Things I do not like or cope with: change &/or uncertainty. Things that this week has featured in spades: change AND uncertainty. Yuck yuck.
It all kicked off on Monday morning when an appointment that Mum had scheduled for Wednesday at the hospital was cancelled and rearranged for… ‘can you come in a couple of hours instead?’. Obviously, I wasn’t the one who had to directly embrace the change, but my day was shaken up a bit (a bucket load in Steph World), I had that stomach churning feeling, and I was apprehensive about the procedure that Mum was about to endure. Naturally, she dealt with it like an absolute BOSS and I’m incredibly proud of her.
… BUT., just to cap it all off, I ate my lunch in such a hurried frenzy of angst and tension, that I forgot the importance of chewing before swallowing, and managed to scratch my throat on a spiky bit of bread (remember sourdough-throat gate? It was that all over again). I spent the remainder of the day worrying (I do this well don’t I?) and drinking honey straight out of the jar to make swallowing less ouchy. My involuntary reaction to the sensation, was to become even more tense which just made the whole thing feel a million times worse. Thus, my neck and shoulders are now stiffer than an ironing board and my throat/front of neck feels like it’s been doing a session on the squat rack… the actual throat soreness seems to have subsided though so small wins eh?
As if that wasn’t enough for one week, the carnage of Monday rolled into Tuesday. Bearing in mind our relatively quiet and uneventful lives, yet another meeting for Mum on Tuesday morning meant further upset to my comfy routine and an accompanying loss of brain power on my part.
I decided it was a good opportunity to attempt a cake recipe I had been endlessly tweaking (perfection mission). I started incredibly diligently, but managed to drop the ball at the eleventh hour of prep. I got as far baking the cake, in fact it had been in the oven ten minutes when I suddenly got that sinking ‘OH F**K’ feeling. I had amended the original recipe from a 2-egg quantity to 1-egg, everything was scaled beforehand and checked…. except for the oil which I managed merrily incorporate as the double quantity. Anger, tears, throw toys out of pram, what an IDIOT. Honestly, you’d have thought I’d be over these stupid mistakes by now. I am not. The cake took about a year (make that 3) to ‘bake’, and therefore came out crispy on the outside and absurdly moist inside. In truth it tasted pretty unbelievable, but I won’t be doing it again.
Lessons from this story:
1. read your recipe a few times to check you know the drill.
2. check you have all the ingredients in the house…. and maybe check that they’re in date - strange as it may seem, rancid oil, and 10-year-old flour don’t yield a particularly tasty outcome.
3. weigh ALL OF YOUR INGREDIENTS BEFOREHAND, (and check them - twice or 3 maybe times), before you barrel in!
4. Maybe re-read your recipe again just to be sure…
5. Oh, and grease and line your tins, or prep whatever receptacle you are using.
Then you just gotta hope that Mercury isn’t in retrograde, and you should be on to great things…
… it’s also worth remembering these lessons 3 days later when you’re making lasagne. On Friday, I got as far as assembling said dish when I realised I was deficient in lasagne sheets, (fairy fundamental) cue more swearing, dithering and a moment of thinking: ‘how can I flatten penne pasta’, before deciding I was probably best knocking up an emergency batch of fresh pasta, rolling and cutting it into large sheets, and hoping it wouldn’t affect the outcome too much. Honestly, life is so full of curveballs.
Thankfully, not all my foodie endeavours were this chaotic, I nailed a new brownie recipe for you (See below, it features brown butter, and is totally filthy delicious, it also would be an excellent Valentine’s Day bake, winner!) and think I may have stumbled upon my best bread dough yet. It’s brilliantly universal, really nice to work with, and makes a range of epic bread-y things - baguettes, fougasse, cheesy olive sticks - drool! I’m going to do a bit more testing and I’ll share it with you next week if I’m happy with it.
Despite the lifey parts of life … I’ve got this insatiable appetite for ART-ing at the moment. The problem is, when a vague interest develops in Steph-World, it quickly becomes an obsession – the ‘up all night’ kind of obsession. I’m totally adoring all my baking creativity (even the mistakes) at the moment (you know that, because I tell you all of the time), but also, I’ve reignited my fascination with the art world and am loving photography, as well as drawing and painting again. I was awake for hours on Wednesday night poring over the work of photographers and artists from previous generations, totally mesmerised by the techniques and skill demonstrated in their masterpieces. From 3am I watched countless YouTube videos about the use of paint and fell in love with the work of artists I found on Instagram. I’ve no idea where this enthusiasm may lead, one day I may have the courage to share a bit of the stuff I do with the world, but the main point I want to make is this: if you have a creative passion, explore it, if you think you’re rubbish, do it anyway (obviously I think I’m rubbish), don’t seek fame, fortune or financial gain, just do it because it makes you limitlessly happy!
Right, you’re yawning, I can hear you, sorry! Happy pancake day (for Tuesday) and Valentine’s Day (for Wednesday) and if neither of these things make you Happy then Happy New Week. We got this!
Love & Hugs,
Steph x x x
BBB’s (Brown Butter Brownies)
I’ve shared my favourite brownie recipe with you before in a previous newsletter and it’s great, I still swear by it. But I decided to switch things up in a little test a few weeks ago and it blew my mind. I should have realised that using browned butter would give my brownie another dimension of flavour… but phwoor, is it good. The nutty, toastiness that it imparts is totally wicked, meanwhile a few other tweaks to my original recipe creates the perfect super chocolate-y, fudgy creation with a delicate crisp crust.
Oh, and if you happen to be celebrating Valentine’s day on Wednesday (alone or with your partner), these are an excellent choice. Enjoy!
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