Primroses and folding chairs (first two days of the holiday)

I can crochet! I mean, I've got the hang of it again, having learnt last winter, and done nothing since. I made these yesterday, sitting outside with a whole series of cups of tea, hooking (and unhooking), and hooking (and unhooking) and......... until - Ta daah!

OK, crocheted primroses may not be your cup of tea. (I'm not entirely sure they're mine...) but I think the yarn works very well for their matte leaves and petals. And I'm tickled pink with managing a 2.5mm hook for the first time - and single crochet, half doubles, doubles and triples. Fascinating to see the forms develop on the hook from this list of code. (Meanwhile Keef, poor thing, was up to his ears in Java Script or some such.)

I'm going to have a go at a pansy and a briar rose today. If I can keep my tension loose enough on the 2.5mm hook, with finer yarn, I'm going to try crochet cotton next - even thinner, and no stretch, so quite a challenge for me, but I want the sheen and delicacy of cotton for flowers. Poppies. Love 'em.

This morning I took a couple of old pairs of jeans and replaced the perished upholstery on a folding chair that I found when we moved in. Denim's so strong, and jeans only ever get worn out at the crotch and hems, so it was a cheap and cheerful exercise. I'd love to call the result shabby chic, except that shabby chic doesn't do a thing for me. Let's call it cack-handed kitsch. (Keef's been very restrained.)

But it'll do for this summer, and now I know what I'm doing, I'm going to check out the end of season sale at muy chichi Tejidos Julián López on Gran Vía for some fab deckchair canvas, and do it over again for next year - together with this 18€ folding chair with drinks holder, book pocket and canopy that I bought from my favourite Chinese bazaar for supervising kids at the pool in July.

Stylish, or what?

Pots, Privacy & Peas: Paradise

I've got this notion: dappled shade. That's what we're going to have. Also beautiful growing things: healthy, handsome, aromatic, delicious!

Terrace as paradise. I learnt from Paul Fleischman's Seedfolks that the word paradise came into English, via Old Persian and Greek, from the older Avestan (Eastern Iranian language) para daesa, or pairidaêza, meaning walled garden - from which the Spanish word pared (wall) is derived. Persian gardens........

The picture so far:

PEAS!

Look at that shoot!

Keef planted these in late June. Neither of us knows anything about growing things from seed, so we just keep watering, and watching, and most of them are coming up. We've had blossom since Thursday, and there's another 30cm to come, according to the packet. It's been fascinating to see these very strange plants opening up and throwing out wiggly tendrils. We nudged them towards the railings at first, but they've got the idea now. Looking forward to paradise peas with mint. Until then I suppose we'll just have to continue with our evening mojitos to use it up - you can't leave mint growing unchecked: it could take over the planet...

Where was I? Oh yeah..

So Keef said, "Remember the blue wall in that glasshouse at Normanby Hall?
I want to paint that wall blue."

And I said, "Um... ok."

My husband the genius. Fab!
The troughs have not done well, and those two arum lilies scorched in the sun, and have since moved indoors with me (Sit in the sun? In Spain? In Summer? Talk to the leaf, honey. I don't think so!).

Otherwise, isn't it beautiful? When you think of calming blues, you think aqua... sky... duck-egg... teal... But cobalt? Except it works. It would be hideous under northern light - sallow and garish in summer and cold and garish in winter. Here, though, although we're north of the Equator, Madrid light doesn't have the blue-grey or white softness or the cold, yellow-grey slatey cast that you find further north. Under this sun, orange is the real colour of Spain (Apologies to the Dutch, but it's true.) because the sun makes it sing at this latitude. And cobalt blue is simply... cool.

So, peas, herbs, and a dream of dappled shade. And privacy. And filtering the sun, but welcoming every breeze.

There was tatty barasti (woven palmleaf fencing) attached to the railing on the street side. Keef hated it because it was ugly, with it's old cable ties, torn bindings and random bits of satin ribbon holding it up. He had a point.

