Fresh Bread Bake Off entry - if at first you don't succeed, try again.

I confess, I am a bit of a bread nerd. This mostly stems from when I did an entry level teaching qualification a year or so ago. As part of it, I had to do a mini teach on any subject and I chose bread as my subject, exploring the science behind breadmaking and comparing handmade bread with traditional white sliced bread. I had never made bread by hand successfully until then, although I often use a breadmaker. Having just researched the science for my prep (and taking myself back 20 years in the process - some of my degree included some food science), I understood more about the process. When I made my bread,  I made sure that I kneaded it properly and I found kneading very therapeutic. The results were amazing. I did a taste test with my "students" and they were all pretty impressed with the taste and texture I got as well as noticing the difference in colour. If you make bread by hand, you don't get white bread - the crumb is distinctly cream coloured, although that can depend on what other ingredients are in the bread. White sliced is blindingly white thanks to the bleaching agents they add - and that's just the start of the nasties.

The recipe I used for making bread then is from Nigella's How To Eat. It's great but it uses fresh yeast so I have to remember to get some from Asda (they give it away) and then try to use it all but inevitably, some of it gets thrown. So when English Mum blogged an easy bread recipe for bread using easy bake yeast, I thought I'd give it a go, especially as a few days later, she launched her Fresh Bread Bake Off competition.

My first attempt was not terribly successful - it took ages to rise and I couldn't figure out why. The resulting bread was OK but not as light as I'm used to. A few days later, I worked it out. I have dried yeast in the fridge that I use in my breadmaker. I thought it was easy bake but something caught my eye and I realised it said it wasn't suitable for breadmaker use! I'd only bought active yeast that needs to be activated BEFORE mixing into the dough. No wonder it didn't work properly!

So I had another go following English Mum's recipe but this time I activated the yeast first (which involved adding it to warm water and leaving it to stand for a while, nothing complicated). I also added less oil this time, using 15g instead of 50g which is closer to the proportions that Nigella uses. I may have used a bit too much yeast because after half an hour of rising, it was like this.

And when I turned it back onto the worktop I had to take another picture because you can clearly see the network of gluten chains forming so you get the nerdy shot:

My only problem is that the bread seem to puff up but also spread a lot. Anyway, here is the finished loaf (excuse fairly rubbish photography!), which looks fairly rustic so I guess it's a cottage loaf.

It's gorgeous still warm but as I'm trying to be good, I didn't eat the lot in one go so it's still going and it makes good toast although I can't put it in the toaster thanks to the odd shape. It tastes great, which is particularly noticeable if you've had commercial bread recently, which tastes like cotton wool in comparison with real bread.

Why don't you have a go? You'll have to be quick if you want to enter English Mum's Fresh Bread Bake Off - she needs your entry by midnight on Valentine's Day. The prize is a range of Marriage's flours and some scrapers so you could get more baking done. And then become a bread nerd, just like me.

Jamie at Home DVDs - Winner!

Thanks for all your entries in the giveaway of the Jamie at Home series DVDs. I've just used random.org to draw me a winner and the winner is.....

Kerrie Morley! Well done. I'll send you an email very soon.

Come back soon for more competitions.

My Fitness Story... - The Black Cloak

Today's post is anonymous at the author's request, for reasons they explain in the post. When I first received this post, it made me cry because it is utterly heartbreaking that someone has suffered alone for so long, and so uplifting that they found the strength of mind to overcome this alone. I won't say anymore, I will just hand you over to today's guest poster.

Starting to write this post is one of the hardest things I have ever done. I've known for some time that I needed to write it, but my own blog didn't seem like the right place. So when Kate asked for people to write about their experience of eating disorders,  I took her up on the opportunity to get this out there finally. But writing this, just getting to the point of writing, has taken me several days. In reality, it has taken years, if not decades. Writing this post is going to make me face lots of things about myself that are long buried, and if I'm truthful, that I really don't like about myself. I have asked for this to remain anonymous because the person I'm about to write about is no longer me and I don't want people to judge me for someone I no longer am. Perhaps that is a message of hope to carry you through the me I'm going to tell you about.

I am a binge-eater. There, I said it. OK, so I am not anymore, but part of me feels like that, given the right/wrong circumstances, it could happen again. I've never been diagnosed with an eating disorder but deep down, I know that is the label that would be placed on it if only I were to admit to someone. Because I haven't. Like all addicts, I've been clever. I've never been caught out. No-one in my real life knows my shame. I have lived this alone.

When did it start? Possibly, childhood. I can remember taking food secretly from the fridge from a youngish age. Back then, it was low grade - just taking food and eating more than I should. But the seeds were sown. I grew in size, I was teased at school. It wasn't pretty. Instead, I kept my head down and got on with school work.

