well, I like a new drama - unlike a school report though I think we should say 'don't try so hard'. Think its about slavery next week.

Among various little jobs yesterday (shopping - with list to save money, dying my husband's irretrievably stained polo shirt chocolate brown) I took my Mum's old sewing machine up to the repairers. I'd tried to use it to stitch something up at the beginning of the year and suddenly smoke issued from the foot pedal and it started sewing by itself (bit like Close Encounters). Anyhow I finally got around to contacting the repair shop and asking if they were up to repairing a 30 year old sewing machine. They were calmly confident that they were, knew what the problem was, and that it would probably be a breeze - so I dropped it off and now they're finding out if it is a breeze and I'm awaiting a phone call.

The main reason for this lurch into domestic science is that I like to wear baseball undershirts. But I'm picky about them. I like them with three quarter length raglan sleeves, lowish neckline, scooped hem and made of heavy cotton jersey. A company called toxico used to make some I liked but they've stopped. Also, recently, my work colleague came in with a couple of baseball undershirts he'd ordered for his 3 year old daughter and the contrast sleeves were made of patterned print cotton jersey which was really nice - and which don't come in adult sizes. Only one thing for it - make my own. Over the next few weeks I will be attempting to rediscover my Home Economics skills from sec school - I'll let you know how I get on . . .