A week in my London home / Some news, homemade chicken stock and planting for spring

Good morning everyone. Welcome back to my Sunday Diaries. My name's Emma. These are the Sunday Diaries. I hope you are still enjoying them. I don't know why I say that. Like, I know you are. Why would you be tuning in otherwise? I'm definitely still enjoying filming them and making them. It's so nice. Does my voice sound funny this morning? I feel like my voice sounds a bit... I really cannot afford to get ill right now. We've got so much work to do at the allotment plots over the next couple of weeks because I have heard a rumour that the temperature is literally going to plummet any sort of week now. It's definitely got colder today. So yesterday was the 1st of November. Today's the 2nd, obviously. But yeah, the temperature's definitely plummeted today. It's like eight degrees and I think it went from like 16 to eight. So you can definitely feel the difference in the temperature And I feel like it's... I've heard a rumour that it's just going to get lower and lower and we're going to have a really really cold winter so I need to get a wiggle on and do a few jobs at the allotment plot so I can't afford to get ill and I can't afford for this cold temperature to come any sooner, it needs to just hold off a little bit longer so I don't know if there's anyone out there that can do anything about those things but if you can please do. It is the first week of November which is very exciting. I feel like we can finally start talking about Christmas though I still do have my Halloween decorations up. These ghosts that I got from TK Maxx are the cutest decoration that I think I own. I don't really decorate too much for Halloween I just tend to sort of put Just a few little bunting bits up in my little Jack B. Littles. I only got three Jack B. Littles this year. Yeah, that's all I do for Halloween, really. So there's not much to take down before Christmas. I thought I would start this vlog with a bit of an announcement, which is probably why you've clicked on the video. So I'm going to get that out the way straight away so that I can't be accused of it being clickbait. But this is what I want to tell you in the video. This is the point of the video. We have come to the conclusion that we are not in a position now to move. To move house. So the house has been on the market for a while. We actually took it down a few weeks ago. So we're no longer on the market. We're no longer looking to sell. It's a combination of things. So firstly, the housing market is in the worst state that it's been in, certainly in my adult lifetime. We bought this house seven years ago now. This is our seventh year living in the house. And we thought the housing market was bad then when we bought it. And we really struggled to buy this house. It took like every penny of our savings to buy this house. And this house was a complete dump. You know, it had no boiler. It had no gas central heating. The windows were falling out the frames. And there wasn't a ceiling in the back room. We thought the housing market was bad then. It is appalling now. It's probably the worst I have ever seen it. For us personally, we actually ended up with three offers on our house. So we got one in the first week and then we got one a few weeks later for asking price. And unfortunately they had to pull out for some reason. I don't know, we never really found out why. And then we got one for 10,000 pounds just under asking price, which was like. The sweet spot basically but when we got that final offer we decided we had to look at the housing market ourselves to see what we could buy. Everything on the market feels very overpriced and everything on the market needed a lot of work. I don't know, I don't know, the market at the moment is really difficult so what are we going to do? So we have decided We're going to do the extension. So the original plan was to extend the kitchen and then put a nice patio in the back, put some double doors in, and redo the garden a little bit, put some nice fences up to give us a little bit more privacy in our own home. And we're gonna go ahead with that now. So that is the new plan. The new plan will be to extend and stay. So, if you're wondering what's going on, that's what's been going on. It's just a really terrible time. If you are trying to sell your house right now, I do feel for you. If you've managed to and you've moved successfully, well done, congratulations. Like, I know that wasn't easy, so just amazing if you've managed to do it. But we've just, we've... Got scared and we've just stepped back basically from the market. So and that's what I'm doing at the moment. I'm looking on the positive side. I went out the other day and bought a few things and I thought I would just really quickly run you through what I've got because I went to B&Q to pick up some compost to fill in my raised beds. I'm pretty sure you've seen the video for that now. But in B&Q they had these like bags and loads of bags of things that had split and they were selling them for a pound. So one of the ones that I got for home This one was actually 50p. God, I didn't even realize this one was 50p. But they're in these bags like that. You see they've got the price on it, just like 50p written on it. And in this one, perlite, which is really good for adding to your compost mix in pots. So I thought I'd get some of this. I've never had this before, but I've heard good things about it. They're always using it in garden as well, aren't they? And I've never bothered to use it, but because it was 50p in the bag split, got a massive bag of it for 50p. I know I keep saying 50p, but my goodness, like the bargains. And I've got loads of compost for the