Sourdough September

Since 2013 September has been known as Sourdough September to encourage people to have a go at making their own Sourdough Bread. It's just the sort of thing I like to have a go at so I'm attempting to make my own Sourdough Starter.

It looks like a complicated affair. Feeding a little jar of gloop every day for a week in the hope that it will grow and make delicious bread. Keep everything crossed for me.

It was a great excuse to use a kilner jar (of which I have several waiting for a use!) I carefully weighed out the flour and water (100g of each). Wholemeal flour to start with and bottled water. Gave them a mix and lightly covered it with clingfilm as instructed.

I set an alarm on my phone for the next day so I'd remember to check it for bubbles or any activity if I'm honest.

There were bubbles! I'm so excited, this might actually work. I threw half away and fed it on the 3rd day by adding 60g each of water and flour (white flour for feeding). And same again on the 4th day. It was very frothy looking on the 4th day and had almost doubled in size. What have I created? 

I got used to the routine of feeding the starter and seeing it grow then shrink back when it was hungry ready for feeding the next day. It kind of reminded me of the 90s and having a Tamagotchi pet! On day 7 it was ready to use.

I used the recipe on BBC Food to make my bread.

We all enjoyed the result. Tasty bread biologically leavened by my own homegrown sourdough starter. I'm so proud of it!

Making Face Masks

I finally got around to making some face masks this month. Erin is starting an apprenticeship soon and I wanted her to have a few to choose from so they can be washed in between using. I bought some black elastic from eBay and used some material I already had.

I found this great instructional video on YouTube (credit to 5 Minute Rhythmic Ideas):

I didn't use a sewing machine for mine, I just hand stitched them since it's not a massive amount of sewing. They look like a straight rectangle but the pleats in them fold out to make them big enough to properly cover your nose and mouth easily. I had to adjust the elastic length a little as it was a bit short.

I'm really pleased with how they turned out. It's such a great pattern which makes a very comfy mask. I was pleased to use up some cute material I had too. I love this Russian doll one!

I made purple spotty ones, red heart ones and little sheep ones. We've got around 7 or 8 now so Erin has plenty to choose from.

Have a try yourself. It's a simple make and very satisfying to be able to make your own masks. I need some cute owl or skull material now for me!

How we Organise our Cleaning

 

Cleaning is a thing I struggle with. I never feel like doing it and I put it off as much as I can. I don't mind tidying, the house is always tidy and looks nice but I know I should clean more often.

JD came up with a solution to my troubles by downloading the Chores App. It lets you add all the jobs that need doing and spreads them out over time so you're only doing a few minutes a day.

I find it much easier to manage this way. Instead of feeling every day like I should do more I just look what is scheduled to be done and do it.

The jobs are broken up into smaller jobs (like sweep the kitchen and mop the kitchen) so that each job only takes roughly 5 minutes to do.

I don't end up doing more than 15 minutes a day but it feels like I'm keeping on top of things.

Of course there are daily jobs to be done that can't be added here such as setting the table, making tea, washing up and laundry. But those jobs are already done between us. Erin sets the table and sometimes makes tea. JD takes care of the laundry plus sometimes washes up. I usually make tea and sometimes wash up.

The app includes a scoreboard so we can see who's doing what. This is a funny example of it because it looks like I do the most but it's usually a lot more split between JD and I with a few bits from Val and Erin. Having a scoreboard weirdly pleases me. It also shows who won the week (we should have prizes for the winner tbh, since it's often me! :D)

You can have the app on your phone or on a desktop like this and it's so helpful that we can all see what needs doing anytime. It's so simple for the kids to look and see how they can help out any given day. Sometimes I let the jobs build up and have a catch up day but it never gets really out of hand any more.

This app makes us feel organised with the cleaning. JD can look on his days off and see what I've done and what needs doing. I try to encourage the kids to do one job a week and they can pick a favourable job from the list and do it. With smaller kids you could allocate them jobs using the app too.

Give it a try if you want to feel more organised.

Oh Burger 39: Steak Frites Burger

For my 39th and penultimate burger I've made a Steak Frites burger.

Steak frites (or steak and fries) is a popular dish in France and this burger attempts to bring it into burger form. I'm not sure I think having the fries inside the burger is the best idea but it could add crunch and be great Let's see!

Ingredients:

burgers

buns

cheese

spinach

fries

relish or your favourite steak sauce

Make the burgers and cook the fries. Layer up the burger with spinach first then the burger and cheese. Top with sauce and finally the fries on top. Sandwich it with the bun top and you're all set.

Ratings: JD - 2, Emma - 2.5 

As you can tell by the ratings we weren't a fan of fries in a burger. It did add crunch but it was just too much and added a frankly unnecessary element to the burger. Burgers need to be easily held and eaten so too much filling always puts us off a bit. The rest of the burger was great and we enjoyed them but adding fries is a no-no for us!

A Year of Learning - Graphic Design

For August I've decided to have a go at teaching myself Graphic Design. I'd like to be able to make banners for my blogs. I have had some success in doing this on sites like Canva that are really easy to use but they're also a bit limiting. There are more features but you have to pay to use them.

So I'm going to try get my head around GIMP. It's more complicated but has tons more features, plus its free to use. Below is the GIMP dashboard with a hello message I made. :)

There are a plethora of Youtube tutorials for GIMP so I started off by watching a few guides for beginners. One tutorial showed you how to remove part of an image and put it over a new background. Below is my first try at this!

GIMP works by separating different elements of the image into layers so you can work on each element without affecting the others. It takes a bit of getting used to switching between layers all the time.

