Plant to Plate.

It's been too wet. Our grapes that grew so beautifully all split. It's a shame - I tried one or two that weren't split and they're really lovely. They're actually a purple variety and perfect for eating if a bit seedy - I assumed they'd be a sour wine-type. We had to cut them all down and bin them, but they did look pretty.

The tomatoes, though, have been a bit of a triumph so far - I'm really pleased. These are 'Gardener's Delight', with some unidentified cherries thrown in for good measure. My more interesting varieties so far haven't ripened very well, but we'll see. I have a couple of stripey ones that look like they will, and with any luck some of the big San Marzano plums I planted will do too. I don't mind too much if they don't, because there are fab things you can do with green tomatoes - I'm particularly keen to try the curry.

Our chillies are still purple, but they'll ripen in time - I've had those plants a couple of years now so I know how they'll behave. This year's chillies and the peppers are barely more than seedlings...I'm not sure what I do about those. I'm moving in two months (yes, really, again...) so we'll see how they look then. I might give them to my mum if she can find space for them. Hopefully we'll get a few green peppers in say November...! I should probably have planted them out earlier. Seeds can go into compost in February and no later next year, then hopefully they'll be big enough to plant out by the time it gets warm. The tomatillos are still growing...we'll see how that goes...

Blackberries have come and gone, too. Traci and I actually got around to picking some this year - we meant to last year but failed. I've never been a big jam person, but I did want to try cordial with them. I drink a fair amount of squash of one sort or another, and having something made of blackberries sounded great. I made the most enormous mess cooking them - I stained EVERYTHING a deep, dark purple. I have just ascertained though that with plenty of Vanish these stains seem to be happy to come out of even my pale grey tracksuit bottoms, though I have not yet succeeded in getting them out of the wooden chopping board...maybe I should try Vanish on that, too.
They SMELL incredible - of roses...which shouldn't be a huge surprise because the plants are related. And I didn't really mind the stains when this colour is so amazing. I'd have them cooking all the time if I could, I think.

I had a flick through some recipes on the net, but I didn't see any I was particularly keen on. I didn't want to adulterate the flavour of the fruit with spices as some recipes do - I've had spiced blackberry squash before and it's been a bit too cloying. This is a purer flavour. I suspect I added too much sugar (though hopefully this will mean it keeps better), and this somewhat overwhelms the flavour of the berries. The smell is still incredible, and it's not too cloying either as a drink when diluted with sparkling water. It's amazing, that black purple colour doesn't get any less when you water it down...it just stays black. It's less translucent than coke!

I didn't take proper measurements I'm afraid. I know I used around 2 1/2 litres of blackberries and probably around 400g of sugar maybe less. I was walking a line between trying not to make it too sweet and getting enough sugar into it that it would preserve it a bit.

I boiled the fruit in a large heavy bottomed pot - I didn't need any water as it was already pretty juicy in there. I let it boil until it seemed more liquid than solid, and then added the sugar and boiled for a bit longer to let it dissolve. I then strained it through a sieve and then muslin. This was the part where I made such a mess - my sieve kept slipping and the sheer quantity to be strained meant that it went everywhere. Persevering, I eventually ended up with a thick dark syrup which I bottled in this rather lovely old olive oil bottle that I'd sterilised with boiling water.

It's been in the fridge ever since, and I don't think I'd want to store it out of the fridge. I've been drinking it with my dinner, and we made a cocktail with it, tequila, the juice of a lime and some fizzy water that was pretty nice, too. And it's virtually free!

:-(.

Apple Crumble Cake

Work had a barbecue on Monday, to welcome our new members of staff. We're only a tiny company (6 and a half with the newbies), so there were partners and The Cambridge Arts Marketing Mafia and assorted hangers-on. It was a nice evening. Lots of wine. Being able to leave work at 4, too. Though when I walked through the door of my bosses' house, I was greeted with, 'Hazel! Ah! ...if I give you a glass of wine will you make me another chart?' Typical...!

Anyway, the point was that we left with a party bag. A party bag full of cooking apples from the tree in another guest's garden. ACE FREE STUFF. And an excuse to make apple cake, which I love. That the combination of buttery cake and soft moist tart apple with a hint of cinnamon is a great one is hardly earth shattering news. I was thinking that I'd see if there were things I could do to add texture to it, hence the nutty crumble topping. What I really was thinking about was adding caramelised walnuts instead, but this was hindered by the fact I only had chopped mixed nuts in the cupboard, not walnut pieces, and also that I needed the cake baked quickly because I'd promised a friend tea and cake at three in the afternoon, and she changed the time to 10:30 in the morning! No disaster, except for me skinning the top of my middle finger with my brand new and hence very sharp indeed peeler.

Ingredients
3 small bramley apples, about the size of a girly fist. Didn't weigh them, sorry...
Juice of half a lemon to coat the apple pieces and stop them browning
2 medium free range eggs
4 oz butter
4 oz plain flour (actually, I think half wholemeal flour here might be a nice way of giving this more texture)
4 oz soft brown sugar
2 scant tsp baking powder
Half a tsp of salt

For the crumble:
4 tbsp plain flour
2 tbsp icing sugar
2 tbsp (about half an ounce) butter
2 tbsp chopped mixed nuts

Preheat the oven to 180 degree centigrade, or about gas mark 4. I hate my gas oven.

You will also need a tin around 6 inches in diameter and at least 1 and a half inches deep, lined with baking parchment. My cake overflowed - I might make it in a square tin another time to avoid that.

First, the apples. Peel them, without getting blood all over everywhere. Try to keep your fingers intact, or when you put a plaster on the subsequent cut, your pet rats will think it's a wonderful toy and try to pull it off and chew it and generally be fascinated by it. Cut two of them into quarters and core them, then into eighths and into rough dice and add to a pan with about 100ml water. Cook until soft right through and looking saucy. Quarter and dice the third apple and cover with lemon juice.

For the crumble, rub together the butter, flour and icing sugar until it resemble clumpy breadcrumbs, then stir in the nuts.

For the cake, cream together the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy, then beat in one egg. Sift in about a quarter of the flour, beat, then add the other egg and beat. Sift in the rest of the flour, baking powder and salt and combine. Fold in the apple pieces (not the juice) and add two heaped tablespoons of the apple puree. (This probably won't be all of the puree, but the rest is an awesome thing to add to yoghurt with a bit of sugar.)

Pour the batter into the prepared tin and cover with the crumble mixture. Bake for 30-35 minutes, checking towards the end. The top where the cake mixture pokes through should be nicely browned and a bit cracked. A knife should come out without uncooked cake mixture on it, but it will probably still be a bit wet because of the fruit.

