“The bread was so powerfully aromatic that, had I been alone, I would have been tempted to push my face into it.”

This was the sentence, penned by Michael Pollan in ‘Cooked’, that made me want to make sourdough. Up until then, i had relegated it to the domain of intense foodie-types with surplus time on their hands. Then i became one of those people around about my early thirties, so it was time to harness the elusive airborne yeasts and begin. My first starter was frankly a disaster. I used fancy organic rye flour, bottled water and a pretty-looking Kilner jar, surely the elements of success. After a few days of discarding and adding to the precious elixir, i was left with nothing more than an expensive, foul-smelling wall plaster. For several weeks thereafter, it greeting me mockingly from where i had hidden it in cupboard, too stubborn (and stingy) was i to call it a failure. This was an error, people. The final product was a black, volcanic substance with a smell perhaps reminiscent of the earliest forming of algae 3 billion years ago.

Kilner jar and all in the bin, i took to the internet in search of a shortcut. Turns out there’s lots of starter to buy online. San Franciscan, English, German, whatever. My little packet of 30 year old Derbyshire gloop arrived neatly sealed in a Ziplock, and was soon bubbling merrily in a (new) jar the next day. I fed it for a week, daily, thinking this was all very labour intensive. I later discovered that a 12-hour feeding schedule was in fact preferable, for maximum starter health. Heck, you’d think i’d bought a puppy. After a week of all this i was half expecting to come home from work one day and find a sourdough loaf just sitting there on the bench, such was the effort already invested. No such luck.

Then came the real work. On a Tuesday night i prepared my ‘sponge’ or ‘leaven’, a mixture of starter, flour and water which serves as the pre-cursor for the dough proper. Hesitantly i peered into the covered bowl 12 hours later to find a pleasantly risen pouffe. This was promising.

Wednesday, my day off. A perfect opportunity to get acquainted with the real business of bread-making: kneading. However, as i have already confessed to being an inveterate short cutter and nothing like the purist i need to be for making sourdough, one will not be surprised to learn that the Kitchenaid pounded my dough whilst i sat and had a nice leisurely cup of tea. Once smoke was beginning to emerge from the mechanism of my kitchen friend, I turned out the dough and did a few token kneading gestures to check it wasn’t concrete, and to examine for the elusive gluten. Mechanical kneading risks over-working the dough and losing all the helpful protein that creates the bread architecture, the quintessence of a sourdough loaf. Without being any clearer on the presence or otherwise of gluten, i plopped my dough into a bowl and proceeded with stage 65 which is the first rise. This is where you discover if the yeast culture has any life within. My dough rose pleasantly enough the first time, so i knocked it back, and repeated this all again a few hours later. Next stage: the proving basket (‘bannetone’). I wished it well, briefly carried out the laying on of hands, and left it to hopefully double in size over the rest of the day.

Miraculously, a reasonable rise had occurred. Not quite a double upper, but not a boulder either. Into a hot oven it went, alongside a tray of water to help crust formation, where hopefully the final rise occurs. The smell of baking bread wafts around the flat (quick, put it on the market!!), and a good hour later my boule emerges. Not a looker, you’ll agree, but a passable first time loaf. Edible, just about, and a decent sour flavour. I’ll settle for that.

I recently took a trip to London Baby. This is the official and complete term for our nation’s capital, by the way. The premise was to partake of a 2 day international medical conference, but this was merely a ruse. The real reason was of course to check out some local ‘vintiquing’ hotspots, and do some DGAF shopping. (For the un-initiated, this is a well rehearsed salvage sister survival acronym, sadly unpublishable in this context.) During the first morning of the conference, I managed to recruit some fellow miscreants to come along with me during lunch to the Old Spitalfield Thursday Flea Market. Just a few stops on the underground, and a frenzied walk from Liverpool Street got us there in reasonable time for a dig around. In any case, who actually benefits these professional ‘networking’ lunches anyway?! Much better to scoff your salmon, move directly past the free pen table and escape for an hour of leisurely market browsing.

The market had a decent number of good stalls, with some more specialist sellers eg antique giant maps, cornish crockery, silverware. Being in central London though, the prices rose accordingly and i couldn’t quite bring hand to pocket in order to make any purchases. The value of going to these high quality markets for me is to gather ideas, find out what is popular, and brush up on items to watch out for elsewhere at half the price.

Malkie and I have been in London every year for the past 6 odd, and almost always take a trip to Leon. The Spitalfield branch is the best, and was the first one i went to, having cooked my way through the first book shortly after it was published around 2008. It was a surprise to discover Leon is essentially a fast food chain, but that doesn’t diminish its appeal. Here we have moroccan chicken, cool ‘slaw’ sides and traditional lemonade – shlurp! Plus a free orange brownie thrown in for good measure.

Friday morning and my enthusiasm was undiminished, so like a woman possessed I arose early and headed south. I read somewhere recently that Bermondsey Market was a must-see. In operation since 1950, this is local trade at its finest. Though it was a lot further than I had anticipated, the walk was worth it to see this wonderfully named shop en route.

The market itself was pretty quaint, with about 20 stalls of mainly antique dealers with some interesting wares. After chatting to a guy about the demise of the market in recent years, I bargained him down to £10 for these original copper letters spelling a word close to my heart.

My other purchase was this large Beryl Woods Ware 1940s teapot for £8. The elderly seller and I got chatting about the pot, which was part of her original wedding gift list together with the tea set. She seemed quite delighted to hear I had many of the original cups and saucers, as well as some from the yellow Jasmine range, so she was eager to strike a deal. In a tenuous but nonetheless relevant link to my husband, this exact tea set is often used on the set of Endeavour, the prequel to Morse. As a former non-Calvert i did not understand the appeal of the murder mystery programme, but now that I am a complete convert I thought a reference to the TV series might soften the blow for Malkie, who inevitably ended up lumbered with this ruddy teapot for the rest of our travels around London.

