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desperanceThis morning was all about new stuff. I unpacked my grain mill! After tiddly-um years! Also, I made a salad dressing you could use to construct model mountains. Convincingly.
The grain mill: I bought it because bargain (fifty quid, reduced by stages down to eight), and because I bake. How cool, I thought, to grind my own malted barley flour! Only then I learned that all the homebrew stores in the neighbourhood had closed down, and I couldn't buy malted barley. And I only used a teaspoonful per loaf, and I had plenty of the commercial flour, so the mill sat in its box. And I only shipped it over here because bargain, and I was going to bake more, and who knew...?
As it turns out, m'friend Katherine grows corn and wanted to mill it and lamented her lack of a grain mill, and I said "I have one!" So there you are. She brought some corn around, and I have milled it. I have made cornmeal.
Also, dressing. I made a fava-bean-and-bacon salad with the favas that I grew and the bacon that I cured and smoked; and I dressed it in peas'n'cheese. Specifically, I blanched fresh peas and pounded them in a mortar into a kind of pesto with basil and parmesan and walnut oil and lemon juice, and it was utterly yummy. The sort of dressing you could spread on toast and call it bruschetta, if you so chose.
In other news, Mike went home today. So after two weeks, it's just the two of us again. We shall slump into our former ways, and go to the grocery store and buy wine, and come home and watch TV most likely. Somewhere in my head are a buzzy young couple always on the go, but they ain't us.
The grain mill: I bought it because bargain (fifty quid, reduced by stages down to eight), and because I bake. How cool, I thought, to grind my own malted barley flour! Only then I learned that all the homebrew stores in the neighbourhood had closed down, and I couldn't buy malted barley. And I only used a teaspoonful per loaf, and I had plenty of the commercial flour, so the mill sat in its box. And I only shipped it over here because bargain, and I was going to bake more, and who knew...?
As it turns out, m'friend Katherine grows corn and wanted to mill it and lamented her lack of a grain mill, and I said "I have one!" So there you are. She brought some corn around, and I have milled it. I have made cornmeal.
Also, dressing. I made a fava-bean-and-bacon salad with the favas that I grew and the bacon that I cured and smoked; and I dressed it in peas'n'cheese. Specifically, I blanched fresh peas and pounded them in a mortar into a kind of pesto with basil and parmesan and walnut oil and lemon juice, and it was utterly yummy. The sort of dressing you could spread on toast and call it bruschetta, if you so chose.
In other news, Mike went home today. So after two weeks, it's just the two of us again. We shall slump into our former ways, and go to the grocery store and buy wine, and come home and watch TV most likely. Somewhere in my head are a buzzy young couple always on the go, but they ain't us.