News from Nowhere

Half a month into the year, the daylight lasts until teatime and the students are returning: but I feel as if nothing has happened yet. Alternatively, as if so much has happened that I will never manage to fit them all into this post - but all the things that have happened are tiny things, or things that should have happened but didn't.

Two things that didn't happen:

• The weekend weather was so icy that S. decided not to come to Durham for the meeting (she said she couldn't face the hill down from the station, and I can't blame her); so she didn't drop in for tea / coffee afterwards. The previous weekend we had missed her party because of the snow: I hope this is not going to be the pattern of the year.


• Despite the thaw, I am not at the pub quiz tonight: durham_rambler has gone without me. On Monday evening I started sneezing explosively, and blamed the pepper I had been grinding into the cheese sauce (pepper has that effect on me these days; it never used to). But I haven't stopped sneezing since, so I think it must be a cold. I don't feel terrible, but I don't want to share it with a crowded pub, so I am spending the evening at home. I feel a bit flat, missing yet another social occasion, but I have Dreamwidth and the glass of whisky I would have drunk at the pub (only better whisky), so things could be worse.

Administrative things:

• The builders came, and measured the windows; they also examined the dormer window in my study, and pronounced it basically sound (phew!) but promised to look at it from the outside once the scaffolding was up, because once you are paying for scaffolding, it's silly not to make use of it. durham_rambler's study looks great after all the work he did to free up access to the window: so light and spacious! The sitting room looks less great, because the boxes of books which were stacked under the window (and therefore behind the sofa) are now ranged in full view. But they have been vacuumed, and much dust removed.


• One item of my prescription had fallen down the gap between the doctor and the pharmacy: it took durham_rambler two visits and a phone call to the pharmacy to work this out. The good news is that it's nothing life-threatening, just some analgesic gel; the bad news is that I may now have squeezed the last drop out of the tube.


• I need to submit my Income Tax return before the end of the month: it shouldn't be a big job, but it's always the next thing I need to do after... I think I have cleared away the dayjob tasks, and it now really is the next thing I need to do.

Good things (in the kitchen):

• It was not my plan to bake the first loaf of the year on that icy cold Saturday, and I worried that it wouldn't rise (or wouldn't have time to rise). But I had rescued my sourdough starter from the freezer, and restarted it, which is the procedure that works for me if I need to take a break; and now it was demanding attention, and there was no bread in the house, so needs must. I made a rye loaf, which rose only minimally in the tin, but made up for that in the oven. It's still quite dense, but that's how I like my bread, chewy and full of flavour.
.

• Back in the autumn, our neighbour A. gave us two big bags of cooking apples from her tree: I have been working my way through them ever since. We have had apple crumbles, an apple pie, stewed apples, pork and apples and red cabbage slaw with an apple in it. It wasn't until there were only three apples left that I thought of baked apples. My childhood memories of these aren't great, fighting to scrape the sour flesh from the tough skin - but A.'s apples were quite sweet, so maybe if I cooked them for a long time, and was generous with the mincemeat to stuff the core (I will not tell you the 'best before' date on the jar of mincemeat I found in the cupboard, but I don't believe it anyway: surely mincemeat improves with keeping?)... This stategy proved entirely successful: the skin was crisp and slightly charred, the flesh fluffy and sweet. I am a convert.

Trivia, but my mind feels tidier for having put it in writing.

As I anticipated, the first loaf after I thawed my sourdough starter was not the best loaf ever: in fact - and I hadn't expected this - it was pretty certainly the worst. The dough, while it was proving, showed some signs of rising, but in the oven it actually seemed to sink: what came out was a dense slab. I sliced it, toasted it and ate it. I'd rather eat the bread I bake, which tastes of something, than the ultra-processed white which Patrick Campbell referred to as "boiled babies' blankets."

I eyed the re-started starter nervously. It was bubbling, but it looked very sluggish. I was braced for a slow and gradual process of recovery, but I really didn't want another brick like the last one. But I took the plunge, made a walnut loaf - and it rose beautifully. If anything, it rose too high: the morning after it came out of the oven, it was still a challenge to slice it.

