Tag: Melancholy

More sourdough blah blah

Sorry about the spelling.

My friend Don kept a small flock of chickens in his orchard and I remember him telling me that there was one elderly bird in particular which would not lay an egg for weeks – but if he happened to mention in the bird’s presence that it would have to go to the pot he would invariably find an egg the next day. I think Eeyore, my elderly and neglected sourdough starter has a similar temperament. It’s all my own fault, of course, I neglected it shamefully for months because among many other things I didn’t feel like doing, I especially didn’t feel like making bread; far too optimistic an activity for a man sunk deep in melancholia and self-pity. Maybe that should simply read “self pity” because melancholia is essentially a posh middle-class euphemism for it. The stages of starter decrepitude are slow but very visible. No bubbles rise and burst on the surface like methane from a muddy lake bed. It sits there and glowers at me as gradually the golden liquor separates from the sludge and I begin to imagine it will soon be a stinking mess. That happened once many years ago and when I eventually sprang the top on the container the most dreadful smell burst out like a vengeful demon. In the end I had to throw the starter and its container away; both irredeemably contaminated.

I have read about keen but recently converted sourdough penitents advertising for surrogate parents to look after their starters while they pop out to the shops for a morning. This is never necessary because, like all living things, the whole life of a starter strains towards survival and reproduction and so Tarquin’s shopping is astonishingly unlikely to threaten its continued existence. Take heart! sourdough starters can survive almost any catastrophe except being tipped down the sink.

I’ve written about my attempts to revive the original starter but, briefly I fed the original one – maybe 15 years old – and miraculously not at the stinking stage – and watched it sulk for a week or so without so much casting a pinhead bubble. But I also scraped half a gram of dried starter off the top of the pot, added (tap) water and dark rye flour and watched in wonder as it sprang into vigorous action. I’ve never given my starter a name but I decided to call the old one Eeyore and the new one Tigger. Tigger did so well I was able to make the first loaf after a couple of days, which may have been around the time when I mentioned in the presence of Eeyore that I was going to have to let him go. Eeyore responded the next day by throwing a thick foaming head – just like the good old days. The Potwell Inn bakery was back in business and I was able to make side-by-side comparisons of the two starters. Unsurprisingly, (they are genetically identical), there was no difference and we are able to eat decent bread again after a long hiatus of melancholy and indigestion.

The new flour – 100% Maris Widgeon – is demanding some experimentation with baking times and temperatures to avoid the much sought after, (by masochists), palate ripping crust which neither Madame or me enjoy; and thirty six hour proving seems to make a better crumb texture; but then, I’m irredeemably excited by poorly designed experiments with too many variables to draw any conclusions. The sourdough world is full of overly masculine imagery with extreme temperatures and impossible physicality built into the mystique, combined with slashing and frequent applications of cold water. But better than all that nonsense; the Potwell Inn is filled with the fragrance of baking bread once again and the world seems a better place for it.

Blessed are the cheesemakers

Smoked Westcombe Cheddar, Duckett’s Caerphilly and at the front, Westcombe Cheddar.

This is a bit of a catch up post for a multitude of reasons which would have to include the loss of British summer time, dark nights and 36 more days to be endured before the winter solstice gives us something to celebrate. I find it impossible to write when the black dog pays a visit and so there have been a few weeks now when it’s been hard to turn on the laptop. Madame and me have talked a lot about it and we came to the conclusion that spending almost two years on our own much of the time is at the heart of the problem. All of the groups and societies we belong to have effectively shut down; so no lectures, talks, classes and field trips; no galleries or markets and very few human interactions. The real world has shrunk to a first floor flat and the allotment – and it hasn’t been good for us – and then, just for pudding we have to live in a corrupted and feeble democracy; the obvious failure of COP 26 to honestly address the issues; and the inflationary effects of brexit.

