Busymum and the International Socks of Doom

I am a bad blogger - it's been over a week since I posted anything and I think that's the longest I've ever gone without actually planning to take a break so apologies for my unexplained absence.



Cameron's new ventures have gone into overdrive which means that for the time being his schedule is kind of crazy and for me that means a lot of to-ing and fro-ing, not to mention waiting around.  I'm happy to do it, of course.  It's wonderful that he's so active and engaged in projects but the busyness has well and truly interrupted my flow.

One of the things I love most about my having taken up knitting is that there are so many opportunities to fit it into everyday life.  Right now my knitting of choice is socks, I find them to be a really portable project and most of all I love that I can transform what could be boring waiting around time into something really creative and efficient.
Pool-side, park-side, on trains, on buses, in cars, waiting rooms, reception areas and cafes I sit and I wait, and I knit socks. 



I have been enjoying a free sock pattern I found on Ravelry called International Sock of Doom.  The socks are ribbed but the Rib of Doom is a slight variation on usual ribbing (which I find rather monotonous) and so it's enough to keep me interested but not so challenging that I lose my place when someone starts a conversation mid-needle! 
I also love that the pattern uses DK yarn so the socks knit up quite quickly (I'm falling a little bit in love with merino!).
If our schedule continues this way then every gift I give this year and every blog post I write may end up being socks.

Any how, I don't have much else interesting to say but I wanted to pop in and say Hello. 
I plan to find something new to write about within the next week because life socks without you! 

The Bad Influence of Food Porn - Day 17: Sugar Free Fail

Confession: I had a slip yesterday and ate ice-cream.

After a really quite horrible day in which I battled with my hormones, spent hours waiting around in the freezing icy weather, travelled on nine buses (one of which I fell over on - wearing a skirt.), had an eye test (I'm not a fan of these) and an extremely challenging and inappropriate encounter with a neighbour, I decided to settle down in the evening, get cosy and watch a film.  Unfortunately, I didn't realise that the film I had ready to watch was one I had picked last year from a list of Best Food Films of All Time.

Have you seen The Waitress?  If you haven't and you're a food fan then you will want to see it.  It is a full length film of food porn with a slightly cheesy inspirational story coincidentally happening around it. 
All of the food featured is pie - every kind of sweet pie you can think of and some you never would.  I had to take screenshots just to show you what I was dealing with, here.



And



and



See?!



In my weakness I remembered the ice-cream left over from new years and before I knew it I was in a sugar rush of palpitations and giddiness that pulsed through my body and took some climbing back from before I could get to sleep.

Lesson learned I shall choose my viewing times for food porn more carefully and I will not be revisiting sugar again in a hurry!

Bright Eyes, Green Smoothies

In recent months as I have researched for lifestyle changes I have read a LOT of contradictory health information but one thing that all sources seem to agree on is that we should increase our intake of vegetables and more specifically, green leafy ones. 
I happen to love green leafy vegetables - salads, stir fries, throwing them into stews, soups, sauces - the uses for greens really are endless.  However, my veg eating habits seem to centre around my evening meal and one of my new goals is to incorporate more alkaline veggie goodness into all of my meals. 

Green smoothies were the obvious choice but whilst I loved the idea of them, I couldn't get my head around what I had perceived as a green sludgy drink, akin to cold raw soup (I know some people like cold soup and even think it's a bit of a delicacy - I just can't get past the feeling of wrongness about it which is why I'm not at the stage where I can contemplate green juices, yet). 
Could a kale drink be a breakfast I'd ever be excited to wake up to?  There was only one way to find out.



I probably should have started with some recipes but you know what I'm like about following rules! I dived straight in with a bit of guidance from this photo on Pinterest and the results were OK - edible, but didn't blow me away.

Once I was over my fear of green drinks I began tweaking to (hopefully) concoct something that would give me energy, add veggies to my day, and not rely on a lot of acidic fruit or any sweetening to be appetising.  I was sceptical that the green smoothie idea in my head actually existed but it did - it just turned out to be purple! And although I'm still experimenting I'm definitely on to a winning idea now, I think.