Wood’s Ware probably isn’t high tariff crockery as yet, but I reckon it will be a rising star for vintage aficionados in the next decade. So I’m starting my collection early folks.

Any blog devotees (whoever you are, because I don’t actually know) will be aware that I have been talking about painting the living room for a while now. The major delay in this project was the sourcing of a suitably dusky yet delicious, low-key pink. If pink is the new black, which it is, then F&B, Little Greene and all the other big players need to address their pink department. It seems the only pinks on offer are too pale, too cold (ie too much blue in the pigment) or too dark. Meanwhile, Fired Earth, which seems to be enjoying notable popularity at present, has some lovely shades on offer. I had originally opted for this chalky “Orchard Pink’, but it’s much lighter than it appears here against the white background.

 The perfect shade for our fairly dark, east-facing living room was “First Date’.

Having chosen the main colour, I was happily deluded that the main work was done. What followed seemed to illustrate rather well the classic sequence of events which i frequently find myself accustomed to, when it comes to decoration. Here’s a rough map…

Stage 1: Commit to taking time off work in order to get things going. This usually takes about 12 months, because who wants to spend their holiday time painting the living room?

Stage 2: Wake up on said day, and launch directly into moving heavy furniture around single-handedly, creating large scratches on the wooden floor but nevertheless succeeding to get everything piled into the centre. Prepare brushes and paint pots hastily and without recourse to protection of flooring, in anticipation of finally seeing the long-awaited colour on the wall. Roughly stir the pot so that only half the pigment reaches the top half.

Stage 3: Realise that a significant amount of preparatory work in fact remains, including finding enough dust sheets to cover everything, 45 nails and screws to be removed and subsequent holes to be Polyfilla’d and sanded. This takes until 3pm approximately. Open a bottle of red and proceed.

Stage 4: Give up on day 1 and begin again the next day. Apply the pink/other lovely colour with gusto, half-believing that because there is a roller in one’s hand, the job is nearly done.  Stand back and admire the small area that has been completed, taking copious pictures and feeling fulfilled.

Stage 4: Being to appreciate the enormity of the task, simultaneously realising that most of the paintwork is not going to be pink.

Stage 5: Contemplate decisions that should have been made pre-stage 1, for example the colour and type of other paints required, which in fact constitute most of the actual paint work.

 Stage 6: Agonise relentlessly over the scheme. Once decided, head off to the shop to purchase remaining supplies. Find the shop in a state of chaos, and closure, due to refurbishment. With anger, buy a further one million tester pots from another reputable paint supplier. Head over to said trusty paint shop, Farrow and Ball, for the remaining paint, tripling the cost of supplies beyond the original budget.

Stage 7: Spend the next 3 days painting continually, cursing the project and shedding a few tears for good measure.

Stage 8: The good bit – put everything in it’s place, and admire! At this juncture, all of Stages 1-7 are forgotten and forgiven.

I grew up in the country, so maybe my heart will always be there. But there are some things about city life that trump the bucolic idyll. I like to think of myself as a sort of rural operative in the big smoke, an interloper with country-tinted glasses. There are lots of ways to live in the city and yet remain connected to the land. And not necessarily through back-breaking labour in a guerrilla garden; I’m referring to more leisurely pursuits, like cutting wild-flowers from a disused yard or lane. Or knowing where to find wild garlic, timeworn apple trees, or heavy-laden elderberry bushes. Having enough space to grow 10 types of herb, but without the boring lawn-mowing and endless weeding; a simple stroll amongst the cherry blossom, perhaps. No farmyard smells, no gnarly guard dogs pouncing from concealed gateways, and the nearest carton of milk isn’t 7 miles away.

One of the things I love most about city living in Edinburgh (apart from the quality restaurants, compact size, park spaces, charity shops, friendships, proximity to beaches and the Borders etc etc), is the potential quality of street finds. I know, its hardly the pinnacle upon which to base one’s entire way of life. But can there be anything better than rounding a corner to find some old relic cast out from the fold, yet still full of vigour and youth, ready for its next reincarnation? Such items can either be pure gold, like my most recent find, or the proverbial wolf in sheep’s clothing. I’ve had my fair share of the latter, particularly in the chair department. Trust ye not a fair looking chair for the legs shall ever be wonky and the dowels inept to support the weight of a small human.

Enough soliloquy, let us get to the main event. This nondescript little table was spotted beside the bin along the meadows late on Thursday night, as I snuck out to pinch a branch of cherry blossom before it disappears for the season.

Nothing special, but solid wood and a nice height. Could work as a potting stand perhaps, or a hall console. Legs are pretty wobbly, but easily fixable (by Ali T). But what’s this, a latch?

Up pops the middle section to reveal the riches of Solomon…

An original 1973 Singer sewing machine, complete with instruction manual. The machine slots against the other detachable piece, and to the left, a little cubby hole section for storing sewing bits and bobs.

Magic! Manna from heaven, methinks. But surely the reason it sits keeping the communal bin company is because it doesn’t work. Needs a bit of TLC, some fiddly tinkering, maybe a trip to my friend Mr David Drummond for a few expectant weeks. Alas, its in perfect working order, hums like a kitten and might even out-do my current modern machine for reliability. And of course, its vintage, so its looks simply delightful.

Returning to my ‘one-in-one-out’ theory from the last post, such lofty ideals will have to be temporarily suspended to accommodate this, you must agree. I’ll just need to attach wheels onto it so I can transport it over to number 12 every monday night for sewing club!