The fastest, easiest loaf of bread in the world

We've all been there: a friend phones you up and says, "come round, I'll put the kettle on," or "I'll open a bottle of wine..." and we quite happily trundle round, BUT, if that same person said, "come round, I've just put a homemade loaf of bread in the oven," we'd be on out toes and running round there faster than you can say, "I'll bring the marmite!"

Making bread is simple.

This is the stripped down, self sufficient way to make a great tasting (and smelling) loaf of bread.

Time:
20 minutes work
1 hour to prove
20 minutes baking

Ingredients:
400mls warm water
650g bread flour
1pk dry yeast (1.5oz fresh yeast)
desert spoon sugar
Teaspoon salt

Method:
In a small-ish mixing jug, add tot he warm water the yeast and sugar.  Stir and leave for 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, in a large mixing bowl, add the salt and flour.

Pour the yeast solution into the flour and combine.

Tip out onto a lightly floured surface, and knead for 10 minutes.

Place kneaded dough onto a lightly oiled baking tray, or into a bread tin.

Leave for an hour somewhere warm to rise (double in size).

Bake for about 20 minutes at 175 degrees (tap bottom - if it sounds hollow, it's ready, if not, put back for a further 5 minutes and repeat.)

That's it!  That's all there is to it!  So, so simple.

Come on, make a loaf of bread this afternoon, it will cheer you up immensely.

Homemade chocolate easter eggs

How great is it to make a homemade Easter egg? And they're so easy! Okay, you might get yourself and the kitchen covered in chocolate, but as Shep said today on their Shep and Jo show (if you haven't heard the Shep and Jo show on BBC Radio Devon, where have you been...!?), when they very kindly allowed me on again this afternoon, you are just going to have to lick it all off!

Right, eyes down for homemade Easter eggs...

This is how to make an Easter egg using the shell of a real egg as the mold.

So, first you need an egg. You can get eggs in all different colours:

Green
Blue
Pink
White
Dark brown

And different sizes:

Quail
Goose
Chicken
Bantam

Now, empty the egg, and you do this by taking a needle and digging away the the pointy end of the egg until you have a hole about the diameter of a pencil. When you have done that, take a cocktail stick (or anything similar) and dig about inside the egg, kind of mulching the contents so when you tip the egg up, the insides fall out - you can of course tease it out with the cocktail stick.

So now you have an empty shell.

Now run it under a hot tap so it fills with water, and empty it out. Do this several times until the water runs clear.

Now you need to sterilise the egg shell, so pop it into a pre heated oven at 180 for at least 10 mins.

That's your mold!

Now you have choices (choices are good!) for the fillings.

Option one:

Simple, melt a bar of chocolate and pipe it into the egg shell using either a piping bag or something like a sandwich bag with the corner cut. When the egg shell is full, place it in the fridge to chill overnight. When it comes out it will, fairly obviously, be a hard, solid chocolate egg. if you very carefully peel away the shell, you can decorate the egg or leave it plain.

Option two:

This is for a soft chocolate fill, truffle chocolate (also known as a ganache). Truffle chocolate is easy to make, this is how:

Ingredients:
275g/10oz chocolate
175mls/6floz double cream
25g/1oz butter

Method:
Melt the chocolate, add the double cream and butter and stir until thoroughly mixed. That's it!

Fill the egg with the same method as option one, and chill in the fridge.

Decorating the shell or not is up to you, but serve in an egg cup at room temperature and eat as you might a boiled egg by chopping off the top and dipping in with a spoon, of course watching for any egg shell especially for children.

Happy Easter everyone!

London Suits to Welly Boots

I'm doing a talk!

Ilfracombe library, Saturday 14th at 2.00pm.

There will tea, coffee and homemade cake, and me talking about stumbling from London life into Devon self sufficiency, hooligan pigs and rogue chickens. It'll be lively, spiky and full of fun.

For tickets call 01271 862 388.

Please come or it'll just be me!

Growing in a small space

Thanks to the ever wonderful Shep and Jo (not the mention Lidia the producer), I'm on BBC Radio Devon this afternoon at 3.30, oh yes, self sufficiency Simon is back on the air!

Okay, so all veg growers suffer with one common complaint, space - or more to the point, lack of space. But there are things you can do to expand your growing area, and one of which is growing upwards, sort of high rise growing.

Tyres are great for growing potatoes and provide a micro-climate in which the plants can thrive.

Sit a couple of car tyres one on top of the other and fill them with a good, rich composted soil.

Press 4 chitted potato plants about 10cm/4in into the soil and water after planting.

