As cooked by Emily:

Clafoutis aux Cerises

Baked cherry pudding, serves 4-6

Butter for greasing

750g/ 1 ½ lb black cherries, or other fruits and berries

4 eggs

Salt

100g/3 ½ oz sugar

70g/2 ½ oz flour

70g/2 ½ oz butter

250ml/9fl oz milk

Sugar for sprinkling

Generously butter a wide, shallow oven dish and arrange the cherries evenly over the bottom. Beat the eggs lightly in a large bowl; whisk in a pinch of salt and the sugar. Sift the flour gradually, still whisking. Melt two-thirds of the butter and beat it tin. Stir in the milk.

Pour this batter over the cherries and dot with the remaining butter. Bake at 200°C/400°F/Gas6 for 35-40 minutes until the batter is set. If you don’t want to serve immediately, it may help to prevent the batter sinking if you turn the oven down to 150 °C/325°F/Gas3 and bake for a few minutes longer. Sprinkle with sugar and serve hot or lukewarm, with cream.

This year, we wasted not a single apple at Nový Mlýn. In terms of sustainable living, the two of us could probably live on apples alone as we have a vast number of trees here. Experiments in the past which failed included storing apples in the cellar wrapped individually in paper in 2007 (out of sight equalled out of mind, and we never got round to using them before they turned bad), cooking apple sauce for the freezer in 2008 (which is still in the freezer), cutting them up and putting them raw into vodka – which created great apple flavour vodka, but not so great vodka flavoured apples which we didn’t use. I tried adding apple to recipes such as West Country Stroganoff – however Mike wasn’t keen, and in general we don’t eat deserts – so though the Tabor Apple Bomb was nice, it wasn’t going to use up even a small percentage of apples.
The process of juicing the apples was really messy (especially before we had water here), and we need a device to crush the apples before putting them in the press. This is something we need to work on when we have a larger apple crop. We plan to make cider in the future – I do hope that the apples are of a good variety for this.
So, this year, as soon as apples started falling from the trees, I began to experiment with sun drying apples. At first I carefully cored each apple and sliced it using a kitchen mandolin from a Moseley jumble sale. It’s possible to prepare the apples really quickly – you need a very narrow sharp blade to cut out the core by cutting a circle the size of a ring around the stalk. As you slice the apple, you can pick off any bits of seed, and the fibrous flakes around the core are no problem as they are sliced so thinly.
Leaving them in the sun directly dried the very thin slices of apple out quickly, but was way too interesting for all sorts of flying insects – a layer of muslin above and below the apples solved the problem. I needed some kind of wire rack so that air could circulate underneath, and came across two wired bed bases in the attic – once we’d cleaned these up, they were perfect. We positioned them in the middle of the garden – for maximum sunlight and apples would dry out within a couple of hours on a hot day.
Once the apples were dry, I put them in large jars with a piece of fabric held in place with an elastic band as a lid. These were placed in the kitchen window so that they could continue to dry if necessary. They have been a great success. We put them out on the kitchen table as snack food in the evening, and they are quickly devoured. I’ve now labelled the jars with the month for consumption so that we can share them with visitors throughout of the year.
A note: the first apples were not so ripe and produced sour apple rings – which were good, but different from the sweet apple rings later in the season. We tried pear, however these dried rather differently – rather thin and lumpy – Rosie & Esther’s Pear Chutney was a far better use for them.

As cooked by Rachel

INGREDIENTS

* 4 (1 ounce) squares semisweet chocolate, chopped (I USE ¾ BAG OF TRADER JOE’S CHOC. CHIPS… WITHOUT MEASURING…. DOESN’T SEEM TO MATTER MUCH.
* 1/2 cup butter
* 3/4 cup white sugar (less is more. not too sweet, brings out choc.)
* 1/2 cup cocoa powder (plus a little bit more to coat the pan with)
* 3 eggs, beaten (by hand)
* 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 300 degrees F (150 degrees C). Grease an 8 inch round cake pan, and dust with cocoa powder. (JUST SPRINKLE COCOA POWDER OVER A GREASED CAKE PAN WITH A SPOON. THEN TILT IT BACK AND FORTH SHAKING IT AROUND, TILL THE COCOA COVERS BOTTOM AND SIDES WELL.)

2. In the top of a double boiler over lightly simmering water, melt chocolate and butter. Remove from heat, and vigorously stir in sugar, cocoa powder, eggs, and vanilla. Pour into prepared pan.

3. Bake in preheated oven for 30 minutes. Let cool in pan for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack and cool completely. Slices can also be reheated for 20 to 30 seconds in the microwave before serving.

IMPOSSIBLE TO GO WRONG. NOTHING MUCH IN IT. NOTHING MUCH TO IT. EXCEPT, OF COURSE, HOW FABULOUS IT TASTES.

