Bread, wine and pickles.

A late night post from me,   just come inside as we've been sitting out by the pool enjoying the cool evening.  But now it's dark so time to come nearer the lights.

I spent most of the morning in the kitchen,  bread making,  wine making and pickling.  The bread was relatively lazy - I put the bread machine on to the dough setting and left it to knead and prove and rise while I got on with the wine and pickles.

The strawberry glut continues,  having got jars of dried strawberries, jars of jam,  pots of frozen puree,  and made and drunk the vodka version,  we are now trying strawberry wine.  I googled yesterday for recipes and today started this one,  partly because there are pictures of it looking oh so colourful.  2 kilos of fruit,  1.3 of sugar plus a few other bits and it's already bubbling.   Then I found some places that sell strawberry wine......£8 a bottle for something that is only 4.5% - that's the same amount of alcohol as beer!!  I think ours may end up with a little more kick than that!

The cucumbers that I sliced and salted and soaked yesterday have been rinsed and rinsed and are now packed into a jar with a sweet vinegar.  I sliced one and a half pepinos yesterday,  now we're going to wait a week - or maybe less - I counted about 9 or 10 more pepinos on their way this morning so we need to know that these taste nice pretty soon.

By the time I'd done the cucs and the wine,  the breadmaker was beeping that the dough was ready so I rolled it out into 8 mini baguettes and baked them.  One each for lunch,  maybe one more for breakfast tomorrow, but maybe not.  We don't tend to eat breakfast,  a very large strong coffee sets us up for the morning.  Sometimes we have breakfast ie cereal and fruit at lunchtime,  seems to be enough for us till the evening meal.

This afternoon I spent a couple of hours out by  the pool reading and swimming,  60 widths equals  480 metres,  followed by my back stretching exercises.  Not that I have a problem now but better safe than sorry.