Group 2012 and a breadstick experiment

I've got a bit of a confession to make. I've been attending a writing class for the last two months. I didn't post about the first meet because it was all very new (and quite scary) and I wasn't sure I had the nerve to go back (I still don't really think of myself as a 'proper writer', which may be part of the problem). This time I had dutch courage (in the form of a single malt before I set out) so let me introduce you Group 2012.

Set up as a joint venture between Blackwells, the Oxford Editors and Hersilia Press the group aims to support its members by inviting published authors to give talks and advice and supporting work in progress by offering feedback and advice. The first session was a mixed meet and greet where the aims were put in place. The second meeting we had the quite wonderful James Attlee talking about his latest book Nocturne: A Journey in Search of Moonlight (and offering copies up for a very reasonable price, alas I didn't go via the cashpoint on the way but I will be buying a copy of Nocturne for my dad's birthday & a copy for myself if my bookcases can bear any extra strain). The talk itself was fascinating, James describing how he had followed stories and images of the moon through time and cultures ending up with a kind of distilled essence from which the book flowed.

We had the opportunity to quiz him after he had finished and I asked about his top tips for writing when you have a job as well (as he does, good man). He told me that you have to train your brain into the habit. He had written lots of stuff on the train to and from work in what would have usually been dead time & he now knew this was writing time so it was easy to stick to.

 Certainly food for thought as my rewrites don't seem to be going anywhere quickly at the moment. The rest of the meet was given over to socialising and attempting a critique with something already published as real critiques are due to be happening at the next meet (my friend Ali will also be talking about his newish book the man who rained, which I ranted about on here already) so lots to look forward to there. You can follow the progress of the group on their blog here (I believe there is an official post being written about the Feb meet at some point).
The second bit of this blog title refers to a connected but quite different part of the event. We had been told to bring a bottle and treats to share. I decided as I'm in a bit of a bread phase to take some homemade breadsticks. I made them in 3 flavours Parmesan, salt and chili. They turned out wonderfully (the Parmesan and salt being particularly good).

I then discovered (to my horror) that the meet was not on the Monday as I had it in my diary but on the Wed. Homemade breadsticks do not keep (and these indeed went v.mushy) and even the chickens refused to eat them, so I ended up taking these.

Honestly the best laid plans...

Bread with Claire

Claire and I have been friends since about the age of 12, when we kind of fell in with each other (and never really fell out, despite the time she pushed me in the mud, but that's a different tale...). We were together all through high school, but then college came and we were seperated & uni followed and then our jobs and loves took us further apart still (me to the bright lights of London & Claire to Barry Island). Thankfully world balance has now been restored as Claire and her husband Simon have just moved to Guilford, a mere hour away from me! We decided to take full advantage of this geographical closeness and meet up for a break baking day and here are the results. First up we gave Claire's bread making machine a go, I think somewhere something went a little wrong as the resulting loaf was a bit too 'interesting' to photograph or eat (think large pile of soggy crumbs you are probably nearly there).

Our latter two efforts however worked out really well. We tried focaccia from Dan the bakers River Cottage handbook (I got this for Christmas and have to say it's brilliant, all the recipes look amazing, there is loads of other useful bready information and just like Delia so far all the recipes I've tried have worked (result!)). Our second batch was a bit of experimentation, Claire had been given a batch of tiger paste so we thought we'd make tiger bread rolls. S hockingly Dan the baker didn't have a recipe so we used this one, if anyone else tries it could you let me know how you get on? Ours turned out really wet meaning we had to add quite a bit more flour than was called for in the ingredients. Still the resulting rolls were really tasty. We are planning another meet up for a food day soon, the next subject of our experiments cupcakes and biscuits. Yum.