09/52 2018

Week 9
26 February - 04 March



This is Jamie at his play kitchen, positioned in our hallway by the door to the grown-up kitchen so that he can join in without getting underfoot. In this picture he seems to be frying a nice nutritious bottle of Early Learning Centre washing up liquid - he also has a tendency to put toy cars in his microwave - but his favourite cooking activity is to give everyone cups of tea. His teapot is usually on the hob, and generally people are given a cup with an item of play food to enjoy while he keeps everyone topped up.

Cake (picture-heavy)

For reasons too complicated to explain, I found myself committed to baking a cake for a friend in another country who isn't going to be here to eat it any time soon. The only relevant part of the backstory is that I was meant to make a cake some months ago and made a bloody great mess on the floor instead. It's almost like I got DLA for a reason.

Nevertheless.

Part One was done in advance. I found a recipe, of the sort that tells the cook to get an adult to help them with the oven, and went and bought the stuff I'd need.

I think eggs and butter were the only things I had in the house anyway, and I didn't have enough of either, so I purchased the whole recipe. Using mostly supermarket-own-brand ingredients this came to about £15. Admittedly I have a lot of stuff left over - flour, sugar, icing sugar, vanilla essence - but I'm really unlikely to use any of it. Even if we just add up the things that were entirely used up it comes to over £8. It would definitely have been cheaper, in monetary terms, to just buy a cake.

Nevertheless, again. This is not about eating cake. This is about making a cake.

Greasing the cake tin wasn’t too traumatic. Measuring ingredients was a bit okay if a little messy at points. Creaming the butter and sugar brought me back to that whole "DLA for a reason" thing. But that's okay, because the difference between making a cake and cooking a meal is that I can take as long as I like to make a cake, and it doesn't matter if it's the only thing I do today (I will now stop banging on about DLA. I'm just always worried, when I post about my biannual adventures in cookery, that someone's going to try and use it to report me).

Adding the eggs to the butter and sugar was… well it started okay and then I thought it looked a bit lumpy, but no matter how much I stirred the lumps wouldn’t go away, so I figured, it’s butter, it’ll have to melt when it cooks if nothing else, and pressed on, adding a tidge of vanilla essence, a tidge of milk, and the sifted cocoa and self-raising flour.

The resulting dough was tasty… uh, did I say tasty? I meant it looked tasty. Yes. Looked. Having no great cake-making expertise I did wonder whether it was meant to be dough. If it was meant to be batter then I’d done something really badly wrong at the measuring stage. But I was too messy to Google it, or to take pictures and ask Twitter. So I kept going.

Wrangling the wodge of dough from the mixing bowl was awkward, and then it kind of sat in a big sticky messy lump in the middle of the cake tin. It didn't really look like any kind of proto-cake so I sort of splatted it out a bit. Not squished it flat or anything, but made it a bit more circular and more evenly shaped. I probably should have taken a picture before it went into the oven, but it was already in the oven when I realised that, and even I know you're not allowed to keep opening it.

The time it took to bake was longer than the time I needed to find instructional videos on how to check a cake is done and how to get it out of the tin. I have a springform cake tin with a removable base, so getting the cake onto the cooling rack was remarkably easy. A couple of people have already expressed jealousy about my cake tin. Seriously, it cost less than the cake ingredients. If you enjoy baking, and are frustrated by normal tins, then just get one.

And lo! Cake! Properly baked, not dry, not burnt, not soggy!


There was, however, one small problem.

At just an inch and a half in height, the stage of the recipe that called for cutting the entire cake in half horizontally was going to be more of a challenge than this novice could handle. Happily, I'd been looking for a way to avoid that particular challenge anyway, so it didn't take me too long to decide that actually, I'd just cut the cake in half the easy way, and stack the halves into a semicircular cake.

I mixed up the filling and while that was chilling in the fridge, I had my lunch:


It was very tasty.

Finally, it was time to assemble the cake.

From this side it pretty much looks like chocolate mousse with cake somewhere in the middle...


... but from the other side it looks much more cakelike.


If I was doing it again, I would probably try and get a smaller cake tin. I also think that while the whole raspberries look good on the top, for inside the cake, making it a sandwich of chocolate filling on one side and raspberry jam on the other would work better than thick chocolate filling with whole raspberries added.

I have a great sense of accomplishment for having successfully made a cake. All things considered, though, I probably won't be doing it again. The cost of ingredients, the pain, the time, the cleanup, are just all too much for what's basically a pretty mediocre cake. In future I will continue to outsource all of my cake requirements to the lovely experts at Sweet As.