Was it a fluke? No: yesterday's loaf (rye with a spoonful of leftover rice) was also a success. So I'm thinking that in future I should thaw the starter and use it to seed the starter, but discard what would usually go to bake the next loaf. It feels wasteful, but I'm only going to eat a finite amount of bread in my life, and it's even more of a waste not to enjoy it.

While I am away on holiday, my sourdough starter hibernates - which is to say, I freeze it. When I'm ready to resume baking, I thaw it out and use it. The first loaf is sometimes a bit heavy, a bit sour, but that's OK.

I my have pushed my luck, this time.

I added the last of the pumpkin: this, too, I have done before, with excellent results. But I may have been too generous with the pumpkin, and I certainly didn't reduce the liquid enough to compensate. The dough was as sticky as I could handle, and then a bit more. But that's good, right? A wet dough is hard work, but it makes for a good rise. The first loaf after freezing needs all the help it can get, but there did seem to be some spring in the dough. The final rise, in the tin, wasn't spectacular, but it rose a bit...

But - and I didn't know this was possible - it actually fell in the oven. And what came out was a slab of something dense and moist. Possibly it needed longer in the oven, but that might have made it even more solid, which I don't think I could have handled. As it is, I can slice it, and I can toast it, and I can spread things on it and eat it for breakfast.

For a dreadful day or so, I thought I'd killed the starter, it was so sluggish. It still doesn't look very happy, but it isn't dead. So tomorrow, I think, I need to coax it to make a very plain and simple loaf, to ease it back into the way of it...

It's the best part of a week since this post began to take shape in my mind: back then I had one item in each category, and they described - not a single day, exactly, but a period of 24 hours, which seemed reasonable. Then I ran out of time: not necessarily in a bad way, but preparing to be visited, and then having - and enjoying having - a visitor. Which rather illustrates my point. How much of that unwritten post can I reconstruct?

The good:

I have baked a Christmas cake. I have posted before - more than once - about the basic recipe, which involves steeping the fruit overnight in a mixture of stewed apple and marmalade and any convenient alcohol. Splitting the preparation between two days (the fruit / the cake) mysteriously does not make either of those stages less work, and what with one thing and another the fruit was allowed to macerate for a day (or more) longer than intended. Which is why I was particularly triumphant at having baked the cake. It doesn't seem to have come to any harm, and I remembered to toss in a handful of chopped almonds at the last minute: sometimes I forget, and then I wonder why there are no nuts in the cake. Half quantities of the fruit mix plus the quantities specified for the cake gave me one large loaf, one small loaf, and four little buns, which is precisely what I was aiming for (though the little buns cooked much faster than I expected; they weren't singed, but they were darker than they should have been).

Effect of delayed posting: it's still good. We ate the smaller loaf with Wensleydale, for Sunday lunch, when J. joined us. The four of us polished it off, which I take as success.

The bad:

I have broken my glasses. I hoped I had just lost a screw from the hinge, but no, I have snapped one of the arms (close to the hinge). Back in September, I made an appointment with my optician, but that isn't until mid-January. We threw ourselves on the mercy of the duty optician, and she patched up the join with parcel tape - not even gaffer, let alone some sort of magical only-for-opticians gaffer - and was very sorry but there really were no appointments to be had, all she could do was add me to the list waiting for a cancellation.

Effect of delayed posting: mixed. The bad news is that the repair didn't last any longer than you might expect, and that the only "spares" I have are the glasses I used to use at my computer, which are better than nothing, but not much. I am writing this on my little notebook, for which I use my reading glasses. The better news is that a cancellation came up, and I have an appointment for 9 am on Friday.

