Jane Mulberry

Jay Angler wrote:When I'm baking something in a medium oven, like apple crisp, I will put 6 bulbs in a small casserole dish with a lid and let them bake. Then I peel them all, and freeze them, so I have baked garlic to add to pesto, bean dip, garlic bread etc and it's easy to grab as much as I want.  

Yesssssssss!!! Roasted garlic is soooo good. I have to cook a lot at once, because we will eat a whole head of it each in one meal, given the chance.

I'm Aussie living in the UK, I'd call it a baking tray, too.

You might be wise to put a glossary at the front of terms that might vary internationally. I write fiction, and my main market is the US. My fiction set in the UK uses British English, and a glossary for US readers is a must!

Or in the recipe itself put the different terms in brackets, as you'll need to do with US & metric measurements for ingredients.

I do know what a baking sheet or cookie sheet is, but mainly from reading a bunch of US cooking sites.

I've never stayed in one for more than an hour or so, but when I lived in the Outback I visited a couple of underground houses in Australia in a similar opal mining area to Coober Pedy.  They didn't seem to worry too much about ventilation in the small houses. There were no internal doors and the main shaft into the house was enough. Bigger houses with deep inside rooms incorporated some air vents to the surface. No air pumps or anything I saw, everything was simply left open for natural ventilation. Maybe a simple fan.

But the situation there is very different. It doesn't get that cold in winter, and there's no radon issue in that area, as far as I knew. So their methods are probably not relevant to your land and your underground rooms.

Amazon calls them latte spoons, but to me they're sundae spoons!

It seems most likely to be a response to the grain in the chicken feed, especially as you know you react to soy and wheat. I would be surprised if the feed didn't include wheat gluten and possibly soy as well to up the protein content. Changing their feed to something either homemade or with a proper ingredients list so you know what the hens are getting is probably the best thing you can try. Some chicken keepers here have also commented in the past about fermenting the feed being helpful.

If it was an infection like Salmonella, I'd expect you to be a lot sicker.

Another interesting article! Random and irrelevant to the oatcakes discussion, but talking of etymology,I noticed that the main Anglo-Saxon word for bread, hlaf, is very similar to the modern Bulgarian word for bread, хляб hlab.

I will try some of the recipes for the poor person's bread, made without wheat, as hubby is wheat-intolerant.

Tereza, I was really glad that Leigh's question sent me off looking, too! The blog has some fascinating info and is still a work in progress so I'm looking forward to more.

I think part of the problem is that there are so many recipes for "anglo-saxon oatcakes" on the internet that are all copies of each other and aren't at all authentic! Almost all are sweet cookie types for kids to make as a part of history lessons, and almost all use rolled oats, also not authentic.

Honey cakes most likely would have been a rare luxury for most anglo-saxons, only eaten on feast days. Coarsely milling whatever oats you have, whether labelled rolled oats or porridge oats should work to give the right effect.

The old lady's "cakes" King Alfred burned are far more likely to have been a type of unleavened flatbread, probably a mix of pea flour and rough milled oats or barley. This is an interesting article on what anglo-saxons might have really eaten and how they cooked them: https://earlybread.wordpress.com/2017/05/13/how-to-make-everyday-anglo-saxon-bread-version-2-hearthcakes-or-kichells/

Reminds me of the excellent article you wrote on using wood ash for leavening!

If these are meant to be authentic oatcakes, it would be oatmeal that was used, not porridge oats or rolled oats. They need to include the flour from the roughly milled oats.

Though oat cookies like Anzac biscuits are delicious, proper oatcakes aren't anything like cookies or biscuits. Not usually overly sweet or overly salty, so it could adapt to whatever it was eaten with. And flat, more like a crispbread or a large round cracker, but harder.

The north of Scotland wasn't suitable for growing wheat, so the oatcake was used as a bread equivalent.

I think if you put rolled oats or porridge oats through a grain mill at a coarse setting, you might get something like the right thing.

Agreed on time and moisture being essential. I've had compost fails because of letting the heap dry out. That's the most likely reason, for sure. What Sarah describes doesn't sound typical of herbicide damage, as some plants survived and could be transplanted.

But I still also think it's relevant to mention that some people composting manure brought in from off their site have experienced issues due to the manure being contaminated with persistent herbicides. I imagine horse owners may not have any way of knowing what the hay they feed the horse was sprayed with, unless they make their own hay or get it from a trusted source. Being very aware of the source of imported manure is essential.