Food & Thoughts

Sometimes, my Man is amazing. Wait, allow me to correct that - he's always amazing. But sometimes he outdoes himself. Like on a cold, cold December night he'd been working and I'd been sitting in front of the heater, studying for my exam, and he came home and started making me cupcakes. Martin never bakes, I should probably mention. But with Nigella in one hand and me coaching from the little table in the kitchen - as if he wouldn't have known what to do without either!:-P - he made these wonderful little numbers, Chocolate-Cherry Cupcakes . I'm still studying for that exam. For some reason (maybe it's still the perfection thing ??) I chose to walk out from the what-was-to-be a six hour written exam after half an hour. I get a second chance in a couple of weeks (luckily!) but just know that that is one of the reasons posts might go a little short and sweet for a while around here... Well, that and I seem to have collected an enourmous amount of pictures of food ...

- this is what leaving a 2,5 kg. bag of chocolate buttons close to the heater will get you - just in case you were wondering...;-)

I'm bad. There I go, leaving y'all with nothing - NOTHING! - for an entire week - again! But you see, it is not for of lack of "want", nor is it too much "must do" or need of perfection that 'causes me to not post so much at the moment. It's only because of - yet another - darn exam. And the other thing. Oh yes, the other thing is taking up quite an amount of my time as well. I'll get back to the other thing. Anyways: don't you just love the smell of freshly baked bread? I know I do. For some reason, I've never been afraid of the whole yeast/too much cold/draft thing. I used recipes, I measured flour, water, yeast, salt - I kneaded, proved, knocked back, shaped, proved again - baked. Not thinking too much about it, just doing it. I used to bake around a hundred rolls every morning back when I ran a canteen, not giving it much thought. But I don't think I ever really understood what it was all about, before I started baking all of the ...

A couple of weeks or so ago, a very wise woman told me something important. She told me that sometimes, you can get so afraid of not doing things perfectly, that you end up doing nothing at all. I never thought of this before. I like to believe that I'm human. I make mistakes - I'm not proud of them, but I try to learn from them. I'm notoriously messy, I can't be bothered to vacuum before I have guests over, they'll dirty the place anyways, and well - the dishes have been known to wait for a couple of days, or even a week, before I get round to them. I do like organizing - the spice drawer, the sock drawer. I make scrapbooks. In school, I take notes using mind maps . Sometimes, the dinners I throw are planned down to the tiniest detail and I've done long lists taking every possible outcome into consideration - what glasses to use, what herb to top a dish with - and at other times, I forget to buy half of the groceries I need. Still, deep down, despite all these ...

Here's wishing y'all a very happy new year! I know it's awfully quiet around here at the moment, but life's being a b**** and trying to slap her around and get her to be nice again isn't really working for me!;-) Hopefully there'll be time for blogging again soon. Meanwhile, start enjoying the 365 fresh and sparkly new days you've just been given - I know I intend to!