Healthy Eating With Mary

Hello everybody. I feel that I really should be doing some sort of New Year post, and maybe I'll get to that later, but today, we're going to talk about Healthy Eating, which is very important after the excesses of the holiday period.

This... is a Banana.


A banana is a wonderful fruit, with lots of lovely vitamins, and counts as one of your five-a-day.

However, while the banana is delicious when eaten fresh and unaugmented, the essence of cooking is to improve upon the raw materials by combining them while retaining the goodness of the basic ingredients.

For this reason, I have added a few chocolate buttons.

You will notice that the chocolate buttons in the picture are from Montezumas. By using these chocolate buttons I am supporting ethically-trading British artisans, so really this is a contribution to both the planet and the economy - quite apart from the well-known virtues of quality cocoa including its antioxidant properties and its ability to trigger a release of your body's natural endorphins.

However, we again face the problem of core ingredients on their own being boring so I have decided to add a secondary chocolate element to complement the buttons - Ben & Jerry's Chocolate Fudge Brownie ice cream.


My next addition provides much-needed calcium as well as offsetting the cocoa level of the dish. Yes, it's squirty cream.

My personal belief is that the satisfaction gained from a good squirt is a restorative to the soul, making this a dish with psychological benefits in addition to the nutritional aspects already discussed.

Finally, a drizzle of chocolate sauce adds aesthetic appeal and pulls the whole dish together.



I feel much healthier now.

(This blog post completed before the inevitable sugar crash. Apologies for typos.)

Not the WI

Not a great success.
Originally uploaded by girl_of_bats

Today I decided to make chocolate cornflake cakes, having in my kitchen both a box of cornflakes and a packet of chocolate bars that were getting dusty because no one fancied eating them.

Turns out, it IS possible to balls-up chocolate cornflake cakes. Who knew?

Things to remember for next time:

• Don't use snack bars of Galaxy and expect them to behave the same way as cooking chocolate.



• Don't look at the semi-molten, unappetisingly pale brown mess and decide that it's a good idea to add cocoa.



• Don't look at the consistency of your now dark-brown mess and decide that the best way to make it runnier will be to add a bit of water.

With a nod and a grin to Carie, multi-prize winner at her village show and a marvellous friend despite being my polar opposite in so many ways.

Breakfast

I am many, many things, but a culinary wizard is not one of them. Part of that can be placed squarely at the door of chronic illness - the way that "chop one onion" is for me not a quick aside in the flow of a recipe, but a hazardous undertaking that will require a sit down, a rest, and possibly a couple of sticky plasters - but even before I got ill, I would have a good swear at cookery books and online recipes. What is a "ricer"? Why do you assume I have fresh garlic in the house? If I'm "cooking until golden brown", what time should I put the vegetables on? Couldn't you have mentioned that the oven needs pre-heating before the "now put it all in the oven" stage?

So instead, I've focused on perfecting simple dishes. I am pleased to announce my latest accomplishment: Hot Buttered Toast And A Cup Of Tea.

You will need:

for the toast
two slices of Bread
Butter
a Butterknife
a Small Plate

for the tea
Water
a Teabag
Milk and Sugar if you want them
a Cup
a Teaspoon

In addition you will require a fridge (or other means of keeping perishable dairy items chilled), a toaster (or other means of toasting bread) and a kettle (or other means of making water boiling hot). And an appropriate power source for these pieces of equipment, although possibly this is getting a little extreme for the planning...

Step One: Make the tea. While I acknowledge and respect the many regional variations on this theme, I tend to go for swilling a bit of hot water around the cup, chucking the water out, then dropping a teabag and two teaspoons of sugar into the cup before almost-filling it with hot water. Give it a stir, let it brew for a minute, then remove the teabag and add a splash of milk. One last stir, and it's done.

Top Tip: throw the water away down the sink, and throw the teabag away into the bin. The other way around doesn't work so well.

Step two: Prepare the butter. Now this is what's usually the problem. Leave butter out of the fridge, it doesn't keep properly, keep it in the fridge, it's rock solid. So what you do is:

• Remove the butter from the fridge. Put the milk back in, while you're at it. Neatness is a virtue.


• Using the butterknife, cut two slices of butter from the block, each about 2mm or 3mm thick.


• Place the slices of butter on the sideplate.

and then the trick at the crux of the whole procedure:

• Balance the plate on top of the hot cup of tea.

Leave it there for a couple of minutes while toasting your bread. This will be sufficient to warm the butter (so that it's spreadable but not melting) and also to warm the plate (so that your hot toast doesn't become cold toast after being on the plate for ten seconds).

When the toast is done, remove the plate from the top of the cup. Use the butterknife to transfer one warm pat of butter to each slice of toast, and spread. Cut the toast into your preferred shape.

