#4 Loaf-ly day for an Adventure

Welcome back to our kitchens for Episode 4!

This time, Hannah teaches Lotty her signature "Impatient" Bread, which until now has never been written down - check out the exclusive recipe here on our website! -  and we chat about holidays we’ve been on over the years - Lotty discusses her recent adventures in Amsterdam, while Hannah reminisces about her trips to Riga and to Eindhoven.
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We also take a deep dive into some spicier topics this week – with discussions about mental health and drug decriminalisation. We might not get everything right, but we’d love to hear your opinions too. 

This Episode's Recipe: https://www.flour-power-podcast.com/recipes/impatient-bread

Featured in this episode:

Matthew Wong at the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

Drug Decriminalisation in Portugal - not featured, but a good bit of further reading if you want to learn more

Taylor Swift's The Tortured Poets' Department
Chappell Roan's The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess 

Follow along for delicious recipes and thought-provoking conversations - You can find us on Instagram @flour_power_podcast, and listen across Spotify, YouTube, Samsung Podcasts and the RSS Feed on our website https://www.flour-power-podcast.com/ 

Transcript

[INTRO MUSIC]
LOTTY: Hello, and welcome back to our kitchens for the fourth episode of Flower Power, a baking podcast for two twenty-somethings just waffling through our 20s together.

HANNAH: Each episode we choose a recipe to make together, even though we're 150 miles away from each other. In this episode, we're making bread, which I'm really excited about, and chatting about some holidays and adventures we've been on over the years.

LOTTY: So, we each have our ingredients laid out and ready to go.  get baking.

HANNAH: Perfect.  Right, so, we'll just give you an introduction to the recipe. This recipe is one of the many recipes that I have just stored in my brain, which therefore means it's kind of useless because I don't have it written anywhere. And if something happened to my brain, it would be lost. And I don't know where I got it from either, so I would love to link the source, but I don't know who taught me this, I don't know where I got it from. Either way, it's my basic, basic bread recipe. So, you use 500 grams of flour, 7 grams of yeast, pinch of salt, pinch of sugar, about 2 tablespoons of oil, and 300 milliliters of hot water. Well, warm water.  And this, the best thing about this recipe is that you don't need a long time to prove it.  I am not very patient to save my life. So, I'm going to be teaching Charlotte my quick version, so that when you get home from work, you can still have a fresh loaf of bread. Because it's probably my favorite thing, is the smell of a fresh loaf of bread.

LOTTY: Oh, I agree. I mean, baking bread at home can seem like a really time-consuming task, and, like, I think most people think, why not just leave that to the supermarkets, or leave it to, like, the professional bakers? But I think Hannah and I want to prove in this episode, yes, I did write a pun into the script that you can actually make bread at home without too much time or fuss, and it's actually way more delicious than the stuff you can pick up at a shop.

HANNAH: Hundred percent.

LOTTY: Now, we were both going for different recipes... We were both planning to go for different recipes. I was going to make a soda bread recipe, that’s another really easy, very little effort, and no proving kind of bread that you need to make. However, in preparation for this episode, I looked in my cupboard, and I've run out of bicarb, so a little bit premature in the episode for a fudge off, but that, yeah, that's kind of derailed my plans! So, Hannah is actually going to be teaching me how to make her signature bread loaf in this episode! So, I'm really excited for that.

HANNAH: It'll be good

LOTTY: How do we start?

HANNAH: We'll have to do your soda bread recipe later on or as a bonus.  So, the first thing you need to do is, grab yourself a mixing bowl, grab yourself your yeast, and your water, and just pour it in there, and leave it to bloom. Which sounds really fancy, but it just means leave it for a couple of minutes to let it figure itself out. It will go a bit foamy. So, I'm just going to leave it for a minute.  Let it figure itself out.  While we're doing that.

LOTTY: Can I just check we're putting the water and the yeast into the bowl? Water and yeast into mixing bowl, yeah?

HANNAH: Yep. And then just leave it for a couple of minutes

LOTTY: Alrighty.

HANNAH: Literally a couple minutes, because I am so impatient.  Maybe -

LOTTY: There we go.

HANNAH: - we should call this recipe the Hannah's Impatient but Likes Bread.  Minimum amount of time required to have fresh bread, is what I'm looking for.  So, while we're baking, we're going to share our favorite things that we found recently. Be it a recipe, a book, or something intriguing we've discovered. As well as sharing a little fudge up or two! Because we're human, not perfect, and we make little fudge ups sometimes. 

[MUSIC]

HANNAH: Now, we've already started to hear about Charlotte's Fudge Up, but let me just cover mine. So, this week, I was like, oh, you know what I'm going to do? I have a brand-new steam mop. I'm going to steam mop the fuck out of my bathroom. I'm going to do the mirrors, I'm going to do the floor, I'm going to steam mop everything that you could possibly steam mop because I'm excited and I'm old and I've got a new appliance that I wish to use.  So, I plugged it in.  And the nearest plug socket to the bathroom is in fact too far for you to steam mop anything in the bathroom. So, I had carried everything up the stairs, already covered the floor so that I could steam mop it, and then realized that I couldn't without an extension lead.  Now, we have loads of extension leads in this house, but all of them are plugged into something, which meant I had to decide what I was going to unplug, to then take that back upstairs.  To then try again and I managed to pick an extension cord that was too short So all in all it was quite the ordeal and eventually I did get to steam mop and steam clean my entire bathroom It was great, but I don't think I’ll be doing that again!

LOTTY: Oh, wow. I mean, I've never had the joy of trying a steam mop, but I have heard they're quite satisfying. So yeah, as you all heard, my, well, my fudge up was, I thought I was baking soda bread today. I had all of the ingredients laid out ready to go, I bought buttermilk, I, you know, got my two types of flour and everything ready to go. But I hadn't checked on whether I had enough bicarb for the recipe. Until I was tidying and preparing. Everything this morning, I've managed to set up my camera, I was doing a little bit of a video test, so I actually managed to catch the moment on camera when I opened the cupboard, and I look into the bicarb, and I can, like, I caught the moment when my eyes widened on camera, so that, like, watching it back is hilarious.

HANNAH: We’ll have to get it Instagram.

LOTTY: Oh, yeah, absolutely.

HANNAH: I can't wait to edit it. I'm going to have the most fun So next step

LOTTY: I promise you; it was not scripted!

HANNAH: We're, we're not doing these fudge-ups deliberately! For us being, for me, clumsy, slightly thoughtless, and just getting in my head that I want to do something without thinking about how you actually execute things, I get ahead of myself.  But I think it's just normal to make mistakes, and there's a lot of, like, pressure going around making you feel bad if you make a mistake or make a typo. We're trying to bring light to it. We all make mistakes. Let's just have a laugh. All share ours. I know it's made me feel less anxious when I make a mistake, even just us doing this podcast.  And because we note them down, it feels like an achievement. [LAUGHS]

LOTTY: Oh, same here.

HANNAH: Because we write down when we fuck up.  And go, “oh, I'm going to tell my friend that I messed up today!”

LOTTY: It's, yeah.

HANNAH: It's quite nice.

LOTTY: Yeah, it turns from like an, “Oh shit, I'm a terrible human being who's messed up irreversibly. No one else makes these mistakes but me,” to, “Oh, whoops, it's a fudge up. No worries. I'm not the only one who does this. It's okay. It can be fixed.”

HANNAH: Woohoo!  And we want you to share them!

LOTTY: Exactly, exactly

HANNAH: Just enjoy the fact that we're human.  I would say learn from each other's mistakes, but I don't think I do that, I have to make a mistake myself to learn from it. But laugh at each other's mistakes sounds good to me! Right, next -

LOTTY: Oh yeah, I love that. I love that. Okay, is there a method to this? It looks like you're using a method.

HANNAH: [INDISTINCT] step, pop in your flour and using a fork make sure I get it off the sides, that's about it.

LOTTY: Ah, I've just picked out a spoon. So that will do me a lot of good.

HANNAH: And then I just start to mix it in slightly

LOTTY: Alright.

HANNAH: and then once you've got it kind of half incorporated, so there'll be a lot of flour left, you add your oil, and sugar.  I was about to say salt and pepper then and that's not what I mean. You don't want to put your salt and sugar in at the same time as the yeast. Because it messes with it! And I don't know what the word is for that, but it messes with the yeast.

LOTTY: It's a chemical reaction of some sort. What kind of oil are you using? Are you using vegetable oil, or olive oil?

HANNAH: I’m using vegetable oil – I would use olive oil, but I didn't have any.

LOTTY: Okey Dokey.  I do have olive oil, so remind me how much I'm putting in again. Alright, so two, two glugs. I can do that.