But I liked it as a very practical privacy screen between us and the people across the road, because I like working with what I've got rather than binning it and starting afresh (Think entire fitted kitchens in skips, rather than fencing!) but mostly for its nostalgic associations with a more human, down-to-earth version of life in Dubai: the pre-madness Dubai of Chicago Beach Village, Jebel Ali Village, Fridays at Eric's, Brian & Sami, Pete & Louise, Peter's place near the Fishing Village, the Rugby Club, etc. So much weight on a collection of sticks held together with string!

But it was definitely ugly. I used cable ties to mount an opened-out, wrought-iron screen set with red glass tealight holders against the railings, sandwiching the barasti in between. That meant meant I could strip off the exhausted fabric binding and dispense with the bits of ribbon and old cable ties. That increases the height of the fence and has a net curtain effect in the lower part but lets the sky through in the upper part. It looks pretty from below, with the glow of sunlight through red glass; and it's sturdy enough to support the climbers that will work their way through it, and over the washing-line web strung overhead. And we both like it!

It's tempting to rush and buy lots of stuff for instant effect, but for me, gardening is the ultimate art of the possible, and starts with dreams and patience, and learning the quirks of your patch.

And brutal August is just around the corner, so that's pretty well it til chrysanthemum time. Must find out when to put crocuses, narcissi and tulips in. And spuds. Maybe I can order several kilos of soil from Lincolnshire, so that my beloved can have proper new potatoes...

And a compact composter, and a rainbarrel, and some ducky little solar-powered fairy lights....

Next year, I'm going to set a summer windbreak of beans, courgettes and pumpkins; un-temperamental, scrambling, brilliantly flowered climbers with sturdy stems, shady leaves and handsome fruits to delight our eyes and fill our stomachs, then die away to let the winter light through.

And lemon verbena ,

lemon-scented geranium ,

nicotiana alata , jasminum nitidum and galan de noche (cestrum nocturnum) for wonderful smells by day (for Keef) and in the evening (for me!).

And trailing geraniums and petunias.

And nasturtiums cos I love 'em.

And a hibiscus. Gotta have a hibiscus.

And maybe a lime tree to keep the lemon tree company.

Paradise.

De Madrid al Cielo

Our patch of sky

It may not be a beautiful view, but it's comfortable - our neighbourhood, as seen from our eyrie. It's very peaceful up here. And when we go down, this is a long-established barrio, with a mixture of traditional old brick casitas and mid-rise apartment buildings from every decade since, and more in progress. (Note cranes.)

There are parks and playgrounds, an indoor market, a Sunday market, a sports centre, cafe bars, a state-of-the-art library and theatre, a children's theatre, a busy church, schools and health facilities, and lots of family businesses rather than chainstores.

Up the steps and round the corner (also down the steps and round the corner) there are Chinese bazaars and restaurants, Arab butchers and grocers, Indian grocers, traditional bakeries, greengrocers, a deli, a bookshop, a newsagent, a tobacconist, an ironmonger, hairdressers, a vet, a seed and petfood shop, a florist, even a third generation basketweaver.

And beyond them, close enough to walk, but too far for traffic noise and crowded pavements, are calle Bravo Murillo, a main shopping street on main bus and Metro lines, and Plaza de Castilla, a strange clutter of interesting monuments and landmark buildings placed too close together to be appreciated - and a whopping great bus/train/Metro interchange from which you can get to pretty well anywhere in Spain, or get to Barajas Airport with just one change. Madrid is very good at public transport! Basically we've got the best of city life here: it's all at our feet if we want it, and when we don't, we hardly know it's there.

And when the sun goes down,
it's not bad at all.

Easter Wedding - 25 years ago today

Happy Anniversary to Us. Tra la!

Happy New Year

Not a wish, but a fact. ¡Qué bien!

Now then, Fate, God & Mammon, though not necessarily in that order.