Eat. Drink. Be happy. Leave the marinades to the experts.

Not Blown Up After All

... just a bit tired out.

The New Year fireworks were a resounding success, with the only casualty being one of L's gloves which got singed by a lighter. Then Steve and I enjoyed one day to rest, one day back at work, and one day to get the house passably tidy in readiness for my mum to come and stay for a few days.

We got lots of nice Christmas presents from my family, including a shiny and very spiffy set of saucepans. Nice as they are, sadly, these have not been the accessibility revolution Mr Rhodes seems to think. Firstly, as you will see from their lovely little "42" diagram on that page, the recommended angles only work if you have kitchen surfaces at well below waist height. Secondly, if you watch the video, you'll see that to drain from the saucepan, you need to hold on to the knob on top of the lid as you tilt - fine when it's empty, but in a real world situation that means your fingers are right in the path of the concentrated column of steam as you drain the boiling water away. And thirdly, you actually need more strength in your arms to manipulate it than with a standard pan, because there's no way to get a two-handed grip in order to use the handle as a lever to create stability.

So don't buy them to try and make cooking easier. But, that said, they are very nice saucepans, with a lifetime guarantee. Using the variable draining-holes in the rim of the lid to release varying amounts of steam is handy. And they are fully backward-compatible with a regular colander in the normal way. ;-)

Christmas dealt with, it was just about time for my birthday, which was the main reason for mum visiting. I took down my lovely tree and packed it neatly away for next year.

Between all of them, and Christmas and my birthday, my family have bought me just about every book that was on my Amazon Wishlist. I was absolutely bowled over. I always have to read every book at least twice before I can consider it not-new, and I can't read just new books (it's an ME thing) so this should keep me excited about having books of newness for at least three months, if not longer.

It was good having mum about for a few days. We've always talked lots. As a kid, she would tuck me in to bed every night and we'd chat for a few minutes. It was my opportunity to talk, as there was no getting a word in edgeways with my sister about. In sixth form, my Thursday morning free period was designated as our Cream Cake Day. When I lived in my little flat, I would come over to use the washing machine and stay for a cuppa and a bit of a chat about nothing very much at all. When I got sick, we had a cup of tea most days, and it added routine and a strong element of familiarity to a world which had been turned upside down. Since I've moved to Warwickshire, we still email or speak on the phone if we have anything particular to say... but it was nice to once again just sit and enjoy a quiet, non-pressured chatter with each other.

That said, it was also nice when mum had left, to be able to come home from work and fall apart by myself, without feeling that I had to put a sociable face on. I love my mum but we probably shouldn't live together.

The people at work gave me cake and flowers, which made me squee with delight. Steve is getting me a watch, just as soon as we actually have a spare half-hour to go into town together so I can try some on. He's also sort-of got me a combination printer/scanner/photocopier doodah, which will link to our wireless network and allow us to print from anywhere in the house. He says this doesn't count as a birthday present though, since it's for both of us to use and it wasn't wrapped, he just happened to buy it the evening before my birthday. I think it counts though. It was definitely a surprise - he only went out for a pint of milk.

So far being 27 isn't much different from being 26, except it's increased that feeling of being stuck in a rut.

Standard Christmas Post

That was a nice Christmas. Steve and I had four days off work together which hasn't happened since last Christmas, and that was less a holiday than a hectic whirl of visiting people in between nap-breaks in our hotel room, so really, we needed this.

For me it was five days, since Christmas Eve fell on a Wednesday which is my day off anyway. We'd both worked steadily at getting the house sorted out so that we wouldn't have to DO anything much - gold star to Steve who deep-cleaned the entire bathroom including the ceiling - so on Christmas Eve all I really had to do was press the button on the Roomba, which isn't taxing housework by anybody's standards. After dinner a friend came round bearing gifts and a card, and it felt very Christmassy indeed.

Christmas Day started with a glorious lie-in. At about 11am, Steve's mother came round, and then we started on the presents. My highlights were the set of KnitPicks Options interchangeable circular knitting needles, which I knew I was getting, and the iPod nano which I had no idea about. Both of those were from Steve. I think Steve's best present was the 1.5 kilos of jelly beans from one of his friends.

Christmas dinner consisted of sausages, cooked and served by Steve, with some roast potatoes with onion and bacon bits, mixed veggies, and gravy. Many people seem appalled by this, including Steve's workmates and my mother, but our logic was sound:

1) We wanted a meal we would enjoy. Steve knows he cooks sausages to perfection. However neither of us have ever attempted to cook a turkey, and my obvious limitations mean that even a regular roast dinner can be quite an adventure. So we opted for definitely-yummy sausages over a potentially disastrous attempt at Christmas Turkey Dinner With All The Trimmings.