HANNAH: And mix it around until it makes kind of a, a sticky-looking ball in the bottom of your bowl.  I would have some flour out as well, because you'll probably need to add some more.  So that's what mine currently looks like.

LOTTY: Okay, I'm a little bit further behind you, so I'm just about to add my salt and my sugar.

HANNAH: No problem - Yep

LOTTY: You say just a pinch of each, yeah?  Okie dokie. Let's see if I don't tip in a whole tub of salt…! Come on, out you come?  There we go.  One thing I have learnt about baking bread is if you forget the salt, you can tell. So, my dad bakes bread. It's his second favorite hobby after the, the four-wheel drive kind. Not four-wheel drive, you know, like the four-wheel kind, and… he bakes a loaf of bread, possibly every other day, he's got it down to a fine art. He's managed to perfect sourdough, and pizza, and baguette. Brioche still eludes him, but he's still working on that. And so naturally, he's been baking bread, I'd say, about 20, 22 years at this point. So, I can remember a time where we did still buy shortboard bread, but it was a long time ago. Yeah, it's kind of, it's his thing, like aside from being a classic car enthusiast, he is also, I think in another life he was a professional baker.

HANNAH: [VOICES OVERLAPPING] I can’t remember a time when you bought shop-bought bread, I can only ever remember your dad making bread.

HANNAH: Oh definitely, and I think your dad has done a lot to really inspire me. I think there are people in life who inspire you to do things and try things. One of those people is your dad. With baking and cooking, I don't think that I would have made fresh pasta, if your dad hadn't done it around us when we were younger, I don't think that's something I would have naturally come to on my own? My mum's quite a good cook and quite a good baker, but she wouldn't… make a loaf of bread from scratch often. She wouldn't make pasta from scratch often. She'd do it occasionally. So, seeing your dad make it a priority kind of encouraged me to make it a priority in my house as well. As I'm older and I make a lot of stuff from scratch - I mean, I made naan bread the other day, so it's just, it's nice to have that positive influence.

LOTTY:  It is good. My mum was so happy to hear that because we had a little meeting, Hannah and I, a pre-record meeting the other day and she made naan and I made tiger bread. I would have made that today as well but that takes, like, two hours to prove! [HANNAH LAUGHS] And I said to my mum that Hannah had made naan and Mum was really impressed, because she's half Indian, and so that's …like that cuisine, that culture is like a huge part of our life, like my life growing up, and their life at home, is a lot of Indian inspired food, a lot of Indian influences. And so, when I said that Hannah had made naan, and that you'd done it with, what was it with? It was with milk, or…?  Because it wasn't with yogurt, it was with something slightly different, it was milk and egg? And she was really intrigued by that.

HANNAH: I’ll send your mum the recipe if she'd like it.

LOTTY: Oh, please do, she would, yeah, she'd love that.

HANNAH: So, what I’ve done now is I’ve tipped the bowl upside down, put the gooey substance onto the surface with some flour, and now we're just kneading. So kneading is when you stretch it out and then pull it back. And basically, from my understanding, is it stretches the gluten and by stretching the gluten that's what creates the air bubbles within a loaf of bread so the more you stretch it the airier it will be but you can stretch it too much from my understanding? So, five to ten minutes is best.

LOTTY: Yeah, you can overwork dough.

HANNAH: Now, I'm winging it,

LOTTY: Have you set a timer? Alright, I am going to set a timer, because like that's probably a good shout.

HANNAH: I usually do it until the dough feels soft and supple,  isn't quite so sticky, but kind of bounces back quicker?  I don't really do things by, you know, recipes! [LAUGHS]

LOTTY: I mean, you’re kind of… you are the embodiment of what we talked about in, I think, Episode Two, of measuring it with your heart. You know, whether that's, like, cheese or pepperoni on a pizza, or whether that's timings for bread. I think it's a really invaluable skill to have as a home cook or as a chef… Or really just anyone, it's a great skill to have and it shows that you're confident in the kitchen. Because it's one thing… it's one thing to be able to follow someone else's recipe. It's another to be able to take a recipe, adjust it how you like it, and how you see fit, and experiment with it, and have fun with it. I think that's really

HANNAH: [INDISTINCT, VOICES OVERLAPPING] So long that then you can’t remember where you got the recipe from! Like this loaf of bread.

LOTTY:  I mean, I can't retain things in my brain like that, unfortunately. I wish I could.  But I have to write things down. Which, it does mean that I have a lovely little recipe book. Of like, stuff that I've collected over the years. And, turns out that's also something that runs in my family, because… We’ve been sorting out my Nana's house recently, I say recently, for like over the past year or so.  And while we were sorting through some of her photographs, we found her recipe book from when she moved out. When she went to live independently for the first time. Because when my Nana moved out of her parents’ house, she couldn't cook at all! And so, she taught herself how to cook with like, magazine clippings, and early TV cooking shows, things like that. So, this is probably like, in the 50s, I’m thinking?  So like, the very start of television cookery shows.  And so, we found her recipe book, and it's all like handwritten, and old newspaper cuttings, and like, yellowed sellotape. It's really, it’s a really wonderful thing to hold. So, yeah, I love that, like, that’s, that's something really lovely, actually, that I've discovered recently. I'd say recently, like when did we do that? Maybe a month ago? Two months ago, perhaps?  But I actually made a recipe of hers the other day.  Which I think she must have learned from my Da-da because it was a vegetable curry, and it was a lovely curry!

HANNAH: I mean, one of my recipes that everybody loves is my mac and cheese.  Everybody says that!

LOTTY: Oh, I love your mac and cheese. It's amazing.

HANNAH: My friend loved it so much that she asked for the recipe.  She was like, “I can't live without it, I've been thinking about it for six years since the last time you cooked it for me!”  So, I leave an impression with my mac & cheese!

LOTTY: Oh my god.

HANNAH: Which kind of came from my mum.  She taught me it mostly. And then I've just kind of messed with it as I've gone along and - My mum's a “measure with your heart” kind of gal. She doesn't use measuring spoons unless she has to! She just wings it. So, I've learnt from her and that's something really nice that we've passed - She's passed on to me.

LOTTY: That is lovely.

HANNAH: Speaking of recipes, that covers my first find! So, my first find of this Month / this episode is beef kofta. Now. I made this on Sunday when I made the naan bread Charlotte and I have now started doing our pre-record meeting as a baking session and I fucking love it!

LOTTY: I think it's one of our best ideas. Like, closely following the whole idea to get a podcast started in the first place

HANNAH: It’s just like I enjoy baking with someone and I live quite far away from all my friends and now I get to bake with someone at least twice a month and that's so nice!

LOTTY: It's wonderful.

HANNAH: So I made beef kofta with (What and was in it?) I'll, I'll attach a photo of the recipe. Probably to the Instagram and maybe the website.  Because it has…

LOTTY: I should be able to add it to the show notes?

HANNAH: Butternut squash in it. Which is something I was convinced I wouldn't eat. Which is a very me thing to do, is convince myself I wouldn't eat something and I fucking love it and we've had it twice in a month and I strongly recommend everybody tries it, and but the only adjustment I've made is I used Stewing beef rather than meatballs and it was fucking delicious! So… highly recommend

LOTTY:  I love that. I've got to say that butternut squash is one of my favorite vegetables. So, to hear that you now like butternut squash? amazing. When I get some in my veg boxes, if you're down at the same time, ohh… there is an amazing butternut squash lasagna that I want to introduce you to, it's so good.

HANNAH: Here we are. This is my, my ball of dough. When you push down on it, it will come back up. I mean, I've got acrylic nails so it kind of leaves an indent -

LOTTY: [VOICES OVERLAP] Looks beautiful. Let’s see…

HANNAH: but it should come back.  So, I roll it into a ball

LOTTY: Mine's getting there! It's still quite sticky, but I think that's feeling pretty good.

HANNAH: Roll it into a ball, coat it in flour.  I just used the same one I mixed in because I don't want to do more washing up if I don't have to!

LOTTY: I mean, from what my dad always does, he always puts it back in the same bowl, too.  But what he tends to do is he tends to put olive oil in the bottom of the bowl rather than flour. [OVERLAP] So that's an interesting difference.

HANNAH: And then this is the bit that makes it go faster, is you put it in the oven on a very low temperature. You can do this from it being cold, you can do it from it already being warm, it's, completely up to you.  And I just pop it in the oven, or I would do if I hadn't left the shelves in a place where I couldn’t put the bread in!  And I'll set myself a little timer for half an hour… And it should double in size in that time.  Alexa, set timer for 30 minutes.

HANNAH’S ALEXA [MUFFLED] - 30 minutes, starting now.

HANNAH: Yep, clean tea towel!

