Day 7, Thursday 19th March , Ireland School Closures

Day 7.

I guess the important thing is to do something meaningful every day. I have the Pedometer app on my phone now so I am going to get my 10 000 steps in every day. I am aiming to start with a walk every morning and get started with that.

Lesser Celandine, this is their season.

The baking is continuing, my DD#3 baked white soda bread again and also a homemade pizza. Both yummy.
The soda bread is made from white flour, bread soda, (bikarbonat, tror jag , på svenska) and sour milk.  There is no yeast involved. If you don't have sour milk, then you can add a few squirts of lemon juice to fresh milk and let it sit for 5 mins, that will do well enough. The lemon juice makes the milk sour, and it is the reaction between the acid and the alkali in the bread soda (bikarbonat) that makes the bread rise. You have to get it into the oven as soon as possible after adding the sour milk, as otherwise the bread will flop once the reaction reacts itself out.

Incidentally, bread soda is useful for lots of other things around the house, like using it to scrub your sink clean, or to clean off any brown stains inside your coffee mugs or tea cups, or even scrub off limescale marks off the shower door if you have 'hard' water like us (mycket kalk i vattnet, det har vi).
When I lived in Sweden, I learned that one could bake with yeast! I had never seen that being done before I moved to Sweden; in my experience, we baked using bread soda for bread and scones, or else we used baking powder for a cake. So if I can find some dried yeast I will bake Grahamsbullar (wholemeal rolls) in the next few days too. And then maybe some kanelbullar (cinnamon buns) and maybe even a Semla, (Swedish bun with almonds and cream) very traditional in Sweden coming up to the season of Lent, and now eaten from January to Easter, pretty much.
One of my favourite memories: eating the first Semla of the season in Ahlströms konditori on Korsgatan, near Brunnsparken, in Göteborg.