Domestic Goddess - in training

I have sat myself down on many an occasion and said to myself 'what are you good at?' 'what are your strengths?' (yes, I am afraid I do talk to myself and sadly I occasionally do it out loud as well, it's a wonder I haven't been thrown out of Sainsburys yet - or even banned from Tesco as I wander around muttering 'this place is crap') unfortunately I am not good at looking at my potential.  I  am brilliant at doing it for other people but not so for myself.  Then I remembered those excruciating 'ice breaking' sessions I took part in for all the assertiveness classes I have attended (4 so far and none of them worked because you know what, people you need to be assertive with haven't read the manual and so don't follow the steps - which is plain unfair) and of course those 'wonderful' sessions the trainer at the organisation  (the one who made me redundant -just in case I haven't mentioned them before) would run (for those of you not in the know these are 'how to be the most perfect manager/employee as decreed by the 'organisation' lessons - oops enough of the bitterness) whereby amongst other things you have to state your name, your identity (yep always a good one that - how do you identify yourself) and something you are good at!!!!! I  struggled with the 'what am I good at bit' most and so, in a fit of panic,  I always said 'I can cook'.

So, I thought, there is my potential.  I am going to be a domestic goddess. Nigella eat your heart out.  And as with my book - instant bestseller - made into a film - Meryl Streep playing me etc or with my art - hanging in the Tate gallery within a week of my painting it - bought by a reclusive, filthy rich Middle Eastern gentleman for a phenomenal amount - interviewed on South Bank Show (Melvyn brings it back just for me - again), so it is with my cooking.  3 Micheline stars at least, all by the end of the year of course. Gordon, Jamie, James, Delia and Heston having to queue for a table. Three cookbooks out by next June - all bestsellers - sorry Jamie.  Ah that is what I am going to do!!

Having dedcided not to go with the chutney for reasons previously discussed I sat down to comtemplate in which direction my culinary future lay.  Leafing through  my many, many, many cookbooks I thought of casseroles.  I would make casseroles for busy professionals which they could just pop into their ovens to reheat - and then I remembered the beef casserole I made - the one with the mushy squash in the bottom, the stringy meat and the potatoes that didn't seem to want to cook,  the ragu that kept drying out and had to have a whole extra bottle of wine added to it to keep it moist and it's best not to even think about the moroccan chicken. Perhaps not casseroles then. 

Then I hit upon it - afternoon tea - I just love afternoon tea - the ex signicant other took me to the Ritz for afternoon tea for my 40th birthday (which was the only time he ever spent any money on me but that is another story and one which you may well get to hear if I don't get a job soon). I will make afternoon tea thought I -  sandwiches, cakes and scones.  I will set up a tea stall at all the markets in Kent until I can get my own tearooms and  then I'll charge £35 for afternoon tea thereby undercutting the Ritz and people will have to book 3 months in advance for a table and the Japanese will all come to me  for tea when they visit England and what  will set me apart from everyone else will be sandwiches made from my own homemade bread. Yes!!  But before I get too ahead of myself here I thought I had better practise, just a bit.  My scones need a little work.  They are no longer flat biscuits thanks to Rachel Allens recipe (thanks Rach) but they are not quite 'scones' as in the pictures of risen and fluffy looking scones seen everywhere. So a bit of practise needed there but I can do it.  However, I haven't made bread since I was at school.  So this afternoon I made unleavened brown bread. Another Rachel Allen recipe - with an awful lot of ingredients in it.