Part the First

Last year was... interesting... For me, pivotal, I think. I'm a slow study, but I usually get there eventually. And now, I'd say I'm there. First year of rest of life. This year should be... interesting... !

Last year? Seven or eight months of sorrow, worry, frustration, anger and loss inextricably entwined with new certainties, closer relationships and budding contentment, lived in an atmosphere of deepening economic gloom and W.T.F?!?!?! social uncertainty. And it was a good year for the air industry too...

By the end of August, I'd quietly reached the point where I wouldn't touch a newspaper, period; or read any novel unless I'd read it before (ideally at least three times) and could therefore trust it to soothe - or unless it came in a reassuringly ChickLit candy-coloured jacket with an improbably thin and perky cartoon Twenty-Something nipping across the front with Betty Boo eyelashes, Cherry Lips lips and a designer carrier bag, blithely confident that her cut-out-perfect Jackie O bouffant hairdo would protect her if the huge, embossed alphabet-soup-style title and author's name dangling above her should tumble and fall - as if it possibly could!!

But October brought good things, fresh hopes, new energy. November did not disappoint. And December: December was wonderful. Perfect. Perfect! And now we've got a shiny new year to play with, and I feel so good about it. I would say, 'Bring it on!', but let's not tempt that stuff that goes around, just in case it decides to come around again.

Part Deux

I mean. 2010. How many grim events and developments can you actually fit into one year? Boom-time for examining entrails and planetary alignments, given that neither Jehovah nor Mammon have quite the cred they used to.

I'm leaning towards Zen by now, though this may be a symptom of advancing years. History presents several got-it-alls who arrived in their middle years, looked around and chucked it in (a variation on 'Turn on, tune in, drop out.', I reckon) for something less-is-more; or at least discovered a hole in their lives that wealth and power could not fill. (I don't think I've reached this stage yet!)

Even so, there's Siddhārtha Gautama, the prince who founded Buddhism.

And Chandragupta Maurya and grandson Ashoka the Great, first emperors of a united India
with gratuitous photo of Shah Rukh Khan in the 2001 film. (Any excuse!)

Ooh! And Spain's own Felipe II. Only known in Britain as Mary Tudor's husband Philip, this is the man who had El Escorial built - palace and monastery.

Somewhere to get away from it all.

I'd love to believe in God and an afterlife, especially now that people I love have started popping their clogs like there's no tomorrow - which unfortunately, I believe... sigh...

However, I've always liked this poem by Arthur Hugh Clough,

"THERE is no God," the wicked saith,

"And truly it's a blessing, For what He might have done with us

It's better only guessing."

"There is no God," a youngster thinks,

"or really, if there may be, He surely did not mean a man

Always to be a baby."

"There is no God, or if there is,"

The tradesman thinks, "'twere funny If He should take it ill in me

To make a little money."

"Whether there be," the rich man says,

"It matters very little, For I and mine, thank somebody,

Are not in want of victual."

Some others, also, to themselves,

Who scarce so much as doubt it, Think there is none, when they are well,

And do not think about it.

But country folks who live beneath

The shadow of the steeple; The parson and the parson's wife,

And mostly married people;

Youths green and happy in first love,

So thankful for illusion; And men caught out in what the world

Calls guilt, in first confusion;

And almost everyone when age,

Disease, or sorrows strike him, Inclines to think there is a God,

Or something very like Him.

Ah well. Just have to wait and see, I suppose.

Of course, the likes of Ashoka and the Buddha are probably outnumbered by The Men Who Would Be King, Emperor or President for Life. And women who want shoes! shoes! shoes! (or ingots) and are prepared to take the rough:

Mr Philippines 1965-86 and Mr Tunisia 1987-2011

for the smooth:

Anyway, although I like shoes almost as much as the next girl, and wouldn't object to having a couple of ingots in the bank, 2010 was a year made for stocktaking, and I did. And 2011 shows signs of being a year for building, and possibly a little light tree-shaking. At least in our small corner of the multiverse.