Final acceptance.

Actually, this guy is nothing to do with anything I want to talk about. AND I think it's probably a girl, not even a guy. She's turned up three or four times in the evenings about 10ish. I wonder if her owner goes to sleep or kicks her out or something. We nearly always leave our back doors open, and she just pootles in and makes herself at home. She's pretty keen on the fridge. She thinks it's great. I offered her a bit of sardine from out of said machine though, and she turned up her nose at it. Ah well. I think she's lonely. She mostly just sits and purrs at us. She is without a doubt the single biggest cat I've ever met. She's a bit fat, but she's BIG too - her paws are bigger than an inch across. Hefty. I like having a cat around. In theory, we aren't allowed pets inside, (the rats are technically 'outside' - this was the agreement with the landlord), but since our house is being repossessed at the moment and the landlord seems to have gone totally AWOL I've given up even thinking about it. But my new friend, nice though she is, wasn't the point.

I want to get my hair cut. Properly short. Every time I say that to people around me, they say, 'So...you like girls now and need to have the hair to match?' Which kind of annoys me. Partly because it's true, and I hate to be so predictable. It's not that I want to conform with any stereotypes - exactly the opposite, out of pure contrariness*.

I have been progressively getting my hair cut shorter for the last couple of years in any case, but it hasn't been exactly drastic. I'm annoyed with how tatty it looks when it's long. This picture by the the inimitable Mr Allsop is in many ways a really lovely picture. But my hair's a STATE.

It's quite thin, though the curls means it doesn't necessarily look it. Partly it's that I just don't get it cut often enough and rats' tails is what happens to my hair if I don't get it cut enough. It breaks easily. It's shorter than that now, but it's still that wispy no matter what I do.

My thought is that cutting it short will help it seem less thin and pathetic. The curl means it shouldn't go flat and JUST ick. And if it does, I learnt about mousse. I might not be very girly, but I did figure that one about.

It is about coming out, somewhere along the line. Something about being different and making a statement. Same as the vague but fairly insistent desire for a tattoo, I think. 'I have decided this, now let me show that it means something'. An acceptance. I'm WAY too shy for the tattoo. I'll look at pictures of them and think about it, but the actual walking into a shop and saying 'draw this on my skin' is too much involvement from someone else. Getting my hair cut is pretty ordinary, though. I'd shave my head, except I'd get more questions.

I think I want something like the same length all over, about 2-3 inches, to give it space to curl. I don't know. I might just go for more short and quite layered. Don't know. It'll probably wait for a while until I actually leave Baker Richards (at the end of October...crazy...).

...thoughts on the hair style, anyone?

*True story: I vividly remember being in year 2 (I called it J3 back then, and I was 6 going on 7, for any foreigners) at school and being asked to make something that measured wind direction. I can't even remember now what everyone else made - something with paddles, I'm pretty sure - but I very deliberately didn't go with what was the only really sensible idea given the materials we had because I wanted to be 'different', and failed the test totally. I remember reading the comments my teacher was writing down over her shoulder. Being Contrary Is Not Always The Answer. It's amazing how often I've failed to take note of this since then.

Cornwall and coriander.

Traci and I and several of my friends from college were in Cornwall this weekend. It was all a bit epic and involved my brother losing his glasses in the sea and Mel having nightmares about Leonbergers. Good fun was had by all. I shan't forget Jenny and her fear of mud. I totally failed to take *any* photos whatsoever, which was a bit hopeless. Kate did though, if you can see them on Facebook. We ate a lot and went swimming in the sea and the Londoners learnt a little bit about the country.

...and on the (very foggy) way home, we went to the Eden shop. I love going there, it's a fantastic place. Sadly it appears to have realised that it can make money out of the tourists and it's less of a good place to go to buy presents than it was, but it's still an ace place to get unusual plants and seeds. I bought a Vietnamese coriander. I've wanted one for *ages*, ever since I first saw one at Eden a year or two ago. My problem with ordinary coriander is that you basically need to grow it like cress in order for it to be of any use, and I am not reliable enough in my need for coriander to be able to grow it and use it in that way. This stuff doesn't taste quite like ordinary coriander, but it's similar enough to fill the hole. Plus, it means I can make Vietnamese spring rolls, which I adore and would LOVE to be able to make properly. Not for a while. My little plant, while big for a little plant and probably prepared to explode bigger (they do that, apparently, I might have a bush of it 90cm tall!!), is not ready for much in the way of harvesting yet. Soonsoon...

Of the Terrible Doubt of Appearances

Been a while since a poetry post. I clearly miss my degree too much. Enjoy the pretty poem if the analysis is too self-indulgent!

Of the Terrible Doubt of Appearances

Of the terrible doubt of appearances,
Of the uncertainty after all, that we may be deluded,
That may-be reliance and hope are but speculations after all,
That may-be identity beyond the grave is a beautiful fable only,
May-be the things I perceive, the animals, plants, men, hills, shining and flowing waters,
The skies of day and night, colors, densities, forms, may-be these are (as doubtless they are) only apparitions, and the real something has yet to be known,
(How often they dart out of themselves as if to confound me and mock me!
How often I think neither I know, nor any man knows, aught of them,)
May-be seeming to me what they are (as doubtless they indeed but seem) as from my present point of view, and might prove (as of course they would) nought of what they appear, or nought anyhow, from entirely changed points of view;
To me these and the like of these are curiosly answer'd by my lovers, my dear friends,
When he whom I love travels with me or sits a long while holding me by the hand,
When the subtle air, the impalpable, the sense that words and reason hold not, surround us and pervade us,
Then I am charged with untold and untellable wisdom, I am silent, I require nothing further,
I cannot answer the question of appearances or that of identity beyond the grave,
But I walk or sit indifferent, I am satisfied,
He ahold of my hand has completely satisfied me.

Walt Whitman, from Calamus (1860)

Apparently, this is J. K. Rowling's favourite poem. That article says it's in Leaves of Grass but my collection clearly says Calamus so I went with that. And well she might pick it as a favourite. I don't know much Whitman and bookmarked this to read after someone mentioned it on Twitter. If someone mentions something as a favourite then I'm usually curious to see why, especially when it's not something I know a great deal about. Whitman was too American to feature on my course at university and I haven't really found a good way in yet.