I registered Nový Mlýn on a site called workaway.info earlier in the summer.  The deal is that you provide food and accommodation, and your volunteers will work for 5 hours each day, 5 days a week. I had no idea how much interest there would be with a project like ours…  but quickly discovered that a calendar was necessary to organise visitors.

Up to today we have hosted Jess, Rosie, Sian, Caro, Helen, Rachel, Rosie (2 – our research shows that 66% of English women are called Rosie), Esther, Matt and Andrew… ten people…  and only three people have ever left!

We started in June with individual visitors – though the house was often full with family, friends or the Global Agents for Change (team of 20 riders plus film crew). We doubled our numbers when Sian and Caro were here at the same time… then Rachel arrived as well. Caro and Rachel have formed a crack baking team – they’ve really shown us how far you can go with the new oven – with a constant production of cakes and pies to keep our energy levels up.

Currently we have Rosie and Esther here too … they had been volunteering at the Centre for Alternative Technology in Wales for the past year.  I have heard a lot about CAT so it’s wonderful to have visitors who have spent a considerable amount of time there.  It’s been really great to compare notes with them about all sorts of eco technology – high and low.

Sian is leaving today. She has worked like a trooper and is incredibly strong – she also blasted a lot of my students’ stereotypes about women… her job back in Australia was working in explosives in an iron ore mine – and her ovaries are fine!* Sian single handedly shifted tonnes of rubble away from the kitchen & we suspect would have dug her way back to Australia given too long. We now have a cellar with lighting and a concrete floor, walls in the hallway, stripped and varnished floors in all the bedrooms, a hot shower, washing machine, oven and freezer – (all post Sian developments). She’s been great fun to spend time with and we’ll really miss her sense of humour.  Our plots to keep her here have so far failed – (finding a Czech for her to marry – for example) but we hope she’ll come back some time.

It has been really useful seeing how the house operates with 7 visitors… though Matt and Andrew (also from Australia) have their own camper van so I didn’t need to find a bed for them. Andrew has contributed way more experience in chopping wood than I was expecting from a design specialist!

Over recent weeks we’ve eaten some really fantastic meals (though, now, cooking for nine, people are a little more daunted by the task!) and been introduced to the idea of desserts (not at all usual for us two). We’ve heard lots of new music and been educated in many different ways. By the end of October we’ll be down to one or two visitors and things will quieten down for mid winter – I can’t now imagine Nový Mlýn with only us here!

(*My Czech students often warn me that certain types of work are bad for the ovaries and so, as a woman, I shouldn’t dig or lift heavy things).

A kitten was put (unnoticed) into the car of a friend when he was at a petrol station today. He discovered it when he got to our house, and offered to take it out and leave it in the forest – he doesn’t like cats very much.

The kitty is ginger (like Jiri and George the second), weighs 300 grams, has all his front teeth and wobbles as he walks – which means he’s over 3 weeks old and should be fed every 5 hours. I’m feeding him soya milk formula. He needs 80ml of formula every day. I have a 1ml syringe with the top cut off which seems to be working as a way of feeding him – so 16 lots at 5 hour intervals. He arrived at about 2pm and so far he’s not pooed… but at least he’s eaten (he’s had quite a lot of soya milk).

There is no cat’s protection league here, so we can’t just hand him in. Luckily there are websites like kitten-rescue.com to help.

He’s way too young to be away from his mother, but we’ll try our best. This will make for an interesting day tomorrow… we’re going to Cesky Krumlov with our Aussie visitor, then collecting a couple of Taiwanese couchsurfers before going to camp overnight at the cottage of a Czech friend who is having her 50th birthday party… all with a 3 week old kitten in tow.

I saw a fascinating video recently about how to fix the wings of a butterfly – I think  made by someone who works in a sanctuary – rather than someone who lives with a cat who likes to hunt them. Today Pavouk turned up with another flightless specimen and I knew what to do… rather than rescue it to allow it to spend the rest of it’s hours earthbound.  As there was less than 40% of the wing missing – I held the two wings together and snipped them so that they were even – and he flew off. I wonder what distant storm will be caused.

Rosie and I went gathering mushrooms the other day. It had been raining heavily so excellent weather for it – we found a great patch of Chanterelle, a couple of Porchini – including the Luridus variety, as well as Chamomile and some wild raspberries.  While we were out I got us (a little bit) lost and we had to hop across a stream to get back on course. It was there we made our discovery…

Gold! Well… Clay! Which you must admit, is just as exciting (and far more malleable at ambient temperatures).  When we got home I referred to the self sufficiency book my dad bought me and it provided detailed instructions on how to test the clay for PH balance, treat and process it… that book is so good. If we ever loose the internet/civilisation, we’ll be okay.  So, we ignored the instructions and got straight on with making stuff. Rosie did a ceramics course recently – so she’s the expert!

The next day I got out my enamel kiln. The kiln is not large – in fact you could just about fit an apple in it. It was given to me by a friend of my mum’s – when I was a teenager – because she knew that I liked all sorts of crafts – and I’ve kept it ever since.  Apart from a little smoke it seemed to be working fine and the (dinky) pots were successfully fired. The clay turned from grey to fleshy pink – with lovely sparkly bits (which John says are puwer gowld!).

