All Day Homemaking in Our Cottage | Bread Baking, Jam Making & Family of 5

Well we have got lots of home making and baking and lots of wonderful things happening here in the kitchen today so I thought I'd bring you along on a home making day. We're getting started with some bread. I've got two loaves here and then I'm going to make us an English breakfast for lunch and then hopefully this bread will be done in time. And then we're also going to make some jam today which I thought would be really really fun and something that I haven't tried before. So we're going to try that and then lots of other exciting home making adventures. So come along with me and let's enjoy this autumnal wintery day today. We went out this morning and yeah I should have worn a coat. It was pretty cold. But let's get started with this bread. I had this going earlier on this morning so this is ready for to rise in my baskets. I think there's something special about starting the day with bread on the counter. It asks you to slow down even before the day's really begun. If you're new here I'm Mia and this is English Rose Cottage where I share home making and natural living and from scratch cooking from our little corner of the English countryside. It's not fancy or fast but it is real. Most days you'll find me right here baking, stirring, sometimes burning things and trying again. So if you love slow mornings, simple food and finding beauty in everyday life I'd love for you to pull up a chair and to the farmer's market the other day and picked up these blueberry berry bars. They're called Freddy's Farm, 100% British fruit and veg. They're so lovely, all they've got in is apple blueberry beetroot carrot and spinach. I must try making these but they're kind of like chewy sweety things. You can't see me, I'm talking. You find them yummy don't you Juna? You like them? She'll make some breakfast, lunch. The best way to start up a fry up is by having some big juicy tomatoes that one day will be grown from my garden but not today and these are going to sit in the frying pan for the duration of the cooking time because it just means that they get slowly kind of grilled and fried up and they get soft and it's the best way to do them. In my opinion now, however growing up, I grew up in the Midlands and we do tinned tomatoes on a fried breakfast growing up and now, well to my southern husband that is absolutely sacrilegious so we don't do that anymore but this is the way I actually prefer it, just sit it down on itself, upside down, chopped in half and just leave that to do its thing for the whole duration of making the roast. I keep saying roast don't I? I don't mean roast, I mean fry up. We don't need to chop tomatoes anymore, sorry mum. Just going to get a bit of fat on here before I put them on and I forgot to pre-heat it so definitely pre-heat it first. The next thing to get on as well as the tomatoes are some sausages. Now these are British pork apple sausages which are Josh's favourite so they're new to this particular brand but we're going to try them. The next thing I'm going to get ready is the poached egg water because we do fried eggs all the time so I think we're going to do poached eggs today, I'll tell you as well if we're going to do poached eggs. Just to mix it up but I like to do water and vinegar in a, I was going to say a solution but it's really not that fancy, just water and vinegar on the stove and get that boiling, add some salt. Before you're about to throw your eggs in, give it a whisk, get the water swirling, crack the egg in, leave it for a couple of minutes and then we've got a poached egg catcher. That's definitely not the name of it. What is this called? A poached egg utensil? An egg thing and we get an egg thing and scoop it out but we're not ready for that yet, I just like to get everything prepped while we're standing around doing nothing. So then I'm going to also put some baked beans in a pan too and get that prepped and then we'll get on our mushrooms. With the mushrooms I like to put in a little bit of garlic powder and a little bit of salt and get it frying in some nice fat. I'm going to fry them in beef dripping, all the good things, all the good things and then I'll do that in my cast iron. My cast iron I like to keep quite seasoned, well seasoned, I did get a question about how I cook with cast iron. Just well seasoned, well preheated and then I'm pretty much good to go. With my little cast iron pan, I have a big cast iron pan that I struggle a little bit more with because it's thinner but my little one is always very favourable. Where is it? It's times like these I'm also very thankful that we have a very big oven. So just a little thought on why I think being at home matters. I think being at home has been a gift that I didn't always see. For a long time I thought home was just sort of the place I came back to, somewhere between everything else but the more time I've spent here at home with my children, with my family, the more I've realised it's not what actually keeps me from life but it is life. The meals, the laundry, the sound of those little footsteps, they're not distractions from something bigger, something better, they are actually the bigger thing and it's easy to look at home making as small work but I've started to see it differently. Home is where the tone of what days is set, where people learn what comfort feels like, where love shows up in those quiet ways, in the clean sheets and the warm food, a space that just feels safe. It's not glamorous and it's definitely not always tidy but it matters more than most things that I can think of and there's a kind of purpose here that doesn't need to be proved, it just needs to be lived and maybe that's enough but anyway that's a bit of a ramble. Let's get back to our breakfast, lunch, breakfast lunch. Now I am going to very slowly and carefully flip over my tomatoes once they're in the process and they should be nice and round on one side. We're going to flip them over for a couple of minutes and then flip them back over just to get all the juice. Time to get some bacon. So the next thing I just want to get cooking away is some stock. I have got some lamb bones and some vegetable scraps that I like to put in a stock so I'm going to get this going and leave it for, well, see we're going away tomorrow so probably maybe like 12 hours or so, I don't really know yet but we're just gonna throw it together anyway and then I might freeze it. While the children are in quiet time and napping I thought it was the perfect opportunity to show you what I bought from the charity shop this morning. I made an impromptu visit to the this basket was this basket here which was so cute and so this