It really started when I moved away from home in my late teens. I didn't want to be overweight anymore so I started to learn a bit more about weight loss and dieting. I stopped eating. Brilliant. I didn't stop totally but the amount I ate was horrendously small. I found things I could "eat" that were very low in calories but could stop me feeling hungry. Lunch could often be a cup-a-soup. Or it might have been dinner. On top of the eating regime - for it was a regime, it was that tough - I took up regular running.

It worked. I lost about 2-3 stone and eventually reached the lowest weight I've ever been as an adult. It was however too low. With the benefit of hindsight, I'd say it was more than a stone lower than my minimum healthy weight, even though it was considered at the bottom of the healthy range on all those weight charts. I wanted to be the best and to me, the way to do that was to be the lightest the charts said I should be. I remember getting comments from family and friends - looking back now, I can tell they were worried but at the time, I dismissed them as being overly protective.

I can't remember now when things started to change but after being so strict for so long, something had to give. And it did. One day, I felt an urge to eat something. So I did. And something else, and something else and something else. Before I knew it, I couldn't stop. Even now, I can't explain how or why I did it. Something within me was driving me until it was too late. I'd eaten too much and I felt sick. I wasn't, however, bulimic - I felt sick but I couldn't make myself sick. I felt rubbish for the rest of the day and took myself off to bed, claiming I had an upset stomach. I did, but not in the way that people thought.

I got into this cycle of eating fairly normally or carefully, then bingeing about once a week. Nothing could stop me when it happened. I will admit to you now, I did things I was not proud of. I stole food from others sometimes, when I was in shared housing. I stress now, that person that did those things was me, but was not me. When I binged, I needed to eat; nothing could stop me. When it was over, I didn't feel better - I felt worse. I felt sick, sometimes for hours, sometimes up to a day. Sometimes, I wanted to make myself sick just so I could feel better but something stopped me from doing so. Perhaps, looking back, that was a good thing. The guilt afterwards too was awful. It enveloped my heart like a black cloak. But boy, I was sneaky. No-one ever actually caught me taking food that wasn't mine. To my knowledge, no-one knew what I did. My housemates might have suspected, I really don't know - but if they did, they never told me or confronted me. I was deceitful, I lied, I stole. I sound like an addict. I was. I had to have my regular fix. Sometimes, even when doing it, I wanted to stop but I just couldn't.

With regular bingeing, and a less strict diet and exercise regime, my weight began to increase. I know now that the crash dieting I did would not have been good for my health and that returning to normal eating would have seen me put weight back on at a faster rate than I lost it. I was not happy with my size again. It was a spiral - I was unhappy with my size, which made me feel bad, so I'd binge - almost like a form of self-harm, and I'd feel worse, my size would get bigger... and so on.

The bingeing carried into my twenties which was a turbulent time in my life. I made bad choices in terms of relationships - which were possibly linked to the underlying reasons for my bingeing in the lack of self-esteem and positive body image - and was unhappy more than I was happy. The unhappy times always coincided with more regular binges. I remember thinking after many a binge whether I would ever stop, whether the binges would punctuate my life until I died. And still, none of my partners ever knew I binged or caught me bingeing. A couple of them knew I was totally and utterly obsessed with my weight. I would weigh myself every day and it was a disaster to me if I'd put on a pound or two. This alone could trigger more binges, which made me feel worse. The cycle was apparently endless. In the end, I got rid of my scales and only weighed myself in shops every now and then. This helped to reduce the frequency of binges but it didn't stop them completely.

So what happened? To be honest, I don't know. There was no light bulb moment, no need to stop suddenly. They just did. That's not to say I don't ever overeat but the overwhelming need to eat and eat and eat until I was ill faded gradually - the binges became less and less frequent and I would think about it less. If I did think about it, I could almost guarantee that thinking about it would mean I would binge within days, so I stopped thinking about it. It was buried in the back of my mind for a very long time. Until one day, I thought about it - and the binge never materialised. I'm married now and I've never told my husband about it. It didn't seem relevant, and I am ashamed of that person that I was. I feel that if I tell him, he would see me in a different light and may not love me anymore.

Since stopping bingeing, my weight has gone up and gone down. I have had children which has caused some of that. I know I have a pretty healthy attitude to food - one of the things that I am grateful for is that I have always eaten lots of veg and fruit and prefer wholemeal options to white, so the basis of my diet is not bad anyway. I've managed to lose weight through sensible eating. I know that I can't restrict myself too much. In fact, I'm scared to do that because I don't ever want to go back to the way I was before. It does scare me that I never got treatment for the bingeing now. It worries me that it might come back if I had some major crisis in my life. When I think about it, I feel the presence of that black cloak. It amazes me that I can think about it and not go off and binge. I hope with every ounce of my body that it doesn't push me into bingeing ever again.