LOTTY: Alright, clean tea towel. And into the oven she goes! [CLANG]

HANNAH: I would say this is time to clean your countertops, but there's kind of no point because you're going to need the floured surface again.  So, I just leave it.

LOTTY: It's a good time to, like, put ingredients away and do a quick sweep of anything that does need washing up and just pop it in the general direction.  But yeah, I agree with Hannah on this one. We're still, like, we're only halfway through.

HANNAH: We’re just going to leave the floured surface. While we get on to the body of our Wow God, body of the argument sounds a bit like an essay. [LAUGHS] Body of the podcast.

LOTTY: Oh jeez, no.

HANNAH: Which is our food for thought segment. 

[MUSIC]

HANNAH: Now, this episode is called “A Loaf-ly Day for an Adventure.” because we quite enjoy having pun-ny titles and I'm slightly concerned that we're going to run out of them ! [laughs] So we might have to come up with a new gimmick  But for now, we're going to roll with the puns and which is all about adventures and exploring, and so I wanted to talk about some adventures that I've had In the last couple of years  - So firstly I went to Riga, and if you didn't know where Riga was I would forgive you! it's in Latvia, which if you don't know where Latvia is, I would also forgive you, [LOTTY LAUGHS] because I didn't until I went.  So, if you imagine Norway,

LOTTY: See, as a geography nerd - oh, my goodness.

HANNAH: - and Russia, it’s kind of between those.  And Riga is like a lovely city, kind of right at the mouth of Latvia. It's the capital city.  It's absolutely stunning. I cannot describe to you how beautiful and how wonderful it was there. They are so anti Soviet, which makes sense because they are ex, like, Soviet Union, so it makes sense that they're anti Soviet, but they're very anti Soviet, and we went a few weeks after the war kicked off in Ukraine, and everybody asked me if it was safe, if I thought it was a good idea to go, And I went, “it’ll be fine, don't worry about it, no problem!”  And I'm so glad I did, because I had the best time. We got to explore the KGB Museum.  We explored the square, we went to the Baltic Sea, we went for a beach day. Oh my god, the Baltic Sea is the prettiest sea I've ever seen. It was so cold! but it was so gorgeous. And I actually would go to Latvia for a beach holiday. Which, I never would have guessed, and it was, you just walked through these, this wooded area, and you were suddenly on a beach, and it had a, a little boardwalk, and there were these changing stations on the beach, and there were bins everywhere, so there was never any litter, which was good for the wildlife… They had the best policy to allergies I have ever seen, and they were -

LOTTY: That makes me so happy to hear.

HANNAH: so – Anti-communist and anti-Russia specifically, that it was almost jarring. They had a poster of Putin dying on the Ukrainian Embassy facing the Russian Embassy!

LOTTY: Wow.

HANNAH: There were Ukraine flags – the people were s, kind.  It was just such a beautiful place. It looked like it was out of a storybook.  And I would go back in a heartbeat. I would take anyone. It's one of my favorite places I have ever been.  Why don't you give me one of the places you've been while I, I have a hydration a hydration check.

LOTTY: Well, in complete contrast to the beauty that is Riga, sorry, that's a slightly mean way of starting about saying I went to Amsterdam the other week. Amsterdam is gorgeous, I will just put it out there, but like, it's also possibly the most subversive city I've been to. It really does subvert your expectations. So, it’s taught me a couple of things. One of which is, don't do all of your research for your next holiday on Instagram, because… trust me, they filter out the crowds, they filter out the weed smells, they filter out the roadworks and all sorts of things. And so, yeah, that was, that was an interesting change to what I was expecting. I mean, as someone who loves classical buildings and historical architecture, Amsterdam is gorgeous. Like all of these beautiful, narrow canal houses with these gorgeous - like every single house is different. Every single window is different. Every single roof style is different and it's beautiful! There are bikes everywhere, there are individual, separated bike lanes - tram lanes and it works. It's incredible. However, when I say there are bikes everywhere I mean, there are literally bikes everywhere. They will just keep going. They will keep running past you, they do not care that you are in their way, they will just keep going. They will clip right through you if they can! - it's I imagine what New York must be like but on a smaller more like five story rather than 15 story scale because Amsterdam stops for no one. I have to say, the museums are probably some of the best that I've ever been to. My partner and I specifically booked a bunch of different places that we've been wanting to go to for a while including the Rijksmuseum, which is stunning. It's this gorgeous, neo-Gothic Revival temple to art. It's beautiful. And I mean temple, it's huge, it's beautiful If I, if I could describe it as someone who's never been to Amsterdam, it kind of looks like St Pancras, it's that style,

HANNAH: Did you just describe it like a British place?

LOTTY: it's gorgeous - now, but it looks like St Pancras, it’s that Gothic Revival style made out of red bricks. That's what I'm trying to say, I'm not saying like, “oh, it looks like a British place, no. It was designed by a Dutch architect called I've forgotten his first name, surname Cuypers, who also designed Amsterdam's Central Station. And it's the same like, beautiful, over the top, like, Dutch revival style. The artwork in there is incredible. We got to see Rembrandt's The Night Watch. It's huge. It's beautiful. I love it. We also went to the Van Gogh Museum, which definitely stole my heart. I love the Van Gogh Museum.  80 percent of that is because Van Gogh is one of my favorite artists of all time. So, like, I couldn't go to a museum dedicated to his life and work and not fall in love.  However, a significant portion of this was also to do with the temporary exhibit that we went to see there. Which was a retrospective exhibition of a Chinese Canadian artist called Matthew Wong. And whose life and career share a lot of similarities with Vincent van Gogh's life, like, they started, they both were self-taught, they both came into the art world at a later age, and just as they were starting to gain recognition, their lives, well, their lives took a very similar trajectory and Wong's work also is very inspired by Van Gogh's work. You've got these beautiful, bold canvases that are just explosions of color and of bold, thick brushstrokes. You know, they are, they do sometimes drift directly off of Van Gogh's pieces, which I think is, I love it when artists do that because it's when they take a whole new spin on what an original artist has done and they make it their own. But then the dreamscapes that one creates are, they were really, really quite moving. I think I will have to maybe discuss this on my own blog to just get all of my thoughts out about this artist. He’s incredible. And I'm not just saying that because he's incredible. Like, you know, you go to an exhibition, you've got to praise it, but like, he was amazing. He was a rising star, and I wish we could have seen where his trajectory was going. But I'm so glad that we managed to catch that exhibition.  So, that was incredible.

I will say, Amsterdam is indeed full of tourists, though.  And everyone knows English, so all Duolingo for the past couple of months was a complete waste! They could all speak English better than I could. I felt… a little bit awkward. One time, so we went out for a cocktail evening and like a cocktail experience. And we tried the Dutch Genever, which is like the predecessor to gin. I love a good gin. Genever, I love as well. It's really good. And after the experience, you know, it was getting late. We were going back to the hotel. So naturally, as, as a good tourist, as I go, “thank you, good night!” in the local tongue. “Dank je vel, welterusten!”.  The attendant, who'd been showing us around, laughs his head off. Like, “you've been learning on Duolingo, haven't you?” “How do you know?” “Welterusten is what old people say” “Oh. Okay, well, what do you actually say?” “We just, we just say tot ziens, but don't worry about it.”

Well, Thanks, Duolingo! [LAUGHS]

HANNAH: I’ll have to be really careful then when I go to Cologne because I imagine I don't imagine, I know that Germans know English incredibly well especially in a central city, and they're definitely not going to even give me a chance to tattoos and they'll look at me and go, “ah, she's English.  I, I want to practice my English.”

LOTTY: The Dutch certainly did.

HANNAH: We didn't go to Amsterdam because we predicted it would be quite touristy. We like, we like going to -

LOTTY: You would be right.

HANNAH: - places off the beaten track. Like we're going to Germany, but we're going to Cologne, not Berlin, not Hamburg, because they feel like the, the bigger places. And we can explore them whenever we want, but we want to look at, between me and my partner, places that are a bit odder. Where when someone asks you where you've been, they’re like, oh, I didn't think of that.  That's kind of what we like doing. So, we went to Eindhoven

LOTTY: I love that.

HANNAH: - Same thing, bikes everywhere. Incredible. We rented bikes. It was so much fun. I'm not a cyclist. I don't like cycling. You'll struggle to see me on a bike or get me on a bike. In Eindhoven I made an exception because it felt like the right thing to do. And the thing that scares me most about cycling is being on a road.  But because there's dedicated cycle lanes, I wasn't so scared.  Because I'm scared of being hit by a car.  So being in dedicated lanes that are set out just for that, Just, it took the edge off. I was not worried. I wasn't scared. I was just able to enjoy it. We went to Eindhoven we saw PSG's stadium we went to the Phillips Museum. I have no idea that Phillips invented or had a big part to play in like every electrical thing that you can possibly think of. Like TVs, radios, toothbrushes, MRI scanners, anything you think of. Phillips probably made it. And, they were brothers, and there was a sales brother who would just go up and be like, “yes, I can make that for you!” And then the other guy, who like, invented things and would be like, “Stop telling people we can do things! I don't know how to do that!”  And then would go into his workshop and figure it out.

