Total Art Soul - for artists

Back to the bread I’m afraid, filled breads in this case.

Amaze your friends and relatives with this one, apparently.  My father gave me a very quizzical look when we were making this, “What d’you call that in Yorkshire?” says he to Karen.  “Bread!” we replied, with much rolling of the eyes.

Seriously though it’s a really good way to make yourself a packed lunch for picnics or the like. Or it’s just a good reserve to keep in the freezer for those days when you’re going to be too busy to stop and make a meal. You all being artists of various persuasions, we’re guessing that happens a lot.

We recently made these to take walking and ended up battling then losing some to swans and squirrels, they enjoyed them very much!  Still, it makes a change from battling my father to stop him stealing food.

So, you’ll need:

That good old bread recipe from blog No. 5 again

Whatever you want to stuff in it.

Here’s a few suggestions:

All day breakfast with beans, scrambled egg, sausage (Quorn), bacon (also Quorn) and fried mushrooms.

Cheese and onions (fry the onions off in olive oil for extra flavour)

Fresh basil, tomato and cheese

That good old leek and cheese sauce from blog No.1 made really thick

Stewed, spiced apples and sultanas. Again made really thick

Chilli, as in the meal, not just the vegetable

Etc. etc.

You get the idea, it’s almost limitless.

To make these you’ll need to:

Make the bread dough as per normal. Like the Pizza recipe Blog No.11, when you come to do the second rising, divide the dough into however many pieces you want. Take one of these and gently roll it out flat. Take your filling and place it in the middle of the dough. Fold over or roll the edges of the dough to make a sort of envelope in which the filling is contained. This can be a little tricky with fillings that are sauce based. Just make sure they’re not too liquid, or hot if you’ve just made them, ‘cos it’ll burn your fingers and impede rising.

When you’re done, leave them to rise again for about 30 minutes and put them in the oven at 200 degrees c, checking after 15 minutes or so. If, like me, you can’t wait until they’ve cooled before you eat one, just remember that the filling might still be really hot, so be careful.

Enjoy

Karen and Rich

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No 1; See who's stalking you :)

 If you're on Etsy, go to http://www.craftcult.com/ and tap in your shop name. It'll tell you all sorts from which item has most hearts to who is your number 1 fan (all a bit Stephen King's Misery, if you ask me...)

To see who's talking about you on social media, visit http://socialmention.com or http://www.whostalkin.com/ again, just tap in your business or username and it lists all the tweets, blog entries etc that mention you.

We found out, for example, that half our flickr photos are turning up on a goth blog- linked back to us and listed under our name, so we don't have to go kick anybody, but it did serve to remind us how easy it is for your information to be used without you knowing a thing about it. It also is a good way to find out how much attention you're getting- we had no idea from just our flickr homepage that we were getting views elsewhere on the same photos.

Number 2: Sort your materials out :)

Asides from the fact that it's incredibly theraputic to sort things out into piles by colour, etc, you will now be able to get at things again :) Reserve a box for all the odds and ends you have left over, it's a great thing to be able to get out when you're stuck for things to do, we use ours for fascinators and small bits. Nothing gets wasted that way, and when you just can't get your head around doing any serious designing, you can at least get a  bunch of cards/stocking fillers made.

 Number 3:  Put the kettle on :)

My personal favourite, if you really can't get going- don't. You'll just get cross and give yourself a  headache. Go make a  cuppa, stand out side with it and take some deep breaths. While you're at it, see what needs weeding, put the washing out, bake the next weeks bread. Anything using your hands but not necessarily your brain.  I always feel so much calmer and at least I've been useful. Nine times out of ten, I also find the problem has resolved itself and I can now calmly go and sit with pencil and paper again.

While you're at it, we take ours black :)

 Karen and Rich

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We’ve written this one as a follow on from the last blog on risotto. We’ve done this because we had the remains of one of these risottos left and instead of eating the same thing, we wanted to do something else with it.

Once again, our flour dusted, be-apronned muse was listening and whispered an idea to us.

So we bring you YMCA (yesterday’s-meal-cooked-again) rice cakes.

You’ll need:

That left-over risotto

1 egg, beaten

some plain flour

some oil

Press some of the risotto together to make a patty. Depending on how wet your risotto is you may need to add a little flour to it in order to get it to stick together. You can, if you can be faffed, use breadcrumbs instead. Dip the patty in the egg and then roll it about in the flour (or breadcrumbs) until its covered. Fry this in the oil, turning it over to evenly cook both sides until crisp and lightly browned. Place it on some kitchen towel to remove the dregs of oil. Do this until you’ve run out of risotto. This is really good served with steamed greens but (and you know what we’re going to say,) experiment.

Of course, risotto blog focused mainly on the fact that you can use the leftovers of wine to make it. However, it also occurs to us that you might want to ensure you have wine to make it with and serve the risotto as a meal to all your friends on the evening that preceded “the morning after” If this is the case, we think that this would make a great lunch-time snack for you and your hungover friends the next day.

Enjoy

Karen and Rich 

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