Thank you so much for being so brave in sharing your story. My heart truly goes out to you for all the suffering you've been through and the fact that you managed to keep it a secret for so long. 

If you have any comments for today's guest poster, please do so as I know she will value your support. It takes a lot of courage to write posts like this. Please use the comments to share your own experiences of binge-eating, if you have any. 

If you'd like to tell your fitness story, please get in touch with me, either on Twitter or via the email address on the About Me page. 

A note for Mum

Do you know those days? Where the kids run rings around you in the morning and won't co-operate, nothing else seems to go right, and you feel like the whole word is against you? Where you don't know what's right or what's wrong anymore and you wonder why you bother? Yeah? Yeah.

I had one of those the other day. It was going pretty badly, as days go. Then, I collected the children from school and on the way home, Missy Woo told me that she had done some writing at school and that the teachers had taken a copy so she could bring it home. It sounded a bit strange, but I thought nothing of it. After all, Thursday is a bit like my Monday as Monkey has football and we end up dashing back and forth so I don't have to think, just do.

We got home and Missy Woo got her things out of her book bag. She gave me this:

And you know what? My bad day evaporated in an instant. It didn't matter anymore. The spellings didn't matter. She had chosen the words and wrote them herself. It made me smile - if not grin inanely - and I suddenly didn't feel like a bad mother after all. I may have shed a small tear, of happiness of course.

As someone pointed out to me on Twitter, to know that she feels secure and wants to share that feeling is beautiful. They also suggested that I get it framed. And do you know what? I think I will.

She may be only 4 years old, but she never ceases to amaze.

(Thanks to @TheBoyandMe for inspiring this post)

I don't like Mondays

Now, the title of this post probably doesn't surprise you much, does it? After all, the start of the week, getting back into the groove of work and daily routine, is never nice. And no, it's not. But that's not why I dislike a lot of Mondays. Oh no. For a start, getting back into the daily routine means the children are back at school, even if they don't quite seem to remember on Monday mornings that we must get to school by a certain time. I can live with that and the arrival at school on Mondays is like a full stop to the weekend, and I breathe a sigh of relief as they walk through them sometimes.

But no, not that. What I really hate about Mondays is the tyranny of the After School Activity. On Mondays, it is the Swimming Lesson. School finishes at 3.30, lesson is at 5.30, bedtime is 7.00. This leads to an interesting schedule as follows.