This poem is fantastic. If you just read it for sense, you get the fact that the speaker finds the world confusing, but that it's all ok when he has a friend, a lover, with him. So far, so good. I'm not sure that it's the sort of thing the British Romantics were much into, though it's hard to say. The style is so different from that of, say, Tennyson who was writing at the same time, or of Wordsworth who was a little earlier. I don't recall this sense of vulnerability in Tennyson or Wordsworth, or even this much positivity for much of the time. Admittedly, I found both of them too wet and self-conscious and frankly emo to persuade myself to study them too long so I will freely accept correction on that subject. I love that last line though. When I first read it, I thought 'wedding poem' because of that fantastic sentiment there, though it would have to be perfectly read to convey the sense of it to anyone just listening and not following it along on paper. All the huge questions of existence are resolved by the presence of another and by the fact that they are there with you. What better summing up of a true relationship can there be? It's wedding season at Great St Mary's again, and I shall await someone choosing something other than 1 Corinthians 13 probably in vain...

Wikipedia suggests that Whitman might be regarded as the father of blank verse - look at the line length in the poem and the lack of strong rhythmic, rhyming or even strong structural devices. It's real blank verse in that sense, but far from prose because of the conscious syntax and even type-setting. The hyphenation of 'may-be' all the way through apart from the first instance seems unlikely to be a mere whimsy of the period or of the later editor. Again, I haven't studied Whitman or American writing of this period, so it's possibly that 'may-be' was habitually hyphenated, but even if it was I like that it forces you to take more time over the phrase - both when reading to oneself or out loud. 'Maybe' is synonymous with 'might' in modern parlance. The way we use and understand the word today doesn't emphasise the permissive element in the word 'may'. Today's use seems to allow us to sit back and let things happen. The quick way that we throw the word about means that we never stop to savour the fact that there are several outcomes to something. This construction is more conscious of the fact that something may be or may not be. Whitman achieves what I have there with six words and italics in two words an a hyphen, and then intensifies the uncertainty by repeating it through the poem. Suddenly, it is more important to us that things have more than one possible outcome and that the speaker and we as readers are more uncomfortable about that. This level of confusion and concern is important because it heightens the relief we feel with the speaker when we discover that love and friendship are the things required for peace.

But the construction of uncertainty doesn't end with 'may-be' - he uses the phrase in conjunction with 'doubtless', 'may-be these are (as doubtless they are) only apparitions'. What are we supposed to make of that? Are they apparitions? The juxtaposition of the certainty and the uncertainty only makes our understanding even more slippery. And their are other things, like beginning the poem in the middle of a sentence that is never complete. In fact, all four of the first four lines are dependent clauses without an independent to stand with. They are all missing bits, and we are wrong-footed from the outset. The first nine lines proper of the poem are long run-ons, with interruptions in parentheses. They are hard to follow and one has to read them several times in order to unravel which clauses might go with which. The word 'nought' appears where one might expect 'naught' - the two words are similar but they don't mean the same. How does one resolve it? I went to read the poem in other locations to check that they were printed right. 'Nought' is a number; 'naught' is nothing. We don't normally draw a line between the two that says they are the same thing. ARE they the same thing? It opens more questions.

The second part of the poem is clear. The clauses are easily resolved into sentences albeit still long and complex ones that make sense and follow through, in contrast to the first part. There are no interruptions and no 'may-bes'. Clarity exists in the structure as well as in the sense of the words. It is as though the presence of the friend resolves the potentially complex syntax as well as the 'big questions'. It is all this that makes this poetry not blank verse. The emotional journey of the poem is greatly intensified by the poet's manipulation of our ability to comprehend it. I love it. It's so clever and so well done, and the sentiment is a beautiful one - for all it's a fairly twee resolution of the 'existential angst' theme that so much poetry relies on.

Other people's roof-top tomatoes

There really aren't many cities ANYWHERE where people actually live on narrowboats any more. One of them is Cambridge. The Cam is a dozy little river and everyone jokes about it being dirty. It's pretty full of bikes (like everywhere else in the city), but as rivers go it's pretty clean I think. If you have got drunk and gone punting and bridge-jumping, and then drunk too much Cam water...that's a whole different thing. It has fish and birds and all sorts. At least ones that can cope with the tourists. And people really, genuinely, live on it, in the way that they have continually since probably forever. Though they do have things like solar panels now, and cabins bigger than 10' by 5'.

This guy is growing rainbow chard, as well as tomatoes and some other stuff. Not sure you can see it in the picture but he is. I planted some, but in the previous house. I'll have to go and see how it's doing when I head over for dinner this week. He wasn't the only one, either.

"Take heart for Mrs Pankhurst has been clapped in irons again!"

I never understood that line from Mary Poppins when I was a kid. I didn't know the history or who Mrs Pankhurst was. That film did ensure that I remembered the name though, even if I didn't know why. I found this postcard yesterday (at Ark in Cambrige, which is a shop I love but where I virtually never buy anything...it has lots of things I'd love to own but which are ultimately useless). It was probably the prompt for the last post, but I felt it deserved something of its own.

I realised that while I know the basic story - that Emmeline Pankhurst and the suffragettes fought violently for the right of women to vote - I know very little about the woman herself. I found this picture intriguing. Doesn't she look proud? And direct? And elegant and somehow modern? She's looking straight at you, and it's a demanding look. I imagine she must have been a terrible woman to meet. A bit like Margaret Thatcher but if possible even more driven. Her wikipedia article shows how single-minded she was and how much she expected of the people around her, her family and by no means least of herself.

The status quo at the turn of the century was that women were inferior to men, incapable of performing the same tasks as men and fundamentally endowed with fewer mental facilities in the same way that they were physically weaker. Pankhurst's own parents didn't educate their daughters to be more than home-makers - they learnt needlework and music while the boys had the academic education. And from this, she rebelled. Rebelled such that she was arrested and went on hunger strike on numerous occasions. Some suffragettes were force fed, though the wiki article doesn't suggest conclusively that Pankhurst herself was. All around her, people decried both her cause and her methods. And they WERE extreme, but given how many times the women's suffrage bill was presented in Parliament didn't they have to be? And what other ways were there for her to fight? They didn't HAVE the vote, so they couldn't choose to vote for parties that supported their cause, much as black people in America couldn't vote to change things over there. At least people fighting for gay rights can actually use their votes to express their opinions.

It must have seemed an impossible project, to change the minds of those confirmed in a belief that women were second. I would have looked at it, been sad, but not seen anywhere to start with changing it. She, and others like her, did a very great thing. Every woman should be profoundly grateful to all she achieved...we would not be where we are now without them.

I'm going to try and do more reading...talking to Elaine last night, I found out she had *taught* a *course* on British history at the turn of the century...so I have a Queens Belfast approved reading list. I will be breaking into the History and English Faculties as soon as I establish when they're open in the holidays. I might even look in to whether I can get readers' rights in the UL.

I have a thing about postcards.