These black dog episodes always come to a climax and so, having had flu jabs and covid booster doses we (truthfully Madame) decided to confront the beast head on and do something about it. That something really amounted to getting out and rejoining the human race; and so a week ago we went to the Saturday Market; raced around looking for a particular cheese – of which much more later – and scuttled home like anxious mice. Why does going to the shops feel like an act of defiance, I wonder? – or perhaps it’s the hordes of unmasked people who seem not to have noticed that there are still 1000 victims a week dying from covid.

The Potwell Inn strategy also included trips to the recently expanded and independent Toppings bookshop – which ought to be sufficient reason for coming to Bath because it’s huge! we reinstated the daily 5 mile riverside walk and re-joined the gym. If the gym sounds a bit unlikely, well sorry, but ever since I took myself into a gym for the first time 20 years ago I’ve loved it. There’s no finer antidote to the black dog than forcing yourself to achieve hard targets, and while Madame swims I prefer to occupy the rowing machines in a quiet corner away from the grunters, and row a 10K in as near to a wholly unachievable 50 minutes as I can get. Yesterday, on my first row since lockdown began, I would have struggled to do it in 60 but it was so good to be back. As any endurance athletes will know, there’s a moment in a long and hard workout where there’s a sudden release of endorphins into the bloodstream – so much so that in my running days I used to call one particular part of a run up Nightingale Valley in Clifton Gorge, the Lord’s prayer moment; so predictable was the rush. My knees are too shot for that malarkey these days!

And then Madame, who has taken charge of the re-entry programme, dragged us back to the bookshop where the strangest series of coincidences began to unfold. I should say that any Jungians would say they’re synchronicities – which sounds a bit more portentous. On our first visit last weekend they were still awaiting the arrival of some bookshelves, they said, and so we rather galloped around, avoiding the freeloaders with their gratis fizzy – searching for the natural history section which wasn’t there. After a quick email we discovered that the promised bookshelves might take a week or two. I said well, we’ll pop back when it’s quieter anyway. So yesterday we popped back. I’m a terrible impulse buyer of books. I know it and so I’ve learned to pick the book up, put it down and walk away and see if the magnetic field draws me back for a second or third time (depending on the price of the impulse). This was a two visit temptation called “A cheesemonger’s history of the British Isles” by Ned Palmer. Madame, who had been looking elsewhere, spotted it under my arm and said ‘oh I saw that one, I was going to get it for you‘ – which I took as her permission to lash out.

Now I love cheese more than is probably good for my heart, which needs no additional provocations from me. I took the book home and read the first third before bedtime; learning a great deal more than I’ve ever known about my favourite food. Fast forwarding to this morning, we went back to the Saturday market in search of the anonymous cheese stall that sells the best cheddar I’ve ever eaten – it reminds me of the way it used to taste before pasteurised block cheeses dominated the market. The stall only shows up irregularly – well, first and third Saturdays we discovered today. There doesn’t seem to be any sign advertising the company or the names of the cheeses – you just have to ask. So I’m there in the queue, and when my turn comes I buy a big piece of the favourite and smaller ones of a smoked cheese and a Caerphilly which also reminded me of the best Caerphilly I’ve ever tasted and which our grocer in Clifton told me was a “failure” that he’d bought cheaply because it wasn’t crumbly enough to qualify as a proper Caerphilly. The Caerphilly I bought today was exactly that experimental failure from thirty years ago, and it’s still just as delicious. So with my cup overflowing already I asked the young woman on the stall where the cheeses are made. “Westcombe Farm” she said, and a small explosion went off in my head. I’d just accidentally bought two of the finest unpasteurised cheeses on the market – not because of any prior knowledge or fawning write ups in foodie magazines, but simply because they tasted so good. The Potwell Inn tastebuds were vindicated! At that moment the maker himself – Tom Calver – turned up on the stall and I was reduced to a pitiful state of wordless admiration. Enough! you cry and I hear you.

The final synchronicity came as we feasted eclectically on the bits of cheese, porchetta, arancini and Indian street food we’d bought at the market. Life doesn’t get much better. I was (intolerable rudely) googling an article on Westcombe Cheddar when I had to ask Madame “who do you think is Tom Calver’s partner?” – “go on” –” It’s your hairdresser!” Drum roll for Mr Jung please.

