Mini Harvest

Seeing as the weather's been unusually good today I say on the front step earlier and was looking around my garden. As I looked at a pot I'd been growing lettuce in I remembered that I'd planted garlic lower down in the pot. I had a root round and found these little lovelies -

Then I noticed that the rosemary had shot up so broke off a couple of sprigs and added them to the sweetcorn chowder I was making (it's simple and filling and very yum - I want to post the recipe here but need to weigh out the ingredients first and time it cooking, as I usually do it by sight and guessing). 'Twas blissful in a soily, garlicy, rosemary kind of way.

I also made bread. I havn't done it after work before but I found it relaxing to mix together the ingredients, knead the dough and enjoy the slow transformation over the evening from this...

After the first rising

...to this...

Bready bread

The recipe is straightforward herby bread (I added two tea spoons of dried chives to this one) and is from a cook book I have so I can't post it here, but I've found this one which is very similar if you'd like to give it a go. I think it's worth making bread at least once; it's slow and you may not make it often, but it's satisfying and pleasing to make. With this batch I've frozen half the dough after the first rising to see if it freezes and defrosts well. The loaf pictured is made with half of the batch of dough and is enough for three or four people with a bowl of soup or stew.

I was also pleased to find that my pjamas match my tea towel, and that both tie in nicely with my apron.