P.S.

In his (1966) speech Leary stated:

“

Like every great religion of the past we seek to find the divinity within and to express this revelation in a life of glorification and the worship of God. These ancient goals we define in the metaphor of the present — turn on, tune in, drop out.

”

Leary later explained in his 1983 autobiography Flashbacks,

“

'Turn on' meant go within to activate your neural and genetic equipment. Become sensitive to the many and various levels of consciousness and the specific triggers that engage them. Drugs were one way to accomplish this end. 'Tune in' meant interact harmoniously with the world around you - externalize, materialize, express your new internal perspectives. 'Drop out' suggested an elective, selective, graceful process of detachment from involuntary or unconscious commitments. 'Drop Out' meant self-reliance, a discovery of one's singularity, a commitment to mobility, choice, and change. Unhappily my explanations of this sequence of personal development were often misinterpreted to mean 'Get stoned and abandon all constructive activity'. So now we know! P.S. I just came across an old blog post, from September 2008. What a difference a couple of years make.

Married to the Pie Man

I am so popular at work. I walk in, and people stop what they're doing to beam at me and ask,

"Got any pies?"

Because my legendary Husband Who Cooks has become The Pie Man. (a.k.a. Piethagorus. I kid you not.)

It started on Monday.

So, is he making his pies?

Yup. Porkpiessteak&kidneypieschicken&hampiesapplepiesbeefpasties(oh,andScotcheggs).

Ooh! Apple pies?

Yeah, and they're gorgeous, sharp and sweet, with a little spice, and he makes the best pastry.

Ooh..... My mum used to make mince pies - minced beef and peas - does he do them? ..... No? ..... OK, I'll have........ two beef pasties, a chicken and mushroom pie........ and an apple pie!

Later .......

Someone said your husband makes Scotch eggs!

Yup.

Oooh! It's ages since I've had a Scotch egg........ And he makes them?

Yup.

Oooh.......

Later

Is it your husband who does the pies?

Yup. Porkpiessteak&kidneypieschicken&hampiesapplepiesbeefpasties(oh,andScotcheggs).

Does he do mince and onion? I love mince and onion.

Er, no, but you're the second person today to say......... I'll ask him.

What about rhubarb, or gooseberry? I used to love rhubarb, or gooseberry tart. (Chorus of oohs, ahs and wistful 'You-never-see-rhubarb-here's.)

Tuesday

Have you got any order forms for those pies?

Sorry, I've run out - but you can order through the website .........and I've got post-its!

Good. I'll have a beef pasty and a pork pie.

Great! (I'm grinning like an idiot.) Thanks!

Wednesday

Here are your pies!

Ooh! (Jump to Thursday: Tell him the apple pie was delicious. I had it hot with custard. Jump to Friday: Can you ask him for two more apple pies for Monday?)

And so it has gone, all week. It's not just the orders, it's the reactions. The Oooohs! and Ahhhhs! and Mmmms! The enthusiasm and the wistfulness. The My-mum-used-to-makes and I-haven't-hads. The requests for the utterly mundane but special things that remind people of home, and being six, or sixteen. And the I LOVES. This is not just nutrition, or convenience, or even value for money. This is home!

My husband started making pies because he really missed traditional pork pies, and English style steak and kidney pies. And gravy. I like solid Spanish empanadas de atún, and those light tiny Argentinian spinach pastries, and Colombian maize balls deep-fried with an egg in the middle, and Italian pizza, and Greek pastries, Turkish kebabs - you name it, if it's got bread or pastry wrapped around it, I will eat it until I'm........... the size and shape I am right now!!!

But sometimes, amongst the fabulous foreign flavours and textures (Oh! And Indian butter naan, German pumpernickel, Chinese pancakes -) yes, even so.... I yearn for the familiar and long taken-for-granted -

And then -

a summer picnic with a crisp-walled pork pie, melt-in-your-mouth jelly, and unadulterated slightly spicy pork....... and pickle in the middle (Now that's all his own idea!) Oh wow!