When the green shoots start peeking through, add another tyre and again fill with soil. You can continue this process for as many as 4 or 5 tyres, adding more soil each time.

Note: more than 6 or 7 high and it can be difficult to keep the plants well watered.

When you want to harvest the potatoes, take the tyres off one by one and you should be rewarded with a bountiful crop in each section.

If you can, do listen live to the Shep and Jo show, they're great and I, well, do my best.

Hen nights (and days)

Two chickens have gone rogue. They’ve turned their backs on the batch, shook a tail feather at the flock, set their combs at a jaunty angle and did the walky-flappy thing away because it’s very difficult to march with any dignity when you’re a chicken. They left chicken-opolis with its safe collection of houses, friends and family, and headed for a life where crime is the only way to survive.

Street life for chickens is rough. Actually, let me rephrase that; Street life for chickens is rough—ly akin to a five star gastronomic adventure. They’re loving it! They’ve never had so much fun. Who’d have thought stealing food could make you so fat and happy? Well maybe there’s a reason for that, and maybe I’ve sussed it out.

It starts each day just after lunchtime when I begin by mucking out the first stable and lay a fresh straw bed before moving onto the next. While I’m in the second stable, they move behind me into the first.

Now I know it’s just two chickens in there scratching about between the straw for wheat, but I honestly wonder if their little legs are bionic the way they flick the bed about. By the time I get to chase them out, the horse’s bed looks like a giant doughnut with a massive hole in the middle.

I go off to fill hay nets feeling like I’m in some out of season panto with a crowd yelling, “They’re behind you!” I know they’re behind me! They’re doing the same to the second stable as they did to the first!

For me it’s annoying, for them it’s an appetiser.

Stables remade and doors securely closed, I move on and feed the sheep. I pour nuts and stand back to watch all the white woolly heads buried in the trough… along with the two chickens. The sheep even make room for them!

But you know what it’s like, you have something to eat and you really want a drink. Water’s okay, but there’s got to be something better. And there is. Milk. Honestly I milk the goat, turn my back and the chickens are in the pale drinking it.

Okay, so appetiser done, main course done, nice drink of fresh warm milk done… right, what’s for pudding?

Pig nuts. In case you’re unaware, pig nuts come in sturdy plastic sacks. Nice big strong bags, just the job. In fact they’re so strong it can be a struggle to open them, unless of course you’re a chicken.

I place the sack on the back of the quad bike and go off to collect the rest of the bits and pieces I need. When I return they are standing on the bag (which for a start if the height of bad manners, who ever heard of walking about on the dinner table?), dipping their little beaks into a hole they’ve made and scoffing.

We’re all aware of the obesity issues in this country, and you could argue that these chickens are on the frontline of that in as much as they themselves are food producers – as egg layers. Shouldn’t they be looking after themselves a little more? Do they really need two starters, a huge main course, a large fattening drink and as much pudding as they can cram?

I want to catch them and put them in prison – a large house with a run known as the Love Shack because that’s where the cockerels go when I want to control who their wife-of-right-now is. I figure if I can keep them in for a week or so, it might break this cycle of crime and slim them down a bit. Only I can’t catch them. They’re at large (very large). Fugitives from justice. It’s like living with a poultry Thelma and Louise.

The good, the bad, and the Alfie

I had left bringing the horses in at night for as long as possible for a couple of reasons, first the field in which they spent their time was quite sheltered and they were happy, and second… second, was Alfie.

But with the wet weather coming in and the high winds it felt the right time to start stabling them at night. I dug out a head collar and made my way to the gate. I could see Alfie at the other end of the field, his rug twisted and untucked, his knees muddy, his mane scruffy and sticking out at odd angles on his head.

“Just William,” I mumbled, “I’ve ended up with an equine Just William.”

He turned – he couldn’t have heard me, there was no way he could have heard me, but he turned as though he had and spotting me galloped over, careful to find the biggest puddle of mud to run through on the way. The mud splashed up everywhere, covering his belly and his legs in thick oozing yuck.

“Oh Alfie,” I said as he dashed up to me and went to rub his head affectionately on my arm but misjudged and put so much effort into it he sent me flying.

Oh Alfie. I slipped the head collar over his nose and stepped back when he got so excited he started bounding up and down on the spot, which is quite a feat for a tinkers pony.

“Calm down, wooo, calm down boy.” I stroked his neck and watched his eyes come back from helter-skelter to nearly normal, and the bounding up and down slowed to a bopping, then a mooching, and finally his front stood still with just the hint of a bum wiggle at the back. We can handle a bum wiggle.

“That’s a boy,” I said, still stoking him, still claming him. Then I opened the gate and lead him through.