LOTTY: That's brilliant.

HANNAH: And Eindhoven is basically a city that was built on Philips.  They made a town for the workers of the factory and it just got bigger and bigger and bigger and they had such a fabulous way of handling work life balance, including sick pay, holiday pay. Back a very long time ago when that didn't exist, they had very good workers’ rights and I think that's an incredible thing. To be able to say, in this day and age, that when you started, you already did the right thing.  The football club, PSG, was started as an extracurricular activity for people who worked in the factory. So, their life wasn't revolved around work, and now it's like a, I don't even know enough about football to pretend what league I But it's, it's a high-ranking football club.

LOTTY: I, I can't tell you either. Football's my cousin's kind of department, not mine.

HANNAH: but here we are. And it was just stunning.  It was

LOTTY: We can add it in as a postscript, it's all good.

HANNAH: - different. Eindhoven is somewhere I would live, not necessarily somewhere I would visit. If someone said to me, “oh, Hannah, I found you a job. It's in Eindhoven.” I'd go, “fuck yeah.  I'm on it. I'll be there.”  Exactly, but -

LOTTY: You’d go, great, when's the first plane out, though?

HANNAH: I don’t need to go back to it. It felt homey, but it didn't feel like it was the biggest adventure I've ever had.  And that's nice, but it just, it just doesn't feel like an adventure.

LOTTY: Yeah. I think I had a, I don't know, I had a lot of expectations going into Amsterdam of like, I've been to a lot of European cities, I'm very lucky to have been to a lot of them, like, I visited.  You know, I've done Florence, Rome, and Venice, for example, not all at the same time but they're all beautiful cities which have incredible history, incredible stories. You know, I've been very lucky to go to Paris several times, and to go to Lisbon, and to go to Helsinki. And so, I had this idea of what a European capital would feel like.  And it wasn't Amsterdam. Like, Amsterdam definitely felt like a capital, but it felt very much like it didn't have the same core identity around food that a lot of these places have. Like Paris, France, it's all about the bakeries. Florence is all about the gelaterias. Venice is all about the seafood. Lisbon. It is all about the bacalhao, the cod and the pork.  Amsterdam is all about the weed, which I was expecting because I've done some reading and also my dad and I had a call like before the night before we left. And he was like, “Oh, by the way, yeah. Amsterdam, they have coffee shops. You go to coffee shops, one thing, it is not coffee.” Thanks, dad. That's great. Because he'd been to Amsterdam, like, 30 years ago. He went on his own little Lads’ Tour of Europe. And he loved it. But so, I was aware of that. [HANNAH LAUGHS] I don't, well, he did used to smoke, I don't know if he did weed. He didn't mention anything, but anyway, that's… I'll go round to that actually. That's an interesting story. So, I was aware of the weed. Seamus somehow, bless his heart, was not aware of -

HANNAH: [VOICES OVERLAPPING] Oh god, that must have been a culture shock and a half!

LOTTY: I mean, it's Amsterdam! It's kind of one, almost synonymous. I'm glad we didn't go on 20th of April because it would've been a fucking nightmare. We wouldn't have been able to breathe! But like we stepped off of the, we So, went to on the Eurostar. Which had also never been on, to be fair. It's just a train, but it is a train that goes through a tunnel. So, we did the Eurostar and we stepped off into Amsterdam Centraal. We went into the center of the city and every other shop was a coffee shop, and every other shop that was a coffee shop, smelled of weed.  Seamus did not know what to do. And I was like, “this is Amsterdam. You do realize this is kind of part of the experience I know this isn't what we came for but it is what a lot of people do come to like do.”

HANNAH: I'm not surprised people do go just for weed.

LOTTY: I'm not surprised. [HANNAH LAUGHS] I think that's probably why they know English so well! [LOTTY LAUGHS]

HANNAH: I mean, I'm, I don't know if now is an appropriate time to voice my drug’s opinion. But I think -

LOTTY: I don't know we're talking about Amsterdam,

HANNAH: Drugs are not totally harmless, but like, I don't think it should be as high in the class system as it is. And I think that it has a lot of benefits, especially as someone who has chronic pain, Painkillers like paracetamol, ibuprofen, codeine, they have so many side effects, and if you could have a legal way to access medicinal marijuana, I just don't see a negative with that. It helps people with insomnia, chronic pain, anxiety. It just helps calm you down. There's a reason that people used it previously. Like, there are some things that are,

LOTTY: yeah,

HANNAH: Predominantly, like, messing with chemicals, like MDMA, where, I don't really get that, I've never done it, I don't intend to, I don't really get it, but like, marijuana, I get it, I get it, for physical pain, trouble sleeping, I wish there was a way in this country to access it without shame, or having to be illegal. And, at the bare minimum, and this is the argument I have always had, if you made it legal, you can tax it, which means that if you put a higher tax on it, people who overdo it, and then become a burden to the NHS, or a burden to any part of our system, police, at least they're paying for it now.  At least they're contributing to the bill that that's creating. Whereas currently, because you don't pay tax on it, because you can't get it legally.  It's, it's just… it's a problem because people who have drug addiction in this country, any country in the world that doesn't have the same policy on drugs as some other countries where, where it's a bit more legal or you get a bit more support, at least the taxation part of it provides work, provides work for people who have drug related criminal history because they could work in dispensaries.  And it provides taxation, which allows you to use that money to fund research, to fund drug help, to fund all these programs that help people get off of drugs. I just think that that's a better way of doing it than just being like, “No, we're not doing that.”  And like, for me, chronic pain, I had some weed with my chronic pain and it just made me feel like I couldn't feel my neck and my back anymore. And I am in pain all the time.  So, the fact that I just  couldn't feel it. I just slept. It was great. I didn't do anything crazy. I didn't have a lot. I had a tiny little bit. And then I just wasn't in pain anymore. So, I just, I think that there's the better things than codeine and I think that marijuana's one of them.

LOTTY: I have to say I completely agree with you I agree I'm not someone who's used drugs recreationally myself or like medicinally, I haven't even picked up a cigarette, I'll be honest. But like, I, you know, I know there are countries which have legalized it and it's worked or it is working. So like Portugal, for example, decriminalized drugs back in… I think 2009. And that means that like addicts can use things safely and they can get help without that kind of stigma that we in this country and in a lot of other countries instantly gets connected to the drug use, like anyone who's using a drug illegally, which is most drugs, is just immediately labeled with a stigma. It just is attached to them by general society. And so, to have addicts not have that level of stigma attached because things are decriminalized means there's less shame.  And that means they feel less ashamed about getting the help that they need. Or having the support as they work through what they're working through. Because I think, again, I can't speak for people who actually do use drugs recreationally or as an addiction or as you know, as medical relief, because I'm not one of those people. But from what I can tell, the more stigma and more shame you attach to it, the harder it is for these people to get the help that they need. And therefore, there's more stigma, and therefore there's less help, and it just perpetuates the cycle. You decriminalize that, you start reducing the level of stigma in general society. And that means more people are able to get the help that they need. And if they need or want to use the things that, you know, the drugs that they need, you know, we're going pretty extreme here, but like stuff like heroin, for example, is an excellent painkiller, it's an opioid. Sometimes people need that.  And to be able to find that in a safe space, where they're not getting judgment and where if something does go wrong, they have people on hand to help and that they know what they're getting isn't going to be spliced with something. It shouldn't be as well I think that's another thing that we should know - is if it's legalized that means it can also be monitored to make sure that people aren't using dirty needles for example, Or that what they think is one drug is in fact a different one and fucks them up completely in a different way - And not the way they expected - So to have that level of extra safety from it being decriminalized, I think, is so, so important. And so, like, perhaps this is an extreme opinion, but I am all for decriminalizing drugs, because otherwise, how are these people going to get the help that they need?

HANNAH: I also don’t think decriminalising drugs would make people use more drugs. Because,

LOTTY: I mean, Portugal is proof of this. It hasn't led to a massive spike in everyone who's now a drug user. In fact, it has actually allowed it to lower and plateau.