Well, I had to throw the first lot of dry ingredients away as I didn't read the recipe correctly and put the weight for the bran in,  using wheatgerm instead of bran and this I didn't discover until I had put in the rest of the million other ingredients.  So I had to weigh it all out again which was just as well as I had forgotten to switch the oven on. The second attempt had me putting too much pinhead oatmeal in as it sort of  fell from the packet in too big a quantity and when I tried to scoop some of it out I was taking some of the other ingredients as well so decided to leave well alone.  It was only a few grams after all and it was taking me ages, which was ok really  as the oven still needed to heat up.  I then had to add 500ml of buttermilk and as I had 584ml in the carton  I carefully weighed it out.  Now the scales definitely said 500ml went into the mixture but for the life of me I don't know what happened to the other 84mls - they weren't in the carton as left overs.   The recipe said to mix it all in with your hand - it is so 'messy' mixing bread this way.  The mixture had to be loose and sloppy and believe me it was. 

Yes, well, it might not look sloppy in the photo but it was (haven't worked out how to remove dud photos yet). Yuk.  Anyway, that done I put it in the tin and shoved it in the oven.  Now as the recipe was for 2 loaves but I was only making one you would have thought I would have cooked the loaf for a little less time wouldn't you?  Well, actually you would be right (that got you didn't it!!!).  I put the timer on for 10 minutes less and when it went off I reluctantly switched off Timothy Olyphant, stood up, went to the living room door and couldn't remember why I was there, so I sat down again until it came to me.  Which it did some 15 minutes later.  My loaf was, well yes, it was a little dark on top and yes, it was a little solid when thumped, as could only be expected from having been cooked for 15 minutes over its time but it was also 'shaped' - not as you would expect a loaf to be shaped.  It was, how can I put this, well a portion had risen from the tin and thrown itself over the side, and there it dangled looking very much like  - well - like this

 I couldn't have made that happen  had I tried.  (Not a very good photo I know but  I am still practising with my new digital camera.  It all seems so much easier with an SLR still I must embrace the digital world).

Anyway, once I had sawed my way through the crust I found out that it was actually - quite stodgy inside. Sigh. I have tried it and the taste is ok-ish but then I am used to my cooking.  I certainly couldn't give it to anyone else to eat, let alone sell it or turn it into a sandwich.  I then remembered why I hadn't made bread since I was at school.  After the breadmaking lesson at school I made a  batch of bread and rolls one weekend that a friend and I took  on a picnic after which we were rather poorly.  She blamed my bread and I was inclined to agree with her.   I also remembered a few other things from school cookery lessons in particular my  predisposition to burning things. I managed to burn a packet lemon mernigue mix and for my home economics CSE exam I burnt not only the toad in the hole but also the coffee!!!! (I passed but only just). I think I am genetically programmed to burn things.  Perhaps I am not destined to cook after all.

Anyway nil desperandum, I am going to try making bread again tomorrow, practise makes perfect but I don't think I shall be setting up my teashops or applying for any jobs as a domestic goddess any time soon.  Ah well back to the drawing board.

Well I am going to go and clear up my kitchen now and saw all the crusts off my bread and feed them to the seagulls.  How fiendishly clever of me, I have discovered a way to get rid of the seagulls.  I wonder if I can patent it and make my fortune?

An achievement

Well I promised snow when I had worked out how to put photos on to the blog and so here is snow.  It is next doors garden from the last lot of snow we had.  Although I feel I have to be honest and confess this isn't all my own work.  Mrs Pao loaded the disc thingy that came with the digital camera onto my computer and today my friend TJ came round for tea and scones and I sort of persuaded him to show me how to get the photos from the  camera onto the computer (I did this by supplying chocolate swiss roll as well). It has then taken me over half an hour to figure out  how to get the photos from the file in which they are stored onto the blog - and I have done it.  In my new optimistic and positive frame of mind I have to say 'very proud of self'.  Of course I'm not entirely sure how I did it, and I don't know how to make the photo smaller or put it in a different place and I think it might have disappeared from the file it was originally in - which isn't exactly what I wanted to happen - but all things considered I think I can say I have a result.  I am optimistic that it will now be 'onwards and upwards'.  Goodness such a lot of optimism, and on a Sunday too!!!!

and here is a squirrel running down the side of the building opposite just to prove it wasn't a fluke my getting the photo onto blog - so now I really really can be very proud of self.  I didn't know squirrels could do that.