allotment plot for literally a pound, which is incredible. Got myself, again from B&Q, a gigantic Christmas candle. This is pine and cedar. I think they had like a mixed berries one as well. This was £12 and look at the size of it. It's like the size of my head. I absolutely love it. It smells really nice actually. Very Christmassy but not too strong. Sometimes the pine candles can smell like too strong. This one doesn't. So I got this for £12 which I'm very pleased with. I also got a bunch of bulbs but I will show you these in more detail later because we're going to plant some of these in my garden. But I've got loads of tulip bulbs. And then, because I bought this at B&Q the other day, but before that I actually went to the White Company and saw a gorgeous winter candle. And then I've got a few home things coming this week from Next but they haven't arrived yet. If they do arrive in time, I will show you them otherwise. That's my little haul. I feel like I've chatted for ages and ages. I actually need to start some cooking. So yesterday I cooked a roast dinner. Today is the next day and I'm going to make my chicken stock. And I thought instead of showing you the roast dinner, which I did a few weeks ago, I'm going to show you how I do the chicken stock for the next day. So let's go and make some homemade chicken stock. It will last all week. It's so easy and it's delicious. Right, so here is my roast dinner from yesterday. So after I finished with it, like... I've used it. I leave it in the baking tray. I have cooked my chicken on a A bed of vegetables. So you've got some leeks, carrot, onion, a whole bulb of garlic here, and then the offcuts of, oh no, some celery as well. A little bit of water into the bottom and then you roast the chicken on the top of that. So that is what all of that is. And what we're going to do is we're going to take all the rest of the chicken off of the bone and then we're going to pop all of this into a big pot. Also, a lot of you might be thrilled to know that I have purchased some new knives because my knives were absolutely terrible and even when I sharpened them, they were still so, so bad. I'm so glad. So I've actually purchased myself a new knife and that is part of the reason why I'm starting to buy new things in my kitchen is because we're now like staying and we're going to do the kitchen up. So I'm not so worried about spending money on things now. The only thing, the knife is like so sharp. I'm actually not used to using a knife this sharp so I'm a little bit scared of it at the moment. I'm so used to using knives that are not sharp. Okay, so now everything over goes into a great big pot. So I'll pop it all in there so you can see. So we've got the carcass of our chicken. Any chicken that I have accidentally left on the bone will just add to the flavor and fall off. And then we've got all of these veggies. All of this can go in. Okay, so into this concoction will go some salt and pepper. Some apple cider vinegar, just a good sort of healthy glug of that. I've also got some cumin seeds. If I had a lemon, I would put a lemon, half a lemon in there as well, but I do not have a lemon. And then what we do is we just literally fill it up with water, just cold water, I'm just using it from a kettle, until it's covered. That'll do. And then we are going to put it onto the heat, we're gonna bring it to the boil, and then we're gonna lower it right down to a really low simmer, and we're gonna leave it simmering, covered, for four hours. Uncovered, bring it to the boil, take it right down, cover it over, four hours. Looking okay out there, it's very cold, but the sun does keep poking out, so I'm gonna pop out there now. do a big old weeding session get all the weeds out because the garden has been slightly neglected this year for obvious reasons we thought we were gonna go and then we're gonna stay and now we're gonna do the extension so i don't know i don't know what's going on anymore but i'm i'm just gonna start living in the moment and in the moment This moment right now, the garden's a weedy mess. So I'm going to go out there, do a bit of a sort out, see how many of those weeds I can take up, and dressing for winter because it's chilly, like I said. And we're just going to go down the borders and just see how much we can clear. Let's have a quick check on these sweet peas that I sowed last week, I think. Yeah, some of them are starting to come up. We've got no mice problems here, so at least I've got some sweet peas germinating, which is excellent. We'll just leave those in there. Look at all this, completely neglected. Right, let's see how much we can get through. So as you've probably seen through some of these Sunday vlogs, the back garden has been slightly neglected. I've really just been focusing on the vegetable patches at the back of the garden because we were gonna do the extension, which we're now going back to doing. And so the front of the garden here is sort of gonna be dug out so that we can actually extend the house. So before we put the house on the market, I started to move all of the plants to the back of the garden so that this area was clear and I'm going to continue to do that. So this pear tree that's just behind me now where I'm working, that's going to be moved and the planters are going to be moved to the back. So that will be the plan for the garden over the autumn time and then I've got some big plans for the garden for when the extension is done but I'll talk about that nearer the time. Right, I'm going to cut this Japanese anemone back because it's finished flowering. The foliage is still green so I'm not going to cut it right to the ground. And then I'm going to cut this clematis behind it back because it is