HANNAH: Exactly it’s the “you want what you can't have” complex. Some people like doing things they're not meant to do. And also, take Lotty, for example, if you legalized drugs in this country, I don't think she would change her behavior.  I, if you legalized drugs, would have medicinal marijuana. But I wouldn't be out having heroin, I wouldn't be doing MD. I don't care. I don't want those things! But for me, medicinal marijuana sounds great. And then they could mess with the quantity of THC,

LOTTY: Yeah,

HANNAH: and CBD so I could have something that's mostly like, that doesn't give you the high. I don't, I don't want to be high. I want to be in less pain. So, I just, I think it would make a huge difference for a lot of people. So, that's our, that's our hot take.

LOTTY: That's a very spicy take for Flour Power. We haven't normally delved quite that deep.

HANNAH: No, but we will,

LOTTY: I like it

HANNAH: We've got one episode coming up all about our opinions that lots of people might not agree with us on. So, I hope you stay listening for that one because it's I've got some really strong opinions, and I tend to upset people! So, if you want to potentially be offended, I suggest you listen.

LOTTY: I honestly, I am very much looking forward to that very spicy episode. Because I honestly, don't tend to share a lot of my opinions with a lot of people and so to be able to just let loose - I am very excited for that. So, yeah, that will be up and coming. How's your bread doing, by the way? Because mine has about three minutes left on its clock. So, I'm assuming yours is probably about done with its first proof.

HANNAH: There we go.  It's about double, and it's really glossy on the top.

LOTTY: Oh, gorgeous!

HANNAH: I'm going to just tip the bowl upside down. That's what you want. Oh, it smells so good.  And this is the bit where you turn your oven right up, to about 200.  And I'm just going to pat all the air out… Oh!  I've stuck it to the side because I didn't flour my surface first.  Top tip, guys. Flour your surface.

LOTTY: I've just floured my surface, because I think I'm getting impatient, it's got two minutes left. I'm going to just take it out now.

HANNAH: Go for it! This is the “fuck it, quick method” bread. Yeah.

LOTTY: Fuck it, we ball.

HANNAH: So now I knock this back, but I don't knock it back for anywhere near as long. I basically knock it back a little bit, and then shape it.  So -

LOTTY: Alright, there we go.

HANNAH: Looks so nice. And that smell of proofed dough. Isn't it just delicious? Yes.

LOTTY: Oh, yeah. Oh, it's got really good air bubbles in here, I'm really pleased about it,

HANNAH: Now it needs literally two minutes, maybe, of kneading. And then I roll it round my hands like this, and I tuck underneath to create a nice round ball. You can shape bread in loads of different ways. You can do a plait… I'm not very good at that. I think that bread is bread, and I will just make it into whatever shape it is and then chuck it on a baking tray.

LOTTY: I'm personally quite fond of the oval shapes. I seem to have left a miniature loaf in my bowl, so I'm just going to smush that underneath.

HANNAH: Grab myself a baking tray, which is what I should have gotten out earlier, so ignore the loud sounds of the cupboard.  And then I will -

LOTTY: I've got my baking tray.

HANNAH: chuck it on my tray.  Add a little flour on top

LOTTY: There she goes.

HANNAH: And this is so that when you score it, you get a really nice colour difference.  Sharp knife!  And then just score it however you feel like. You can do a crosshatch; you could do just one. You could do loads of them. You can try and do a pattern. I am not going to! I'm literally going to do two slices across the top of my bread.  It should kind of open up slightly.  It doesn't have to be perfect.  That's what you're aiming for. [CG1] 

LOTTY: I've got three like that. I think that's looking pretty decent.

HANNAH: and wait for the oven to heat up. Literally five to ten minutes. Hardly any time -  Again, I don't want to spend more time doing this than I have to.  So, I'm just going to wait.

LOTTY: Honestly, I think that is the best way of making bread. Because, like, I do think that a lot of people expect bread to be, like, a forever kind of task. Like, it takes you literally a day to make. Honestly, most of that making time is just you're waiting for things to happen.  And you can do all sorts of things… Exactly! I don't know why I haven't done this before. Oh!

HANNAH: loaf off in the morning, and then, if you want it to take a longer time period, it's all down to heat, right? So, if I want it to prove slowly, I'll put it in the fridge. So, I start work at 9, so I'll make my bread at 8, half 8, put it in the fridge till lunchtime, 1, half 1, knock it back, shape it, put it back in the fridge, then, just before I finish about 5 o'clock, I finish at half 5, I'll take it out of the fridge, because you don't really want to put it in the oven while it's really cold.  Just let it

LOTTY: No, that kind of messes up the yeast.

HANNAH: come to temperature, chuck it in the oven, bread in half an hour. And yes, it's taken you all day, but it really doesn't feel like it's taken all day.  

LOTTY: It's kind of like little pockets of activity, which I think in terms of making things, in terms of like a task that needs doing, that's a very satisfying thing because you get a beautiful loaf of bread out of it for really not that much work.  The most work you have to do is probably just kneading the bread in the morning, which to be honest sounds like a great wake up call. I should really start doing you make bread in the morning.  I'll do my best, if I'm awake enough!

HANNAH: Get it on Instagram

LOTTY: if I'm awake enough.

HANNAH: A day in the loaf!

LOTTY: You know what, actually, yeah, that would be great, yeah. Morning baking.  Okay, now we have to do that, we have to do one each.

HANNAH: A day in the loaf.

LOTTY: I mean, I am, I am planning to, to make some bread with my partner at the weekend because he's never made bread before, which, he had never baked before we started dating! He had not really done much beyond university level cooking, so the fact he hasn't baked bread, apart from, well, he has put stuff in the bread machine, and made bread that way, but not by hand, and like, if I've learned anything from my dad about bread making, it's… I'm a little bit of a purist about it. Like, yes you can make it with a dough hook, in a machine, but like, you put it in a bread machine? and that kind of takes all of the like, The joy out of it. You just put stuff in and it magically comes out, sure. But like, where's the love, you know, where's the care and affection? You just dump stuff into a box! I have strong opinions about bread machines!

HANNAH: [OVERLAP] Just like cooking is gardening, so I've got my little patch in my little patio behind my house. And it's a true labor of love for me. My potatoes have started sprouting through. My flowers have started coming up from the bulbs that I planted in September. And I planted some more in February. And I'm just so excited. I cannot

LOTTY: That’s so exciting.

HANNAH: - get enough of flowers that I grew.  I'm so excited.  Beyond excited for the project garden -

LOTTY: I love that.

HANNAH: it will be all over my Instagram It will be all over the podcast Instagram because it's the first time that I've done that. It's just exciting - I like doing things with my hands, especially as I have a computer job, I just feel like there's joy in doing things physically and bread, cooking gardening, all of my houseplants. They just, they require a labor of love, and I think that it, it really shows.  That, and I'm hoping that if I prove that I can keep a garden alive and plants, then I can have a dog.  But I did all of these things, now I would like a puppy. But now is probably an excellent time for

LOTTY: that's pretty valid to be fair. I do think that's very valid.  Yeah.

[MUSIC]

HANNAH: So, my favorite for this week? Month? episode is Amanda Lovelace. Now, I feel like I always mention the book and that makes sense because I read a lot. And her poetry, it was one of those things where you go into a bookshop and you don't really want anything, you don't really need anything, and then something catches your eye, and then you're like, “I have to have this.” So, the poetry book that I found was The Princess Saves Herself in this one. And, I didn't know that she did a whole series of them. I have discovered that since. I have now read them all! They are fabulous. But basically, she rewrites fairy tales taking into account mental illness, what it's like being a woman in the modern world. And writes this incredible poetry that just makes you feel seen, and makes you feel heard. And a lot of it is the similar kind of thing to the poetry that I write. So, I read her book and was like, “I need it. I need all of this.” And I've since read most of it. And I just, I can't recommend her enough. There are books where you read them for comfort. And there are poetry books that are my comfort. I love that.  If I'm having a bad day, a bad week, a bad month, it just, I like knowing that someone else had felt that, too. And that someone else can put something into words that you can't even describe yet. That's what poetry is for me, and I just I cannot. There are so many poets that I love and I do think this is probably a really good time with the Tortured Poets Department out, and I would like to be a part of the Tortured Poets Department.

LOTTY: I was wondering if you were going to mention Taylor Swift this episode.

HANNAH: I love Taylor. [LOTTY LAUGHS]

I will admit I've not listened to any yet. I will eventually. I will get round to it. I am admittedly much less of a Swiftian than you are, but like, I am very intrigued by her album.

HANNAH: My favourite lyric is “I was groaning like I'm winning; I was hitting my marks because I can do it with a broken heart.”  Oh!

LOTTY: Okay, now I've got to listen to that song.  Love that.

