It’s made of black wool felt with charcoal leather trim and a thick black elastic strap to hold it closed.

I’m pretty pleased with the result, especially as it was so quick to make!  An hour well spent I think.

They’re good but the cake is better than the cupcakes.

Lesson learned.

marker pens on the whiteboard.’

I do anyway.

]]> http://www.laurengarland.co.uk/2011/12/haiku-1/feed/ 0 http://www.laurengarland.co.uk/2011/08/the-drama-of-the-gluten-free-loaves/ http://www.laurengarland.co.uk/2011/08/the-drama-of-the-gluten-free-loaves/#comments Fri, 05 Aug 2011 18:27:11 +0000 laurengarland http://www.laurengarland.co.uk/?p=145 As an aside – I’ve not been feeling very much like picking up the metaphorical pen recently. I’ve been a little daunted at the prospect of putting my thoughts down on paper. Why? No idea. But hopefully I can get over it.

One thing I’m really going to miss about being gluten-free is a decent loaf of bread. And I couldn’t believe the price of the mean little offerings in the supermarket, so I need to find a good recipe of my own. Now I have my trusted Kitchen Aid stand mixer, it takes no time at all to bake anything, so I have no excuse.

So far I’ve make 3 loaves of gluten free bread, and this is their story.

The first gluten-free loaf.

Loaf 1

I decided that a good place to start would be the recipe on the packet of the Doves Farm Gluten Free Strong White Bread Flour, so I merrily made up a batch.  I only realised afterwards that I had used the wrong kind of yeast.  Rookie mistake if ever there was one.

This loaf was dense and chewy and generally quite weird.  In the toaster it made a fizzing noise.  That is definitely not ideal.  Loaf 1 was a definite fail.

Gluten-free loaf #2.

Loaf 2

I decided that I couldn’t really blame the recipe for the failing of Loaf 1, using the wrong yeast was pretty stupid, and it could be amazing with the right yeast.  The texture was better and more bread-like, but it was still somehow dry and chewy at the same time.  It didn’t fizz in the toaster which was a definite plus, but it wasn’t very tasty, so I’m afraid it’s still a no.

And my third attempt at gluten-free bread.

Loaf 3

I am a massive Dan Lepard fan.  His How To Bake column in The Guardian is a serious must read for me, and I’ve never cooked any recipe of his without success, so I was quite excited when I stumbled across a Gluten-Free Sandwich Bread Recipe of his from 2009.

This recipe was a lot more time intensive than other recipes as you have to leave the bread to rise twice and then cook it for fifty minutes.  Yes that’s right I said fifty minutes.  For some reason my dough didn’t rise at all the second time, and I hadn’t really done a great job at shaping it, it was getting late and I was trying to watch something, but this is still my most successful attempt so far.

The texture was much more like bread, which having done some internet reading is probably down to the psyllium husks.  These are apparently the new wonder ingredient in gluten-free baking and you’d hope so for the price!  But they vastly improved the texture.  My one criticism was that when the bread was warm I could smell the vinegar as I ate it, which was a little off putting.  But I will definitely try this loaf again, perhaps with another vinegar (I probably used Red Wine, so perhaps Apple Cider?), and maybe next time I’ll attempt to make it look a little nicer.

Anyway, those are my gluten-free bread adventures so far.  There will be more.  Many many more.  Watch this space.

It’s quite an easy decision to make, especially now our supermarkets have great selections of gluten-free foods, but what I didn’t really think about was the transition. So after deciding to go gluten-free I went to my kitchen to get some lunch and realised that everything in my cupboard had gluten in it. Ah. Slight hitch. I couldn’t exactly just throw out my entire cupboard and start again, and I couldn’t expect The Boy to eat it all. Don’t get me wrong he wouldn’t complain and he’d manage it, but it would take him a while and, more importantly, I’d have to cook two lots of food every evening to make it happen.

So instead of cutting out from day one, I’ve been cutting down. Breakfast and lunch I’ve gone gluten free, and when we have something glutenous for dinner, I’ve just been having a smaller portion. The cupboard supplies are starting to go down, though still I need to do some baking and get through some of the flours stashed in the cupboard, and I’m starting to replace them with gluten free products. Doves Farm is my saviour, but more about that another time.

So you can expect some posts on here documenting the trials and tribulations of my new gluten-free life. Baking successes and failures (in fact there are two coming up shortly!) and no doubt various rants about lovely treats I can no longer eat. Or drink. Like beer. I had beer on Thursday night. Friday morning I looked like I was about to give birth to a beach ball. Who’d have thought the effect would be that drastic after just a couple of weeks? Cider it is.

It should be up and running in a little while.

After a year of job hunting, interning and freelancing, two jobs appeared on the horizon a couple of weeks ago.  So I suddenly had various interviews to attend, trial days to go to and lots of new people to meet.  On top of this I was very aware that last week I had booked to go on holiday with The Boy and didn’t want to delay my potential employers by asking them to wait until I returned.

