Day Four, nature's bounty

Yesterday's Beetroot and vegetable soup, which did for lunch today as well. There is something about this soup - it is like getting a vitamin injection. Beetroot is going to be on my shopping list from now on, and come March  -
 I'M PLANTING IT!

Dinner - take a bow.

Super cooking day today. I feel like I'm getting my chef groove back! After discussion on the forum of The Fresh Loaf, I found that home-milled flour can often have quite a bitter taste, and that one way to get around this is to "soak" the flour for 24 hours. So yesterday I milled a batch of Grano Duro and Barley flour, added a little salt and then 2 cups of boiling water, to make quite a sticky dough. I left it covered on the kitchen bench overnight. It looked highly unattractive, and had that awful smell that has been putting me off using my mill.

But when I got home from work at 2 p.m., it smelled like BREAD!!! I then added the yeast - I used active dry yeast, 1 tbsp sprinkled on warm water (which I'd dissolved a teaspoon of maple syrup in). It went lovely and frothy. In the end, I had to cheat and mix some store-bought white flour, as I'd obviously put too much water in the night before, but hey! It is all a learning experience. I probably added a cup in total, so it was still predominantly wholemeal flour.

I kneaded it for fifteen minutes, then put it to rise. The children helped me shape it into pita pockets - we made sixteen in total. They were left to rise for another 40 minutes, then I cooked them in batches of four for 8 minutes a piece. They were very puffy, just as they should be. When I took them out of the oven, they went straight under tea-towels to soften.

While all that was happening, I also made Walnut and Mushroom patè (which ended up as more of a dip), a mixed salad (cheated! Opened a mixed salad from the supermarket, and dressed it with olive oil. It had carrots, rucola, lettuce and radicchio), and a kidney bean and tomato salad with a simple oil and balsalmic herb dressing. The table looked bright and inviting, and the house smelled wonderful! 

My son was a loooonnnnnggggggg way from impressed (although he loved the bread), but my daughter cleaned her plate. She's getting excited about Mummy's "new diet" because she's been saying for a very long time that she feels sad when she eats animals. Now she's asking all sorts of questions, and I have a feeling that she might be the reason that this new habit lasts more than 30 days :-) She talked me up to 90 during dinner.

Anyway, there was no dessert tonight, just fruit, which is better for us anyway.