My current favourite green/purple smoothie consists of cucumber, kale, the fresh juice of half an orange, ice, a small handful of frozen blueberries, peanut butter, raw cacao powder and a small amount of almond milk/coconut milk/homemade yoghurt.

And the results from adding more veggies to my days - incredibly bright, sparkly eyes and clear skin - what more motivation could I need?

Do you do the smoothie thing? I'd love to know your favourite combinations.

Right now

{Enjoying} new found energy

{Absorbing} glimpses of Winter sunshine and occasional Spring-like breezes

{Dreaming} of Spring

{Planning} what to grow this year

{Eating} soup, soup and more soup!

{Knitting} with colours to match the early spring bulbs sprouting



{Organising} a new and hopefully workable household routine

{Growing} windowsill pea shoots for Winter salads

{Nurturing} second hand items that are new to our home

{Loving} flowers lovingly gifted from the garden by Cameron

{Wishing} you a wonderful weekend!

Gluten free bread 1.0

I'd like to start today's post by saying that I am in awe of all the people out there who are baking gluten free out of necessity.  Gluten free ingredients are expensive and harder to find, workable recipes are not always simple to source and different ingredients mean gloopy mixtures and that you really have to learn to bake all over again, developing new instincts.

To begin my gluten free bread baking adventures I went to the supermarket and bought ready made gluten free bread.  I wanted to have something to compare my own creations to and while supermarket breads in general are not a great level of standard, it gave me a starting place to work from.  There may be other varieties available but I only found one - a multi-seed loaf - which turned out to be 8 tiny slices that were vacuum packed.  It tasted like cardboard, there wasn't a single appealing thing about it - even the crunch was disappointing.
At least now I knew that whatever I came up with in my own kitchen couldn't be any worse!

The next step up from ready made supermarket bread was to use a gluten free flour blend and the recipe recommended on the back of the packet (I went with Doves Farm because it was the only one I could find!).
The ingredients required were very different from my wheat flour breads, requiring eggs etc - it felt more like making a cake mixture than bread.  At this point I wimped out of mixing the bread by hand and decided to use my breadmaker.

My breadmaker does not have a gluten free setting as some models do.  The recipe on the flour packet suggested the basic setting and with further research, the breadmaker booklet agreed.  This setting has two proving rounds before baking which aren't really necessary when there is no gluten in your dough, however I found that it did help to make a very smooth mixture.  The only new thing I needed to do was to scrape down the sides of the tin a couple of minutes into the first mixing in the bread maker.

Whilst the bread baked, I began to realise just how much wheat contributes to the taste and aroma of most breads.  I had previously thought that yeast was the main contributor to the sensory delights of bread baking.

Three hours later I removed a tidy cube loaf of bread from the breadmaker.  I observed a good colour and crust and checked with a skewer to see that it was cooked all the way through before leaving it to cool.

The bread sliced very neatly and looked like bread:



It was more dense than the fluffy bread we are used to but not in a heavy way, like with bread that has failed to rise.  The texture was more cake-like than I was expecting and more filling so smaller portions would be required. 
The real test for me was how it toasted because, having been wheat-free for over a week at that point, the one thing I was missing was toast!  I found it toasted well but needed a bit longer than wheat bread.  The all important crunch factor was excellent however I found the bread lacking in flavour.
Like most gluten free bread, it requires warming to refresh it after baking day.

My verdict: acceptable as a bread substitute, particularly when toasted, but only to accompany other things with dominant flavours, it isn't a stand-alone bread. 

Do you have a go-to recipe for gluten free bread? I would really appreciate tried and tested recommendations.

Sourcing Stevia

Photo credit

Another of my health goals for this year, alongside breaking up with wheat, is eliminating refined sugar from my diet. I know that I am not alone in that I used to think that sugar only posed a risk to dental health (and obviously mood changes because of blood sugar spikes) but further reading has really opened my eyes.

