Leakers Bakery Sweet Potato & Harissa Bruschetta

Here's a delicious recipe - especially for the approaching Autumn!

For 4 servings:

1 large sweet potato, peeled and cut into generous slices

240g drained cannelini beans

4 slices Leakers sourdough bread

50g baby spinach leaves

50g Gruyere cheese sliced

2 cloves garlic

Half a lemon

3 tablespoons Harissa paste

2 tablespoon Olive Oil

Roast sweet potato in butter at 180c for 20 minutes. While roasting whizz approximately 240g soft cannellini beans with two cloves of garlic and lemon juice to make a paste.  Spread paste over the top of sourdough slices, leaving the crusts and edges exposed.  Top with raw baby spinach leaves then lay potato over the spinach. Finish with sliced Gruyere. Finally, mix the Harissa with the olive oil and drizzle this mixture all around the edge of the bread crusts plus a little on top of the cheese.  Place assembled bruschetta into the oven for approx 10-15 minutes until the cheese has completely melted.

Leakers Bakery

How is the Muddy Carrot house eco-friendly?

If you’ve ever met either James or Tracy (the brains behind Muddy Carrot) before, then you’ve probably heard all about how eco-friendly their lives are.  Since I’m so keen on the environment I decided to travel to this eco-house and learn about what makes it so eco-friendly.

I started by simply looking at the exterior of the house and noticed that the roof had an overhang over the balcony.  According to Tracy this helps the house heat up more in the winter and cool down more in the summer, this diagram will show you how it works:

So in the summer when the sun is higher in the sky the overhang prevents the house from getting too much heat and in the winter when the sun is lower in the sky the sunlight is free to stream in through the windows warming the house considerably.

Also on the farm besides the house are a number of out buildings, 2 of which had south facing roofs which I noticed had solar panels on; one set for hot water another for general electricity, some of which they sold to the national grid helping to reduce energy bills significantly.

One part of the house that I simply couldn’t miss was the green roof, not green as in eco-friendly (although it was) I mean that the roof was literally the colour green! It had been planted up with sedums, a small hardy plant, not needing very much tending to (unless there isn’t much rain for a while.) Planting on roofs is becoming increasingly popular although it doesn’t mean you should just pour a load of compost all over your tiles, no, the roof has to be specially prepared beforehand to be a sort of basin which is then filled with soil and then is planted on.

Also visible from the outside were the windows, which were double glazed, good for increasing insulation. Tracy told me that they were made from super-insulated Belgian glass, good for protection against the wind. Also, on the note of insulation, when I went inside I noticed the walls were really thick, and Tracy told me that they were a whole half metre and stuffed full of insulation.

Inside the house the only heating source I could find was a relatively small wood burner but I suppose that’s all they need, with half-metre walls all the heat is going to stay inside the house and isn’t going to decrease very easily especially when it’s winter and the sun is heating the house up too.

There are also numerous measures that James and Tracy have taken so as not to waste electricity such as putting stickers on plugs so you know which switch controls which device, also almost nothing is left on or on standby overnight, the only ones that I can think of are the fridge and the freezer!  To help save energy the lights are turned off when not needed, applications that use energy all the time are turned off at the power point, and also Tracy told me that when they had a dripping cold water tap, rather than letting the water just trickle away they put a jug underneath it to collect the water. 

overall I think that this an excellent way to help the environment and more people should try incorporate some of these ideas into their homes.

Charlie, 

Green Society,

 Colyton Grammar School

Nice ‘n’ Easy Coffee Bean Vodka Tiramisu

Very simple and easy dessert to prepare for a dinner party or as a treat, using the Coffee Bean Vodka enhances the flavour!

Ingredients:

• 100ml of English Spirit Coffee Bean Vodka
• 100ml of espresso (or coffee of your choice), cooled 
• 500ml pot of double or whipping cream
• 5 tbsp of caster sugar
• 250 gram tub of mascarpone
• 175 gram pack of sponge fingers
• 25 grams of dark chocolate
• Cocoa powder

Method:

1. Put the cream, mascarpone, half the English Spirit Coffee Bean Vodka and sugar in a large bowl. Whisk until the ingredients have completely combined and have the consistency of thickly whipped cream. 
2. Put the coffee and remainder of English Spirit Coffee Bean Vodka into a shallow dish and dip in the sponge fingers one at a time, turning for a few seconds until they are nicely soaked. Layer these into your serving dish until you have used half the fingers, then spread over half of the cream/mascarpone mixture. Next, grate over half of the chocolate. 
3. Then repeat the layers for a second time (you should use up all the coffee/vodka mix, if not pour the remaining liquid onto the second layer of sponge fingers), finishing with the cream/mascarpone layer.
4. Cover and chill for at least 2 hours or overnight. 
5. To serve, dust with cocoa powder and grate over the remainder of the chocolate.

