Just Humans Being...

For a another trip down to the beach... The blue skies tempted us out again today & although we haven't had any frost here - it has still been cold! Lupschki watched us go while basking in the warmth of the sun in our living room window... We joined the coastal path which is 10 minute's walk away... The sky & sea just looked beautiful today... The cottage on the beach.  Now a holiday home owned by National Trust & it costs nearly £100 per night out of season & £300 a night in season! An elderly brother & sister lived there before - they had lived there all their lives & the cottage was falling apart.  They were tenants of NT & no work was done until they both had to left to go into care homes. We're sure NT do good work, but they are certainly good at neglecting their tenants & they only pay their holiday cottage cleaners a little more than minimum wage. (We were approached & turned them down)! The path on to the beach... Looking...

We made our first ever batch of marmalade yesterday... After doing loads of research & having advice from Pattypan  - we took the plunge. We bought a marmalade kit from  Riverford .  This contained Seville oranges & lemons - along with a recipe, which we found a bit complicated, so instead we looked on our bookshelf... The recipe we eventually settled on was taken from:  Val Harrison's  book, We wanted to use brown sugar & this one looked easy to do - although now looking at it online, she's made some changes. Val now suggests to soak overnight, add a litre more water & to weigh the mixture before adding the sugar. It took about 8 hours to do from start to finish & we've ended up with 8 jars of a delicious, though a bit dry (more peel than liquid) mixture. It hasn't set that well, but it's quite thick & it'll be fine - just hope we got the sterilising right... We shall persevere & want to try adding interesting ingredients ...

I'm not sure whether we really save money on making our own bread... But we do prefer it & on the odd occasion when we've had shop bought bread - we realise just how good ours is! Through years of trial & error, a bread machine & bloody hard work, we've found for us the perfect combination of simple ingredients that work every time. It has to be  Shipton Mill  flour. We order an assortment in bulk every few months. For 2 small loaves we use 1 kg strong flour. (We love quite coarse flours or spelt)  We also chuck in a handful or two of seeds... Add 3 teaspoons of sea salt. 1/2 teaspoon of rose hip powder. 20g fresh yeast just crumbled into the flour or 3 teaspoons of dried yeast... And 700mls of warm water. We add the water slowly & stir with a metal spoon... Then knead the dough for about 10 minutes & leave to rise (covered with a damp tea towel) for 1 to 3 hours, depending on the warmth of the kitchen! This is after 2 hours in our cold kitchen...

It's great how quickly we've adapted to living without the central heating...  The three of us just wear lots of layers & Hugo gets into his sleeping bag if needs be. The only problem we find now is going into places that are heated - it kills us! We don't really walk around towns much, but when we did before Christmas - it was unbearable... And the funny thing was, it seemed that it was only us that suffered. Being out in the fresh Cornish air is much more fun... We've embraced life on a budget.  We think about how often we travel into one of the towns (the nearest is St Austell) & seem to need very little. We had already bought large bags of pulses & grains in November, which will keep us going for weeks yet & we have  an organic veg delivery each week, so our outgoings are very little - which thrills us! When we do get busy again in the Spring, we are going to make an effort to continue eating home cooked food -  No more eating out willy-n...