With lockdown easing, we thought we'd share some things that have been keeping the team busy outside of work the past few months, and maybe you'll be tempted to pick up a new hobby as well. From mastering sourdough to getting green fingered, the Lucy's team have certainly been busy!
Sourdough baking 🍞
Ursula, along with what seemed like the rest of the country, decided to jump on the sourdough making bandwagon. From having never made it before, the results now are looking pretty impressive (if she says so herself!)
'I've always been a keen baker and cook, but sourdough has always somewhat scared me, as I had no idea where to even begin. A few weeks into lockdown, I decided now was the time to start tackling it. I followed along with The Boy Who Bakes Instagram Stories on how to make my starter, which were so clear and easy to follow. This process takes a week and after about 3 days, you are feeding it both in the morning and evening, and can start collecting the discard, perfect for baking with (like these dark choc sourdough discard cookies I made below)! Recipe linked here. I read somewhere that a starter is a millennial's tamgaotchi, and they are certainly right - they become your little baby!
After 1 week of nurturing my starter I was ready to bake my first loaf. Each loaf takes about 24 hours from start to finish, you prepare the dough on one day, leave it in the fridge overnight and then bake it in the morning. The first few times I also followed The Boy Who Bakes recipe, which is the perfect beginners recipe and has a Youtube video you can follow along with, which is great for seeing the techniques. The bread tasted completely delish but I wasn't happy with the inside and the bubbles, so I continued researching and came across this recipe by Martha de Lacey, which is now my absolute go to. It produces the most delicious bread, and just look at those bubbles on my loaf above!'
Everyone in the office is certainly excited to return to hopefully lots of fresh sourdough for team lunches!
The recipe Ursula now uses can be found here.
Photo credit from Ursula's Instagram.
Gardening 🌱
Before lockdown Hebe had just moved into a new garden flat, so after making sure the kitchen was all set up, her next project was the garden, and what better time to fix your garden than during lockdown!
'As a Lucy's employee I obviously had to start by growing my own salad ingredients first! I started on the tomato plants, before moving onto lettuces, courgettes, kale, herbs and then kitting out my planters with beautiful flowers. My brother handmade these at the beginning of lockdown and it's been really satisfying filling them and watching them grow. During lockdown I made sure to update the team on the garden process on our zoom calls too, whether they liked it or not!
The recent hot weather has not been kind to my plants and even with countless watering sessions I have seen a few casualties but I hope that they will manage to revive themselves! Also after being away for a week I came back to many weeds, which I was not happy about - so that's this weekend's project.
I've loved the time during lockdown to get into gardening and really start to turn the garden into something I can be really proud of, and I'm excited to keep it going for hopefully many years!'
It wasn't just Hebe who discovered her love for gardening during lockdown, Isla, Lucy's one of Lucy's children also got green fingered!
She has been busy growing lettuce, tomatoes and cucumbers, as well as making sure the garden is always stocked up with fresh herbs ready for plenty of dishes, which she also loves to help with.
Online Fitness Classes
Whilst Lucy can normally be found getting her fitness fix at spinning classes or jogging on the common, during lockdown she had to adapt.
'I've always loved my fitness classes as I find it the perfect way to relax after a busy day at the office, or as a way to kick-start my day and make sure I'm at my most productive. So when lockdown hit, I had to get creative. We're lucky to have a garden so every lunchtime became family workout time.
Image credit: Barry's Instagram
The whole family would follow along to Barry's Bootcamp live streams on Instagram, and my son is now totally obsessed. We can't wait to visit one of their studios together soon. It was so great having this break in the day from home-schooling and juggling work to come together in the garden for a good dose of activity.
I also kept up my usual routine of taking Rhino for a long walk on the common every morning, and to make sure he was tired out for the day - he has certainly LOVED lockdown and the constant attention!
With lockdown starting to ease, I'm still keeping up with the exercise lives when they're happening but I've also started to return to some of my usual forms of exercise like swimming at the Tooting Lido, which has been very necessary recently with all the beautiful weather!'
We'd absolutely love to know how you've been keeping busy during lockdown and whether your new found habits will become permanent fixtures in your life or whether you're now ready to return to normal and hang up the lockdown activities for a while.
Love,
Lucy's Dressings x