And now - with skies and temperatures lowering -

putting a knife into crisp pastry, all flaky and golden on the outside, pale and steamy on the inside; and inhaling that unmistakeable winter comfort smell of steak and kidney; and then the dark chunks and rounds slipping out in a a glossy brown flood of savoury gravy......................... Ho-hum. Yum yum!!!!

Anyway, the man himself is experimenting with mince and onion this weekend (Thanks, Angela!), and yesterday bought a couple of bottles of a dark and healthsome beverage of Irish origins, to practise steak-and-ale pie recipes for the benefit of those who like their steak-and-kidney sans the kidney.

He may have to deliver me to work on castors on Monday morning.

No, wait! I've just remembered!

I'm running 7-12 kilometres tomorrow!

There, it's all about balance.

P.S. He did an interview which appeared in July's InMadrid. It's bigger here, but you'll still need to zoom!

P.P.S. So if the changing weather's making you a tad nostalgic for Blighty's finest, go check out the Great British Food pie (...oh, and a Scotch egg) site. (And in case you weren't paying attention, that was indeed a shameless plug. But it's for your own good, you know.)

P.P.P.S. if you're pining for a decent British style sausage (not to be confused with a cheap-and-nasty British sausage) check out Brendan Murphy and Cider Dave's The Proper Sausage. We had some over the summer. Phwaw!

Summer is ycomen in - los días de verano!

Friday June 4^th 2010

Yesterday felt like the first day of summer. I’ve had the window open at night for weeks, but on Tuesday the air was so warm and still that it felt like a fourth wall outside the window, so now we sleep – or try to – with the blind raised and the curtain tented to encourage any stray draught into the bedroom.

Wednesday was a hot one, 33˚, and every Metro station smelt of fart. What can you do when you’re standing inside a fart? You can’t hold your breath, but breathing doesn’t seem an attractive option either. Outside, it was rather humid, with clouds dithering all day. Shower? No. Shower? Maybe. Shower?

In the end, no, and we spent an hour or so around sunset in a terrace bar in Plaza de la Remonta, watching a crew dismantle a hundred metre long canopy left over from the Fería Gallega, while kids rode bikes and kicked footballs, and police cars cruised back and forth between the big station at the rear of the plaza, and the opening onto calle Bravo Murillo.

Yesterday, though, was June 3^rd, Corpus Christi, and a public holiday in Madrid. When I surfaced yesterday morning, it was to the voices of the nuns in the convent across the road singing at mass. Right now, there’s a blackbird serenely singing somewhere close by, up on the convent roof, I think.

Bar Seréa was open yesterday morning – most places were shut for the fiesta – so I had a barrita con tomate, an Andalucian toastie with tomato pulp drizzled with olive oil; much nicer than it sounds, though it would have been even better with black pepper. It surprised me that you don’t often find a pepper mill among the condiments in a Madrid cafe – I thought they were an essential part of Mediterranean life; but no, this is Spain, the exception to every rule, so the condiment of choice is salt. Nice having olive oil and wine vinegar on every table though, even with two salt pots!

I had planned to stay all morning, with a bottle of water and my notebook, but it was soon too warm for me (delicate English blossom) and even if it hadn’t been, everyone else’s holiday morning comings and goings around the news stand and the grocer’s, and at the other tables were much too interesting for a street theatre aficionada – noseyparker – like me. So in the end I came home, wrote a bit, snoozed a bit, read, and re-arranged the living room to encourage air circulation. (This place was an oven last summer, when it wasn’t a sauna. I don’t think we have any insulation whatsoever, so we get the full benefit of Madrid’s continental climate. Yay.) Then I watched Billie Piper in Mansfield Park, and sat here at my desk near the open window with a fan going when there was no breeze, chatting to one of my brothers on Skype. Lovely.