Equilibrium recovered

IMG_4697OK so it’s not the prettiest sight, a very dirty hand, but I’ve come to see that sometimes the best therapy for November is getting out on the ground.  I remember one of my spiritual directors once saying to me (at about this time of year) “there’s nothing wrong with you that a bit of sunshine won’t put right” and today, after a very grey day yesterday, that’s exactly what did the trick.

Yesterday I didn’t post because we spent the day with my old friend Big Al, and his wife.  I’ve known them both for 28 years.  Al was the very first person I met when I took on my first parish. I was sent to placate him one night because the Acting Head of the school in which I’d automatically become Chair of Governors, had made a disastrously bad decision.  I think I was thrown over the wall to take the flack.  The monstrous parent I was sent to sort out had, I quickly realized, got a real case. We got along famously from that moment and we’ve shared some great adventures together. It was Al who took me to Compiegne where the armistice was signed on November 11th 1918.  We stood quietly immersed in our own thoughts in front of the railway carriage deep in the woods where the war ended.  We were delivering some furniture to a place in Belgium, and apart from having the scary experience of driving the Green Goddess, a borrowed veg lorry, around the Periferique in Paris, we managed to visit as many 1st World War cemeteries as he could fit in. In Arras I got really ill and Al looked after me, calling the doctor and dealing with Madame (basically by not telling her).  We stood at Vimy Ridge together in awe at the monstrous craters and the sheer number of dead.  He’s traced and visited every single war grave of every soldier who came from the parish and died in action.  I’m proud to call him a friend.

With Armistice Day on Sunday  (it’s all been on my mind this week),  I had a curious experience in Bath a couple of days ago as I walked past the Post Office into Green Street. I turned the corner and I suddenly felt the presence of children there- but not there – if that’s not too strange. They seemed to be sad, fearful, suffering souls asking me to help them or perhaps just to remember them. It was such a powerful experience I had to struggle to deal with it. But it’s bearing down on me to say that just remembering alone isn’t enough if it doesn’t change our behaviour. Why are we celebrating the dead of 100 years ago when we’re still manufacturing and selling weapons that we know are being used to kill and maim civilians and above all children? Are the employment statistics so important that they’re worth killing children for?  That’s why it was a grey day yesterday.

IMG_4698So I’ve said it and it feels good. Madame is very sensitive to my melancholic states and she knows what’s good for me.  Yesterday I coped by cooking for Al and Helen.  I made the very last fresh tomato soup of the year as the rotting remains of the tomatoes damaged by the recent frost went on to the compost heap. It was a recipe from the Leith Vegetable Bible, and we were really delighted with it. Making veg stock is such a good way of using up the inevitable scraps from cooking. I think I rate this new addition to the library – two recipes and two successes.

This morning, with a bit of prompting from Senior Management we went up and spent the day at the allotment once I’d made some bread, labelled all the blackcurrant cordial, whizzed up the chilli sauce and labelled the blackcurrant jam.  I’m very adept at displacement activity.  Interestingly, this years is so much more flavourful than the last year’s batch we just finished – at least according to my breakfast slice of toast, spread with samples of both.  The chilli sauce is so fragrant I could eat it by the spoonful.  Say what you will, home produced food tastes just so much better.

So now we’ve planted all the alliums – 5 sorts of garlic, 2 of shallots, onion sets, and prepped the spring bed for leeks.  We’ve planted broad beans ( Aquadulce Claudia) and overwintering peas (Douce Provence) and last of all, as it was getting dark, I grease -banded all the trees.  What a filthy job! It took 3 washes of surgical spirit to break down the sticky coating on my hands.  But the allotment looks great and I felt a whole lot better. It’s a good reason for prescribing gardening as a treatment for modern life. Cheap, drug free and free exercise as well. Oh and the root veg are doing so well.