2) We don't get much time off work together. There were better things for us to do with this precious four-day block than spend a day prepping, a day cooking, and two days washing-up.

3) Not to mention two weeks of leftovers.

4) If we happen to fancy a Turkey Dinner With All The Trimmings we can go to a carvery any week of the year and stack more (properly-cooked) grub on our plates than we can eat. We're in a fortunate position where it's not like Christmas dinner represents the one decent meal of the winter.

Plus, of course, by the time my mother phoned and expressed her horror at Sausages For Christmas Dinner, she hadn't even eaten yet, while at our house the dishes were done, the ice-cream was eaten, and Steve's mother was giving us both a run for our money on the Wii. So in the absence of the dedicated chef (mum's husband is not only an excellent cook, but actually enjoys doing it) I think our version was just fine.

I got a nap in while Steve and his mum went for a walk, and then she went home and we settled down for a nice relaxing evening.

Boxing Day was more of the same. A lie-in and a couple of hours pottering about the house playing with presents, followed by a leisurely jaunt into Warwick and a cream tea at a ye olde tea shoppe near the castle. Saturday was a lie-in, bacon sandwiches, and a trip out for some milk which turned into a couple of hours with friends at a slightly remote pub near Cubbington, complete with roaring log fire and dogs in the bar. Sunday's lie-in was followed by a trip to Kenilworth Castle, which was fun. It was also a lot more accessible than I thought it would be, so we'll have to go back in the summer when hopefully I'll be a bit more mobile again, and we can appreciate it without the pressing issue of freezing cold.

So, today is back to work day. Notable absence of lie-ins and weirdness of being in the house by myself all morning.

I don't want to post this, because posting this means my holiday is over... :(

Pancakes, Mary-style

You will need:
flour
eggs
milk
oil

Preferred toppings: I like sugar, cinnamon and lemon juice.

long-suffering assistant (Evilstevie)

Reassure long-suffering assistant that the washing up won't need doing before this meal. Measure out about six ounces of flour and dump it into a bowl. Add a little pinch of salt. Make a little hollow in the middle of the flour, and crack two eggs into it.

Take two phone calls from people whose calls you consider "important". Completely lose track of what you are doing. Make sure the long-suffering assistant has no idea how long you are going to be on the phone and thus remains unsure what sort of thing he should be doing to amuse himself.

Phone calls dealt with, attempt to whisk the eggs and flour.

It will take just under ten seconds for you to realise that this was an extremely bad idea and that the eggs and flour should in fact be mixed by hand with a fork or spoon. You may wish to practice some inventive swearwords for this stage.

Try to improve this situation by adding a little bit of milk. Realise you are getting nowhere fast. Use a teaspoon to scrape the worst of the mess off the whisk and add about a quarter of a pint of milk. Bash the not-turned-on whisk against the milk and mess until it's a little bit more like thick batter. Breathe sigh of relief that things are back on track.

Retrieve long-suffering assistant from behind the doorframe, where he has been trying to listen in to make sure you are not in difficulties, while not getting in the way of batter-related WRATH.

Add a smidge and a gnat's of milk, until the whisk moves through the batter without lumpiness or stickiness. Whisk it until your arm gets tired, then stop and have a nice sit-down while the mixture settles.

After your sit-down, add another quarter of a pint of milk and whisk again (serious note: letting it settle before adding the second half of the milk is a genuine tip that I think makes the pancakes better). It'll be easier now the mixture is thinner. Tell long-suffering assistant that it is time to fish out the frying pan.

Do NOT decapitate long-suffering assistant for pointing out that your preferred pancake-flippy tool needs washing up. This would make it more difficult for him to actually do the washing up.

Heat a little oil in the pan over a medium heat. Using the ladle, pour some batter into the pan and swirl it a little to spread it thinly and evenly over the surface of the pan.

Insist that only boring people make round pancakes.

When pancake is lightly browned on one side, flip it over with the now-clean pancake-flippy tool. Watch as large bubbles form in your pancake. Realise you used self-raising flour. Insist this makes them "light and airy" while smacking the bubbles into submission with the flippy tool.

Slip pancake onto plate. Offer flippy tool and in-front-of-hob perching stool to long-suffering assistant "so you can make your ones whatever shape you want."

Add enough sugar, cinnamon and lemon juice to your own freshly cooked pancake so that none of the above matters any more.

Repeat these five stages until there is no remaining batter.

Dopey Happy

I really am quite stupidly, insanely, indescribably happy right now.

No reason.

