Well its amazing how you can have an eventful few days even when confined to the four walls of your house but I suppose expectations do change !
I have continued to embrace my love of cooking and a new found pleasure in creating meals like I’m in the set of ready steady cook but with no waste bin. I always have hated any type of food waste but I can honestly say that I have taken this to a whole new level. To date I have only sacrificed a wobbly carrot and mouldy parsnip so feeling rather chuffed with my frugality.
This resulted in a quiche which used a couple of the weekends rashers of bacon, a leek, some shallots that had been living in the vegetable drawer in the fridge for far too long and some delicious black bomber from Silver Hill Larder close to home at Parkhead in Sheffield.
My issue is that I need to keep moving in order to burn off these baking calories however I appear to have literally stumbled across another problem here, well launched might be a more appropriate adjective.
Last Thursday evening prior to the weekly NHS clap we decided to take Poppy (our Standard Poodle) on her walk and turning into the jitty, snicket or genal dependent upon your locality I managed to kick a protruding stone and propel myself like a downhill skier minus the snow and with the addition of gravel towards the earth at a great rate of knots. I would like to point out that not a drop of alcohol had passed my lips but maybe if it had I would have bounced a little !
My bruised ribs and gravelled extremities have put paid albeit temporarily I hope to my exercise plans as feeling rather sore. Anyway sitting on the settee with a good cup of Teaology Tea and half a chocolate rabbits ear does make it all a little easier.
The day after my fall I decided that rather than sit at my laptop I would bake a cake ! So I decided on a Cafeology Bird Friendly Peruvian Coffee and Walnut cake.
The distraction from my aching ribs was very welcome and it’s a long time since I have spent a morning making so much mess and feeling so absorbed in a new and challenging subject matter. Baking is a science and to be honest my style is rather more creative when it comes to home cooking however I am a qualified SCA coffee roaster so I adopted my professional hat and became focused and ensured that rather than a dash of this and a slurp of that I accurately and diligently weighed out all.
My first problem arose from the walnuts as required 85g and despite raiding my bags of mixed fruit and nuts that usually adorn my cereal I could muster only 50g so a combination of pecans and brazil nuts came to the rescue.
So whisking, beating, chopping nuts, whipping and icing and 3 hours later the cake was created ! I would like to say now that personally it looks better than the taste test as if I can be brutally honest my substitute brazil nuts appear to be rather thirsty and in my Mary Berry opinion sucked all the moisture out of my master piece !
Anyway it was appreciated by my Mum, Dad and my Brother in Laws parents but Bryan not so sure his comment was ‘its not like your Mums’ well yes I agree completely but with the additional of at least two mugs of Cooling Towers coffee you could manage to swallow again !
As I write this the sun is shining once more and sitting in my little corner I have had a further Cafeology Colombian Smoothie by my side so here is today’s recipe :
2 shots of Cafeology Colombian Coffee
2 bananas
150ml cold milk
Handful of ice
A cheeky shot of Mount Gay Rum
So the moral to this story is don’t tell everyone else to be careful and go around not picking your feet up yourself and also brazil nuts are certainly no substitute for walnuts.
Finally I decided that as a secret twitcher it would be somewhat cruel to feed that last sliver of the cake to my friendly blackbird so it joins the carrot and the parsnip still not doing so bad though.
PS – Breaking Mushroom News we have a white misty mould beginning to form so maybe next week folks !