So just over a week ago I agreed a job with one of these companies, sadly without finishing the interview process with the other as there just wasn’t time, and this very morning I signed a contract for my first ‘proper’ job, and I start on Tuesday.  I’ve taken on a job as a Garment Technologist for a high street retailer, something I know I can do as I have done it before at Mulberry, but that doesn’t stop me being terrified!

While all these interviews were going on I suddenly realised that my free time was coming to an end and I should probably get done all of the errands/appointments I’d been putting off and I also needed to get ready for our holiday.  On the same week as all this happened my new Brompton Bicycle arrived, which I’ve hardly had a chance to ride yet sadly, but will be great for my new commute next week, and I also found out I’d got a place on the 2012 Brighton Marathon!  So I need to step up my fitness from here on in!

My Etsy shop will probably close once the items are sold/expired, but I may decide to keep it and list the occasional thing.  I’m not sure yet, I’ll keep you posted.

I’ll be keeping my Tumblr.  It’s had most of my focus recently, so I’ll try and be good and write here more.

#12 | Life, Interrupted by James McConnel

#13 | Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh

#14 | Intimacy by Hanif Kureishi

Again, I’ve not read as many as I should have done this month, but I am also half way through Orlando by Virginia Woolf, and this week I got distracted by One Day by David Nicholls, which I can’t put down.

But back to April’s books.  Life, Interrupted is the story of an undiagnosed tourettes sufferer.  It tells the story of not only the twitches so commonly associated with the illness but the compulsions and obsessions that go with them.  It documents the ups and downs that come with such a life, as a promising musician James attends the Royal College of Music but after realising that alcohol quietens the ‘commander’ in his head, spirals into alcoholism and depression.  The book is written in much the same way that James must think, the story is interrupted and we jump around in time.  This lack of flow did make it difficult to stick at at times, but overall I enjoyed it.

I love Evelyn Waugh.  He is a satirical genius and Decline and Fall is no exception.  It tells the story of poor Paul Pennyfeather who is struck by bad luck at every turn.  Expelled from Oxford he ends up teaching, where he falls for the mother of one of his students, who is not all she seems.  Poor naive Paul.  Brilliantly written characters and a plot thick with coincidences and conspiracies, it’s a very funny read.

Intimacy by Hanif Kureishi left me raging.  It was an intriguing book about a man deciding to leave his wife and children.  I have never read a book before where I hated the lead character so vehemently.  He was selfish and self-important, and the entire book is him justifying his actions, knowing full well that leaving will destroy the lives of his wife and children, but he needs to do it because he’s bored and is really into this girl he’s shagging on the side and just doesn’t feel that he should be held back by the mundanity of domestic life anymore.  Oh it absolutely infuriated me.  But it’s a testament to the quality of the writing that I kept reading, and despite hating the plot and the characters, I will still look out for more Kureishi to read in future!

I’ve been having some major clear outs recently, and today I decided it was time to go through my fashion, art and knitting books to remove the ones I rarely use any more.  So I’ve spent this morning listing them on eBay.  You can view my seller page, where the following titles will be on sale for 1 week:

#1 | Costume & Fashion: A Concise History by James Laver

#2 | 20th Century Fashion by Valerie Mendes & Amy de la Haye

#3 | Sewing Lesson: A Japanese Pattern Book by Machiko Kayaki

#4 | The Harmony Guide To Crochet Stitches

#5 | Digital Illustration: A Master Class in Creative Image-Making by Lawrence Zeegen

#6 | Fabric Savvy: The Essential Guide for Every Sewer by Sandra Betzina

#7 | Fashion Artist: Drawing Techniques & Portfolio Presentation by Sandra Burke

#8 | Wrap & Drape Fashion: History, Design & Drawing by Elisabetta Drudi

#9 | 20th Century Fashion: 100 Years of Style by Decade & Designer by Linda Watson

#10 | The Fashion Book by Phaidon

#11 | London Street Art by Alex MacNaughton

#12 | The Dressmakers Handbook by Rene Bergh

#13 | The Harmony Book of Machine Knitting Stitches

I’m mad on Politics, I studied it for a year in college and it inspired me much more than I ever expected.  It opened up my understanding of everything that went on around me and made me even more opinionated!  In that first year we studied all of the different voting systems and I wrote one of my exam essays on the pro’s and con’s of each, so I’ve been particularly enthusiastic about this vote.

I want change.  FPTP doesn’t work with our modern political system.  It is designed for a system with two political parties  so that whoever gains the most votes, has the majority share of the total votes cast.  We no longer have that, we have 3 main parties and several other minor parties.  This means that the votes are spread more thinly, and often the party with the most votes has far fewer than 50% of the total votes cast.  So by some simple maths that means that the majority of the population voted against the winning party.  How on earth can this give the party a legitimate mandate to form a government and run our country?  It baffles me.

For me AV isn’t ideal, but it’s a step in the right direction.  And it’s how I’ve voted today.  Below are a video and a podcast that explain how AV works, and why we need it.  They are far more eloquent than my rambling type could ever be, so I’ll leave it to them.

Whether you agree with me or not, go and vote!  We won’t get another referendum on this for 20 odd years, so grasp the opportunity to have your say.

http://youtu.be/Jm5IBhrq_PU