And now I’d better get some breakfast down me, and go to work.

Oh frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!

I don't know when I last felt so thrilled by an election result. Thrilled!

"There will be setbacks and false starts. The government can't solve every problem. But I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face, and I will listen to you - especially when we disagree."

OK.

¡Qué bueno! (Chuffed of Chueca)

I did my audition for the Coro de Mujeres de Entredós (women's chorus - soprano, mezzo-soprano, alto) - a dauntingly large turn-out for half a dozen places, and I got in! I am thrilled to bits. I've wanted to join this chorus for so long, bought a CD, been to a concert, practised songs from both - and now I'm in!

Entredós is a women's centre with a social, cultural and political agenda.

There's also a percussion workshop on Friday evenings, and I'm hoping I can afford to do that as well. I've seen the percussionist in action, and we're not just talking djembes - though they're deeply satisfying - but all sorts of percussion instruments.

However, there's something else to think about too. One of our friends is an expert on medieval musical notation, and is happily obsessed with the Cantigas de Santa Maria, a 13th Century collection of songs celebrating the Virgin Mary (also catchy Christian propaganda in a country still divided between Catholic and Muslim rulers). The collection was part of a vast canon of work commissioned by Alfonso X, or Alfonso el Sabio (Wise - or, more accurately perhaps - Learned) king of Castile & León, and what makes this so very appealing is that a lot of the cantigas have been set to traditional Galician (i.e. Celtic) folk tunes, rather than the more elegant court music of the time. So there's a bunch of us getting rather excited about the prospect of learning to sing and play some of these. Our little corner of Chueca was rocking to our stomping singalong to 'Quen quer que na Virgen fia' on Sunday afternoon, which my husband says in 27/13 time. Great fun. Sorry neighbours! So my Spanish may not be all that brilliant, but my medieval Galician Portuguese is going to improve no end!

Oh, and at Entredós this evening, we worked on a lullaby written in Catalan, Cançó de Bres per a una Princesa Negra, and Spain's summer hit of 1986, A Quién Le Importa. And in case you're not familiar with the latter, here's a video I smuggled out of rehearsal.......... Altos rule!
______________________________________
Esta noche he ido a las audiciones por el Coro de Mujeres de Entredós ¡y he tenido exito! Me gusta cantar, ¡tengo que cantar! Sin embargo, es siempre mejor a cantar entre otros, y me encantar cantar en armonía de tres o quatro partes. He buscado un coro desde otoño pasado, y he descubierto el Coro de Mujeres de Entredós, el Coro Universitario Complutense, y el Coro de Cámara, pero mi horario ha hecho todo imposible. Me gusta música clásico, pero otros tipos también: swing jazz (Ella Fitzgerald, Lena Horne), la música folklórica europeana, arabe, y africana (me gusta la música japonesa también, pero sólo a escuchar, ¡no a cantar!) y cuando estaba socio de 'Dubai Harmony Chorus' he cantado pop, y gospel, y 'barbershop' - ¡qué diversión! No he elegido Entredos sólo para su repertorio - lo que es muy variado y divertido -sino también para compartirlo con otras mujeres - españolas y otras - por fin para ser socio de un grupo.

¿Y nuestros primeras canciones? Cançó de Bres per a una Princesa Negra - en catalán, y ¡¿A Quién Le Importa?!

¡Qué alegría!

Felt Bird of Happiness

The other night, I wandered onto the website of Tamar Mogendorff. Go see! Inspired by her birdies, I've been playing with felt, and having a wonderful time.
I'm not satisfied with the upturned tail or the pot belly, so of course I'll have to make another one. I enjoyed playing with the position of the black bead and scrap of yellow felt to get not just the position of the eye, but also - unexpectedly - an expression in it (mostly wry resignation this time, which I think is appropriate). And when I was tying off the stitching on the beak, I realised that I could also retract the beak slightly - basic needle sculpture. Obviously these things also mean that I need to make another one!