Or rather, just cards in general. I still have nearly every birthday card I've ever been given, though I think they're in Cornwall somewhere. I started running out of space, so unless they were particularly important I began tearing the pictures apart from the backs and recycling the backs. I have some great ones. The postcard thing is slightly different, because it's about images I've chosen for myself. It still have the odd separated birthday card in it, or cards people have sent me and even the odd flyer or leaflet if it had a particularly good image. I have one photo taken by Graham, that fits in seamlessly. I have an ambition of one day wallpapering them all to a suitable wall, but in the meantime, I use the wardrobes.


It probably doesn't look like it, but they're quite carefully arranged. The idea isn't to have areas that are all the same colour or that are too busy. New cards often mean rearranging what's already there so that the newcomer fits. The too busy is a big factor in how I choose images to go in. It's much more effective to have a very simple image on each card, because it gets too hard to see otherwise.


This one is pretty simple - just one object to catch your eye in a sea of more detailed images. It's a flyer from The Baltic Centre in Gateshead. I went to a conference there a year ago, and spent a good hour or two in their shop - they had a Yoshitomo Nara exhibition on, so it was pretty cool. I love the doll - the cynicism and the cartoon aspect of it.


Can't get more simple than that, and it goes quite well with this one:


My favourite (at least at the moment...) is this one:

I found it in a tiny art gallery come shop called Frank in Whitstable. I bought about 5 cards in there and found I'd spent about £20. I have forbidden myself even looking at that site properly because I KNOW I'll spend more money.

My postcards range from the abstract (thank you Charissa!) to the silly, from adverts to Darwin and from The Wildlife Photographer of the Year to Joan Collins. I love buying them. It's surprising how much money you can spend on postcards. I don't intend to get into that antiques game, I just find it a nice way of remembering great images.

I pick them up in art galleries, from racks of flyers, from quirky bookshops and gift shops. People SEND me them sometimes...that's exciting. Interesting images from all periods, cultures and places. I remember pretty much where they all came from too. They're an extension of my own photography, part of the same thing. An easy way of having a record of a beautiful thing or place, but also a window into a different time and place. How ELSE could I have a picture of Joan Collins rehearsing dance routines from Seven Thieves alongside pineapples growing at Heligan?

...So. Pretty pictures. If you see one that you think I'd like, post it! And I'll send something back. Then EVERYONE can have quirky collections of of pictures to cover their wardrobes with...

My tomatoes torment me -or- Gardening At Height

I can see them there, outside the bedroom window, ALL THE TIME. I can see the fruit on plants. Green. Not going red, despite my checking on them hourly when I'm home. Dammit. And I don't actually see any more growing, though everytime I go out there to take off the side shoots and feed them, there ARE millions more buried under the leaves. And tomato side shoots can grow 6 inches in a week. WHY not the tomatoes that I can see from the window? It's torture.

I'm growing four sorts. The ones in the first picture are 'Gardener's Delight', available nearly everywhere. When I bought mine they came with a free packet of Marigold seeds. These are those 'companion planting' things that people talk about - something about the tomato pests being kept away by the marigolds, or something about the proximity of the Marigolds encouraging growth in the tomatoes. I have no objection to flowers and the possibility that either of the above is true, so I put them in too. I haven't actually grown tomatoes all the way through by myself before - usually I've had to move house in the middle and leave my half-grown plants with someone - so I don't know if it's made a significant difference to pests or not. I also haven't grown them on a roof away from other plants that might pass the pests over before, so I can't really tell. I've only got one plant of this sort - I gave quite a lot away (can YOU find a way of growing on 18 tomato seedlings), but only one seedling seemed strong enough to warrant planting out. It's a nice plant with the biggest tomatoes on it at present. I reserve judgement on whether I grow it again when I see how it tastes and what the final yield is...

Then there are are the San Marzano and the Striped Tomato. I didn't take pictures of those in my two minutes on the roof this morning in the rain, but they're weird and wonderful shapes already. (It's been gorgeous, for ages. I pick the day to take photos that the sky appears to be trying to wash out the ground...) Another time.



I'm not actually sure of the seeds for the little cherry tomatoes I'm growing - I suspect they might be these ones or something similar. I planted them on a course I did at the Eden Project in March, along with some basil (growing nicely thank you) and some liquorice - one single seedling of which is creeping larger and looking forlorn on a windowsill. It's the cherries that are the biggest plants with the most fruit on them, to the extent that I'm not even worried I broke off a truss by accident last time I was pruning. There are masses*.



Also on the roof are a selection of chilli plants, some of which are getting on for three years old and still producing tiny, firey chillies, some peppers that are still seedlings, really (they're the ones in the champagne box!), some of the basil and the tomatillo plants. And my pride and joy - the one solitary little aubergine plant that's made it through.**

I like the roof. It's an effective place to garden. We water by throwing the hose up there and then climbing out of the window. It gets lots of sun, and it's reasonably sheltered. Except from one direction.



I also share my house with a triffid. This I didn't plant but definitely intend to harvest. I hack it down on a weekly basis but it's trying to take over the world. LOOK at the fruit. Hope it ripens. It's been planted with some thought, the roots outside and the fruiting branches in - vines like cold roots and warm branches.



It means our passage doesn't get too hot most of the time, and the rodent residents of that room don't roast. They're quite keen on vine leaves, which is a good thing because otherwise it would try and eat their cage.



*Provided the ENORMOUS thunderstorm we've been having all morning hasn't knocked them all over. Arg...
**Storm getting worse. Please thunder, don't kill my aubergine. It hasn't had a chance yet!

Facebook.

My cousin Philip posted his thoughts on Facebook a couple of weeks ago, and I've been mulling them over ever since. Facebook seems to be getting a bad rep, often from the religious crowd but also among others. I can see it from their perspective, in that the life you live online is by its very nature partial, and that is something that people who are searching for authenticity all the time find problematic. (I know there's more to it than that, but I'll let Philip speak for himself.) I just wanted to put the other side...to try and articulate a bit of why I think Facebook is popular with people from so many areas of society and what I think I take from it. I'm not an avid Facebook browser, but I do think it's a worthwhile enterprise. Probably quite long...

Facebook serves as a space to share things with a large group of people whom you see in person only rarely. I have friends spread around the country, and we meet up a few times a year to do things. But without the freedom facebook affords to say just a sentence to one another now and a again - about a photo of a trip we've been on together say, or a reminiscence about something in our shared past - we might not talk at all, and it would be harder to meet up, and we would find it harder to start conversations when we did meet up, and eventually we might drift apart. The time we actually spend together would be poorer because we wouldn't have a dripfeed of continuity between times. Of course there are more personal ways of contacting one another, but they are all more serious and more time-consuming - and the reality is that we would invest that time only rarely with a few people, or not at all. And friendships would slip away because you've missed some part of someone's life, and the barrier of events that separates you from one another becomes so high that the story of your life since last you met is so unwieldly that you don't know where to start, so you don't start, so it remains a barrier between you and the friendship is lost. Facebook, via the 'little and often' element, helps to prevent that obstacle ever becoming enormous.

