Becky Bakes…

By now I’m sure we are all aware of the apparent shortage of eggs. Many flocks have been culled due to Avian flu and the cost of replacing them has risen by 25%. Add to this the problems with grain supplies for their feed and there’s yet another rise in farmers’ costs. While some shops are limiting the number of eggs customers can buy, Sainsbury’s has begun to import eggs from Europe. This is a risky idea as they are not guaranteed to be salmonella-free, so anyone using them must ensure they are fully cooked – no runny yolks or chocolate mousse made with those eggs. I suspect that there is an egg-mountain building because supermarkets have been unwilling to buy British eggs at the higher price, claiming that consumers won’t pay any more for their eggs. Two supermarkets, Morrisons and Waitrose, have pledged to only sell eggs from Britain and have warned of fewer available. Let’s see if and by how much the price goes up.

We all have them don’t we? Things that annoy us or tastes we don’t enjoy. Let me give you a few of mine – dislikes first; tripe, shellfish, snow, parents who scream at their children. Likes? Sunshine, pale pink roses, fish and chips and, maybe controversially, Marmite. I love the stuff. It’s one of my earliest memories of school days as the factory was nearby and often the playground was bathed in the aroma. This week I saw a short TV programme which explained (almost) how it’s made. It was fascinating yet stopped short of revealing the secret ingredient, but never mind. I’m happy to spread it on toast, put it with cheese in a sandwich, on pastry twists and wheels…. and I’ve even diluted it with warm water for one of our cats to drink. Anyone else a fan?

Have you started planning yet? It’s just 6 weeks till Christmas, but doesn’t feel very wintry with hollyhocks and roses still blooming in the sunshine. Whilst I haven’t made any lists yet, we have placed a small order with M&S and I’ve made the first batch of mincemeat, currently upside down on the worktop. I don’t make Christmas pud as so few of us like it and the last time I made Christmas cakes was with a group of children in an after-school club. We cooked them in small baked bean tins then put marzipan and fondant icing on the top. Two or three coloured packs gave them the freedom to put trees, stars or leaves on top of the white icing. A wide ribbon was tied around the outside, then it was onto a tiny silver board and finally bagged with a gift tag. A couple of mouthfulls and it was gone….quite different from my mothers’ royal iced monstrosity that seemed to go on till Easter!

This week has flown by! It’s been interesting to read your thoughts and experiences of all types of electrical equipment you have bought and found useful – or not. From soup makers to slow cookers, cordless vacuum cleaners and microwaves, we all have different opinions. Many gadgets are given as gifts, with some returned when found more tricky to use than was expected. It seems the slow cooker is still used regularly by many of us and I’m planning to share one of our favourite recipes as a bonus next week. The energy consumption is very low so it costs about 80p to cook a typical casserole, an important factor in these energy sensitive times. Another economical piece of equipment is the microwave oven as it’s cooking time is very short. Speaking of economy I succumbed to buying Jamie Oliver’s new book “One” which is full of recipes which use just one pan and seem to work out at under £1 per serving. I haven’t made anything from it yet, but no doubt there will soon be post-its marking potential trials. And by the way, we’ve filmed a new video this week too, hopefully to be edited and released as soon as possible. x

Many thanks to all of you, both far and near, who joined the discussion about air fryers. It seems many of you have bought these as gifts for young friends with some positive feedback. In order to further my research I called in to our friendly local electrical supply shop where the young assistant was more than happy to chat. In competition with the widescreen TV displaying the rowdy House of Commons and our latest Prime Minister all shouting at once, he told me that they had almost sold out of air fryers after they had been promoted as money savers. There was just one on display, quite chunky – about the size of a bread machine. It had a single basket which looked similar to a deep sandwich tin with a perforated base. The price was reasonable by comparison with the 2 basket versions which he said were more popular. Interestingly after some discussion he decided that I probably wouldn’t get enough use out of one and, to his credit, he certainly didn’t try the “hard sell”. So, to date, my best advocate is the lady I told you about last week, a nonagenarian, who deserves a special mention, still using hers every day. Will I buy one? Probably not, but one of our young friends has added one to their Christmas wish list!

