Highlight of the day

I like to reflect, at the end of each day, the highlight of that day. It sounds silly but somehow I find it therapeutically. When I lie in bed, running through in my head those things happened during the day - the things I've done, particularly those things I have never done before; the food I've tried for the first time; the interesting or strange people I've met on the street or at work, it is to me rather a kind of life enrichment.

I am thinking now what my highlight of today will be. It has to be the lunch I cooked for Peter, my hubby. It was a simple but effective lunch - lentil, schaeufele and home made pasta. Peter loves lentils, particularly when it goes with pasta, a taste of which is often teased by me. For me, lentils, like soy beans or other legume, are counted as carbohydrate part of any meal. Lentils with pasta is like having rice with bread, it can not possibly be a balance meal, let alone tasty. Anyway, since Peter is particularly fond of the two things in a meal, I thought I'd better make a bit effort to please him.

The shaeufele was bought in Germany when we were there last week, I am not sure if I can buy it in this country. It is sort of like a piece of gammon steak. I cut it into pieces and brown it first. then add the cooked lentils, garlic and green pepper corns; slow cooking until it is tender. While lentil and shaeufele were being cooked, I started making pasta dough by just adding water and a little salt to two cups of semolina, which I bought from a local Asian food store. I normally make the dough a little harder so the pasta will taste more al dente after cooking. It takes no more than 1 minute to cook the freshly made pasta and I have not bought dried pasta for a long long time, it takes far too long to cook and waste a lot of energy I think.

I actually did not expect how tasty the three things were together! I could have sprinkle a bit parsley on top but it was too cold to go out to the green house to get some. The highlight for me today is that I cooked something so simple but made my hubby very very happy. And it actually changed my views on lentils with pasta, perhaps they are indeed best mates :-).

No kneading bread

I stumble across this article (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/08/dining/081mrex.html) taking about how Jim Lahey baking his no kneading bread. His no kneading method is incredibly easy to follow and the results are to some extend rather satisfying. I normally use 6 cups of strong white flour, mix with 1 teaspoon dry yeast, 1 teaspoon salt and enough luke warm water, using a pair of chopsticks to make a rather wettish dough (see picture). Then all I have to do is to do nothing for about 5 hours (the longer the better but I have so far had not tried to let the dough develop for more than 12 hours). After the dough is shaped I will leave it for another hour until the dough is doubled the volumn.

Meanwhile I put my secret weapon (a glass dish with lid) into the oven and heat it at 200 degree C for about 20 minutes. The dish is scotchingly hot by now so when I put the dough into the dish, it won't stick to the surface of the dish. The bread is then baked in the dish with the lid coveredd for 30 minutes and then bake a furthe 20 minutes without the lid. The bread is very crusty when it is still hot, so far so good. My problem is that as soon as the bread gets cooler the crustiness of the bread goes. I am going to try to leave the lid on a bit longer to see if that helps to keep the crustiness a bit longer.

Bread, cookies and biscotti

My mill is broken. Well, strickly speaking, that is not my mill but my husband's. He had it for years (maybe decades) but for the last few years, I have been the one using it. Hubbie is sort of semi-retired from the kitchen. We buy organic grains (wheat, spelt and rye) from an organic grain grower in Germany and mill our own wholemeal flour whenever we make bread. I normally bake about two loaves a week. The bread goes wonderfully with cheese, sausages, salad and Italian style anti-pasti.

I am waiting for the mill to be repaired by the hubbie. Ideally it can be brought back to life again. Should the mill have passed its best before date, I have already set my eye on a KoMo Magic grain mill. It looks gorgeous and should do a good job too.

Meanwhile I have been using commercial flour making white bread. Today I have made a rosemary bread (in the middle of the photo above). It tastes fantastic. Besides baking a bread, I managed to bake some biscotti and cookies. A colleague of mine accidentally bought some muessli with dried fruit in it, which she did not like. Instead of throwing them away, I suggested collect them and said I would find a way to use up those unwanted raisins, dried dates, apricots etc. They have been soaked in amaretto for weeks now and I finally got the time to make something out of it today. When I opened the lid the almondy aroma rushing out the container. I could not help but tasting a fewof the raisins. OMG they tasted unbelivable. I used half to make some walnuts cookies and the remainders were turned into almond biscotti. Both taste delicous. I am really really pleased that something would otherwise have ended into the bin have been given a chance to shine. I have packed them (see photo above with the cookies lying neatly in the round storage box and biscotti packed in the freeze bag) a will bring them to work. I am sure my colleagues would love them.

Swapshop

As trained PAT testers my husband and I volunteered to help testing the portable appliances at a local swapshop. The swapshop was surprisingly well attended. We did about 15 PAT tests, ranging from an almost new bread maker, crepes maker, a couple of kettles, a wall light to a greenhouse heater. It took us about an hour to get all the appliances tested, sadly there were two items did not pass the test, which means they would have to be ended up at the recycling centre.

Swapshop is such a wonderful mechanism to help ourselves and the environment. One has old things that he/she no longer needs, e.g. CDs, books, magazines, clothes, but is too good to throw away; others may find those things are exactly what they would like to have. Swapshop provides a venue to satisfy both the 'bringing' and the 'taking' parties; and save the stuff that would otherwise be sent to landfill sites. I was thrilled to see those coasters, CDs, National Geography magazines and some nice clothes that I had brought in went to a good home... It is really comforting to know that those stuff will be given another lease of life.

Green waste from work

That's the name of the spreadsheet I created back in Febuary this year to record the amount of compostable stuff produced by our team. We are a team of 7 (one works part-time and one left this month so now 5.5 in total) and everyone of us eats fruit more or less on a daily basis. In the past those banana skins, apple stones, orange peels etc were thrown into the normal bins and were most certainly ended up in landfill sites. Starting from 1 Feb, I decided to bring them home, weigh the waste, record the figure and chuck them into my compost bin. I intend to use the data to convince our waste management team that more needs to/can be done to reduce green waste to be sent to landfill sites.

Since I started this project 7 months ago, I have brought home just over 30 kilograms of banana skins, orange peels etc. Considering we are just a small team, the amount of green waste that would otherwise have ended up in landfill sites is astonishing! I am hoping to have composting facilites set up at my workplace so I don't need to carry the waste on my bike everyday.

PV panels and weather

Since we had 12 PV panels installed on our roof about 10 months ago, I have been taking daily metre reading and put them on a spreadsheet for our record. I always enjoy collecting live data,  e.g. monthly water consumtions, electricity usage, gas reading etc and these readings are then recorded on a spreadsheet. Over the years I know exactly how much our utility usages are each month. Those data certainly help me to make an educated decision in terms of choosing the right company to supply our energy etc.

Now I have something more exciting to ready, DAILY solar electricity generation reading. Exciting is because it fluctuates on a daily basis hence you get different reading every day. So far the highest daily reading we had was in June with a whapping 19.3 kilo-watt hours. Considering our average daily electricity usage is 5.5 kw , 19.3 was not a bad one. The lowest reading was zero, unsurprisingly in December last year when the panels were liturally snowed under. The daily average so far is 7.5. Wonderful. I think every suitable roof in this country should be covered with PV panels, that may help us to generate more green energy.

Practice makes perfect

I am not confident in writing anything in English, except for compiling my shopping list ;-)
As the English phrase goes - 'practice makes perfect' - I think it will be a good idea if I write something regularly, something that interests me at least. The more I write the less I will fear of writing and who knows one day I may even be good at it...


The rain has stopped so I'd better be going to town and get ourselves a rabbit for lunch... on my bike of course.