It is no substitute for face to face, just an addendum to it. I don't entirely agree with the reasoning behind 'quality not quantity' philosophy that so many people expound as a reason that Facebook is a bad thing. Yes. You suddenly have minor contact with a lot of people. You still have intense contact with a few of them, and you have more contact with the wider circle than you would otherwise. Knowing just a little about the people in the wider network, about how their lives have changed since you did have contact, means that there is always the possibility of revisiting a friendship or intensifying it in a way that wouldn't have been possible before. Maybe you didn't know a schoolfriend was working in your city. Maybe you didn't know someone had a certain interest. Maybe you can re-click. You might come across other acquaintances through them, and be surprised who knows who. What's the real chance of running into the one other peerson you knew from school who lives in Australia, say, in real life? But on Facebook, you can. And suddenly the whole scary experience of a new country and a new life is made easier because there's someone to talk to about it.

You will say 'but that never happens'. It does. Maybe not those exact scenarios, but I have spoken to people via Facebook, and been pleased that I have, that I probably would have lost entirely if not for coming across them as a friend of a friend. And it has been a good experience. Going out of my way to contact them would have been creepy for both of us. A quick 'hi' on chat or whatever is so much less threatening, and actually very important for me at the time it happened. So don't knock it...

The danger is voyeurism. But it's less the domain of the watcher to censor what they look at and more the onus of the watched only to share only that which they can afford to share. That feels the wrong way around, I guess. Maybe that's a British feeling. Something about one should be embarrassed to watch? A difficult balance maybe, but not a pointless one. I don't mind that there is a presentation aspect of to the self on Facebook - it's a very freeing experience to have more control over your image, and it's not like people don't act parts in real life. But everyone knows that everyone is playing a part all of the time, in life and online, I don't see the issue. Once you're aware of the construct, you can see how it's put together.

Of course one needs to make sure that one uses it and not let oneself become merely the tool either of the software itself or of other users, but it does have a function. It's all about opinion. At the end of the day, as a place in and of itself it's just not that important. But it can slide into the real world in a much more tangible way than many other things. People whose blogs one reads, or who one talks to in web fora, are for the most part not people you meet in real life. It is the exception and not the rule that you might seek to actually meet them. Facebook is an addendum to a real life connection - who is Facebook friends with people they've never actually met? Nobody I know, I think. It is a way of documenting and strengthening that RL connection. It creates a common area where groups of friends can share things in virtual space when practicalities mean they can't do that in reality.

So I think it's a good thing. I have on occasion deleted myself from it - I don't necessarily want to be part of the scrutiny all of the time for one reason and another. But for the most part, I like that other people are prepared to share parts of themselves with me and are interested in parts of me. What's the problem?

Oven gripe, but eventual cake.

So far I appear to be having baking disasters in the new house. The first time I made the lemon cake in our new oven, the wretched device burnt the bottom. Grr. That's what you get with a gas oven, I guess - much harder to predict, especially if you're used to the even cooking of an electric fan oven. But this is an odd thing anyway - all the gas ovens I've seen before have the heat source low down at the back of the cavity, along the line where the back of the oven joins the base of it. In this one, the heat is in a strip along the centre of the floor of the oven, running from front to back. That means that the heat rises straight up, making the base of whatever you put in very hot indeed. With the heat at the back you generate a circular convection current, meaning that whatever you put into the middle of the oven has heat going all around it instead of being fired from one directino all the time. Of course you're going to cook the side of whatever it is near the back of the oven faster, but you can easily turn it around to get it cooked evenly. It's not like I can flip a cake over to cook the top of it as much as the bottom, or like I can very easily protect the bottom from getting scorched with tin foil or whatever. I had intended to test whether or not it would be possible to shield the bottom or at least spread the heat a bit by putting any trays I can find between the heat source and my cake tin, but a whole OTHER disaster happened after that.

The oven stopped working altogether. ARG.

Of course, I found out it had stopped working as I opened the door to put a trayful of careful prepped raspberry fairy cakes in it. Grr. It was always dodgy to light, but I'd got that figured out - it just needs quite a large volume of gas running through it before it will consent to ignite - you just have to hold your nerve... It has a heat switch like many gas appliances do, whereby you have to keep your finger on the button for a few seconds after ignition until some heat has been generated, otherwise the gas shuts off. The idea is that if the flame goes out, the jet won't keep pumping gas into your kitchen creating a potentially lethal fire hazard. All well and good. But that switch doesn't seem to be registering heat now - however long you keep your finger on the dial, when you take it off the gas shuts off and your oven goes out. This makes baking fairy cakes impossible. Eleanor and I ended up in the car clutching bowls of cake mixture in a variety of hues and driving across town to bake them in John and Will's oven. We cleaned their kitchen in payment, and Will's in Japan in any case, but it WAS annoying. Landlord has been contacted.

Don't get me started on the fact that the shower has burst a pipe.

At least we got the boiler fixed and we can have baths with hot water instead...






















Raspberry cupcakes
6oz caster sugar
6oz soft butter (it was warm enough on Saturday that I kept having to freeze the butter so that it didn't just run away!)
3 eggs, separated
6oz plain flour
2 scant tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
12oz (300g) raspberries - fresh or frozen (one third of these will go in the icing, but it all needs making into puree)

Icing (this is for my favourite blue smiley face cakes)
100g plain white fondant
Few drops blue food colouring
2oz soft butter
4oz icing sugar
A small quantity of jam
More icing sugar for dusting

Also - one oven (that works) preheated to 200 degrees centigrade and a 12 hole deep muffin tin and corresponding papercases.

First make the raspberry puree. This is easier in the microwave, especially if you're using frozen berries. In a heatproof bowl, heat the raspberries until they turn mushy - try not to boil them. You can do it in a pan, too. When everything is liquid, run it through a sieve and put the resulting puree in a pan. Boil to reduce by half. This now needs to cool - I just put it in a cold bowl and stirred it while my lovely assistant made the rest of the batter. You could (shock) plan in advance and leave this to cool properly. Try not to eat it all on yoghurt - this is a problem I regularly suffer from when faced with raspberry puree.