HANNAH: I don't have Eras Tour tickets. If anyone wants to find me Eras Tour tickets, I would love them. I want nothing more.  I just feel like she's the generation, she just encapsulates what it's like to be a woman at this age. And I know I'm like 10 years younger than her, but she just encapsulates it. She just gets it, you know? There's a lot of her stuff where I listen to it the first time, or the second time, and I'm like, “Yeah, it's alright.” And then you think about it and digest it, and you're like, “That's really clever, holy shit.”  She just outsmarts me on every level.

LOTTY: I love that. I have somehow already talked about my favorite because It's Matthew Wong. So actually, I have a little recommendation for you, Hannah. She's, she's an artist, a songwriter - I don’t know if you've heard of her. But her name is Chappel Roan - Oh my god, you would love her. She is incredible. She has just released a new single called Good Luck Babe. She's recently put out a full debut album called The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess.  I am in love with this album. I've kind of set myself a goal this year of listening to more albums all the way through, rather than just making my playlists and curating my playlists. I want to listen to albums. I want to, like, experience the whole story of music. So, you know, with Hozier -

HANNAH: Have you been speaking to Ash? Because that’s what he’s doing -

LOTTY: Actually no! I probably should. But, like, with Hozier's recent Unreal Unearthed, and now with Chapel Rowan's Midwest Princess, like, there are some incredible albums that are coming out right now, and She is an incredible songwriter, and she has this wonderful way with her words of, like, encapsulating the queer experience in a way that I haven't seen in a lot of pop artists. She’s… I think I found her from a newspaper article while I was scrolling on my lunch break. And then a couple of weeks later, my boyfriend's dad happened to mention her in conversation!  My boyfriend's dad is in his mid-sixties and as far as I can tell is entirely straight! So, the fact he was listening to a very, very openly sapphic, like, 20 something pop musician - and then played it in the car on the way back from this restaurant that we were all at which, like, that’s… you'll know when you hear these songs why I was a little bit bemused by this! [LAUGHS] And now, like, a couple of months later, She's everywhere. Like, she's been going on tour with Olivia Rodrigo. She's got, you know, songs and music videos coming out.  And I’ve got to admit, I've got a kind of tiny little musician kind of crush on her? I don't get those very often. So, like, she's good. She's good.

HANNAH: So Ash and his bandmates this year, made a pact that they were just going to listen to albums. So, they've not listened to playlists they've not listened to...  radio really, they just listen to albums and he's listened to like 400 albums this year and it's actually insane and I love, I love this for him, but it's so special and then they're categorizing it all and doing -

LOTTY: I am so impressed by that.

HANNAH: I jokingly said “can I turn it into Top Trumps?” so now I might be making like Album Top Trumps or Musician Top Trumps in like their group chat – [LOTTY LAUGHS] it’s quite funny. I don't want to be in it, but I do like hearing it. They were like, “who would win in a fight between this artist and this artist?” And I was like, “you should make Top Trumps.” And then they went, “You're the graphics one, you should make Top Trumps.”  I'm like, “Give me a spreadsheet and I'll sort it!”

LOTTY: I love that.

HANNAH: They're perfectly nerdy. They're very, very cute.  Just to say, we've popped our bread in the oven. It takes between 20 minutes and half an hour, depending.

LOTTY: I've put mine on for 32, so I will see how that goes. Like my dad, whenever he bakes his loaf, he uses he's got a sourdough starter, which he's been keeping going for probably about four years now, and has called it Norma.  Her name is Norma. I don't know where that name came from. I, I wish I did. It’s kind of just appeared one day like, “oh yeah, this is Norma.” “Okay, you’ve been keeping busy then.”  Yeah. This is actually the second one, because I think we, we did in fact let Norma 1 die, but Norma 2 is still going strong four years later. So, Dad's loaves usually take about 36 37 minutes but that is a sourdough bread, so it is a slightly different process for making, and it does kind of take all day, but as my dad is also, to be honest, he worked from home before it's cool, so he's -

HANNAH: Your dad worked from home before it was cool.

LOTTY: Tell me I'm wrong, though. So, like, he's very used to sort of getting up, sorting out your bread, going to do work in your office, coming down at lunchtime. You know, the way Hannah described it just now. He's made that, mastered that to a T.  But, like, when I say my dad worked from home before it was cool, he's been working from home for, I think, almost, almost as long as I've existed. Because his office was the back bedroom, and then when I wanted a bigger bedroom, he moved all his stuff into the box room.  And it still has the same wallpaper, but the farm animals on it.  Yeah. It was, it was fun when knockdown started and he had to do Zoom calls and stuff, because he was strategically moving his posters so that the farm animals wouldn't be seen in the background! [BOTH LAUGH]

HANNAH: We should renovate your dad's office. And just paint the walls.

LOTTY: I would love that, but have you seen how much paperwork he has years, so I imagine it's I say this - If my parents are listening to this, Dad, I’m really sorry, but it's true – you can't move in there for paperwork! Please do something about it. I've moved out of the back bedroom now. You can move back into the back bedroom, it's been three years! You can take the back bedroom back.

HANNAH: We’ll renovate the office for them -

LOTTY: It's on camera now. You have to do it.

HANNAH: Or Lotty's old bedroom. We'll do it for free, as long as you sort out the paperwork.  There we go. [BOTH LAUGH]

LOTTY: You know what I’m I am going to send them a link to this episode!

HANNAH: We’re happy to paint the room as long as you organize first. 

LOTTY: I mean, Dad is looking to retire soon, so it's kind of, now is a good time to start consolidating the mountains of stuff?  I don't know. I don't know.  Ooh.  In bread related news, she's growing! She's growing and she's beautiful!  I think next time I want to experiment with like, different toppings, because, the tiger bread that I made with Hannah the other day, like the crackling rice flour topping, really fun. I'm personally a big fan of poppy seed loaves. And I'd like to get over my, like, my ick about bigger seeds, so I think baking with bigger seeds might be a good way of doing that. So, yeah, I think this could be a very fun start to a very fun experiment.

HANNAH: I love having basic recipes just in my brain. So, I can make a loaf of bread and a cake without a recipe. Which is quite useful. So, for cake, this, this I know where I got this recipe from. I got this recipe from my Nan, I love her very much. I love her cakes. I absolutely love her shortbread and - please keep giving me shortbread from your freezer every time I visit? [HANNAH LAUGHS] And I bring it back up in a tub every single time and I eat it all. It's my favorite thing. But I love her cakes and her cakes are a bit of the “bare minimum easy to do.” I think that's where I get it from.  She doesn't like doing things if they're difficult. So, you take as many eggs as you want, two, three, four, depending on the number of cupcakes you want, I’d say 12 to 18, two eggs. More than that, you put it up. And it's the same for just a plain vanilla sponge. You weigh your eggs. Whatever weight your eggs are is the weight of everything else. So, weight of eggs, weight of self-rising flour, weight of butter, weight of sugar.

LOTTY: it's a pound cake! Love that. Those are brilliant.

HANNAH: So she microwaves her butter until it's melted in her old orange Tupperware bowl, which I absolutely love and man, I would like it.  With the orange spatula? yeah, I want that. And then she mixes in the sugar, the flour, the eggs, chucks it in a cupcake tin, and it's done.  So, it, that's just, that's it.  I like that I've got things like that in my head forever.

LOTTY: I think that's really important to have, like, have things that you can just pull out of your head like that. I think it's a really special gift to have because especially if it's a recipe that you've been, like, gifted by a loved one, you know, like by your Nan, for example, it means you’re kind of always carrying that person with you, especially whenever you make that recipe which I think is, is very special. I'm of the opinion that, like memories kind of hold people. I don't know if that's the right way of putting it, but you know what I mean. Like, you, you hold that memory in that kind of, means that if the person's not with you at that moment, you're still connected. It's really lovely. I think in terms of things I've managed to memorize with my little colander brain of mine (I affectionately call my brain a colander. It, it's got too many holes in. I'm also very fond of the saying, life is soup, I am fork.)

HANNAH LAUGHS.

LOTTY: But that's, that's a digression. I have managed to memorize, with my little colander brain, a very good pasta sauce, and a pretty decent way of making sort of mock miso soup.  But most of these it's kind of just throw stuff in a pan until it's good - Herbs and spices go a long way. Fresh herbs and spices go even further, it's great. And I think as long as you have a certain amount of store cut staples, and a basic understanding of how flavours work, you can pretty much make anything.

HANNAH: I think it’s easier with cooking, that might not be the right word, but baking is a lot more chemical based, so to get the right texture out of baking you have to have a greater understanding of how the chemicals work within what you're trying to do.  Not saying that you have to understand chemistry. I'm just saying that you understand that yeast equals rise unless you add salt to the yeast originally. You know, like basic kind of stuff like that. And that egg, flour and sugar and butter creates a fluffy texture. That's not the same as bread.  It's very different. But I couldn't agree more. My favorite pasta sauce that I make is different every single time because I do not ever use a recipe for it. I chop up peppers, tomatoes, spring onions, whatever I have in my fridge pretty much, and I fry them with garlic, and then I add a bit of puree, and then I add a stock cube, and then I add whatever else I want, and then I add salt and pepper and paprika, and whatever else I feel like, until I make a pasta sauce that I blend up, and it's delicious.