3.10 Check tweets.
3.15 Realise the time, grab coat phone and keys for school run.
3.20 Leave house, drive to school, remembering to slow down where they hide the mobile speed camera.
3.25 Hope to get parking space on back road.
3.27 Check phone for tweets and emails. (It's been 12 mins, OK?)
3.28 Get out of car and walk into school playground.
3.29 Play the "Guess which child will come out of their class door first" game and choose door to stand near.
3.31 Mutter that they're late out. Again.
3.33 Realise you've lost the "Guess which child will come out of the class door first" game and that the other child is waiting for you to collect them.
3.35 Wait, pointedly, by other door with child that wants to run all over the playground.
3.36 Door opens. Late, again!
3.37 Remember this means your child is at the back of the line again.
3.39 Child finally appears.
3.40 Realise other child has run off whilst you weren't looking.
3.41 Locate other child and retrieve (For which read: holler at them to come here NOW!)
3.42 Finally leave school grounds.
3.43 Holler at one child again as they run off into the distance.
3.44 Walk back to car with children, trying to ascertain what they ate for lunch/did at school today.
3.46 Get children into car.
3.48 Drive home, remembering about the speed camera.
3.53 Arrive home, herd children with book bags out of car and in through front door.
3.55 Make sandwiches for tea unless tea is already made (vain hope) whilst refereeing argument over whether Sky Sports News or CBBC is the channel du jour.
3.58 Give sandwiches to children, ask them to eat them. (This might seem stupid but at least one forgets).
4.00 Shout at children for not eating sandwiches whilst you get a drink ready for them.
4.01 Make cup of tea. This will go cold before you reach the bottom.
4.04 Remind (shout at) children that they need to get sandwiches eaten and not play with toys/watch telly/argue.
4.07 Remind/shout at/nag children for a third time. Realise one child has at least finished, but wants more food.
4.08 Provide said child with yogurt. Shout at other child to "just eat the flipping sandwiches, how can it be that hard?".
4.09 Tell child who has now finished yogurt to get changed into swimming costume. Lose patience with other child. Have a sip of tea.
4.12 Show child where swimming kit is, ie the same place as last week. Provide second child, who has FINALLY finished sandwiches with a yogurt and ask they eat it quickly.
4.15 Tell second child to go and get their swimming kit and get changed. Remind first child to ensure they remove underwear and visit toilet BEFORE putting on swimming costume.
4.18 Ask loudly why neither child has swimming costume on and uniform put back on. Have sip of tea, whch is now a bit on the lukewarm side.
4.21 Locate child, who has wandered off after a loo trip, and gently remind AGAIN of their mission to put on swimming costume and uniform back on over it.
4.24 Remind first child, who has finally finished getting changed, that they need to get their book bag for you to check. Tell second child that no, they don't need to take their socks off as they will only have to put them back on again in a minute.
4.25 Check book bag. Read newsletter. Have sip of tea. Say through gritted teeth "Will you get that flipping costume ON?" whilst reading. (Thank God women can multitask, eh?)
4.26 Realise child has reading and spellings to do this week. Ask child if they want to do spellings or read book. Get negative answer.
4.30 Realise drinks have not been drunk. Ask children to drink them. Hope children don't need loo again before leaving house.
4.33 Ask second child, who has FINALLY got swimming costume on and uniform replaced, to go and get their book bag.
4.35 Realise they have books to read and spellings to do too. Second child keen to do all of them. Sigh.
4.36 Have a sip of tea. Getting cold.
4.37 Supervise child doing spellings.
4.40 Child finishes spellings. Check them.
4.41 Child settles in to read book to you. Try to get sip of nearly cold tea.
4.43 Remember they get new books on Monday and child is never as good at reading through first time.
4.44 Have a sip of tea. Colder.
4.45 Have another sip of tea.
4.46 And another...
4.47 And another...
4.53 Child finishes book. Locate reading record and insert meaningful comment.
4.54 Instruct children to put on coats and shoes. Quickly get a drinks bottle and fill it with water to take.
4.55 Remind children of their task.
4.56 Get children out of house, remembering to collect own coat, phone and bag on the way.
4.57 Get children strapped in to car, leave for swimming pool.
5.10 Arrive at swimming pool car park.
5.12 Attempt to find space.
5.13 Give up, and park car in the retail park next door.
5.14 Get children out of car. Escort onto premises.
5.15 Get children into the changing room cubicle. Instruct to get undressed and put clothes in swimming bag.
5.16 Find a locker.
5.17 Return to children and remind them of their task.
5.18 Start yanking clothes off children.
5.20 Get bags repacked and place in locker.
5.21 Check children over.
5.22 Get bag back out of locker and give one child the goggles they forgot to get out.
5.23 Send child to toilet.
5.24 Child returns. Send both children to wait by pool for their lesson.
5.25 Child free time begins. Go to cafe by pool.
5.26 Try to attract attention of café staff.
5.28 Finally get a coffee.
5.29 Join rush for tables overlooking pool.
5.30 Watch children in lesson whilst tweeting. Occasionally look up and wave back to child waving at you.
5.57 Reluctantly, stop tweeting to return to changing rooms and join other parents waiting for their charges.
6.00 Lesson ends.
6.02 Go collect towels from the locker. Oops.
6.05 Try to work out where children have got to and realise they have gone for a shower.
6.08 Children appear. Put towel on them and herd back to changing cubicle.
6.09 Dry children, remove swimming costumes.
6.10 Ask children to get dressed. Help get clothes out of swimming bag.
6.11 Go to spin dry swimming costumes.
6.12 Tell child off that has followed you but is not dressed and return them to cubicle.
6.13 Return to cubicle; lose patience with lack of speed of getting dressed.
6.14 Start helping children to get dressed.
6.17 Finally get last item of clothing on child. Give them coats to put on whilst you repack swimming bags.
6.18 Chase child who has decided to run up the changing room. Ask them how come we are the only people left from the class that finished at 6.00?
6.19 Check changing room cubicle for dropped/missed items. Check you still have phone.
6.20 Herd children back outside to car and get them into car.
6.23 Get in car, breathe sigh of relief. Drive home.
6.33 Arrive home, get children and bags into house.
6.35 Get children a drink/something to eat.
6.37 Send children to put pyjamas on. Make cup of tea and hope to drink it whilst hot.
6.38 Place swimming kit in washing machine. Shout in reaction to sounds coming from upstairs which suggest no pyjamas are being put on.
6.40 Threaten immediate bed if children  are not back down in 1 minute.
6.41 Children appear in pyjamas.
6.42 Brush hair. Sip tea.
6.45 Send children to get toothbrushes and toothpaste.
6.46 Put toothpaste on toothbrushes and supervise teeth brushing.
6.48 Send children to put toothbrushes away.
6.49 Allow children to call Daddy to say goodnight. Sip tea.
6.55 Get children to finish call. Take them upstairs.
6.56 Check uniforms out and not just dumped on floor.
6.57 Get children to have quick tidy by removing as much as possible from bedroom floor. Join in or they'll be there forever.
6.58 Get first child into bed, have a hug, kiss and say goodnight.
6.59 Get second child into bed and do the same.
7.00 The children are in bed. I repeat, the children are in bed. Woohoo!
7.01 Remember that you need to cook dinner.