To make the cakes, beat together the sugar and the butter with an electric beater, or a wooden spoon if you have more energy than that. Beat in the egg yolks. Sift in the flour, baking powder and salt. Gradually beat in two thirds of the raspberry puree. In a separate bowl, whisk the egg whites to the soft peak stage. Take one spoonful of the eggs whites and stir it into the rest of the batter to loosen it, and then fold in the rest of the whites.

Divide the batter between your twelve muffin tins - they should be full to within about 1cm from the top.

Check your oven is still working. If it is*, bake the cakes for 12 or so minutes, until lightly browned and cooked through. They'll be a wonderful pinky purply colour. Test with a cocktail stick.

While the cakes cool, make the icing. Beat together 2oz of sifted icing sugar with 2 oz of soft butter. Drip in about 2tsps of the reserved raspberry puree and beat again. Continue adding raspberry puree until abotu half of what was left has been added, and then beat in the remaining sugar. The rest of the puree you can pour over yoghurt or eat with a spoon...

If you are lucky and have a chef girlfriend, you might have piping tips lying about somewhere along with some disposable piping bags. If not, you can roll up a cone of greaseproof to use, or cut the corner off a square sandwich bag. Whatever your medium, fill it with the pink goo and put to one side.

Mash together the fondant with the blue colouring until a uniform baby blue colour.

Heat a tablespoonful of jam and then run it through a sieve so it's smooth. Brush the top of each cake with this to act as glue.

When the cakes are cool, dust your work surface with icing sugar and roll out the fondant to a couple of millimetres thick. Cut circles using a glass or a biscuit cutter, and stick these to the cakes. Pipe your chosen designs on top, then leave to dry before eating.

By this point on Saturday, housewarming party guests started arriving, and I'd done *NO* cleaning. Such is life... They didn't seem to mind that much, there were cupcakes...

*If it's not, round up one friend, ring up another one (waking him up in the process) and ask in a state of fluster if you can come round and use his oven. Drive all the way across town and bake your cakes there, drive back, making the friend you took with you late for her lunch date... *sigh*.

Chicken noodle soup

Chicken noodle soup (two portions)
Stock
Some chicken bones - buy legs and bone them if you don't fancy boning a whole chicken (a whole bird is a faff...legs, you just hack the bones out of the middle of the meat - neatness isn't required!). You can buy bags of wingtips for stock in butchers sometimes, you just need to ask. Or you could roast a chicken or a couple of legs one day and eat most of the meat, and then use the bones and the remains of the meat for this.
A piece of ginger the volume of your two thumbs, roughly chopped
2 star anise
Handful of peppercorns
1 onion, peeled and roughly chopped
4 garlic cloves, peeled
1 tsp red chilli flakes (I ALWAYS add more than that, but I like it hot...)
Juice 2 limes - keep the juice to finish the soup, and the shell of one goes in the stock
Other things that sound good - I add a dried lime and dried mushrooms because I have them around

Things to go in it
Enough of your favourite sort of chinese noodles for 2
around 350-400g of mushrooms (whatever two portions looks like to you), quartered or chopped into bitesize but not small pieces
Two heads of pak choi, or maybe one head of chinese leaf, or two big handfuls of spinach leaves - something green and leaf, chopped in such a way as to make portions.
6 spring onions (scallions) sliced finely
Tsp honey
50ml soy sauce
sprinkling of sesame oil and sweet shilli sauce to serve
cooked chicken meat if you want it (i usually don't, because I'm being frugal!) - you can poach it in the stock.

OR, new thought, buy commercial chicken stock! Buy the fresh stuff, and organic if you can. Cubes...not when you're ill. About 750ml? I've not tried this way so you may need more

Commercial stock version: throw your chicken stock in a pan and add the same quantity of water. Throw in the stock ingredients EXCEPT the bones and simmer gently for 2 hours. It'll smell ace. Strain the liquid. You're probably aiming for about 750ml of liquid left, so if there's more boil hard to reduce it.

Bones version: Throw the chicken bones and the rest of the stock ingredients into a big pan. Cover with water - around 2 litres. Bring to the boil and simmer for as long as you have time for in an evening - ideally as much as 6 hours. I never have time for that. 3.5-4 is fine. Leave to cool with the bits in and then strain just before you make the soup. There will be clear fat on the top and it looks horrid, I promise it tastes good! When you're going to start the soup, boil to reduce to around 750ml.

When you're ready to eat your food, heat up the stock. Heat some oil in a wok and throw in the mushrooms and half the scallions. Stir fry until nearly cooked and throw in the greens. Taste the stock and add the soy, lime and sesame to taste. Add some soy, lime and sesame to the mushrooms with the honey. When the veg is done, put your noodles into the stock to cook.

When THEY are cooked, heap the veg and noodles into bowls and pour the stock over the top. Add sweet chilli as you eat.

I'm sure it's not authentic, but it tastes good. And you'll get very messy eating it.

Eureka moment.

The picture came from this post on the 101 Cookbooks blog - which I literally started following today. Can't believe I hadn't looked it up before, I *HAVE* heard of it, many times. It looks like a cracker.

But I wanted to have this picture somewhere. If I ever do the opening-some-sort-of-eatery thing, then I want to have those plates and that cutlery in it. Colours and rustic and interesting, but not busy. I just wanted them there...

Gah. I tried to post a comment on that post checking for permission to re-publish. Couldn't find a contact. However. I HAVE linked back to the website...

Cacophony.

I love this time of year. Summer is still a thrilling concept - we aren't bleached and wrung out by it yet. There's still a coolness in the nights that means you can sleep, but you don't need extra layers. Getting out of the shower doesn't mean speed-dressing as close to the radiator as possible, but you haven't reached the point where a cold shower every 8 hours is an absolute necessity.

I love the way it smells, too. It reminds me a bit of India, but only because smells seem so much more pungent in warm air. (Actually, I think that might be an Actual Fact, or nearly - something about speed of diffusion.( I was cycling around the city this evening at breakneck speed to catch up with the Van of Stuff, enjoying the way the scents changed with neighbourhoods in between willing my bike to change gear and not drop its chain or its pedals or anything like that.

Where I live, there were barbecues. Charred meats and hot fat spitting into charcoal. The difference between steak and sausages discernible. I was starving, too, that's partly why I noticed. Down near our new house there are large communities of Chinese and Indian people, and the smells change. Curry, of many sorts, interspersed still with barbecues - sometimes also Indian-flavoured. Odd to pick out the scents of a western meal in that setting, actually. There's the river with its own smell, and the diesel smell of buses that I kind of like in a perverse way. In a brief period of calm, the clean smells of the launderette and a tanning salon permeated through the food odours. Late, on the way back through town and up the hill to home-for-tonight, the pubs were full and spilling into the warm night. As you go past the door, apart from the thumping music, you are assailed by the cloying smells of sticky alcoholic drinks, cigarette smoke, cheap aftershave and sweat. It's odd that that isn't really off-putting - it's just an indication of what a place is.

