early to rise?
Up at 6.15 to make the tea. Nice cuddle in warm bed. Now up and at it. Weetabix with blueberries. A day of getting bits and bobs done ahead of me. VAT return. Apple picking – still a load on the tree at the bottom of the garden. Rearrange tomorrow’s train journey as meeting has been pushed back a week. Out for a walk after lunch. Did consider going to the pool this morning but not sure it makes sense with this cough. A second cup of tea is in prospect.
Today’s big news is the “supermoon”. Supposed to be 7% bigger than normal. Oh. The weather forecast is cloudy with some rain. I doubt that we will see anything earth shattering. Miserable git eh? It’s newspaper hype. 7%? Nobody will be able to tell. You would at the very least have to have the two moons side by side for comparison. Aint gonna happen is it?
New Zealand has had two major earthquakes within a day of each other. Another historical reference point. 100 year old woman pulled out of the rubble alive. Good news. Her time is not yet up.
Really here we live a dreamy existence. What are our daily concerns? Whether I have the right yeast for today’s bread? Was given a wodge of fresh yeast by a baker in Tesco yesterday. The result is a definite improvement. Not quite there yet. Need to figure out how to get the best rise after knockback. Done it before. Need to be able to do it every time. It’s about warmth. Lurve:)
I can see a career in baking ahead of me. Amateur of course. Just for personal consumption. Just need to crack the basic techniques right at the start. Once you are up and running to doesn’t take much effort to make nice bread or cook nice food. Most people just don’t put in the time to crack the techniques up front. Bread takes 15 minutes to get going. 5 mins of grabbing ingredients and 10 mins kneading. Maybe I’ll add another 5 to the kneading to see if it will make a difference. John is up. Yesterday’s load has been given the thumbs up.
Good bread is a real luxury. Good food generally. Much of the stuff in supermarkets has lost the quality that made it great pre globalisation and the era of the supermarket. Bacon is generally poor quality, unless you pay top dollar and even then I’m unsure it matches the product of old. I’m sure there are other foods that sit in this category. Out of season fruit and vegetables. Tomatoes grown in industrial quantities without ever seeing soil.
Anne and John are gearing up for the school run. I am sat in the TV room in my pyjamas. Tapping away. It’s a good job we have the word processor these days. My handwriting is very bad. I’d never have been able to churn stuff out at an useful rate had I had to rely on pen and paper. Maybe it would be less voluminous but higher quality. Dylan Thomas wrote over 200 versions of Do Not Go Gentle Unto This Good Night before he was satisfied. I rarely look at something twice. Not in the same league obvs. I am however still alive and he is dead, albeit it he was of an earlier generation. He was 39 when he died. At the peak of his creative ability.
They have gone now, Anne and John. Engine roaring. The first time the Peugeot has been used on the school run. Gosh. I have to clear up the breakfast things and get stuff lined up for my day.
This morning I have put out the call for a decision on the Christmas Dinner meat. It’s going to be beef but I thought I’d give them the opportunity to choose. Anne is still very much a turkey lover so I feel a little guilty that she doesn’t have the chance to have it on Christmas Day. Maybe I’ll do a chicken or a turkey breast as well. We always have the relevant trimmings anyway. Pigs in blankets etc. Maybe even stuffing.
This year because we aren’t going off anywhere on boxing day I might invest in a bigger beef joint as we will be around to eat it afterwards. Nothing quite like cold roast beef, medium rare. You only get it when you cook a large joint.
Enough of this. More in due course…