So all good fun, if a world away from the style and originality of Tamar Mogendorff's work, which ranges from the most elegant or funky soft toys, to art with a needle, conveying something essential about the nature of her subjects.

All wonderful!

Oh, and while I'm on the subject of people with actual talent, Habibi's been drawing, but is dissatisfied with the outcome. Apparently he's out of practice, so these are not much good.




Right.........................

bloggy contentment

Last week, when I was Deeply Fed Up, I went looking for blogs to cheer myself up. Molly Chicken (away with the fairies - it's quieter there.) did it for me. I want to live next door to this woman, not least for our similar take on the important things in life, although I would not lend her my Dyson. If I had one.

This afternoon, having been restored to my normal (and I use the term loosely) insufferably cheerful self, (the power of a good whinge and the good sense of good friends), I surrendered to the pleasures of someone else's garden, on the Costa de la Luz, which is about as far south of here as you can get without falling into the sea. Starting at the beginning, I'm up to December 2006, and everything in the garden is pretty damn gorgeous, including the cat(s) and the mosaic(s). I could go for this.

And *now I'm going for an audition for a women's four-part harmony choir that I've been yearning to join for a year. If I get in I shall be a very happy bunny. If I don't get in, I shall be less happy, but I've got a reserve yearn. What I want to do is sing. With friends. Fingers and toes crossed.

*Harrumph! P.S.Erratum.Addendum.Bumbum.Oops.Buggerrit. How come the last Tuesday in September is in It's-October-now-so-get-yer-ass-back-to-work Week? Faec Fic Foc! (Who says Latin is a dead language?). OK. Next week!

Home-made happiness

I had yoghurt and oatflakes for breakfast this morning, with a big dollop of stewed plums, and a generous swirl of honey. I only mention it because,

1. it was good!


2. I stewed the plums (not major, but gratifying)


3. I made the yoghurt! Yeehah!

Of course, I stirred it all together, but do you really want to see that image? Not for nothing do the yoghurt manufacturers favour pale fruits, or small, definite bits of fruit in their pots..... (More staggering insights into the marketing of dairy products LATER!)

I got the recipe from an old copy of Earth Garden, that excellent, very practical magazine and forum on ideas and strategies for living sustainably and well. There have been other recipes, but this one doesn't require a yoghurt maker or GCSEs in Biochemistry or Food Science. (None of which I have).

Basically, all you need is live yoghurt, milk powder, hot water and a vacuum flask, plus the sense to follow instructions. In practice, I'm an Englishwoman in Spain, following an Australian recipe, so I'm a little anxious about quantities, and not entirely sure about the beasties that need to be swimming around in my yoghurt base.

So here's the recipe, which really is as straightforward as it sounds.... with some personal observations, just to complicate things................

• one and a half cups of skimmed milk powder (or ordinary milk powder)


• 2 pints of hot water


• 3 tablespoons of yoghurt
  .....and that's it for the ingredients....



• Use hot water - not boiling. If it's too hot, you'll kill the yoghurt. You should be able to put your finger in without too much discomfort.


• And the yoghurt you use for this recipe should be live, natural yoghurt, with Acidophilus and Bifidus.

Observations Complications Detail!!!!:

• 'cups' of milk powder: I wasn't sure about Australian cup sizes, and we only have mugs anyway, but we thought that the glass in the photo looked like the equivalent of one and a half teacups. Deep breath - it worked.


• 'milk powder' I had a choice between Nestlé Sveltesse CALCIO PLUS CON BIFIDUS at vast expense; and leche condensado, which probably is condensed milk after all, but I wasn't 100% sure, and my Spanish wasn't up to finding out. OK. Going with the Nestlé. It worked.


