Soda bread

Sunday baking.  Soda bread instead of crumpets.

We have a bread making machine, but I fear it is coming to the end of its life.  So W decided to experiment with soda bread.  Made with buttermilk, it was quite quick to prepare, and the result was very tasty.  

Buttermilk is found in large cartons in even the smallest Irish supermarket,  but Z (visiting for a week this summer) is off ALL dairy products, so W has found a recipe using oat milk - that's next Sunday's experiment. 

W also made a rhubarb crumble.

And then we spent several hours in the garden.  We needed to clear the area behind the garage, as Skippy is coming tomorrow to wash the house and concrete.  This was cluttered with some wood left behind by the vendor, and some of the gardening stuff we brought with us.  

The first job was to cut back some of the bushes within the composting area at the back of the garden.  But the "compost heap" is essentially just grass clippings, and they have been dumped in there with no finesse.  So I needed to attack this pile with a fork to try to move it further back.  Phew, what a whiff.  Silage anyone?  We then could add the wood debris to the heap.  At some stage this area needs A LOT more work, and a lot of cardboard, to try to encourage the grass to rot down into something useful, rather than a claggy, stinky mass!

Some of the pots are also now resting in the composting area, whilst many of the garden ornaments are hidden in the garage.

This evening we went to another concert by an orchestra I'm hoping to be able to join in the autumn.  They pride themselves on being "inclusive" so many of the players are quite inexperienced.  Enthusiasm abounds, skill less so.