Beat it.

I had an unexpected bit of fun whilst I was baking this week – not that being in the kitchen messing around with butter, sugar and flour isn’t already fun, obviously. But an intially irritating moment ended up reminding me about the enjoyment very simple things can bring.

I’d been planning the cookies for most of the day at work, as you do. I knew I had the ingredients, I knew I had the time to chill the dough for long enough before baking it. It was so on. Once I was back home I merrily weighed out my butter, sugar and spices, placed them in my mixing bowl and prepared to inflict some serious hand-mixer action on them.

Or not.

I can only assume the fuse in the plug has gone, because despite my best efforts (unplugging it then plugging it back in…and maybe a few verbal threats) the bloody thing wouldn’t go. It didn’t even make that noise that electrical appliances make when they’re trying to work, they really want to, but it’s just so hard. Nope. My mixer was, for want of a better word, buggered.

Which really left me with no option but to beat the stuff together myself; the other option was separating butter, two kinds of sugar and various ground spices and returning them to their respective packaging. I’m obsessive, but even I draw the line somewhere. Thankfully I’d softened the butter beforehand, so was only slightly out of breath by the time I’d produced a butter-sugar combination which was to my satisfaction.

Thank goodness I hadn’t been planning to make meringues.

Cranberries Part II

It’s Sunday morning, and I wake up, not to the sound of Jon Humphrys interrogating a politician or James Naughtie insulting one, but because I am ready to wake up. My body is happy with the amount of sleep I have had, and is allowing me to open my eyes and face the world without being rudely forced into it by the Today Programme. (Incidentally, have you ever listened to the Today Programme whilst half asleep? I find it to be like drifting in and out of some bizarre alternate universe where all you’re allowed to talk about is politics. But maybe that’s just me…it probably is) Today, I can take as long as I want in the shower – or at least until my flatmates start getting irritated. I can savour a mug of tea, brewed for a decent amount of time and not [gingerly] slurped down as fast as my scalded mouth will allow. The sun is shining, the birds are singing (the railway next to my flat tends to drown them out, but I’m pretty sure they are), and the day stretches in front of me like a road waiting to be travelled. I can do anything, I can go anywhere… I am invincible.

 

Or at the very least, I’m going to bake some cookies.

And then I’m going to pile them up on a chopping board and take a picture of them. Because it’s a Sunday and I can.