And home, at last, there's the smell of me. I stink. I've been chasing about all evening doing things that make me sweat. Bleugh. I need to peel off the clothing and shower. Then I shall smell of soap, rather than fading deodorant and ick, and this will be better. But the smell of me tells me that I did work and can be satisfied with myself for that. Not that I recommend house-moving as the ideal get-fit activity - I suspect it only works for me, and even then I'm not sure it counts....

Shift.

I'm looking forward to this house. I only recall looking forward to moving house once before, and that was in similar circumstances, in a way. That's saying something - I moved 5 times within one city in one year, last year, and moved twice at least in the year before, between three cities. Some might say I lack stability, or am flighty, or get bored easily. Those might all be true, but they aren't really the reasons I had to move. A catalogue of unfortunate circumstances, for the most part. This year is going to involve some moving too, but I'm excited about all of it.

This time around, I'm going to a place with two of my favourite people in the world. We're all going together, at the same time. That's important, it gives us equality. We're going to a pretty house, with the nicest landlord I've ever come across, in one of my favourite areas of town. We were fussy about what we wanted and we got it more or less exactly - up to and including having the rats living on the property with us. We have two big bedrooms, a decent living space and a garden. AND it's summer.

Next move will, with any luck, be to London. There will probably be a hiatus in St Albans, but still. LONDON. I've lived on the edge all of my life, and so much of the world goes on there, and I'm so looking forward to it.

Moving is usually hard work and seems to get me nowhere. Shifting restlessness with no purpose. I have a purpose now. I'm happy.

A different sort of post.

Or one more diary-like than they've been of late. I have new poetry books on order - gushy thoughts on Carol Ann Duffy will resume shortly. And I'll probably re-visit lemonade and get summer-food excited. I'll even try and remember to take photos of it...

T and I and various assorted others went to the Cambridge Beer Festival yesterday (I drank cider). It was a wonderful evening of random drop-ins - we were the centre of a small group of wanderers from all areas of my Cambridge existence. GSM people came, a few ADC types were about (including some we hadn't planned to see), Matt the director of the the play he stitched me into producing dropped by, Carl was there, and even Linda from the college chapel set. Even a kind of vicarious family element, though that definitely doesn't count. I had to keep double-taking to keep track of it, and drifted around the circle trying to make sure that everyone had someone to talk to, because in a lot of cases they either knew me a lot better than they knew one another or often were only in the same group because of me. Linda spent a long time explaining spider reproduction to Marion (whom she'd never met), and bonding with Matt over the fact that they both have connections to the zoology department. Leave Linda in any situation and she will proceed to gross out everybody with Bugs. I love Linda.* Carl found someone he'd lived with in his second year of uni in a city 200 miles away to chat to. The attractions of a beer festival break down great disparities. It was a little confusing, and a little stressful because of it. We left before it got too late. T had been on breakfast and I had to be on top of a tower wearing a cassock at *7:15* this morning (more later).

It was a beautiful evening still when we made it home, not too hot or too cold or anything. Hopefully it promises more to come, but I don't gamble when we're talking British weather. We went to sit on the garden wall for a bit. And then there was a hedgehog.

More or less totally unconcerned that we were there, it came bumbling through the fence and snuffling through the undergrowth. It was full dark by that point, no moon, barely any light seeping around the blinds from Will's film inside. Just glimmer enough that it was possible to follow the creature's progress by means of an occasional glimpse of a waddling body on the grass, but it was quiet enough that we could hear it. Listening to it eat was hilarious - so much relish from the little animal. It was chompchompchomplipsmackpotterslurp for a good ten minutes, getting nearer and nearer to T's foot on the lawn. Both of us were still as stones, craning towards it and straining our eyes in dimness to see what it was up to, wondering if it would actually get close enough to touch Traci's shoe (it didn't). When it began to move up the garden towards a bush at the back, I crept inside to fetch Will to show him, but though we could still hear it, it didn't come back from under the bush and it left our patch via the back fence.

But a HEDGEHOG. I like hedgehogs. I like the way they move and the expressions on their faces and their attitude. I don't often see them though; in Cornwall I suspect they're either out-competed by the badgers, of which there are many, or just scared of the dogs, or both. And tiredness and tense and awkward social situations melted into our watching of a wild thing enjoying itself. No deadlines, no nothing. Not long awake from a winter sleep and enjoying a spring glut of fat worms and bugs. No concerns beyond dinner.

I like how even in a city there are still so many bits of things that are natural that hit you if you look. People say that city-dwellers have no idea about the seasons because they never see the plants. But there are hedgehogs and foxes (currently irritating a houseful of London friends of mine) and birds and the odd growing thing and all sorts, and there is the colour of the sky and the weather - it still has an impact.

I wasn't really a country kid, in that nobody in my family farms or raises food animals or manages forests or anything of that sort, but I did grow up in a village. I can milk a cow, believe it or not, though I wouldn't like to be challenged to. But city kids get taken to farms to do that, now, so they can too. I think they probably don't see much of the fields or what goes into them or comes out of them and how things grow, though. Not in a field-wide sense. Not a whole crop, just a bean at school, unless someone has an allotment or a vegetable patch. My mum did and does have a vegetable patch, and she supplements it with ducks now. The llamas still serve no useful function. But I had a childhood spent climbing on rusting tractor hulks, chasing rabbits with my dog, and picking blackberries - until I was 11 anyway, and I loved it. I then spent years living in a city, and got used to the idea of streets of houses and postage-stamp gardens and shops that weren't an event to go to. I know I'm lucky to have had that upbringing - not many kids do these days. But the thing I like most is that it has left me with the ability to have just a small handle on how things the natural world fits together, and how our and everybody's lives are affected by seasonality in a way that it must be difficult to grasp in quite the same way if you've never been that close to the countryside. And it is that slightly closer bond that makes me want to respect it enough not to eat meat that hasn't at least seen daylight and been able to stretch its legs a bit, and to try my best to make choices that have as little impact as possible. I'm not there yet, but I try, and it's got to be a start...

I felt that feeling again this morning. The adults were down to sing the Ascension Day service from the top of the GSM tower at Frightening AM today. I think the last time I got up before 6:30 it was winter - so that time actually felt like dawn, with greyness and mists and sunrise. We're edging on to summer here now, so the sun is well and truly awake at 7am, which was when I left the house. I was slightly disappointed not to be privy to that secret dawn...I like that time of day, though definitely not more than sleep. I can see the season changing, though, and that's ace. On top of the tower today it was a little hazy still from spring dampness, but you could see Ely Cathedral on the horizon 15 miles away - 'the ship of the Fens'. Cambridgeshire is SO flat...