LOTTY: I think that's, that's honestly the best way of just doing that, is you throw things together, you learn the work. So like, I, I taught myself how to do stir fries, because it wasn't really something that we did while I was growing up. Because my parents’ cooking is pretty much either Mediterranean or Indian. You they do sometimes, like, expand out from this, but very rarely. So, I taught myself things like fajitas and stir fries. And a stir fry, as long as you've got various forms of green veg, chop them up, fry them till you like them. And as long as you've got Like, my, my kind of, the ideal is if you have garlic and you've got ginger and both fresh, but like, if you have, you know, ground stuff, that works too. If you have miso, or if you have gochujang, or, like, if you have soy sauce, or if you have mirin, just throwing around in cupboards. Or if you have lemon juice, lemon juice is great in a stir fry. You just kind of, I just kind of throw it in. Like, my mirin, just standard, absolutely basic, cannot be bothered stir fry is lemon juice and honey and stock and a bunch of whatever spices I can reach within reason. Like, there are some spices that do not go in a stir fry, but there are some spices that always go in a stir fry. Ginger's always a good one. Sometimes, like, obviously you want chili. I love a good bit of chili - My spice tolerance has improved since moving out which I'm proud of - Chinese fire spice gives a nice warmth to it. Basically, just experiment. You want some acidity, you want some sweetness, you want some umami, and at some point, you will learn what umami is. I didn't know what it was for years, I thought it was a joke that Friends made up. So, yeah, you’re kind of -

HANNAH: Oh yeah.

LOTTY: Yeah, it's good stuff. So now I always have miso paste, I always have soy sauce and mirin. I always have Like I mean; I have a pretty fully stocked spice cupboard so much so that I have more spices than fit in the spice cupboard and I will have more I will have a bigger spice cupboard! But what I what I'm saying is like cooking is the place to experiment and I your love the fact that I get to just do that. It is one of my favorite parts of having my own kitchen

HANNAH: It’s great - And I find that since living with my partner, my eating habits have vastly changed because he likes a lot more Asian food than I thought that I would like! [LAUGHS] I had decided that I didn't like soy sauce, which, you know, Soy sauce is fucking delicious, what was I talking about? [LAUGHS] So, I decided that I just didn't like it. And I decided that I probably wouldn't like a lot of Asian food. And we eat Asian food on a fairly regular basis now. And because we cook it at home, I just don't know if I like takeaway Asian food. I just think that there's something better about making things yourself!  And I don't have takeaway very often.

LOTTY: Oh, I agree. We don't, we don't really do take away in my house. The closest thing my parents get to take away is the very, very occasional fish and chips. I still take to fish and chips as a very good comfort food - when like everything else has gone to shit, get fish and chips, I will stand by that. But like in terms of things like takeaway Chinese food, Or, like, takeaway Thai or takeaway Japanese food. Or, like, a lot of South Asian cuisine. And even Indian cuisine.  I, because of my allergy, have trust issues with the food. If I can't see what's in the kitchen, I don't trust that they're not putting nuts near what I'm having or in what I'm having. And so, you know, I can be as careful as I like, but if I'm not the one in charge of making it, that’s, you know, my life is in their hands. And… that does put a pretty significant factor of risk towards any kind of takeaways that I might have.

HANNAH: Or it's highly unlikely that it would ever have been in the kitchen. Like if we have takeaway, it's fish & chips or pizza because we know that those are places that don't have nuts involved.

LOTTY: Exactly. I mean, I do still have to be aware in Italian restaurants because they will have a lot of things with almonds in, or they will do things like pesto, which contains pine nuts, or cashew nuts, depending on the recipe. Yeah.  So, anything with pesto, I have learned, just don't let other people do it, do it yourself which is great, I love making pesto because I found a French recipe that does not include nuts at all, it's fantastic! I thought I'd lost pesto forever, I have not, still lost Nutella, but never mind so, like, when it comes to, what, losing Nutella,

HANNAH: Wait, you lost Nutella?

LOTTY: Mhm, yeah.

HANNAH: That didn't occur to me until just now.

LOTTY: I know, I used to have it inch thick on my toast in the mornings! And I can't have any of it now. Not that it will kill me, but it will make me distinctly uncomfortable for several hours. And honestly, I don't buy it. I'm good.  So,

HANNAH: So, you'll just have -

LOTTY: Yeah. I can't have Nutella. I can't have pistachio ice cream. I used to love pistachio ice cream. I can't have pecan pie.

HANNAH: Oh my god, you can’t have pistachio – praline chocolate?! They’re my favourite! [LAUGHS]

LOTTY: I can't, no! I can't have pistachios. I can't have Ferrero Rocher’s.  I know! No! They were mine, too! [LAUGHS]

HANNAH: it's only just occurred to me how many things that you're nut allergy removes you from. That's devastating. Like, I knew it, but I didn’t know it. Does that make sense? Because I don't have to know everything that your allergy prevents you from having, and it's the bigger things that I would go, “oh, Charlotte definitely can't have that,” and I would think to myself, “yeah, she probably can't have that pistachio chocolate in the moment,” but like, holy shit… yeah.

LOTTY: the concept of it, isn't it? Yeah. I… Not recently, but like, possibly I think not long after Seumas and I had started dating I was invited round for dinner, and like, I shit, yeah got there, and my, Seumas's mum had, like, made A marinade that she, like, she put on this meat that she was just about to cook, and I managed to get to their house right at the time when she was about to put stuff away from the marinade.  And on the side where she'd been making stuff was a little bottle of groundnut oil. And I was like, “oh no I can't eat this, I'm really sorry.” And she was like, “why? I groundnuts are okay, aren't they?” “No, groundnuts are peanuts.” [THEATRICAL GASP]  Like, her jaw just dropped. She looked absolutely mortified. And I said, “It's okay, I haven't touched anything. It's all good. Just I can't eat what you're making for dinner tonight. I'm really sorry” and so she finished cooking everything – like she shooed me out the kitchen - Finished cooking everything put it all in the freezer, and was like “Okay, we're not having that tonight! We're having something completely different that you can definitely eat. Don't worry!” And now like Any time that I'm over there and she's done anything that remotely resembles something with nuts in, like, she still checks whether I can have sesame stuff, like sesame oil, sesame seeds. For now, I'm okay with those. For now, they're okay. They're not nuts. There is a similarity to, I think, the protein structures. But anyway, every single time I'm over there, Fiona will check whether everything's safe, and I'll go, “yes, it's all okay.” Or, “it's okay, but I'm going to avoid this.”  And, yeah, but like, that, that little escapade could have ended very differently. And then I would be two for two on people whose parents have tried to poison me. Or people who I'm dating who have tried to poison me.  I'd like to keep that number as one, thank you! [LAUGHS]

HANNAH: I'm very happy that I have never poisoned Charlotte. I'm always very careful.  I'm always very careful

LOTTY: I’m very happy about that too.

HANNAH: We don't really have nuts in this house. Really, I don't even think we have peanuts at all in this house. Maybe other than like Snickers and the Celebrations box.  Which we don't like them, so they, they just sit there. No one eats them.  So, I think that we, for the most part, don't really have nuts in this house, and we don't really use peanut butter to cook or anything. But I'd always be extra cautious if I was making something for you about what ingredients I use, just because it's important. Like, I don't have an allergy. I have an intolerance to apple juice -

LOTTY: Yeah, absolutely.

HANNAH: There are not many times that that comes up. So,

LOTTY: No, and most of the time it's stuff that you can control, like ingredients lists and things. And that's, yeah, that's pretty good. Yeah, mine, yeah… Yeah, like you, you know, you'll feel gross for a while afterwards, but then you'll survive.  For the nuts, I'll feel extremely gross for a while afterwards, but I'll survive. For the peanuts, I have landed in A & E three separate times with my peanut allergy, none of which were my fault! and one of which was even in a different country.

HANNAH: That was horrifying to find out about when you got home!

LOTTY: Yeah, oh god, yeah.

HANNAH: Well, the first thing someone said to me when you got home from that trip was “Oh Charlotte went to hospital for her allergy.” [LOTTY LAUGHS] I went, “Charlotte has an allergy?”  And I've known you forever, but your peanut allergy came on later, didn't it?