As a huge skeptic about the safety of sweeteners it seemed like giving up sugar was going to be very difficult. I was aiming at sparingly substituting sugar with raw honey or molasses, for want of a better alternative, when I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Stevia has now been approved (as of December 2011) as a food item in the European Union.

I have read good things about Stevia in the past few years - it has been approved in other countries for decades. It seems that Stevia is favoured over artificial sweeteners because it comes from the herb Stevia (which can actually be used in herb form as a sweetener) and because it has a negligible effect on blood glucose.

I am terrible at knowing the "right" places to research the reliability of these things and the situation with being duped over information on agave nectar makes me even more wary. However, I have read sources that I trust approve and even recommend Stevia so I am tentatively moving forward with it.

Before Christmas I was asked if I would like to try some of the new Tate & Lyle Light at Heart which is mixed with refined sugar, advises using half the amount you usually would and comes in both brown and white sugar varieties. I found it fine for my Christmas baking and haven't run into any problems with using it as a substitute so far. I think it's a useful half-way point if you want to reduce the amount of sugar you use but not give it up completely. It is also granulated, which makes it more versatile than a lot of sweetener products.

This week I visited my local health food shop and found half a shelf devoted to Stevia products from a range of companies. I haven't tried baking with it yet. The Stevia I bought claims it can be substituted spoon-for-spoon as you would use sugar, however I am finding it much sweeter so am using about a third of the amount. I haven't tried baking with it yet.

Some say that Stevia has a liquorice-like aftertaste and I certainly think it has a taste but it is far from unpleasant.

Apologies if this is common knowledge - I have blocked a lot of media advertising from my daily life but I suspect that Stevia is probably being pushed with the new year weight loss foods this time around.

Do you have an opinion of Stevia? I'd love to hear other's views on it.

Battening Down the Hatches

I had something else I wanted to write about here today but the weather is so incredibly crazy that I'm struggling to concentrate. In fact I'm beginning to feel like Laura Ingalls in The Long Winter - if we do not meet our end from being blown away by the strong winds then I'm sure we are going to be driven mad by the constant howling!

Mother Nature had a busy night rearranging fences, bins and garden furniture. As I write this post it is not yet light but already I can see there is plenty of damage. These are the perils of living on top of a hill, I suspect.

Today we are battening down the hatches. I predict there will be much knitting, board game playing and cocoa drinking.

I hope you are safe, wherever you are x

A Really Useful Knitting Project

Sometimes it's nice to knit decorative things, like the snowdrops in my current blog banner, sometimes it's nice to knit semi-useful things like doilies and place mats that I can swap and change according to my mood or the season but my latest knitting project is something that I can use most days and there's something particularly satisfying about crafting a really useful item, I think.



I have had a "string" bag pattern in my Ravelry queue for a long time. I think I favourited it as a one-day project, you know the kind - a project to aspire to, sometime in the future, when my skills were up to it. Since then I have added three similar bags to my queue and when I spotted some beautiful colour combinations of cotton yarn that would be perfect for the project at my local wool shop at the beginning of December I decided to bite the bullet and give it a try.

As with nearly all new knitting projects that I challenge myself with, it wasn't as difficult as it seemed.

I cast on using the pattern that originally inspired me: Everlasting Bagstopper (Ravelry link here). I chose this one of the three because it has a solidly knit base, which I think adds strength (the bag stretches a LOT, even with cotton) and also a buffer against losing items out of the holes at the bottom.

I had never knit mesh (or turkish knitting, as some call it) before but it turned out to be incredibly easy - yo k2tog on repeat to the end of the row, alternating with a knit row.

I made a one stitch error whilst attempting to knit at a noisy children's Christmas party but I have been assured that it is only really noticeable when I point it out to people so I have let my perfectionist criticism slide this time.

The part I found most challenging was picking up the stitches around the edge of the base - as I mentioned with my knitted baubles, this is not my strong point with knitting - but I managed it without too much trouble. If you wanted to avoid this and skip the solid base you could go with the simpler Purl Soho pattern.