• '2 pints of hot water' I bought a litre flask, and filled it with the cheapest supermarket mineral water, which I then heated in a pan. And if you think I'm being prissy, well, firstly, you're not alone, and secondly, you probably haven't smelt or tasted the eye-watering concentration of chlorine in Madrid tapwater. Ye gods!


• 'Acidophilus and Bifidus' There are plenty of live yoghurts in the supermarket these days, every product label cheerily promoting the assorted flora and fauna required for healthy intestinal activity. Lovely! But while everything (included the powdered milk I bought) contains Bifidus, Acidophilus doesn't get a mention anywhere. Was it in there or not, and if not, would my starter start without it? Er..... Labels mentioned Bifidus and 'other live cultures'. Danone labels merely referred coyly to their 'own' special ingredients (Danone are much more forthcoming on their website.) Even the organic foodshop labels only mentioned the big B 'and others'. Organic products are thin on the ground in Madrid, and I wasn't about to make a crusade of this. What to do? I found a reference online to the merits of Onken Biopots as a starter for making your own. I LOVE Onken Biopots, and have been known to eat an entire tub for lunch - (That's lunch, ok, not dessert, or elevenses....) - but the Onken website explains that their Biopot recipe includes "two live bio-cultures, Lactobacillus acidophilus and Bifidobacterium longum - as well as live cultures, Streptococcus thermophilus" in their recipe. Stre-......???

.....Ah...... and the Euro finally dropped........

...............Imagine you're down at the chill counter, choosing something nice for breakfast or a mid-morning snack. Being a responsible consumer, you read the label on that smart little yoghurt pot. Let us take a moment to consider your instinctive response to the phrase 'Lactobacillus acidophilus'. Hmm....

And don't you experience a very particular frisson at the happy concatenation of 'Bifidobacterium longum'?

And doesn't the thought of a spoonful of 'Streptococcus thermophilus' just set you up for the day? It does, doesn't it?!

And discretion is the better part of marketing, so............ we'll just call it 'Bifidus', shall we? And take great care at every stage of the production process........... it's dairy after all!

O.K. Enough of the hyperbollox, let's get to 'The Method'!

1. Pour the litre of hot water into a basin, add the milk powder and whisk well. (I don't have a basin or a whisk, but a casserole and a wooden spoon worked just fine.)
2. Add the three tablespoons of yoghurt, and whisk til smooth. (I don't have a ........ yeah, ok, moving on).
3. Pour the hot mix into the 1L vacuum flask and leave overnight.
4. Open in the morning, enjoying trepidation and anticipation - and be extremely pleased with yourself!
5. Spoon / pour a helping into a bowl with fruit and cereal and honey. Put the rest in the fridge, and enliven your breakfast with thoughts of yoghurt cake, yoghurt ice cream, yoghurt muffins, yoghurt dip .... because you'll have to go some to get through the best part of a litre of yoghurt.........

So these are the ingredients, and the extreeeeeeeemely complicated equipment required to make your own yoghurt, and yes, that's the finished product in the blue bowl. A little lumpy perhaps, but mine own. And when there's only 3 tablespoons left, I can use it as a base for the next lot. (Must find a cheaper brand of powdered milk when this runs out.)

And this is half a kilo of red plums (ciruelas rojas) washed, halved and their stones removed but left in the pan (I've got an idea that there's pectin in the stones, which gives the finished goop a thicker consistency - you can fish them out when it's cooled). You can cook them very gently with the lid on, with no more water than the moisture left on the plum skin after washing, or slosh in a little extra water and cook a little faster. If it sticks a little, it's not exactly the end of the world, because there's no extra sugar to burn.
And cooked. Sharp, but add honey if you like it sweeter. (I do.)

I prefer greengages - ciruelas de la reina - but they're twice the price of ciruelas rojas this week. I used some rather wrinkled eating apples the other week - cored but unpeeled, and with the cores in (pectin in the pips!) and removed later: the cooking is so gentle that they don't break up into a pippy mush.

And the kitchen smells soooooooo gooooooood.