Organic-Ally

This is now one of my fail-safe recipes. I start on this at 5.30pm by turning the oven on to 220C, prep the ingredients, and put the dish in at 5.45pm when the oven is up to temperature. At 6.15pm I remove the lid and let the chicken continue to brown and crispen up for 15-20 minutes, hoping that husband gets home by 6.40pm or whenever to eat it with us. The important thing is to cover for the first two-thirds of cooking to prevent meat from drying out. I used to cook this in a roasting tray and cover with tin foil. I thought this was wasteful of tin foil. I tried buying a lid to fit the tray, but failed. Then while trying to bake sourdough bread discovered my husband's father's mother's enamel roasting tin that is rather ancient, hidden and forgotten in a dark corner in the cupboard. It looks like this, and I am borrowing an image and link from a well-known retailer for which I am not paid: http://www.lakeland.co.uk/13262/Traditional-Enamel-Round-Roaster It's a...

This is based on a post I put up earlier for friends in Singapore. After baking my bread today I came across this article . It does not take all that long to knead, but you must be patient with waiting for the dough to rise. I now gather all the ingredients together before starting and can get a lump of dough ready for first proofing within 20 minutes.   It's cheaper to buy a packet of yeast rather than the 7g sachets. In the UK and if you have room, you could also have bigger bags of flour delivered. Better still if you could get locally-grown and/or milled flour. You need STRONG flour. White, wholemeal, granary, whatever, or a combination. I now regularly use 1 kg of flour, usually a mix of wholemeal and white and/or granary. I normally make one loaf (about 950g wet weight) and turn the rest into rolls of about 70g (wet weight), some of which I take into the advice charity on Mondays just in case we get clients who have gone hungry or are homeless. ...

My husband and I had been thinking of moving to the country when he retires and we dream of keeping honeybees and chickens and growing our own vegetables, etc. Last night we were in Devon to celebrate his mum's 80th birthday. We had a great time but I was nervous about travelling knowing how treacherous the weather promised to be. Thankfully husband drove well (as usual) and I suspect given the weather warnings, only those who needed to travel, did, and the roads were pretty clear. Still the rain beat down. We checked into a riverside inn in Bovey Tracey, rested, and met up at the pub restaurant for the party. When we were leaving after the party the staff told us that the road we arrived by was flooded and traffic was not getting through. So husband, who knew that area well, chose a different route. Once we got into the car the local radio notified us of various flood spots and, of course, that the river had burst its banks at Bovey Tracey. Ah! What do we do? Son in th...

A certain man made this statement: Team GB chief: dominance of public schools is unacceptable . But of course, he must have been quoted out of context. I had to go out to buy some ginger to put into my slow cooker where the glorious aroma of cinnamon and star anise means the belly pork must surely taste wonderful come dinner time. There was a steel band made up of young people (black and white) performing at the town centre. In the sunshine. I found myself thinking: now how would the lives of our young people be different if they are required to be in a steel band, a marching band, a school cadet corp, a competitive sport, etc. for all the years that they are at school. This goes back to my own school days when I spent so much time playing in the school band and orchestra I had no time to get up to any mischief (or pregnant). Every year we had a marching band competition. We had a concert band competition. We played in concerts from the presidential residence to public ...

My cousin and her husband passed through Heathrow early this morning. My husband met them to collect a package of food for me. I was delighted that she had brought fresh food. My son watched me eat a strange red thing which we call "ang koo kueh", or "red tortoise". He watched me tear off the banana leaves from the bottom of this "cake" and said, "Banana leaves." I said, "Yes, banana leaves, completely biodegradable." Son also chose to buy me a large basket of flowers for "Yummy Mummy" this Mothering Sunday. I really appreciated it. However, it came wrapped in yards of a plasticized clear wrap. It is very difficult to find real cellophane these days, the crinkly variety that actually biodegrades when exposed to light and air. I look forward to a week of eating dumplings wrapped and steamed in banana leaves. Yumm!

Some weeks ago I dealt with a young man from the Horn of Africa. I came this close to throttling him. He slumped into my office and started off straightaway with "I want to know what benefits I am entitled to". [Why should he be "entitled" to anything? He has not contributed a penny to the British economy.] He told me he was being given some benefits in another part of the country and so clearly he was "entitled" to those benefits. But his JSA (JobSeekers Allowance) was stopped because the woman at the Job Centre said as a student he is not looking for a job and should not be entitled to JSA. This woman is right. Otherwise every college student would be claiming JSA but these students are not really prepared to leave their courses to work. The point is without his JSA his Housing Benefit (paying rent) and Council Tax Benefit (paying council tax) were also stopped. So this poor chap had to move in with his sister. Previously he had "his...