happy holidays

may all your days be merry and bright

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Drizzle and other confusion

Sometimes life is confounding. Even more than usual. I made a lemon drizzle cake the other day that was STILL uncooked in the middle, despite it’s being in the oven for twice as long as advised. The only thing you can do in such circumstances is hold your head high and simply try again. Make another lemon drizzle cake. After all, it’s not that you’ve actually done anything wrong. Somewhere in the great lemon drizzle of life there has been confusion. Perhaps baking 100 biscotti before that made the oven cooler? Don’t accept defeat, whatever you do. In the mean time, here’s some nice rice salad.

Upside-down

I’ve become rather fond of recipes that involve flipping upside-down at the end, such as this tarte tatin. There’s a wonderfully perilous moment when you’re not sure if it will make it…and then – ta da!

Return

The chef has returned! Back in the home kitchen at last, although already desperate to be at university again… I made a cranberry and pistachio nut roast as a practice for Christmas Day, when I’ve been placed on nut roast duty. It was a rather fun success! Even the brother-who-won’t-touch-most-foods went back for seconds…yay!

all I want for Christmas

Growing up isn’t just about the change when the things you desire above everything else go from the tangible to the intangible. It’s about your own conscious realisation of this: that the things you want more than anything else in the world are simple not obtainable, achievable. That tangible and material things do not equal happiness. All I want for Christmas is for my mum to be better.This can’t happen, but at least there’ll always be cake.