The where does the time go:

We continue to pursue options for buying an electric car, and durham_rambler booked a test drive with a Renault Zoe. Before you can take the car for a 15 minute drive, you have to spend over an hour of talking to the sales rep, mostly about finance. We quite liked the car, though we thought it a bit snug, and reading about it afterwards, it doesn't have a great safety rating. A tangential puzzle is that the car we drove was described as "celadon blue", which I would have described as "powder blue" had it not been metallic (don't start me on metallic paint); I think of celadon as the jade green colour of some of my favourite Chinese ceramics. Renault produce a number of cars in "celadon blue", some of them more green than others.

Effect of delayed posting: oh, dear... Time continues to go who knows where. We have still not bought a car, nor have we gone to look at the red MG allegedly on offer at our friendly local garage. Suddenly we are halfway through December: I had meant to make lussekatter, but it was St Lucy's Day before I realised it, and I ended up throwing some left-over rice into a rye loaf, and adding orange zest. I've been experimenting with using a higher proportion of white flour in my bread, and it does rise better, but oh, this has so much more flavour.

I opened the last pack of coffee filters to make our breakfast coffee yesterday. Forty filters, forty days: will we be out of lockdown by the time I need more? Not necessarily. Add them to the list for my next online order.

Also yesterday, I went into a shop for the first time in three weeks: last time waa to collect a prescription for durham_rambler from Boots in the North Road, yesterday to collect my own prescription. With the difference that we went to the larger Boots at the Arnison Centre, which is more spacious and airy (and a more reliable source of eye-drops, if it comes to that). We bump-started the car (there are some advantages to living on a hill) and durham_rambler drove me there, and sat in the car while I went to Boots - and then, since it was next door and I had to wait for my prescription to be filled, to M&S. durham_rambler asked "Was Marks busy?" and of course the answer is, "It was at capacity," operating a queuing system, one in and one out. I could have stockpiled half-price post-Easter goodies, but I showed restraint - and I could have bought toilet rolls, too, but since we don't need any, I didn't. Flour's still out of the question, though.

Speaking of which: lunch was soup from the freezer, with the rolls I'd baked the previous day. The recipe calls them 'Cretan onion and olive rolls': you add chopped raw onion, chopped olives and dried mint (which last I forgot to do: I don't think I have any dried mint, and I had meant to try za'atar, but I forgot) and shape them by coiling up long sausages of dough. There was no chance of doing that last, the dough was much too soft and sticky. I was generous with the olive oil, which made it possible to knead, and then just made rolls, fewer and larger than usual (nine instead of a dozen). They rose very satisfactorily, anyway: was this because it was all white flour? because the dough was so wet and soft? or because I was baking earlier than usual, and the starter was livelier?

In the evening, it being Wednesday, we met for the Elm Tree pub quiz, hooray! This is a work in progress: durham_rambler and I have to find a way of meeting by Zoom which allows us both to paricipate, preferably in the same room, without setting up horrible feedback. But it was good to see people, and we all enjoyed it enough that we agreed, same time next week!

Five things make me feel better:

• Sometimes when things are out of stock, you just have to make do. Ocado didn't have my preferred olive margarine / spread, so I increased my butter order. This morning we buttered our hot cross buns - and there was mirabelle jam, also supplied by Ocado (though I recognise the 'Reflets de France' brand from French supermarkets). Breakfast, best meal of the day ...



• I have telephoned an order to Broom House Farm, which was as stressful as I anticipated. I have ordered meat and a lemon drizzle cake, and it's all necessary supplies, but you can't browse when every item involves asking a very stressed person do you have any ... I had anticipated the worst of both worlds, whereby I order by phone and still have to collect, but another customer from our street will be collecting tomorrow, and will have their arm twisted to deliver for us, too (I didn't recognise the name, but do know their next-door neighbour). And maybe another time, you could deliver for them? asked Jane Grey. Good plan ...



• Neanderthal string (with thanks to poliphilo for the pointer). There are plenty of small objects with holes in them, which is evidence of their being hung from some sort of cord, but that could be leather or animal sinews: now archaeologists have found some actual, twisted from vegetable fibres, string.



• The pandas at Hong Kong zoo are enjoying being left in peace.



