Sad farewell to our EU membership

I try to stay away from politics on the blog, but both of us are feeling upset about the whole brexit mess. We think it is a huge mistake, quite apart from the fact that we live in France and although it doesn't have drastic immediate consequences it is bound to make things more difficult over the years.

We 'celebrated' with some champagne, breaking dry January a few hours early.

Good luck to us all!

Growing things

I have started growing 'micro greens'. We have been growing bean sprouts for a while as a good quick way to have tasty veg for stir fry and salads. Micro greens are an extension of this where you plant the seeds in a very thin layer of compost and eat the leaves what grow. We have had broccoli raab (not actually broccoli) as well as broad beans and chickpeas.

I have also tried planting some strawberries in to horse poo (quite well matured). Possibly it might turn out to be too strong and rich for them, we shall see.

Burn's Night

Nice walk during the day and then Burn's supper in the evening

You can almost see our house from the lunch spot

Great views

Poppy was exhausted after the walk so hardly noticed when we left her for the evening

It was dry January so we avoided the whisky!

I am not sure the green stuff is very authentically scots

These antlers are ones Doug found on our land. Cool to have them used. We are thinking of hanging them somewhere in La Mongie

You can just see us dancing in the background here. It was a bit chaotic because even the caller didn't really know how to scottish country dance... they kept starting the dances right at the beginning of the music rather than waiting for the intro to finish. Then everything after that was not on the right bar. However fun was had, we danced The Gay Gordon, The Military Two Step, Strip the Willow and The Dashing White Sergeant.

Soft White Bread Recipe

I am on a bread making frenzy at the moment. I want to make bread that can go in the sandwich maker (12cm x 12 cm) and it needs to be nice and fluffy and not holey so the filling stays in...
I have tried a number of recipes

640g plain flour (T45 protein 9%)
2tsp yeast (1 sachet)
70 ml warm water
260 ml warm water
25g sugar
1 tsp salt
27g butter

1lb bread tin

Put the yeast in to the smaller amount of warm water in the bowl of a stand mixer and leave for 5 mins
Add the rest of the water and all other ingredients, but only 300g of the flour at this point.
Mix until combined, then add flour slowly until a soft dough is achieved.
Continue to mix for 7 to 10 mins until the dough comes away from the edge of the bowl
Shape in to a ball and place back in the bowl and over it with a tea towel and allow to rise until doubled in size (45 mins to an hour)
Gently shape in to a rectangle about 30 x 25 cm
Roll the rectangle tightly from the short size, tuck the ends under and put in your bread tin
Cover and allow to rise until doubled in size (30 to 45 mins)
Cook in an oven preheated to 200°C

This came out quite well, but felt it could be fluffier. The method was quite a faff so I am unlikely to bother with it, but we shall see, I like to give things a chance. Might try this method with a stronger bread flour to see what happens

Another attempt
400g T65 flour (protein 11%)
240g warm water
15g butter
20g sugar
1 tsp salt
4g yeast

Melt butter in warm water
Mix everything together
Rest for 10 mins
Kneed for 10 mins or until done
Rise for 45 mons or doubled in size
Shape by squishing in to a rectangle and rolling up and folding the ends over
Leave until doubled in size (30mins ish)
Bake at 200 until brown and sounds hollow

This one was a little too sweet and still not quite fluffy enough, but better... I need to try a stronger bread flour I think

Snow!

10 cm was forecast and 10 cm arrived! This is a bit rare as there normally seems to be less than forecast. It was slightly heavy but a very pleasant refresher for the area. One of the few chances so far this year to venture off piste a bit

Cold!

After weeks of lovely sunny skiing it has suddenly got a lot colder. Very beautiful clouds and sky, but rather hard pistes. They do seem to have been doing an extra good job of pisteing this year though.

Skiing with Jan and Al

Doug doing a little jump

Walk round the virgin

This has to be our most walked walk. It is a nice loop, not far from the house, and has great views over the mountains - and our house.

There is a lot of damage from the December storms. They are getting on with cleaning up a lot of it, but it is pretty dramatic still.

View over Bagnères-de-Bigorre, our apartment is in there somewhere

Dog posing

 Doug posing

Yummy apple pie snack afterwards. Homemade but with bought puff pastry. Must try making puff pastry one day...

Feels like Spring

Feels like Spring, but Winter is forecast to return any moment...

Bit of culture

Some opera arias and quite a bit of Offenbach. Interesting but made us realise how spoilt we were for classical music living in London. Fortunately we took full advantage while we had it.

Coppa

Coppa is cured nape of neck.

Salted at 50g per kg with curing salt same as the ham

10g sugar per kg

Cured for 40 days in plastic bag in fridge with the salt
I put this one in a beef bung because some recipes ask for that and I happened to have one that needed using. Convenient way to hang it - from the string.

Hang for 4 weeks (or until loses 30% of weight)

What to do during dry January?

We are trying to brew once a week during (dry) January to get stocks up a little bit. This is bottling a Dark Mild and we made a Wheat beer using a new interesting yeast (meant to give hints of banana and cloves), we'll see