an autumn flowering clematis, so it needs cutting back in the autumn time basically. Okay, so I'll cut it back to about there I reckon. So, and I'm not an expert, but I always try and cut it back so that it's just above a nodule. So you see sort of on this one here, I don't know if you can see, but there's a little nodule there. I've just cut it above it with a nice clean cut with my secateurs and that's it. And I know you're probably looking at these fences thinking oh my goodness the bamboo is up there as a bit of a privacy measure and it didn't last very long, which is what a lot of you said actually. So the fences will be redone when we do the extension as part of that. Look at my gorgeous, gorgeous tree. Look at the beautiful colour it goes and how far it's now stretching, I'm so proud of it. I planted this in when we first got the house, seven years ago. So it's seven years old, well maybe a little bit older, and it's just my favourite tree in the world. Look at the colour of these leaves. Isn't it so beautiful? So it goes, it has beautiful cherry blossom in the springtime, then it goes really gorgeous and golden in the autumn time, and we have lovely lush green leaves in the summer. And I think we also get berries on here as well, like little cherries. Um, it's a prunus. I think it's a prunus adelaide. Adeline? Adelaide? Accolade? I'll leave it on the screen if I can remember what it's called but it's a prunus and all prunus trees I think have gorgeous cherry blossom and then lovely golden leaves so it's just a lovely tree and it's given me lots of leaves to use so I think I might gather some of these up. The only thing is I've taken my rake, because it's a leaf rake, to the allotment plot. So I'm gonna have to sort of use my hands. So when you see me on the floor, my hands and knees scraping up leaves, my rake is at the allotment, that's why. Might actually use a broom. Wonder if I've got a broom. Yeah, I think a broom might work, you know. Bit weird, but you know, it's my channel. I think I'll leave the leaves that have fallen onto the bed because I think they're going to sort of compost down and do goodness to the soil. I can just top this directly up. I hate all these things that are growing. Some people say it's comfrey. I don't think it is. I don't think this is comfrey. I think it's the other weed. Still very good for plant food I think but it just comes up everywhere. It's so invasive. I can't stand it. I really don't. The bees love it though. So who am I to complain? I'm going to leave these leaves on the border and then these ones here are sweeping up like a dream. Honestly it's actually easier than raking. Right, you're not really going to be able to see the difference I've made properly because the turf, the lawn, needs so much work and also the fence is falling down which is not great but we are replacing it soon properly. But yeah, I have managed to get some of the weeds up and then over here, looking a little bit less weedy, there are some plants that are stuck in between including my My gorgeous aster. Aster's are my favourite flower. They were my Nan's favourite flower and now they're my favourite flower because they remind me so much of my Nan. But they did not do very well this year at all. So I'm gonna keep him here because he's got nice and big so I have hopes for him for next year. Right, I will do my tulip bulbs a little bit later. I'm in two minds about where they're gonna go. I actually think I should put them into pots because this year is still slightly uncertain. Oh, now the sun comes out! He's out. Now that we're finished, brilliant, yeah I'm still a little bit uncertain with the years so I think the sensible option would be to put them into more pots though a lot of my pots have already got tulips in so we'll have to sort of figure that out but we'll do that a little bit later. I think I'm gonna make some bread right now. So let's go into the kitchen and see if we've got all the ingredients for it. But I haven't made bread for a very long time and I really woke up this morning with the urge to make some bread. So I thought we should do that. Oh my goodness, guys, the whole kitchen smells of chicken, roast chicken dinner and it's just absolutely delicious. I love Mondays, honestly. After a roast, Monday's the best day. I haven't made bread, like I said, for a while, but I can just about remember the recipes. I've got some, oh, I've got some strong white bread flour and I need 500 grams of this. There we go, 500 grams of that. So then the thing to remember with bread making is that the salt can't touch the yeast or the yeast will die. So what you do is you put the yeast on one side. So I'm using six grams of yeast. I think the recipe said seven but I've only got six grams. You put your salt on the other side like that. You kind of mix them in in the hopes that the salt and the yeast don't really Sort of touch each other directly. So now they're sort of both covered in flour. Does that make sense? It does work anyway, but that's sort of the most important thing to remember. So there's the yeast and there's that and then we're using warm water, lukewarm water and a little bit of olive oil. Gives it a little bit more stretch I find, so a little bit of olive oil. I've just remembered from my time of making bread last year, because it's been quite a while since I've made it, it was last autumn I think, I always put a little bit of sugar in there as well. And it made them taste a bit better. That is optional. Now the water has to be lukewarm, otherwise you will kill the yeast. And you just very slowly start to combine it together. You don't want an overly sticky consistency, but you do want it all to be together. And it will be a little bit