Oatcakes

Last night I made oatcakes. Easy peasy. Delicious. Far cheaper to bake at home (also no plastics or other wrapping). I'm ashamed it's taken me so long, and that the impetus was laziness: it was easier to make them than to go out and buy some.

Oatcakes

250g rolled oats
a pinch of bicarb
a pinch of salt
1 tbsp butter
very hot water

Begin by making oatmeal from the rolled oats; blitz them in a food processor until they are coarse or fine crumbs, depending on the texture you are aiming for in the finished biscuits.

Tip them into a big bowl. Add the salt and bicarb, then stir in the melted butter (you could use olive oil). Add the water very slowly - you want as little as possible, just enough to make the oats stick together. I'd be surprised if I used more than 100ml.

Gather the oats up into a ball, then roll them out as thin as you can. Either stamp them into little rounds, or make traditional farls* by cutting a large circle into six.

Put the cakes onto a baking sheet and bake in a hot oven (200c) for 15-20 minutes. Watch them carefully towards the end; you want them just beginning to turn brown at the edges. I baked mine in the wood oven; the temperature was rising from 180 to 210 while they were in, and they took 18 minutes. I suspect they are pretty forgiving.


* I've just discovered that farl comes from Viking for 1/4, but these days farls of oatcake and shortbread are cut into six rather than four.

Fire

We've been lighting the occasional fire for a couple of weeks, but it's only in the last two days that we've kept the stove in overnight. Those wisps of smoke are a welcoming sight on the way back from a cold early morning trip to the station ... a warm kitchen (our house has no central heating), a hearth ready to bake.

The view from where I'm sitting

... a cup of lapsang souchong is on the way.

It takes a while to boil the kettle on the stove, so you have to start before you get thirsty. In the mean time, I'm tidying - and now that I've seen the picture, I'd better get cleaning, too - does anyone have any tricks for refreshing brick that don't involve paint?

I'm rather fond of this simple fireplace, it's in what was once the housekeeper's sitting room, built in 1918, when housekeepers were already rather thin on the ground. I do such housekeeping as goes on here (not much, not enough), so this now my study. We (or rather Lucius) installed the stove in November (also the lovely Delabole slate), and the room is now warm for the first time any of us can remember.

Another romantic present

I've discovered in the last couple of weeks that I'm not very good with an axe. Luckily, all the males round here LOVE making logs. But less luckily, they don't much like making kindling, and you can't make a fire without plenty of small sticks. And I have discovered that I'm afraid for my fingers when I'm splitting sticks lengthways.

Last night, when Lucius got home, I was in the midst of lighting the fire without enough kindling. I explained, somewhat defensively, that I was afraid for my fingers. Could you teach me to split kindling? Tomorrow, when it's light?

A little later, he came in from the workshop, and this is what he gave me:


















Now how is THAT for a wonderful present?

Cooker fuel

There's no ON switch on our new cooker.

Here's the fuel
















Here's where we store it
















And here's how it gets to the kitchen























This is what it's made of

Our woodburning range

This is our new cooker ... on a good day it takes the same amount of time to heat up as an electric oven. We can cook supper AND heat our large kitchen with a couple of logs. After three weeks I STILL can't get over it ...

PS If you look carefully, you can see a mouse carved into the chair leg ... the signature of the Mouseman