So far I’m a little stuck on what we can actually make from the clay – smaller than an apple, yet not tat. We’re fine for tat – we can make loads of it.  I could make ends for my home made knitting needles… bottle caps to keep wasps out of beer in the garden… John says that literally anything can sell in his gift shop in Bechyne – so the challenge has been laid.

So at last, last month, we finally caught up with (what passes for) civilisation.  We had our new (second hand) Whirlpool washing machine and a shower attached to the boiler in the bathroom. It felt really great. For a glorious moment… then I got electrocuted by the tap on the shower – (luckily before I’d started running the water). The washing machine had blown up and taken out the boiler with it – leaving the taps and shower live. At least it was me, rather than a visitor who got the shock.

The problem was that a plug in the bathroom (which was part of the old wiring) had been wired the wrong way – reminiscent of the copper wire that had been used to bypass the fuse system (which we discovered in the early days). Luckily nobody died either time – but it does leave the lingering impression that the house had been booby trapped.

So, yet again we are without hot water and a washing machine. When the weather is good we’re fine as we have the solar showers and bath outside. The repair cost for the boiler was greater than the cost of the boiler itself – so we’ve ordered a new boiler with three inputs – meaning that we can heat the tank from a back boiler on a stove, from a solar system input as well as a backup in the form of electricity.  That’ll be arriving next week, and the Whirlpool washing machine has been repaired – they phoned us to ask us what the maximum we were prepared to pay for the repair would be – then they charged us this amount. Our cheap second hand washing machine has stopped being.

Still… we hope to rejoin the 20th century again this week.

Wanting to stay as close as possible to nature – we decided to try Shellac as a varnish on the stripped floorboards. This is bought in the form of flakes and dissolved in a very strong alcohol – it would have been nice to use a local alcohol – and would have certainly smelled more pleasant, however it needs to evaporate completely – so Slivovice was not the thing to use. Shellac is a secretion from a bug, which is then scraped off the trees and processed. It is the same bug which is used for the production of cochineal – and in fact, Shellac is used in food production – such as over the brightly coloured coatings on Skittles. Yum. As with anything in our immediate environment – including skin creams, the fact that it comes in an edible form gives me confidence that we’re not inadvertently poisoning ourselves by using chemicals which have not been tested a, in combination with other chemicals, and b, over the course of lifetimes rather than weeks to check of ill effects. Shellac has been used for hundreds of years in the form of French polish. It has a long history as well as uses in the food industry.

We have two litres of Shellac made up, I’m interested to know how far this will go – so far I’ve used it to treat the areas of floorboard which have woodworm damage – long dead woodworm which has attacked the wood from the sides, rather than the top – suggesting to me that the woodworm was in the wood when it was cut into planks.

The filler I made up with sawdust and shellac hasn’t been successful – perhaps because the sawdust wasn’t fine enough. I was hoping I could fill the woodworm holes with this mix, but it’s not quite right yet. It’s nice having the chance to experiment anyway.

Most people are aware of the quantity of man-made chemicals we now carry in our bodies – with all sorts of nasties even being present in breast milk. Fire retardants are particularly vile, and, as with most modern day decisions, ‘you pays your money and you takes your choice’. Fire retardant on pillows: you are less likely to set fire to your head, and more likely to get cancer.

Whitewash is essentially a mix of calcium hydroxide, chalk and water. I can buy it ready made for 165kc for 15kg – so it’s much, much cheaper than paint. It appeals to me for the same reasons we’re experimenting with Shellac. Once I’ve got the basic repair and decoration finished I plan to experiment with pigments added to the whitewash – though I will certainly not be using pig’s blood as they did to produce ‘Suffolk Pink’. Nice. I was thinking more along the lines of leaves and berries for a hint of colour.

I’ve been painting with the whitewash for a few days now. If you get it on your skin it’s incredibly drying – it’s important to wash it off quickly or your hands will become dry and cracked (rescued only by the Body Shop’s Hemp hand cream).  I’ve been using a domestic whisk to mix the paint – which settles over time into a watery layer over the heavy, cream cheese consistency, lime. Once mixed together thoroughly this should have the appearance of yoghurt.

A few days ago I used paint which hadn’t been mixed properly thinking that it might save me time on additional layers – it went on well, however when I came back to it today I found that it had cracked into small squares and was loose or peeling off the walls on about half of the places I’d painted. My only excuse was I was rather unwell with a horrible cold, but it was a bad job. Mike said it could have been the paint itself, but I know that I tried something different and it’s worked well in the other rooms. Lesson learnt. I then had to sweep down the walls again, vacuum up the mess and start again. The brilliant white emulsion is faster and doesn’t rub off on other things (like a paint made of chalk does), but I’m far more concerned with our health and the health of the house – why add VOCs to your home if you don’t have to?