In fact it's been a rather pants few days really - notable points of the last 48 hours include slicing my thumb open while chopping carrots, and getting out of my taxi all ready for work on Friday afternoon and promptly fainting, straight into a puddle, and spending the afternoon wearing cold, wet jeans. Not really up there in the "fun" stakes.

But nevertheless, I feel really positive.

I've just spent the best part of 45 minutes reading a book while Bloop the Roomba cleaned the living room carpet. Every few minutes I was looking up and watching it make its way around the room, thinking and sometimes saying "this is amazing. I live in the 21st century. I have a robot doing my housework."

Carpet cleaned, I took a few photos of the jumper I'm knitting. Again, it was all "wow, I made this, with my hands, I knitted each of these many many stitches, and it's all the right numbers and shape..."

Prior to that I was eating dinner with Steve, which was also incredible. Here's a really nice bloke, who I get on well with, and we're living together, and everything is happy and nice and working out well. It's astonishing.

I almost hope it wears off by Monday, because if I'm just wandering about with a Big Stupid Grin on my face going "hey, that's fantastic!" at everything I see, I'm not going to get a lot of work done.

It can continue tomorrow though.

Cooking

I got myself a new cookery book the other day. It's called Just like mother used to make and it's by a guy called Tom Norrington-Davies. On the back are a couple of quotes from reviews, and the one from The Times says that "the recipes are simple to follow and comfortingly delicious to eat." Marvellous, thunked Mary. This is the book I need.

Oh dear. Oh dear oh dear.

I should have looked at the name, really. This book is written by a man, who has access to many varied London shops, and above all, can afford a dishwasher. This is speculation, of course, but if he washes all his own dishes I will be very surprised.

I'm on page 82 now and I am stunned with the amount of faffery this guy suggests. It's the sort of cooking that's probably fun a couple of times a week if you're the sort of person who enjoys cooking and gets a kick out of accomplishing a meal (and you have a dishwasher).

A particular area where Tom and I have fallen out is over the issue of soup. He describes several "comfort soups" which according to him are "low maintenance" and "great food for those times when we are under the weather." Under the weather, that's me, let's take a look. Tomato soup, great.

First, he wants me to peel and chop onions, garlic (actually this should be "bruised" whatever the hell that means), a leek, and some carrots. Washing-up count so far, at least one sharp knife and chopping board, and a bowl to put the chopped veg in, plus it's taken me four hours due to keeping needing to sit down, the odds are I've cut my fingers, and we've not even got to the recipe instructions yet. You're then meant to stand at the cooker for ten minutes "keeping an eye on" the veg while they sweat in a little oil in a covered saucepan (washing-up count: saucepan, lid, wooden spoon). Next, we add some sugar and some tinned tomatoes (tinned? Tom, I'm shocked, you mean I don't have to grow them myself?), whack the heat up, and stand at the cooker for at least five minutes, "stirring constantly". Add some water (he prefers stock but he can stick that up his jumper) and allow to simmer, uncovered, for about an hour, because I always wanted to turn my flat into a tomato-scented sauna. Finally, we chuck it through the blender (washing up count: one blender which he doesn't tell you must be washed before the soup sets on the blades - handwashing blenders is Not Good) and add milk, salt and faff to taste. Serve (washing up count: bowl, spoon, and he also wants nice fresh bread but we're just not going to go there).

Total washing-up: two bowls, one spoon, one wooden spoon, blender, saucepan and lid, sharp knife(s), chopping board(s), and I bet the work surfaces and cooker hob got splattered too.

Tom. Mate. If you ever feel really under the weather, here's what you do.

Get the bowl you intend to eat from, the spoon you intend to eat with, a tin-opener (I know you have one because of those tinned tomatoes) and a can of Heinz Cream of Tomato soup. Open the can and empty it into the bowl. Put the bowl into the microwave and nuke it for one minute. During this minute, assuming you recycle, peel the label off the can and rinse the can under the tap before chucking it in the appropriate bin. Rinse the tin-opener too and leave it on the draining board to air-dry. Get the soup from the microwave, stir it with the spoon, and then put it back in for another minute. Have a little sit-down. The microwave will beep but don't get excited, just in your own time get up and get the soup. The bowl will be hot, be careful. Give it another stir and eat. If it makes you feel better you can put a sprig of freshly plucked basil on top, or an artistic little swirl of cream.

Total washing-up: one bowl, one spoon.

I'm not even going to talk about what he expects me to do about mashed potatoes. Still, I have another 106 pages to read and hopefully there will be some genuinely simple and easy thing that I can serve up with microwave mash and instant gravy.

I don't want to be a domestic goddess, I just want simple easy food!