Enforced silence

I'm sorry that I have been silent, I'm marking essays. There are three topics to choose from: the selection process, e-books and digital repositories. I won't thrill you with details but I do enjoy marking, coming up with encouraging and helpful comments and fixing every spelling mistake because I can't help myself. I'll be able to fit in the odd post from now on because my two longest work days are over. Monday and Tuesday were both oven like at 42 degrees. I rode my bike to and from work both days! I had a flat tire on Tuesday, my first ever, and arrived at work at 8.30am and left after 7pm so the weather was only mildly extreme. After recovering in the evening, I marked three essays before falling into bed.

We have been keeping up with the cooking. Jossie had a friend for a sleepover on the weekend and I let them make the very first cake out of my new book, Mix and Bake by Belinda Jeffery. It was rather big of me because I was dying to make it myself, but I stood back (after a little preparation) and let them do it themselves. I chose the Caramel butter-crunch cake, only I substituted chocolate for the nuts as Jossie, by far the pickiest eater of the three, doesn't like nuts (!?).

I didn't get around to taking a nice photo of the result but the experience was great. The mixture looked disgusting at one point, according to Jossie, which was a good time to teach her about the great truth of cooking, that recipes are so much more than a sum of their parts. The girls loved using the food processor, a first for both of them, and the sense of achievement was heightened as there are quite a few steps involved and the cake looked very impressive having been cooked in a kugelhopf tin and with layers inside. Licking the bowl was still the best bit, though.

We also played our new game, Quelf. It isn't for shy and retiring types with lots of acting and general silliness required but it gave us much afternoon amusement.

Sunday was the big day. Jossie made her very first dinner, fettucine bolognese. I was a bit concerned that when I assembled the ingredients Jossie would take exception to some of them. To my surprise, and Tim will be pleased, the zucchini, carrot, celery and mushrooms caused no offense. All Joss said was that she didn't want to chop the onions. As it happens I only chop the vegetables very roughly and then finish the job in my food processor so Joss managed to brave the onions without tears.

Again, we were in such a hurry to eat our dinner that only the quickest of perfunctory photos was taken to capture the historic moment. Job well done Joss, it was delicious. I always make a huge amount too so the rest will be made into lasagne tomorrow for Toby's birthday dinner. He has chosen brownies for dessert, maybe Jossie will bake those too.