From SS Quarantine #12

Well now.  It was a completely different day yesterday to the day before.  We went from this:

to this:

In the last 36 hours we had almost 30 ml of rain, with most of it from late on Wednesday until after lunch yesterday.

We did not spend much time outside although, after the rain had stopped, Jim did go out the front and trim back a shrub that was threatening to take over the whole of our (private bit) of driveway.

Our somnolence was abruptly broken early yesterday morning by the sounds of saws, machinery and loud banging, thudding noises coming from the far side of the reserve across the laneway.  Obviously we couldn't go across to see what was going on, but we can see a bit from our bedroom window.  There were people there felling the large coniferous trees way over there.  I knew that the reserve was being sold off as house blocks (although now seems a very odd time to press ahead with that) and I can perfectly see that tree felling can't be done from home.  But it's hard to see how it can possibly be classified as "essential" work unless the trees pose some sort of danger.  Also hard to see how the blokes can possibly be practising proper physical distancing, although they do seem to keep well apart as the trees topple.

Social media have been discussing how absolutely everyone has been buying flour and yeast and making bread. I too have been baking bread.  That is not a new thing for me.  I quite often make bread, not to mention pizza bases, pastry, cakes. Not so much biscuits, but even those occasionally.  I haven't made yeast bread for some time because we are blessed with a very good bakery not far away. Not that I can get to it at the moment, although they have recently started doing deliveries.  However, you may remember that Lindsey gave me a slab of fresh yeast in Sunday's food delivery.  I have never used fresh yeast before.  I have always used dried.  But it was expensive, so I thought I had better give it a go.

I read some of my baking books and looked online (at sensible things) and in between watching the rain and the tree fellers yesterday I made a loaf.  It's not bad.  Not bad at all.  I wish the place she got it from offered 100g blocks rather than kilo blocks.  Fresh yeast has a short shelf life and I can't see how your average home baker could possibly use a kilo before it died.  But I'll use as much as I can.

I don't usually work with wholemeal flour either, but Lindsey had found a 5 kg bag at the farm shop and brought it back to the Quarantine Kitchen before we got home. I think she is hoping that once the Quarantine Kitchen morphs into the Isolation Kitchen that some of the produce might make its way to the Hill House kitchen :-D

The fresh yeast combined with the wholemeal flour was very delicious.