To add that luxurious touch, serve the Tiramisu with a Vanilla Kiss cocktail; 2 measures of English Spirit Vanilla Pod Vodka, 1 measure of Baileys (or similar Irish crème liqueur), serve over lots of ice.

Food Security in South Sudan

Just browsing Muddy Carrot we can see how in the UK we are spoiled for choice of delightful locally grown or produced food. Wonderful! Producing local food is an essential element in many parts of the world. 

Back in 2008 St Mary’s Church Corscombe had the privilege of welcoming Bishop John Zawo and his wife Nancy from the South Sudan, Africa and we were able to show them our local produce. Little did we know that 4 years later a group of us would visit our friends in South Sudan as part of a link we have established with Ezo in South Sudan and see it for ourselves. 

South Sudan became independent last year and is the world’s newest nation. Exciting - but living in troubled times with a recent civil war and various attacks by rebel groups. This has made it so insecure that people have been too frightened to farm until now. Fortunately things have improved considerably recently and people are now farming again and building schools and clinics. 

Seems strange, but we were asked to take with us a large chainsaw – it’s a very forested area and the overgrown fields need clearing. 

Large trees in well managed forests can be felled and the timbers used to build school desks and to rebuild clinics. 

The local people gave us a massive welcome and we are in regular contact by email – using solar power to charge the laptop there. Yes, our diet was mainly rice and maize, with occasional bits of goat – generously cooked by people who cannot afford meat. An amazing caring community shows us what can be achieved when people are committed to each other’s welfare. 

Andrew and Celia Tomkins

Clipping mohair

Meet Gertrude, one of our Angora goats.  This picture shows her in her full 6 months of fleece - mohair. Clipping needs to happen twice a year because their fleece grows at an incredible 1"/month.   Mohair looks wonderful in its au-naturel state, still on the goat - full of curly ringlets, though low maintenance (lucky girls)!


We don't have a large flock but the ones we have are bred to produce the best and most consistent fleece.  Gertrude is now 4 years old but her fleece is still very fine and beautifully lustrous (the finest "Young goat" grade). 


Why Gertrude is in our blog spot this week is because she, and all her fellow goats have just had their 6 month clip in time for this really hot weather (and the flies that come with it).

Here she is after the clip - enjoying the sunshine! 


What is mohair used for?
Well, mohair has many wonderful qualities that make it lovely for anything from the warmest jumpers through to hard-wearing upholstery velvet, but what it is most famous for is traditional teddy bears! Steiff bears still to this day use mohair for their gorgeous teddies!


If you knit and would like to try some of the very best I'd recommend New Forest Mohair !

Olympic Champion (I don't mean me!)

Did I feel small?  Yes!  

This picture was taken last week when I was lucky enough to meet Ben Hunt-Davis, gold medal winner at the Sydney Olympic Games 2000.  

He was very inspiring as he talked to a packed hall about his team's amazing progress to win the men's coxed eight rowing event.

I don't think any of us underestimates the effort that goes into becoming an Olympic champion (nor the sheer amount of talent!)

Ben was incredibly humble, explaining how in many ways they were the under-dogs; after eight years they were consistently ranked seventh or eighth in the world and never quite achieved any glory or won any medals but they were determined not to let anything get in the way of a medal at Sydney!  Rather than doing the same thing but harder, they changed their whole way of doing things and tested their every action against one question:

"Will it make the boat go faster?"

And this was the question that they then applied to every aspect of their lives in the 2 years running up to those Games.  Every single day they would aim to implement one small improvement. It was this that moved them from being an "average" top level rowing team to a Gold Medal Olympic rowing team.

It was an interesting thought – “Will it make the boat go faster?” –  it's not just relevant to rowers or even sportsmen. Ben urged us all to think properly about what the question should be in our businesses.

I'm now reading Ben’s book “Will it Make the Boat Go Faster?” and can thoroughly recommend it.

So – will I be making my boat go faster? I sure will! 

Filming the Muddy Carrot promotional video

Remember that one sunny day we had in June?  As luck would have it, that was the day Saucy Horse Video came to our farm in Dorset to film the footage for our new video "I'm Local and I Know It!" (OK, we had to postpone twice due to the weather - but at least we got the right day in the end)

You can view the video on the home page of MuddyCarrot.com