Considering options - castles in the air

Well there is nothing on television and I have inadvertently deleted Timothy Olyphant so I can't watch him again so having started blogging I thought I had better carry on.  I now have a sense of panic relating to blogs and I still don't know how to add the photos.  My friend Mrs Pao is indisposed so I have to try and figure it out myself therefore it may take some while before photos appear.

As I have said I would quite like to use this 'break' (enforced) in my 'career structure' to do something different with my life. I was a finance manager and I no longer wish  to do anything in anyway related to working with figures - ever, ever again.   I was absolutely hopeless at maths at school.  In fact I didn't do maths, they wouldn't let me,  I did arithmetic and only just managed to get a grade five CSE, the next grade was a fail.  So how come??? you might be asking me.  Well,  I  fell into working in finance by accident aged 17 having taken a very short term temping job in a finance office.  I should have run away  from the calculator as fast as my legs could carry me as soon as they offered me a permanent position but unfortunately  due to a crush on my tall, dark and handsome manager (no really he was and, in retrospect, luckily for me a happily married man) who told me I could do the job combined with a strong, but ultimately unfulfilled,  desire to go back to school and say to the maths teacher who used to shake his head sadly at me  'nah nah naaah look what I am doing', I didn't.  Handsome manager was right, I could do it, bookkeeping isn't maths its sums and  logic, but it didn't make me happy and I didn't  like it.  Once I had moved on from the crush  phase - eventually - I did try on more than one occasion to get out of finance but didn't find it at all easy to change track.  In my last and most notable attempt I went off to do a degree in History and English and American Literature as a mature student (my 40th birthday was slap bang in the middle of my first year  exams so my celebrations consisted of a lunch party by a pond on campus - it was lovely and is one of many very fond memories I have of uni). However on graduating and finding myself unemployed I also found  I lacked the financial and in particular the emotional resources to hold out for what  I wanted which was a career change. Unfortunately jobs were scarce and so I accepted a position in finance via a temping situation (again!) Back where I started I vowed to make the best of the situation, worked hard, took exams, got promoted a few times and was, by the time they made me redundant 12 years later, thoroughly unhappy and incredibly stressed out.  Now financially I am in a slightly better position than I was on graduating, emotionally - well I'm older if not wiser. So, here I am - again.   Holding out this time.     In one of the worst recessions for many a year.    Yikes!

Therefore over the past few months I have been considering future career and life path options.  My ideal option (other than becoming  beautiful, thin and very rich - suddenly) would be to write a book.  As a child I avidly wrote stories which were regularly read out in class at school each week. If I wasn't writing I was reading or drawing. So, obviously I will write a book. Actually I have started many books over the past few years.  I am the proud possessor of a rather pretty box which is choc full of opening sentences, opening paragraphs, ideas for books, ideas for stories, titles for books, one poem, lists of characters,  none of which match with any of the others.  However, this book was going to be different, it was going to be based on real people in a real situation.  Gritty realism.  It was going to be a best seller.  It would go straight to the top of the charts in hardback, be translated into sixty-eight different languages, someone in Hollywood would turn it into a film and  Meryl Streep would play me.  I have my oscar acceptance speech already written. Melvyn would bring back the South Bank Show just to devote it to me.  And indeed I started it. It is still there on my computer.  One thousand, three hundred and seventy one words, the start of my novel about the organisation that was responsible for my present state of affairs.  Apart from why anyone would want to read about it in the first place I floundered because I didn't realise I had such vitriol and desire for revenge in me.  I was shocked.  So these words have now joined my 'writing' box and I have gone back to the drawing board.  Being optimistic - there must be something I can do that isn't finance related...........................

Well I've done it now........

The only new years resolution I made was not to make any new years resolutions - and I've broken it already!!!  This is all the fault of Crazy Aunt Purl who's blog I read not 15 minutes ago and because she was going to do brave things it inspired me to do  something brave and so I did.  I posted my first blog.