sticky because you're gonna need it. And then it will lose its stick. So water it once. That was a panic pour. Don't do any panic pours. Try to refrain from the panic pouring. This is my favorite part, you've got to knead it now. You've got to do this for about 15 minutes. And the way you know when you're done is that firstly it won't be sticky anymore and also it'll feel quite springy. So when you put your finger into it, it'll bounce back. That's what we need to get to. Okay, there we go. So it's sort of light and springy, it's come together. So then we get a bowl, we put some olive oil in it and we're gonna leave it in here covered for an hour until it's risen. Here you go, my friend. I'm gonna go put this under the radiator, I think. All right, the lights are on, even though it's literally like midday, but the lights are on. Okay, you're literally seeing this at the same time as I am. So, that is fantastic. It has really, really risen. That's brilliant. So what we're gonna do now is shape them because I want them to be bread rolls. So what we're going to do, you just move out of the way. I'm going to make eight. So I'm gonna take this out quite carefully. So I've got to push some of the air out so they can rise again, but you don't want to kind of beat it up. So we'll have to divide this half, half, and then half, no, half, half, and then half again. Yeah, of course, obviously. I'm going to use my new knife because it's so sharp. I don't have a cutting thing for this. So these have got to prove again for about 45 minutes to an hour. I'm going to stick it under the radiator, so hopefully. It will take a little bit less time, closer to 45 minutes I imagine. Meanwhile, we shall check. On the stock which has been simmering for about three and a half hours at a very, very low simmer. I think we might be able to start putting this into some jars. So you might have noticed I've been collecting glass jars. These are pasta sauces and beans and all sorts of things. Sweet and sour sauce. I don't know how many we're going to need. It will form a bit of a fatty layer on the top and some people get rid of that. I just keep it in the stock. I've got a ladle as well. Look at me. Look at me. I've been busy, right? Almost forgot my little sieve. Look at me. Getting proper fancy now, aren't I? Right. Got my ladle. Got my sieve. Sieve all of this in. Perfect. There we go, look we've got two and a half, I could actually fill that up with some boiling water and just fill up the stock thing and it would just be a slightly weaker stock. These two are obviously full of flavour, this one's got all the kind of fat at the top but it's full of flavour, it's delicious and if you're making any sauces, any dishes that have got a sauce in it and it needs a bit of thinning out you can just use this, you can make a chicken soup with it. Anything you've used chicken stock, I mean this is chicken stock, so and it's just so much nicer. I feel like if you start making your own stock you'll be more inclined to start cooking more from scratch because it's just so easy to make, so so delicious, so full of flavour and you know everything that's gone into it. So it's just well worth doing and that should really last the whole week. Though you know if you don't use much chicken stock it'll last a few weeks. The rolls are ready. They didn't rise as much as I wanted them to. I'm pretty sure it's because I just made some mistakes. Because I haven't done it for so long. But all I did was I dusted them with a bit of flour before they went in. Just gonna pop them on here so that they can, ow. I'm just gonna pop them on here so they can cool down. They look all right actually. I'm being a little bit harsh on myself. So the way you know that they're done is they're nice and golden on the top. And then if you tap them, I don't know if you can hear that on camera, but they sound a bit hollow. So I know that they are done. They smell incredible. They're just a little bit flatter than I would have liked them. And I think that's just because I haven't done it for a while. I used one gram under the amount of yeast I was supposed to use, and I probably didn't need them or prove them for long enough, but that's okay. They smell amazing. They look amazing. Good morning guys. A bit of a cold, misty, foggy start to the day here. I have to say though on these dark kind of grey days the orange and yellow kind of autumn leaves really pop and I just think like without all of those autumnal leaves it would be January basically. It would be winter. But luckily there's always kind of pops of colour everywhere which kind of lifts my mood a little bit. So I do like autumn even on these sort of greyer days. It was very foggy this morning so I didn't go to the allotment plot because I just thought I'm not going to be able to see anything and also just felt a little bit miserable out there. I'm not going to lie. So I thought instead I'd come into the garden and plant out those spring bulbs. I've got all those lovely tulip bulbs. I thought that would just be really nice. I know that in a lot of the pots that I've got at the back of the garden here I've already planted tulip bulbs in so I need to sort of be careful I don't double plant. But some of the plants are finished. This dahlia here, this is definitely finished. So I'm going to cut it back and I'm going to check and see if I've got spring bulbs in here. I think I probably have. Right, let's chop this back. Where's my secateurs gone? I just had them and I've literally just lost them. Does anybody else do that? I literally have them in my hand. I've found them. So I'm just going to chop this back, I think. I know it's still growing a bit, but it's not going to flower anymore. It's finished. I'm