• When you're lost in the rain in Juarez, And it's Eastertime too ... The Guardian ranks Dylan's 50 best songs in order - and that isn't even one of them. Some surprising decisions, and not just because they have placed songs I don't know above those I do. All together now:
  

  I see my light come shining
  From the west unto the east
  Any day now, any day now ...

Technical, political, personal:

• Since the last major Microsoft update, the pretty picture displayed during start-up has been out of focus. This doesn't seem to be caused by the picture itself: I've been through several with the same effect. And it doesn't seem to be caused by the computer: as soon as start-up reaches the point where it displays my choice of picture, it's fine. For that matter, the 'me' icon overlaid on the photographic background is also fine. I've never understood why Microsoft felt the need to show me a random photo of its choosing at this point, and I'm not particularly upset that they now choose to show me a brightly coloured blur instead. Just, it's a mystery.



• When Mr Toad and his fellow conspirators obtained the Queen's consent to prorogue Parliament, it was reported that Privy Councillors fro, the Opposition (Jeremy Corbyn, and I think someone from the LibDems too) had asked to meet Her Majesty. Did she ever answer their request? I haven't seen any subsequent reports, but perhaps I have missed something?



• Making bread from a sourdough starter imposes a certain routine. I don't think of it as a chore, by any means, but once a week, give or take, I need to find a day in which I have time to attend to a loaf of bread (not constantly, but throughout the day). This is not a problem. But why is it so much easier once I know what kind of loaf it will be? Yesterday there was some cooked rice left over from dinner the previous night, and that's always a good addition to a plain loaf; but last week just deciding that I'd make an oatmeal and sultana loaf kick started me into - oh, just into getting on with doing it. The workings of my mind are still a mystery to me.

I am writing at the kitchen table, using my little notebook, because I had to turn it on to find my recipe for spiced buns: Lent is coming to an end and tomorrow there will be hot cross buns for breakfast. Not, as I said when I wrote up that recipe, that I observe Lent, or indeed Easter, but there is a pleasure in cooking traditional foods at the traditional time, and for once I have hit that target.

A less happy coming to an end is afflicting my little notebook: switching it on is no longer a trivial matter. Not only does its battery run flat between uses, it runs so flat that it requires a period plugged in before it is willing even to work on mains electricity. I suspect that one of its two batteries is not charging at all. I must have bought it some time in 2015, which I suppose makes it a respectable age for an electronic device, and it has done its job well in that time - all the more reason why I don't look forward to replacing it.

Thinking these thoughts, I notice that the cracks in my bread bowl grow more sinister with every batch of bread. At least it will be no problem finding a replacement in this case; I can just go back to using the bowl I used before I was given this one (which, unlike the current bowl, actually is a traditional bread bowl). Perhaps I should do that, and not wait until the bowl splits asunder, I thought, as I emptied the last of the bere meal into the dough. (Did I actually buy it at the Barony Mill? In that case, we have probably reached its Best Before date...)

And now, while the dough is proving, I should go to my desk, and to the unfinished post that awaits on the computer there. Maybe that, too, can be brought to an end?

I already know the answer to this one: I have forgotten my eye-drops, which are kept in the fridge and therefore escaped the usual round-up of medication. This is annoying. Admittedly, it avoids all the logistical problems of administering eye-drops last thing at night, when your routine is disrupted, but it's not a good solution to that problem, dammit!

Up to the point on the way up tp the station (just too late to go back) when I realised this, I was feeling pretty smug: there are things that have been bundled into the suitcase to be dealt with while we are away, and things to be done when we get back, and one meeting I had planned to go to, and gave up on - but there are several tasks I was afraid I wouldn't manage, and did: a client newsletter sent out, the residents' association website up-to-date, random items of food combined into a perfectly plausible meal (memo to self: when stuffing peppers with meat and rice, cook the rice first. Whatever Claudia Roden says, it won't cook otherwise).