little sweet basket that I thought I'd use for the children's toys because we're lacking some toy dedicated storage in the lounge so I thought that was a good little purchase. It's got a nice handle, worked well as a shopping basket honestly, it's what I used it for this morning and then I also picked up this clock which I thought was really sweet, quite 80s my husband said but really useful because it's got a little timer on the bottom and I am forever putting down my timer and losing it so it was really nice to have that and I think we'll just put it somewhere in the lounge, a little bit 80s, a little bit a little bit cute and it's a little bit plastic but I think it looks more ceramic than not so I think it's nicer at least even for a little bit that will come in handy and then I also picked up this beautiful tin here now this is just an English tea tin from let's say New English Teas, Fine English Breakfast Tea and it's just the tin but actually I've been wanting a storage place for homemade biscuits and stuff once I've made them I'll pop them in here and have this out on the side as a bit of a biscuit tin type type feeling so yeah and I thought the pattern on it was really sweet and very quintessentially British so I thought that was really nice and I'll put that just on the side in the kitchen and add some cracknel that I've currently got which is a bit like a cracker sort of thing and I'll put those in there and then they'll it's an airtight storage jar so pretty good so I found that as well and then I also found my daughter a red coat currently don't have that but it's a pretty red coat but also I picked up this morning some preserving jars because I'm so excited to get into homemade pickling and preserving and building kind of a bit of a pantry from scratch so I picked up a few of these jars to hopefully do some gherkins and things like that in the coming weeks now we won't be doing that today we're going to make jam today but I thought there was a really these were really good to have on hand because I currently think I've used all of my jars at the moment with storage and flour and all of the bits and pieces that are currently storing in them so I don't have any spare jars so I've got these now and then I also picked up six small jars which we're going to use for our jam in just a minute and just six more jars like this with a jam thermometer and a wide mouth a wide mouth funnel which you'll see in a minute because I'm going to use that to make jam and then I also got a jam straining kit which I'm not sure if I'll use but it was there and it was nice so I thought I'd get it too so that's just a little mini charity shop haul that I have for you today which I was very excited about but the kettle is boiled so I'm going to make myself a nice cup of tea oh there is one more thing actually I did pick up this folder now this is nothing special apart from quite I thought it was just quite a nice pretty folder from the charity shop but it's important because I have and use on a daily basis a home management binder folder kind of system with all my kind of cleaning routines and systems that I try and follow um just to keep on top of the house a little bit and I also keep at the back a bunch of recipes I've just started to I'm struggling to hold it I have just started to um add in some I've got some recipes in there from years ago but I've also I'm also starting to add in the recipes that I'm using now and putting it in here and having it just in one place because it's all a little bit scattered so um I'm gonna just keep adding to this and I always have this in the kitchen and I always have it on hand but it wasn't a very ugly thing before and now it's quite a pretty thing so um yeah and it's a little bit bent and things but it didn't really matter to me I just thought it was pretty enough to use as my home management binder which sounds fancier than it is in fact I just try to show you a little bit what I've got I have kind of a weekly cleaning schedule um with some zone cleaning here and I'll I I rub this out and and redo it each week and then I've got kind of a fly lady cleaning list of each area of the house um and then a bible in 90 days plan which I refer to frequently when I'm doing that plan and then a bit of a morning routine evening routine afternoon routine weekly home blessing which is what the fly lady uses plan day anti-procrastination errand day renewing day all sorts of things and then at the back there I have my recipes that I'm adding to over time so that's a little insight just in case it was a complete mystery what on earth is a home management binder now you know now well this is mine anyway and that's what I refer to on a weekly basis because with three little children in tow my brain isn't always functioning as it should be so I can think oh what's that recipe going here or oh what am I on earth am I supposed to be cleaning if I get a spare minute and a half I'm just gonna check my binder real quick and it's better than checking a phone in my opinion so yeah this comes in handy so that was the other thing that I got was that everything yeah I didn't get one yeah but it was a nice little trip out right I can organize my children's toys now too okay let's get making some jam okay we are actually a few hours later so I need to get these jars sterilized it's nearly the end of the day and it's getting dark so I'm gonna get these jars sterilized put them on a tray first and then our raspberries with sugar it's just a 140 degree oven to sterilize them for about 10 minutes these and have to get up all of them yeah 500 grams do you need to move over smells good right so now we're gonna just let that rest for 10 minutes okay then we'll come back to it okay so I'm gonna put this on the stove while it's on the stove now and it's gonna bring it slowly to the boil and then when it's at the boil I'll let it boil boil how many times can you say boil I'll let it boil for about 10 minutes turn off the heat delicious yes please oh well not yet actually we need to bring it to the boil first so when it starts boiling which is when it's bubbling that's when we can turn the time okay see how it sets well as the day slows and the kitchen quiets I'm reminded how much peace and joy there is in these simple moments I absolutely loved today I loved doing all the cooking and the baking and making the jam it doesn't always look like this but I was feeling well satisfied at the end of today so if you find comfort in slow and from scratch living too I'd love for you to stay a while to subscribe and join me here each week at English Rose Cottage until next time do take things slow come back home and keep finding the beauty in your own everyday rhythm