LOTTY: It did. I mean, I think I must have had it from a younger age because I do remember, like, being at primary school and my friend had given me a Snickers bar and I'd never tried a Snickers bar before.  I had a bite and I was like, oh, this tastes horrible. And I went and like, you know, stuck it out in the sink and was like, that feels awful. But I didn't put two and two together of that means I have an allergy because I was… Six, or seven. So like, allergies don't exist unless you already have them at that age, basically. I just thought I didn't like Snickers!  Which upset Mum, because mum loves Snickers. And so, you know, years go by. And, I get, I go on like a French exchange trip, I think age 12? Maybe 13, because I'm in secondary school. And, the, the mum of the person I'm on exchange with Very kindly puts the bowls, like, I think Skittles, or M&M's, (I think it's the M&Ms) in my, like, in my bedroom that I'm staying in. It's like, oh, I left these for you, you know, and I have one. Like, “oh yeah, that's really nice, I love chocolate.” They're a weird lumpy shape. I don't think anything of it, I just think “maybe that's just what French M&Ms are like.” I spend the rest of that evening throwing up.  As soon as we get home, or not that much longer after we get home, my mum brings back some cookies from a bake sale that the hospital's been doing, because she was working at the local hospital at this time, and they were chocolate chip cookies… And I sneak a cookie because I am 13! I sneak a cookie back upstairs and I go to my homework. Five seconds later, I run down the stairs like, “Mum, Mum, Mum, my tongue feels wrong. Something's wrong. I don't know what's wrong. I had a cookie. I'm really sorry!”  She calls up her friends at the hospital. We go there, we go get a blood test and, you know, get me some antihistamines first of all. And then I get put in for another blood test.  And so, age 13, I discover I have a, you know, potentially life-threatening peanut allergy.  Great, now I have to carry these freakin’ [EpiPens] pens everywhere I go. That's good. And it's not until, I think… three, maybe four years later that, like, shit hits the fan.  As in, I'm in Iceland, on a school trip with someone who has not been First Aid trained, and I'm having a massive allergic reaction. Yeah, thanks - I would call out the college but like I don't know if we want to doxx ourselves like that - but like the person - Yeah, maybe later, we're not doxxing ourselves yet. But the, the person on the field trip, like, we had to have three adults, obviously, because we were a bunch of 15 unruly geography students. And the third adult was someone who didn't study, like, didn't work as a geography teacher, so none of us really knew her, unless we also studied biology, which I didn't. And the day of The Incident I had some bread and some jam for breakfast, as one does when you are at a buffet at a hotel.  And there was a jar of peanut butter next to the jam, and I can only assume that some idiot double dipped, because I start feeling a bit gross, but I think, “okay, maybe it's the bread. Maybe I should just not eat that bread.”  We, on that day, are not on Iceland's mainland, We take a ferry to a very small island called Heimey.  which is where they had a massive volcanic eruption in about 1977. And the plan for today is we are going to go and hike up that volcano. I do not get to the volcano!

HANNAH: We’ll have to take you back so that we can go do the volcano for real

LOTTY: I would love that. I would genuinely love that. So, I feel like absolute death warmed over. I've never felt this way before. I am blacking out on the pavement. I am spewing my guts on the pavement. I know this is a baking show. Apologies. We will put trigger warnings in the show notes for this. If anyone does have an erotophobia but like, yeah. So, the rest of the rest of my team go up the volcano. I give my friend my camera, the one I'm actually filming on at the moment, it has Survived going up a volcano, which I didn't.  I'm not jealous of my camera, trust me! So anyway, myself and this teacher, who's not a geography teacher, dip into a cafe, and she starts panicking because I'm clearly Having an allergic reaction, an anaphylactic shock, full on like I can't breathe. I can't speak I can't even say anaphylaxis without sounding like I have a literal sock stuck in my throat! - and she's panicking She calls her doctor friend in the UK, he doesn't pick up. She asks around the cafe “Does anyone know how to use an Epi Pen?” and I’m there trying my best to still keep breathing and I go “just stab me, Just stab me. Please just stab me.” She finally, finally stabs me in the thigh.  I don't remember screaming, but I'm told later that I screamed. And, the next thing I remember, I am in the, in an ambulance on my way to the hospital. I don't remember a significant portion between before being stabbed and being in the ambulance.  But I do survive, clearly, because I am now here making a podcast! That's –

Quick problem. My SD card has filled up. This might be an issue… It'll be fine. I need to get a bigger SD card, but I’m going to start filming on my phone, I think. We might need to, like, crop this bit out. I'm in the middle of a story.

Anyway, I don't know how much my camera might not have caught of that.  But anyway, so I survived the Iceland experience! My camera survives going up a volcano, gets some fairly decent shots from my friends and I get hugged by literally every single person on the Iceland field trip with me. Most of these people I don't know outside of my geography class, or even, like, they're not even in my geography class! So, it was an interesting experience, I got to say. 

Well, my glasses just steamed up.

HANNAH: The bread smells and looks delicious and I'm telling you right now that the only thing I'm eating for dinner is bread.  Oh, beautiful.  I'm so impatient -

LOTTY: Ta-dah! She is a beauty.  She's done a very interesting thing. Hang on, let me just do the -

HANNAH: You have to tap the bottom, by the way,

LOTTY: Oh yeah, that's good. So, she's done a very interesting thing where she started splitting at the sides. So, I think I should have maybe sliced her a bit deeper.  I don't bread's female. But like, she’s pretty. Gorgeous.  Mine, I should probably leave mine for a little bit before I start slicing

HANNAH: That's not what I've done.

LOTTY: But I don't want to.  Alright, let me just put it on to the bake, the cooling rack. Oh my god, my kitchen smells like a dream.

HANNAH: the crunch, I'm just going to put it next to my mic.

LOTTY: Alright, where is my bread knife? There she is.  Everything's feminine today. And chopping board

HANNAH: I can't wait.

LOTTY: I’ll catch up. Also, this is an excuse for you to have two slices. Think about it that way. Oh, listen to that. [CRUNCHING SOUNDS]

HANNAH: So, are you a fan of my bread recipe?

LOTTY: Beautiful.  Mm hmm.

HANNAH: It's really good to dip.

LOTTY: that is a gorgeous, gorgeous looking piece of bread. It smells like bread, but like, really, really.

 You have to make fresh bread; this is the thing.  Otherwise, you won't know what we're talking about. You'll be like, okay, what's so special about bread?  Make the bread. The recipe will be up not that long after we upload the podcast itself Because Hannah, I will get the recipe out of you and it will be written down so I can also make this Mm

HANNAH: And what we mean by it doesn't take long is that, yes, we'll cut the episode down slightly, right?  But we've currently been recording for an hour and thirty-two minutes.  So, less than an hour and a half between you and a loaf of fresh bread.

LOTTY: I'd say that's a pretty solid deal.

HANNAH: And you get half an hour to sit down and do fuck all.  Twice!  Once while it's baking, and once while it's proving.  It's so good. I'm so happy right now.

LOTTY: I don't know about you, but I'm immensely proud of this little loaf of bread.

HANNAH: I'm always proud of my bread.  It's one of my favorite things to make.  I'm actually about to text my boyfriend to say there won't be any bread when he gets home.

LOTTY: Love that.  Right.

HANNAH: I'll finish my mouthful and then we can do the outro.

LOTTY: I was going to say.

HANNAH: I will let Charlotte say all the important stuff because she's really good at that.  

LOTTY: I mean, you're probably going to have to say again where all of our episodes are, because, as per usual, I have forgotten, but you can find us on Instagram at flour power podcast.  So that's flour, like baking flour. We are getting better at Instagram. We had a whole meeting about it. And we also have a website where you can find episode transcripts, recipes, and bonus content. And it is flour power podcast. com that will be linked in the show notes on Spotify and on YouTube. And, where else do we get our podcasts, Hannah?

HANNAH: Spotify, YouTube, Buzz sprout, I believe that's it.  The website.  Ah,

LOTTY: We're on Google Podcasts as well, I think. Well I found Google Podcasts the other day.

Basically, if you can't find it and you want it, tell me and I'll figure it out. But for right now, if you haven't asked for it, it won't be there.

LOTTY: Sorry, I've just made another mouthful of bread. But our episodes, excuse me, our episodes are released monthly via Spotify, via all the places that Hannah's just mentioned, and on the website as well, where you can follow along with the transcript. And there will be a recipe for Hannah's bread two days after episode four goes live.

HANNAH: 15th of May and the recipe will be up on the 17th of May, so I'm very excited for that! Have a lovely rest of your day, please go ahead and try and make some bread, today, at the weekend, when you have time, it's only an hour and a half. And share with us your loaves, because I'm very excited to see them.

LOTTY: Oh, me too. I would love to see what you guys create. So, we have been Flour Power. Thank you so much for listening, and happy baking!  Bye!