Am on the train. What have I forgotten?
Dec. 13th, 2018 11:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustI 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 becausedurham_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.
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.
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Date: 2018-12-13 01:44 pm (UTC)Another tip- part cooked risotto rice works best of all.
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Date: 2018-12-14 08:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-20 03:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-20 12:58 pm (UTC)