Today is St Lucy's Day, and there were Lussekatter: I had baked them on Tuesday, because I really did need to bake a batch of bread, and because it was that time of year, and because I had been wanting to bake with saffron since I returned from Cornwall in the summer (where I ate just one saffron bun, egg-yolk yellow but with very little saffron flavour). It was a self-indulgence to bake something that demanded so much time in the shaping, and in the end events defeated me: the day's timings were all out of joint because durham_rambler had three separate meetings to go to, and at a crucial moment I was distracted by a loud crash from outside (a red car taking the bend too fast had driven into our next-door neighbour's car, parked pretty much in the spot where ours was parked when a cyclist ran into it, and had also shunted it into the next car down). What with one thing and another, only a quarter of the dough got twisted into Lussekatter, another quarter was made into little buns, and the remaining half into buns which may be influenced by cellio's Japanese milk rolls and are now in the freezer. But we both had Lussekatter on St Lucy's Day, which counts as a win.

That's about my limit as far as stunt baking is concerned: I will not be trying any of Kim Joy's seasonal recipes. In fact, this article pretty much sums up why I don't share the national obsession (so they tell me) with the Bake-Off: this is only marginally about baking, and is much more interested in adding decoration to the baked goods. Though I'm almost tempted to watch, just to see if Kim Joy really can work as fast as her timings suggest. Have a look at the snowman-shaped truffles: the 2 hours and thirty minutes estimated includes two hours chilling time, which leaves half an hour to make the mixture, shape ten snowmen - and make ten marzipan knitted hats and scarves. The fruit cake with a snowy penguin scene comes with the warning "The penguins also take some time to make." No, really? I disagree with Shirley Conran about life being too short to stuff a mushroom: but too short to sculpt a penguin or several, yes, I think it is. Will I even make a Christmas cake this year? We shall see.

As previously noted, Felicity Cloake puts saffron in her hot cross buns, and I thought I'd give her recipe a try. In theory, I believe in following the instructions faithfully, the first time you make a new recipe, because the alternative is that you always use the same seasonings and everything you cook comes out the same. In practice, I often diverge from the recipe because I just don't believe it; also, some modifications are needed to make things work with my sourdough. So, this is what I did:

• Original recipe here



• Warm 200 mls milk with saffron, cardamom, cloves and the last corners of a couple of nutmegs. Leave to stand. I didn't use stick cinnamon because I couldn't be bothered. Might be worth trying. Two cloves is plenty, but the cardamom wasn't really identifiable. The saffron did wonders for the look of the buns, but I couldn't really taste it, which was a waste.



• Add 3 oz butter (I'd meant to use 2 oz, which was how much I'd used previously, but I ended up emptying the butter dish) and warm the milk so that it melts. Then beat in 1 egg, and add to the starter.



• Mix in the flour - and for once I used all white flour - the cinnamon and the ginger. The sourdough doesn't need any extra sugar, so I don't add any, but I see that the recipe also adds the salt at this stage, and while I usually add it much later, don't forget all about it (I did, and wish I hadn't).



• I add the fruit at this stage, because I like the vine fruits to soften in the dough: a couple of ounces of peel and 3 or 4 oz sultanas - I see the recipe calls for currants, but I like sultanas.



• Usual process of rising and knocking back, for as long as time permits.



• Form into buns: the recipe says 16, which would be on the small side, and also tells you to use two baking trays. My usual dozen buns were fine, and would have been even better if I'd managed to make them more even. But I am improving at this. Slash with crosses and leave to rise. I gave them as long as I could, which turned out to be between an hour and an hour and a half. Longer might be better, but this was fine.



• Brush with beaten egg, and bake. 25 minutes at mark 5, on the top shelf, was plenty. They were so tender when I removed them from the baking tray that I was afraid they were underdone, but cooled overnight and then warmed in the oven they were fine. Better than fine.

The combination of saffron and egg wash (and, I suppose, white flour) produced beautiful golden buns, on which the crosses were not very distinct. They were just about discernable if you looked, though, which will have to do, because I have no intention of piping flour-and-water paste, or any of the other methods of marking the cross. Nor am I going to add the sticky sugar glaze.

Anyway, we have buns to see us through the breakfasts of the Easter weekend, and that's the important thing.