pretty sure I'm going to find tulips in here. Pretty sure I would have planted them in. I think I will leave the dahlia tubers in for next year. I think I'll try to overwinter them instead of taking them up. Because whenever I sort of pull them up, I just can't store them very well and they die. I think it's just easier to leave them in and hope for the best. Perhaps not, okay, good. So we'll just plant our tulips over the top of the dahlia. So with my tulips in pots, what I tend to do, because at the allotment plot, I just put in every variety into one bed and it all comes up really beautiful. But with pots, I plant just one variety of tulip into each pot and then all together kind of makes the display. So it's just one type of tulip, which isn't very fun to plant, but does look very effective when they grow. I've got a few varieties here and I'm not sure which ones to plant in. I think I'm just going to go on colour. I think we'll put these ones in. These ones are slower, slower, slower. And also I really sort of stuff them in. I plant quite a lot in one pot because they kind of look better the closer you plant them together and the more you kind of stuff in. If there's already tulips in here, we'll just get double tulips. They will kind of push each other out of the way. So even if I've missed them and they are in here somewhere, it will still be fine. It'll probably look even better and I'll just say I did it on purpose instead of by accident. And then I was just thinking, I've got all those leaves I collected from the other day, I'm just going to put a great big pile of them over the top as a bit of a mulch. I think I'll do some of these which are the the pink and white mix which are great for patios and containers. Maybe they're a bit smaller. It says they're tall though, 40 centimetres. Okay so they are quite tall, they're pretty aren't they? We'll do the same thing, stuff them in. Oh, they just exploded everywhere. Hang on. I've got exploding tulips, guys. Where did that one go? Right, and then I think I might put some of them in here as well. I've only got two packs left. But I think it'd be quite nice to have some tulips come up in here. There are also dahlias in here, but they didn't come up this year. But they might next year. You never know. Definitely happy to have got those tulips in. I do think that most of the pots do have some kind of tulip bulb in them. I might have double planted them. But hey-ho, because I think it would just look great. Just feels really good to be getting things ready for springtime and now that we sort of know what we're doing with our lives and we're actually staying here I feel like I can start investing a little bit more into it. We do have some plans for the garden so I can't do too much and that's why I'm sort of focusing on pots and containers that I know are going to definitely stay and be here as opposed to the borders. I'm just trying to keep the borders a bit clearer But I think we will be building up. some higher kind of borders and filling them up because the ground here isn't great so that's going to be a long-term kind of plan for the garden but yeah it feels good it feels good to get some stuff in right it's very noisy out here today um so we're going to head back in and i think i'm going to do a little bit of baking So I've booked us some tickets to go to the firework display tomorrow night which is going to be very exciting. I think I might make like a chilli, a big old chilli before we go to be nice and warming because it's always very cold on firework night. If you're not from the UK we always celebrate fireworks on the 5th of November because that is the date that Guy Fawkes tried to blow up parliament. So what better excuse to celebrate than somebody trying to blow up the government? What better excuse is there? So I'm going to make a nice chilli and then I think I might bake something today so that we can take some cookies with us or something or some cakes. I'm not sure. I want to do something kind of Firework Night themed but I'm not entirely sure what to do yet. So I'm going to have a look online, get some inspiration I think, have a look at my Readly app and look at some of the recipes and then we might need to go out and get some ingredients. So let's go see what I can come up with. Right, so I have decided just to throw together some really easy chocolate chip cookies because I think then they'll keep, you see, I can put them in a little bag and we can just snack on them. The good thing with making cookies is that you don't actually have to put them in the fridge. You know sometimes when you're making biscuits you have to put them in the fridge for the dough to kind of like harden up or whatever? You don't have to do that with cookies, you can cook them straight away, so always a bonus. A little disaster in terms of, I don't quite know how this has even happened, but they sort of, I mean this one's okay and this one's okay, the rest have squished together. They partnered up, it's like I've made a cookie dating show and it's worked, it's been very successful, except for these poor three that have been left out. They smell incredible and they will be fine, I need to leave them to cool down before I try and sort of spatula them off, so they're going to cool down completely and then we'll take them off. And, um... And we'll take some of those down to see the fireworks with. So the next footage that you're going to see will be the fireworks show. I probably won't have a chance to wrap it up by then because it's Saturday and this goes out on Sunday morning. So I'll say goodbye now. Thank you so much for watching and I will see you on Monday at the plot or next Sunday for another home vlog. Enjoy the fireworks.