Now this may not seem a brave thing to you but to me it is quite momentous because I started writing the blogs end of November/beginning of December last year and the confidence crisis that has been crippling me over the last five years hit again and I just couldn't post them.  I love writing, I love using words and I love reading.  As  a child I was always reading, writing or drawing.  At school English was by far my best subject and I loved it along with art and history.  Maths made me cry.  Yet I have spent a life-time working in the world of finance where words were basically redundant and any creative use of those that were allowed was frowned upon.  Systems and procedures, facts and figures, statistics and policies governed my working life and were slowly destroying my soul.  I want to change.

Realising that in order to get what I want (words, creativity, a new life, a new me) I have to be brave.  I have to  overcome my fears (and they are legion) and most importantly I have to overcome my confidence issues relating to my ability to write and so I have  bravely posted my first blog.  I have written my second out of a sense of panic - and now feel the need to go and lie in a darkened room to recover. More may follow.................oh and I have to work out how to put the photos onto the blog, there seem to be too many wires to me - I did mention I'm not too good with technology didn't I...........................

A New Beginning

When I was made redundant, after I had recovered from the not inconsiderable shock, making chutney became my therapy.  I made gallons of the stuff, obsessively. I think I had at the back of my mind the idea that I was creating the new Wooden Spoon Company.   However, it's ten months down the line and I am still unemployed and although I am still making chutney - obsessively - I find myself in need of a different kind of therapy.   I was never going to be able to make a living from making chutney anyway.  Just about everyone who has been made redundant recently has started a cottage industry making jam and chutney.  At a local food fair I stopped counting after I came across the sixth stall selling homemade chutney.  There are only so many jars of jam, chutney and jelly a person can buy and consume. So I need a new idea for the career front as well as  I so don't want to return to the old career as it was making me ill.  And as a therapy the chutney was all well and good but it could be a little fraught as, despite my best efforts to follow the recipe exactly, it somehow never went without incident. In fact very little of my cooking seems to be incident free.

I would email my friends about the culinary disasters I was experiencing, just for something to do really, but a few of them started to  email back saying 'it's just like a blog' and 'you should write a blog'.  I had no idea what a blog was.  However my dear friend Mrs Pao has introduced me to her blog (take a look - it's lovely) and the art of blogging and so, taking my lead from Crazy Aunt Purl (check out her blog - it's good and she's funny), I have decided that blogging is going to be my new therapy.  As Aunt Purl says I get to talk about myself and I save the cost of therapy sessions.  And it will be nice, as I attempt to change my default position from that of pessimist to optimist, not to have  someone sitting opposite  me nodding and saying every week 'you sound confused about your abilities and your role in life'.  I know I sound confused - that is why I am there.  What I want to know is how to get unconfused and how to get on with my life after a few awful years that have knocked my confidence terribly.  I'm obviously not going to do it through therapy and I'm not going to do it by making chutney either that's for sure.  And blogging away at all hours will also give me a break from the obsessive baking which has also recently afflicted me.  So far this week I have made two batches of scones, an apple pie and a chocolate cake and it's only Wednesday.  Plus there is only me here, there is no room in the freezer - it's full of soup, last weeks obsession - and as we are up to our letterboxes in snow, nobody will be coming round to eat any of it either.  Well, up to the letterbox may be a slight exaggeration but there is lots of the stuff.  I have taken a photo of the snow with my nice new digital camera but Mrs Pao has  to show me how to post it to the blog first. Watch this space for snow photos (just in case you haven't seen enough).

So, blogging here I come.  It's cheaper than therapy and baking.  It might improve my computer skills (sadly lacking in that department), help me deal with the stresses of looking for work, sort out my confidence issues and  possibly might lead to a new and interesting career.   That was quite optimistic wasn't it, see it's working already.