Granola and a loaf.

Here's a copy of the Well Bread! post about Granola, in case you missed it.


We went to Totnes Market on Friday, and I brought a bag of Peanut Granola from the Common Loaf Bakery stall. I've been a huge fan of them for a long time now and their produce is probably the best bread I've ever tasted.
I fancied making my own Granola for a while now, and seeing theirs and trying it gave em the push to have a go for myself.

I found a recipe for the basic mixture online, just Oats, Brown Sugar, and Cinnamon looking around the cupboards I found Pistachio nuts, Walnuts, Cranberries and Chocolate Chips to use for a filling.
My recipe had no indication of the amount of fillings to use but I figured that as long as they were no more than 50% of the total ( 270g of Oats) it should be OK.

Here's the dry mixture, Oats and filling plus Sugar and Cinnamon, just a pinch of salt.

And here's the Canola Oil and Honey, with a dash of Vanilla.

Mixed together we have this, which I spread out on a lined sheet.

I baked it at 140 for 25 minutes and left to cool.

After it had gone hard I broke it into pieces and stored it away.

That's breakfasts sorted for the next few days.

I also made a Soft Wholemeal Sandwich loaf for this week.

And looking out this evening, next door have put their tree up outside.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

New Phone



After a few weeks where my phone has been playing up and getting slower and slower I finally managed to upgrade it.

 

After wiping all the data off of it, I sold it for £70 which paid for a case and screen protector for the new one, and a day out in Totnes last Friday with a good lunch, result!

 

The new phone has a better camera, and I took a few pictures on my dog walk yesterday to try it out. There was a lot of low cloud and it was very moody over toward Dartmouth, I like the way they came out.

 

 

 

My dogs enjoyed the walk as well,

and the sun shone over Berry Head as we got back to the road,

past some cows who came over to say hello.

Today I'm going to make some Granola, so I'll let you know how that goes next time.

Its the last day of NaNoWriMo and Ribbonworld stands at 65,831 words. So with my week off due to illness I haven't quite made the 50,000 words I had hoped but the story is finished so that's an achievement.

I will leave it for a couple of weeks now and then start revising it. After New year it can go off to agents.

Off Sick

Sorry I have been absent for a couple of weeks, I have been even more sick than usual, I twisted my back and had to spend a couple of days ling flat out, every time I tried to move my body said No Way and my lower back went into some sort of spasm, not nice at all.

It felt like I had no control over my muscles, in fact I HAD no control over my muscles. Anyway I'm more mobile now and trying to catch up with everything that I should have done.

NaNoWriMo has slipped a bit, I now need 3000 words a day to finish my first draft, I have enough written (I think) to have made it worthwhile though, you can't really plan for illness can you?

Before all this happened, we went up to see Amy and Harry, not forgetting Elsa and had a great time, Yvonne made a White Chocolate and Raspberry Cheesecake, which was sensational, it had a coconut biscuit base - WOW.

I also made a Walnut and Cranberry Loaf to take up, and some Saffron Buns.

We saw a good sticker on the rear of a car in front of us in Brixham and managed to get a picture while stopped at the lights, my sort of humour.

Elsa is loooking lovely as ever, six months old now,

and I have made a few loaves, notably a white cob which was superb.

Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible, meanwhile I have a lot of stuff to catch up on.

Festive Cookies

Here's the Cinnamon, Orange and Chocolate Cookie. It tastes pretty special, I'll take samples around tomorrow, along with this weeks orders.

NaNoWriMo is going well, 18000 words in 10 days, I'm trying to get ahead so I can have the weekend off, things to do.

Its taken over!

NaNoWriMo has taken over my life. I haven't blogged or done much baking since the start of November. Ribbonworld is playing like a film in my head and I'm having trouble typing fast enough to keep up.

I can see now why you should finish your manuscript before sending any samples off to an agent. I must have changed the first few pages a dozen times as the plot unfolds.
 
And I mean unfolds, sometimes I seem to have little input, I just type what I see in my minds eye. Already things have gone in strange directions and ways that I hadn't planned. So goodness knows what the end result will be.

So at the end of week one the scores are :

Words written 11727 (1675 per day)
Book size now, 40008 words (about 50% complete)
Words to go, about 38318 in 23 days at 1666 words per day.

Based on NaNoWriMo 50000 words in November.

I think we are on track.

Quick update

The story is pouring out at the moment, I dont want to stop it in case it doesn't start again.

In the last 4 days I have written over 7000 words. I now have the basic story complete, it's just a case of filling in the discription and dialogue now. Every time I close my eyes I'm there.

Total is 35372 words so about half way to completion. Got to go now.

Bread and Butter Pudding and NaNoWriMo update

I'm afraid the blog posts will be a little light on words this month, as I'm pouring all my energy into finishing Ribbonworld. I emailed a publishers agent on Friday, with some questions about submission, I got a reply too, which was unexpectedly fast, anyway rather than send the first few chapters now with the book unfinished, she advised me to wait until I had the whole story finished and then send the first bit.

Funnily enough, this has motivated me to finish, and it proved to be good advice, I wrote about 2,300 words yesterday, some of which suggested changes in the part I would have sent off. Changes for the better, that developed the plot.

At one point yesterday I was completely in the zone, the story was playing out like a movie in my head and I was just writing down what was going on. Like watching a meeting in a coffee shop and copying down the conversation, no thoughts or emotions, just writing what you see and hear.

The first time that happened, it felt weird, I mean where was all this coming from, the characters were saying things that I hadn't considered. The plot moved in a different direction and so many more possibilities opened up from a series of events that just flowed onto the page. After I looked back at what I had put down, I still can't work out what made me start or where it came from.

The idea of NaNoWriMo is to get 50,000 words down in 30 days, that equates to 1666 per day. With 2257 done I am above this, but there is still a long way to go.

In a way it was nice to go and do some cooking, but I'm sure that the film will start again soon, and I will be there to capture it. 

I have had so much spare bread left over at the moment that I have been looking at ways to use it up.

Bread and Butter pudding is an obvious choice, but instead of just putting sultanas in it, I used Golden Raisins, Cranberries, Flaked Almonds and Dark Brown Sugar as well. I also added Vanilla Essence to the custard.

It was rather nice, there's enough for tonight as well, after our roast Gammon.

The film is starting again, I don't want to miss a thing.