This week saw us trying to buy a new fridge. You can imagine the moment when I realised the old one just wasn’t cold enough and didn’t respond to a change on the dial. Finding a website where a similar one was available was taking too long, so we made a quick trip to our local independent store on the High Street and explained our crisis. Immediately the young man booked us a delivery slot before we discussed exactly what I needed. Within 5 minutes we’d chosen the replacement and knew exactly when it was coming (today!). I’d been planning to discuss air fryers with you this week, in light of the growing anxiety about forthcoming fuel bills, and had hoped to have done some research by this morning, but with the fridge situation that’s been curtailed! Up to now I’ve only met one person who actually has one and uses it frequently and swears by it. The initial cost can be quite high and it seems that, on average, I’d need to use it 83 times before I recoup the cost. It uses super-heated air circulated at high speed and very little oil needs to be used so food cooks very quickly. They seem great for small quantities of food, so probably not economical for family meals. I still haven’t made my decision – it would need to be put away when not in use, but would it then be a case of “out of sight, out of mind”? Have you bought an air fryer? Any thoughts and feedback would be appreciated x

This week it’s been lovely to catch up with TV programmes I’ve missed and one of these is Stanley Tucci in Italy. The second episode is all about the Piedmont region, which happens to be my all-time favourite part of Italy. Why? Well, having lived in Milan for several years we visited all the expected places but avoided Turin, the home of the Shroud and yet another car factory. It was a school visit that took me there many years after we’d left and I regretted not having visited sooner. The architecture, the porticos to protect pedestrians from the weather, the bicherin (a drink of hot chocolate, coffee and cream) and the lack of tourists – wonderful. The Slow-food movement began there as a reaction to all the fast-food outlets opening throughout the country. Our trip took us to Alba, where the truffle auction had taken place earlier that day, and we enjoyed a delicious tasting menu with truffles featuring in almost every course. The biggest shock/surprise of the trip was being told I was due to teach a class of year 9 pupils and was required to make pancakes with them. Straight away I changed it to scones and sent out for ingredients – quite a mission as Self Raising flour isn’t common, with yeast being the preferred raising agent. It transpired that the pupils had little spoken English so I had to do it mostly in Italian, but we managed to make perfect scones and ate them with butter and jam. Not quite what I’d expected to be doing, but it made the trip worthwhile. What a way to “Find Piedmont”!

Having managed to avoid Covid for the last two and a half years it has finally caught up with us both. For anyone who questions why we vaccinate against “just a cold” I can assure them that it’s a lot more than just a cold. You won’t want to read all the symptoms… Many of my friends have impaired or compromised immune systems and for them to catch this it would be very dangerous. Strangely enough, without any inkling of what was about to hit us, earlier this week I felt compelled to complete a whole list of outstanding tasks, a trip to the dry cleaners, the pile of ironing – you get the idea. So staying in bed till mid- morning was easy – no guilt – and two happy cats, were it not for feeling dreadful. One of the many downsides of all this is that we’ll have to miss several events planned for this weekend, not least the chance to meet up with relatives we rarely get to see. Hope you stay well x

True to our word we returned to the allotment with our young friends, this time armed with suitable containers to transport our harvest. Careful not to look greedy we gathered a small collapsible crate-full of apples, with just a few pears. In the meantime, I was on crabapple duty – a task which was more tricky than I imagined. As I pulled a bunch of them off the tree many more fell to the ground, needing to be gathered as well. Help was at hand and very soon we had a shopping bag full of golden cherry-sized fruit. The next day it dawned on me that making jelly with all those would take a very long time, so I started early in the morning. Because of the sheer quantity I couldn’t leave the fruits to drip overnight so the pulp was composted quite rapidly. Measuring the juice and calculating how much sugar to add was left to my Maths expert but nearly 3 kilos went in. Bubbling away for nearly an hour, skimming off the scum and bottling nearly 11lbs of the stuff was very satisfying and will provide our young friends with produce to share!

Last weekend we spent some time visiting young friends who have recently taken over an allotment. To say it was overgrown would be an understatement, but they have begun to clear it and even created a very smart raised bed. Sharing the work (and the fruits of their labours) with friends is a great idea and gets them all out into the fresh air away from their everyday jobs – computers, keyboards and the like. Imagine my surprise when we fought our way through the gate and came upon trees dripping with apples! Obviously I had to try one, it would have been rude not to. It tasted like no apple I’ve ever tasted before, so crisp, juicy and sweet. That was just the first tree, there were two more which were clearly different varieties as well as a crabapple smothered in tiny golden jewels and a promising pear too. We carried away as much of this harvest as we could but realised we’d need to come back soon with boxes and crates to gather more before they fall and rot. A quick search reveals that one tree could be “James Greave”, another is a “Granny Smith” and then also a Pearmain, or maybe a Pippin? More research is needed so we have a return trip booked already x