The second we made it out of the field he went crazy, ‘…yeah yeah, dad dad, yeah, come on, where are we going? Yeah, come on, wherever it is, let’s go there fast! Wow, I love going… anywhere…’

“William—I mean, Alfie, will you calm down, please.”

This was going to be a nightmare.

We made our way to the stable door with him prancing about like a Spanish stallion.

‘…yeah, woooo, I love jumping about, woooo…’

“Alfie!”

I took a deep breath, and marched him confidently into the stable.

He stopped prancing. He walked in, and stood there. Quiet. Well behaved. With good manors. Nicely.

I looked at him.

He looked back at me.

I scratched my head.

He nibbled some hay.

I tied him to a ring on the wall and undid his outdoor rug, all the time expecting him to explode in such a confined space, but he couldn’t have been better behaved if he was stuffed. I moved around touching and talking to him so he knew were I was all the time, and groomed some of the mud off – to remove it all would have involved walking him through a petrol station carwash. I threw on a fleece indoor rug and buckled it up. Not a murmur.

Early the next morning I went down not knowing what to expect, but he was still calm, still relaxed, standing on a straw bed that hardly looked slept on. I couldn’t work out why my naughty horse had turned nice, other than the fact that he loved being inside and was trying hard to be good – I didn’t even know he was capable!

I swapped rugs, put on a head collar, opened the stable door and the moment he was outside he went, ‘…wooo, we’re out again, yeah, dad, let’s PAR-TY!’

Towards a homemade Christmas

Who wouldn't like a few homemade touches about the place for Christmas? It makes it nice, it makes it cozy and it makes it personal. And, there's nothing quite as personal as a homemade gift.

Sure money's tight right now, but giving a homemade present isn't about saving money, it's about giving something of yourself. Even rich, famous people give homemade gifts: Vic Reeves for instance, half of Reeves and Mortimer, makes bars of homemade soap for his family and friends.

We're in good company.

So here's a couple of ideas that i think are lovely, Homemade Firelighters and Edible Tree Decorations.

First, Homemade Firelighters that when treated each burn with different colours.

Pine cone firelighters

These are really easy to make, but the standard Blue Peter caveat applies: make sure you're a grown-up or have a grown-up around to help.

To start with, you will need:

Dry pine cones

Wax - the old ends of used candles are ideal

Sawdust/wood shavings

Additives to colour the flames (see below)

Method:

Melt the wax very carefully in an old saucepan. You just want it melted, you don't want to cook it or heat it any more than you need so don't put it on the hob and wander off - in fact, if you're at all worried, make up a double boiler with one saucepan inside another and water in between just to be on the safe side.

Dip the bottom half of a dry pine cone in the wax, and then straight into the sawdust so that the sawdust sticks to the wax, and hold in the air to dry.

To make the sawdust burn with different colour flames, you can mix a little sawdust with one of the following (don't be tempted to mix the colourants as they tend to cancel each other out and just burn normally):

For yellow flames - Sodium Chloride (table salt)

For orange flames - Calcium Chloride (bleach powder)

For violet flames - No salt substitute

For green flames - Borax

For white flames - Epsom salts

These are great firelighters, fun to make, romantic to burn and special to receive.

To jazz them up into a present, maybe get a small wicker basket and half fill with pretty dry leaves and put the treated cones on top. Then add a festive ribbon.

Next:

Edible Tree Decorations

For these you will need:

350g plain flour

1tsp bicarbonate soda

1tsp cinnamon and/or sweet mix spices

175g brown sugar

100g butter

1 beaten egg

4tbsp golden sugar

Coloured boiled sweets

Okay, now the method:

Heat the oven to 180 degrees Centigrade. Line 2 baking sheets with grease proof paper. Get a bowl and add the plain flour, to which put in the bicarb of soda and Cinnamon/sweet mix spices. Put the butter in and rub together with your fingers until it becomes like fine breadcrumbs. Next add the egg, syrup and brown sugar and hand mix until it comes together.

Separately, crush some boiled sweets with a rolling pin.

On a floured surface, roll out the dough until it's about as thin as a pound coin. Now to be creative. Cut out shapes, you can cut circles or triangles, but if you're feeling bold, cut out Christmas tree shapes, or stars, anything you fancy. In the centre of them all, cut a circle so that the middle is missing. Then place them on the lined baking tray. In the cut out middles, sprinkle some of the crushed sweets, and maybe make a hole near the top if you want to hand them up later.

Bake for 10-20 minutes until golden brown, then leave to cool.

When cool, thread with ribbon, and away you go, edible Christmas tree decorations!