fermenting

It's a testament to the hyper-productivity of runner beans that even in our tiny garden we are having a glut. Yesterday I made runner bean and garlic curry. The girls didn't think much of it. 

 Yesterday I showed the girls how to change over the Kombucha and they did it with me. They are the first people I've known not to go a bit green over the scoby. I have been giving away my new scobys when they come, but I will save the next one, and have three batches of kombucha going at a time. That'll make about 5 bottles of Komucha every ten days which is about the right amount for us. 

Today I am making my first batch of sourdough since the lockdown, when flour scarcity meant that I had to let my starter go. 

I have been reading a super encouraging book by Kate Singh called the Homemade Housewife. Although many of the practical tips are quite common sense, it's a book I would really recommend to any family living on a single income, as her personal story is so inspiring and encouraging. They are a family of four, with pets, living on a single modest income, and who have managed to clear their debts and purchase their own home, simply through being frugal. I have read it before a few years ago, and I do remember enjoying it but I think something about it didn't quite connect with me. I think maybe now after having tried out working and having two incomes, and then returning to being a single income family I am seeing more how that needs to be a deliberate way of living and will require a change in lifestyle. 

This morning we went to the local library, which is something we generally do two or three times a month, and then visited the loveliest bakery on the way home. Today I had a vegan pasty, Ivy had a toscana which is a caramelly almond cake, Will had an apricot Macaroon (the British kind, not French) and Hazel had a mushroom cake, which it the best thing they sell - a pastry case filled with grey icing, which has been marked with the mushroom's gills, and then a marzipan stem. 

I have requested a couple of books from the library about how to use social media for your business. It's all a mystery to me, and I think is probably necessary these days. I don't want to start wrong and end up throwing good after bad. I must remember to the use the library more.