I like that I'm not attached to academic years any more. They create artificial breaks in the progression of the year. Christmas and Easter do that, to a certain extent, too, but they're less intrusive and regimented than the three terms, three holidays arrangement that we use to order our years. I like that I can sink into something more natural, rather than trying all the time to break the year into shorter segments. That just results in feeling like a failure when you miss a deadline that was set with no regard for what the task is and your personal work speed.

And I don't have to watch the end approaching with the same finality that you do with the end of the term, the end of the year, the end of school, the end of university...and there is life beyond whatever the deadline is because the months and the years keep going and don't stop because you've reached a certain milestone. Dates are only a way of talking about time - in themselves they shouldn't be deadlines on their own account. There shouldn't be exams 'just because it's summer'. A couple of college friends have said to me that they always feel guilty if they're in Cambridge in the summer - they should be revising, that's what May means. No. All that May means is that the sun will be edging its way out a bit and that the peas have sprouted. All. Exams are not seasonal. They have nothing to do with the sun and the weather and the natural order of things. There are still deadlines, because otherwise there is no way of functioning, but they are more fluid and less metallic. They move with not against the flow of the year.

*She is actually ace. Used to date a housemate of mine, who made his own mead and shoes and spend a lot of time dressed as a Viking and talking in dead languages.

Repetitive.

It's amazing, music. How a single song will take you somewhere you never imagined you could remember that clearly.

'Graceland', and my stomach is knotting that I won't see her again, that she's gone. Until I remember she hasn't, and I can just feel the intensity of that original emotion still there and squirming.

'Blessed be the God and Father' and I'm 10 in the choir stalls in Ashwell. 'Lead me Lord' and I'm a similar age, in my cabin bed with my dad singing me to sleep.

'Walking in Memphis' and I'm in a sunny room in an ancient college, watching someone sing his heart out for the love of it, with one of my best friends in the whole world ever playing the piano and enjoying it just as much.

'The Sunscreen Song' and I'm 14 in an RE class, watching the eyes of one of the most short-lived but influential teachers I ever had as he played it to us at the request of a girl whose presence shaped my teens, albeit indirectly.

'I don't know how to love him' and I'm 17 or so, on stage and singing it wrong.

'Living on a prayer' and I'm 16 walking along a street in Melbourne with 4 other girls dressed in tracksuits (lacrosse tour), singing at the tops of our gravelly hungover voices.

'I will survive' and I'm in a hotel on the Isle of Wight, aged 9 again, fighting with the girls I shared a room with that trip. Or I'm in the kitchen in St Albans, shouting at my dad while the TV plays the Weetabix ad version of the song, about alligator dentistry.

Bellowhead's 'Prickle-Eye Bush' and I'm in a car with T and singing because we've listened to the song so many times we know it by heart.

'Canonball' (Damien Rice) and Andy's playing it next door. Or I'm crying, from a far earlier moment - that passed, and is now important for something not sad.

Eel's 'I like Birds' and I'm sitting with Dan and Steve in that funny flat with two presences so different but related and definitely faded a little now.

How many times will it strike me? I love that music has this kind of effect. I should write a real post, or finish a poem, or both... A list of songs and moments is not really worth public consumption, except for those who might remember the same moments. I must take more photos.

The Best Brownies Ever

These are based on a Nigel Slater recipe, with my edits.


250g soft butter (who has soft butter? Throw in microwave on defrost for 30s or so works...)
60g best quality cocoa
60g flour
300g caster sugar
3 large eggs + one extra egg yolk
½ tsp baking powder
250g best quality dark chocolate
¼ tsp each of the following:
- ground allspice
- ground cinnamon
- ground nutmeg
- cayenne pepper (or, if you can find it, ground ancho chilli powder – it’s MUCH milder. The cayenne will make these warm)
1 tsp vanilla extract
½ tsp salt

Preheat the oven to 180ºC. Line a small roasting tin (around 20cm by 30 cm) with greaseproof paper. Break up 200g of the chocolate into squares and melt in the microwave – the recommended method is to heat for 30s, stir, and heat again until nearly all liquid. Overheating it is Bad. Chop the other 50g into gravel-sized pieces.

Beat together the butter and the sugar until light and creamy, and then beat in the melted chocolate and vanilla extract. Beat in the eggs one at a time, and then sift in the flour, cocoa and spices, baking powder and salt. Stir in the remaining chocolate and scrape into a tin. Try not to save TOO much to eat raw – the flavour of the spices is EVEN BETTER in the cooked version.

Bake for no longer than 25 minutes. It should still be soft in the middle, though not actually raw. A bit of gooeyness is important…

Leave to cool in the tin, until completely cold. They fall apart if you try and get them out when they’re straight out of the oven.

Lemon cake.

If I was going to do the food blog thing properly, I'd have to start taking photos of things as I cook them. I'd have to get into food styling. I don't really do styling with my food. A heap on a plate is usually what I'm after. I KNOW that the Japanese say 'you eat first with your eyes', but I disagree. You eat first with your NOSE, and THEN your eyes. One day maybe I'll get time enough to think about how things look on the plate, but my dinner parties are always more low key affairs than that.

In the food blog spirit, I'm posting a recipe or two that I keep cooking for work and that people often ask for. I have just trawled through the archives and am slightly perturbed that I never posted the lemon cake recipe. Gah. So. Here it is.

8 oz butter
8 oz self-raising flour
8+2oz light brown sugar
½ tsp baking powder
¼ tsp salt
2 eggs, beaten
2 lemons

Preheat the oven to 200ºC and line an ordinary roasting tin (around 35cm by 25cm) with greaseproof paper. In a pan on the hob, gently melt the butter and 8 oz of the sugar together. When melted, remove from the heat and grate in the zest of the lemons. (The purpose of doing things in this order is to allow the mixture to cool a bit before you add the eggs.) With a whisk, beat in the eggs and then the flour, salt and baking powder. Bake in the preheated oven for around 20 minutes, until golden brown and a skewer inserted comes out clean.

In the meantime, heat together the juice of the lemons and the remaining 2 oz of sugar until dissolved. When the cake comes out of the oven, prick it all over with a fork and pour the drench all over, making sure you don’t miss the edges. Leave in the tin to cool completely (overnight), and then cut into squares. Eat within 24 hours… NB, the recipe can easily be halved, but it then relies on you having a 20x20cm tin, which nobody ever seems to have…