Laura’s Polenta Soda Bread
~ 225 grams plain flour
~ 225 grams polenta
~ 1 level teaspoon of breadsoda/baking soda/bicarbonate of soda/whatever you care to call it
~ 1 level teaspoon of sea salt ground up in a pestle and mortar
~ 1 level teaspoon of paprika
~ 1 level teaspoon of chilli flakes
~ approx 400 mls of buttermilk (do NOT measure out 400 mls of buttermilk and pour it all in, in one go)

Sift flour and breadsoda into a large mixing bowl
Make a well in the middle
Hold buttermilk in your right or left hand
Make a claw with your other hand
Pour some milk into the flour mixture
Claw in a circle until the dough starts to come together
Very slowly in very small measurements keep adding buttermilk until the mixture comes together in sort of a dry ball of dough, it won’t just clump together all in one go, keep clawing until you are sure no more dry ingredients will be absorbed by your ball of dough, then add another small measure of milk. Repeat until you have your dry ball and no loose flour mixture.
Roughly shape into a circle before turning out onto a floured baking sheet
Cut the dough all the way through into a semi circle, repeat so that you have four quarters.
Leave the quarters closely nudged together

raw dough

Bake in the oven for approx 30-45 minutes
At 30-40 minutes turn the bread over, if it isn’t hollow when you knock on it, return it to the oven, checking at 5 minute intervals until it is hollow when knocked.
Open oven door, let bread cool down in oven.

baked bread (the quarters stick together and can be frozen to give easy to defrost portions of bread when you need them).

Cut and eat with chilli soup or just plain. Nigella does a sublime chilli and blackbean and chorizo soup that I think would go well with this bread. Maybe tomorrow I will make that.

Yum.

Waiting at the steps of St. Patrick’s to meet my father so he could lift the pram up the steps and we could go in.

Compare and contrast
~ in Wien, the trams come every couple of minutes, if one is an old style step up into, you know that there will be a wheelchair accessible one along in a minute. In New York, it is a total pain in the ass trying to find the subway entrance that has a lift.
~ in Wien, in my experience ALL the U-Bahn stations have lifts, so no line or section of line is precluded from a trip. In New York, whole sections of down town Manhattan have subway stations with no lifts.
~ in Wien, at pedestrian crossings, the entire pedestrian walkway slopes down gently, not some wheelchair wide really steep, really tiny section like in Manhattan.
~ in Wien, most of the shops only have one or maybe two steps up into them, not like an area such as SoHo where the beautiful cast-irons have several steps at a minimum
~ in Wien, all the trains have specific seats and areas allocated to parking prams, seats for pregnant women/parents with a child/the elderly/the physically handicapped/disadvantaged. In New York, there are no sections for prams/buggies and safety straps to hold onto them.
~ in Wien, despite a similar climate to New Yorks, all the shops do not seem to have double sets of HEAVY pull out/push in doors. I got so pissed off trying to open heavy doors that I stopped going into shops and department stores. Instead I fled to the tranquility of Central Park and various museums.

The MoMA cafe on 2, where we got into trouble for leaving our pram in the side aisle as it was a fire escape (fair enough) and the manager suggested moving the pram around the corner while the baby was sleeping in it. Seriously, where was his brain. Two people eating lunch sans baby, avec pram, and he thinks the child might be elsewhere than in the pram??

I love Manhattan, but struggling around there with a buggy really opened my eyes to the fact that it is a very difficult city to raise a child in and also that it must be a nightmare for anyone in a wheelchair. The American, car dependent culture really needs to wake up to the fact that life isn’t all about taxi cabs and cars. Some people have to use subways. They should be accessible to everyone AT EVERY STOP. The weird thing is, Manhattan specifically is a place where car ownership is far less than the American average, mostly, I suppose because people take taxis everywhere. But a taxi is only accessible if you clip your car seat into your buggy/stroller and a small infant cannot be kept in a car seat for a whole day in Manhattan. It is just bad for them. Infants need to sleep, reclined in their prams, or in a sling, not with their head tilted over in a carseat.

The new production at the Met.

My new take on Manhattan is that it is a place for shopping mini-breaks only, with my husband but not our child. At least not until she no longer requires a buggy or she is old enough to sit in her buggy most of the time but capable of getting out when I need to ascend or descend steps down into the burrows that make the city smaller than having to walk twenty or thirty blocks searching for a subway stop you won’t have to bounce your pram down into whilst holding your child in your arms. A risky activity for someone who has regular visions of dropping her child and the terrible trauma/tragedy that would ensue. So maybe when she is three I will take her back there, but not before. The jetlag is a whole other post. The cacophony of Manhattan is also a whole other post and one that requires ear muffs for a baby and really, under normal circumstances, there is no way I would take an infant to New York, but my brother lives there and he wanted to meet his niece, and for reasons of his own, was unable to travel to Vienna to meet her.

Sunset over Long Island sound.

I heart Vienna, it is a dream city to live in with a small baby. I won’t be taking it for granted again any time soon.