Next I decided to go ahead and work on a banner I wanted to make for my food blog. I'm going to be making a food from every American state. I watched a few tutorials on adding text to an image including techniques to make the text stand out more.

For this banner I added a background image. Then added text in two places using text boxes. I made extra layers for each of the text boxes, increased the size of the text on those layers by a few pixels and filled it in white to make it stand out and emphasise the black text. I'm pleased with how it turned out but it was a slow process of trying different things before I finally figured it all out.

I then went on to make a few other banners/images I'd been meaning to get sorted.

It's very satisfying to be able to make a banner and put it up on my blog, I think it improves how my blog posts look.

To try doing something different I decided to try make a book cover. I picked an old mystery book I like, The Red House Mystery by A.A. Milne. I thought of some ideas for a cover and then tried to put them into practise.

I had the idea of a house reflected in water because a pond features in the mystery. I used the Path Tool in GIMP to select the reflection (in a similar way to the scissor tool I'd used to cut out JD in the picture above) and then made it a separate layer so I could colour it red without messing up the rest of the image. I think it works quite well. I then gave the image a border by making a background in black a few pixels bigger then the image and added some text in an old fashioned font. I really like how's it turned out. 

Again this kind of practical learning where you just play around to figure things out along with googling tutorials to find what you can't is just what I like to do. I've asked JD for advice here and there too as he's been using GIMP for years and is quite the pro!

I'm pleased with my months work, I've made a lot of banners for my blogs plus got a good start on learning about the different features. There's so much more to learn but as I use GIMP from now on I'll add to my knowledge.

A Year of Learning:

Smartphone Photography

Breadmaking

Arduino Programming

Harmonica

Creative Writing

Meditation

Crochet

Graphic Design

Harrogate Cheap Eats: 53 Bo' Grove

I wrote this review in March 2020 just before everything closed down because of Covid 19. As the rules relaxed we visited again while it was serving takeaway food in June for some sausage sandwiches for Val and Erin. It's open again now (August 2020) with socially distanced tables, hand sanitiser on each table and sterilised wrapped cutlery. The menu may have changed since we first visited but from the menu board as I pass by it looks equally as yum!

A new cafe has opened up quite near our house so we had to go check it out. It's located just to the side of the Grove Road School off Skipton Road. It's quite eclectic in style made up of all different chairs and tables. Makes me feel at home!

We had a look through the menu and it had all the usual suspects of sandwiches, jacket potatoes and soup. There's breakfast items too until 11.30. They had some nice looking healthy options on the menu. JD opted for the Buddha Bowl with sweet potato, avocado, beans and rice. It was presented really well and looked delicious!

I enquired after the soup of the day and decided to order it seeing as it was homemade chicken soup. Yum! It came with seeded bread and butter. It was a broth with shredded chicken chunks in and had seeds scattered on top. Very nice and warming!

We ordered water to drink which came with ice (I love cold water). JD's Buddha Bowl was £8 and my soup was £5 giving us a total of £13 which fits in our £15 budget. I decided to go all out and also had a toasted teacake for £2 which took us up to the max spend. We really enjoyed our lunch, the staff were very friendly and welcoming which is always nice. The whole menu is good value for money with the most expensive item being £9. They also have a good range of hot drinks if that's your thing.

Just next to the cafe there is also an antique shop which was nice to have a look around and a refilling station for dry goods like pasta, rice and more.

It's nice to have lunch just a short walk from home and feel like you're helping a small business. I can see that we'll be back often. If you're in the area, give it a try!

Previously on Harrogate Cheap Eats:

Fodder on the Hoof

Starling Independant Cafe

Burgers & More

Little Breads

Santar Deli

Cafe M

Harrogate Grill & Pizza

Nutrition Joe's

Tak Yan

Drakes Fish & Chips

I Am Doner

Cafe Rita

Palm Court Cafe

App Review - Tasty

As far as I'm concerned Tasty is the ultimate cookbook. My pet peeve with cookbooks is they often don't have enough pictures, sometimes not even a picture of the finished dish. But with tasty you get a whole video as well as an ingredient list and written method. It's pretty great!

I've made quite a lot of foods from Tasty over the last couple of years. It's great for fun recipes the kids will like as well as some delicious dessert ideas.

Here are some of the recipes we've enjoyed:

Pretzel Dogs

Hot dogs wrapped in pizza dough makes for a quick, fun meal. It's basically a glorified hot dog. We enjoyed them anyway!

Chocolate Peanut Butter Balls

These were delicious, moreish but a little bit too sweet. You can only eat a couple at once. It was tough but we managed to eat them all.

Pizza Bombs

I've cross posted these on my Pizza post but they're worth mentioning again!

A really nice way to get your pizza fix. Pizza dough filled with pepperoni, sauce and mozzarella. Delicious!


Mini Peanut Butter Cheesecakes

These little cuties are fantastic. So easy to make but really delicious. The cheesecake base is made with ritz crackers giving a little salty taste to them. We all really enjoyed them.

Nutella Cream Cheese Turnovers

If a recipe has Nutella in it, you know it's going to be a winner. These turnovers are so easy to make with bought puff pastry in a roll and go great with a bit of whipped cream.

I've used the Tasty App a lot and the majority of recipes work out really well. I like how watching the videos gives you a clear idea of how much effort a recipe is. I can't count how many times I haven't read through a recipe properly beforehand and got stuck halfway through. With a video to watch you know everything that is involved. It's a great way to add variety to your meals as the recipes seem endless with dishes from all over the world included.

And it's all free! A very thrifty way to try some new foods out on your family!