I modified the pattern for the top of the bag, originally inspired by the Grrlfriend Market Bag, however on closer inspection I didn't like the idea of only one handle so I improvised my own design for the handles, which I am very proud of and I love the colours I chose.

More details and instructions for the handles are on my Ravelry "String" Bag project page.

I have to admit that I am really taken with knitting at the moment. I was joking over Christmas about how I might have to rename this blog "thingshannahknitted.com" if I carry on this way!

Have you been knitting over the festive period? Planning some new year projects? What's on your needles at the moment?

Happy New Year (because I can't think of a more original title)

I give you the warmest of welcomes today and wish you a Happy New Year!

I don't think I have ever been more excited than I have been this time around about celebrating new year. It's silly really but the beginning of a new year feels like a symbolic barrier has been placed between all of the difficult things I dealt with last year and myself, now. Mix that excitement with a lovely relaxing Christmas break and it means that I'm feeling ready to leap into this new chapter of my life with more energy and enthusiasm than I've had for quite some time.

This time last year was right before I started packing us up to move home, the consequences of which rippled through our entire year. Being in January again feels very much like a second chance and many of my goals for the year are similar to the ones I had hoped to achieve last year and didn't manage.

Last night we celebrated with 2012 inspired pizza and our annual walnut boat candle wishes ritual, setting sail a wish for ourselves and a wish for someone else.

What to expect from me this year:

Less Whinging!

I know I did a lot of this last year and I actually started to annoy myself with it so if you're still reading then thanks for sticking with me!

More Knitting

Knitting is really floating my boat right now, I'm planning to be brave and challenge myself to tackle more technically challenging things.

Less Baking (gasp!)

My main resolution this year is to focus on my health and one of the ways I have chosen to approach this is by moving away from grains (among other things), beginning with wheat. This is excellent news for you if you're gluten/wheat-free or would like to be because I am going to be experimenting in the kitchen with gluten-free baking.

More Veggies

From growing my own to preparing, cooking, preserving and foraging; my goal is that there will be a lot of veggies featuring this year.

My veg patch was a bit of a disaster last year and this time around I aim to spend a lot of my time and energy taking control of the garden.

How about you - do you find the new year inspirational?

Craving Salad?

Hello there!
I hope you enjoyed your Christmas. We had a lovely relaxed time which was just what we needed. Gift giving, family visits, movies, enjoying our new things, chatting about possibilities for the new year, restful knitting and lots of wonderful, rich food! Today though, as always happens following our gluttonous celebrations, we were seriously craving salad.




I was recently sent some Higher Nature organic apple cider vinegar to try out so I thought it would be a perfect opportunity to try out some home made salad dressings.
I went straight for my recently thrifted Cordon Bleu books to learn more about making classic salad dressings from scratch and learnt that it's all about ratios. In the past I have tended to throw some ingredients in a jar haphazardly, shake it and hope for the best but the results have never been anything particularly special.

Today I made a basic Cordon Bleu French Dressing using one part apple cider vinegar to three parts olive oil, adding salt and freshly ground pepper, and then turned it into a vinaigrette by adding a generous amount of roughly chopped chives and surprised myself by how much better salad dressings can be when you follow a simple ratio rule. My Cordon Bleu book also advises that if you find it too sharp or oily to add more salt.

I think I actually prefer the taste of apple cider vinegar to my usual white wine vinegar. The vinegar I was sent boasts that it contains the "mother" which I had to look up, because a vinegar connoisseur; I am not. The mother is in fact the natural sediment and is the true sign of raw, unfiltered vinegar. It contains pectin, trace minerals, friendly bacteria and enzymes which are lost in the filtering and pasteurisation process with other vinegars.

There's something a bit wonderful about vinegar, I think - according to the information I received with the vinegar it is said to aid digestion and when diluted can be used on abrasions, as a skin toner and as a hair rinse. I also use vinegar (although not the apple cider variety) for a lot of my home cleaning jobs and occasionally as fabric softener in the washing machine when we run out.

I love vinegartips.com for more information about uses for magical vinegar. Perhaps I should have titled this post "ode to vinegar" haha!