I thought the After School Activity was for the kids, not me....

Silent Sunday: Here's one I made earlier

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Find more Silent Sunday posts at Mocha Beanie Mummy

Review and Competition: Jamie at Home DVD series

Jamie Oliver seems to have become a bit of a Marmite figure. You either love him or you hate him. Some don't like his accent and his presenting style, others think he's become a bit sanctimonious and preachy with his more recent projects. What you cannot deny is that he has a passion for food and some of his crusades have made a difference to attitudes, as well as the way some of us eat (although there is probably a contract on his head issued by the turkey twizzler industry).

Although I never really watched things like The Naked Chef in the early days, I have watched a lot of his programmes and I do like his cooking style. It's largely unfussy, it's unpretentious, and it makes people think "yeah, I can do that". His fish pie recipe was recommended to me by a friend and it's now a regular in this house as it's less work than traditional fish pie, and not only that, has lots of veg in it which makes it great family food. In fact, I'm about to head into the kitchen to make it again once I've finished writing this post!

I watched Jamie at Home when it first came out and I got the book as a present. I will admit that I have only made occasional use of it. I'm going to rectify that now because I've recently been sent the whole series on DVD by The Sun's Buzz magazine and it's inspired me to get the book out again. The series is a combination of cookery and gardening as it features Jamie in his garden. The focus is on using ingredients that you've grown yourself, largely. I say yourself, but Jamie's gardener features a lot in the programmes! It's worth remembering that growing your own can be quite a lot of effort. Still, the recipes he demonstrates are again simple, though I do find it amusing he does some of his cooking outside with the hugest outdoor oven you'll ever see. Jamie  cooks, as usual, with infectious enthusiasm, such that you almost want to head straight into the kitchen to make them. I have designs on making his sausages with bubble and squeak and onion gravy now - and possibly the only reason I've not made it is I have too many cookbooks!

If you want to get the entire Jamie at Home series on DVD for yourself, you can collect tokens starting today in The Sun Buzz magazine, and continuing in The Sun newspaper for the rest of the week. Take your tokens to Tesco on the day of print and you can get each day's DVD for free. Each one features two half-hour episodes from the series.

Alternatively, you can win a full set of the DVDS by entering my competition! I have a full set of the DVDs to give away to one lucky person.

To enter the competition, you first need to become a blog follower via either Google Friend Connect, Networked Blogs or an email subscriber. You can follow via more than one route if you like, but it won't make any difference! Then, leave me a comment telling me what your favourite Jamie Oliver recipe is. If you can provide a link to it, great. If you have a picture of your efforts that you can link to, even better. But don't worry if you can't - just tell me the recipe and where it's from  - as in which book or series and why it's your favourite. Please mention in the comment how you are following The Five Fs so that I can check you've signed up.

The winner will be selected at random from all commenters on this post who are also followers or email subscribers. The competition closes at 23:59 next Friday, 11th February.

Good luck!

Terms & Conditions

The competition is open to residents of the UK only. (Sorry!)
There is no cash alternative offered.
To enter, please leave a comment below as required above and become a follower of the blog via Google Friends Connect or Networked Blogs, or become an email subscriber. Please ensure you leave contact details via twitter or email.
The winners will be drawn at random from all qualifying entries. The winner will receive a full set of Jamie at Home DVDs - please note the DVDs are in cardboard sleeves with some Sun branding on them; they are not a boxset.
The competition will close at 23:59 on Friday 11th February 2011.
Prizewinners will be asked to provide a full UK postal address with postcode. I will endeavour to post the prize within 1 week.
If a prizewinner does not provide a full UK postal address within a week of being contacted, the prize will be re-drawn and a new winner will be contacted. 
One entry per person only. If you enter more than once, only the first entry will count.


(I was provided with the DVDs to review and have received no other compensation. The opinions stated here are my own, and have not been influenced by the aforementioned compensation.)