Domesticity

Being one of those days where the temperature outside never got above freezing, and the frost rime on the grass never lifted, and as I am still recovering (although much, much better now) from that dreadful cold, and knew I would cough as soon as I breathed in the mega-cold air outside, I have had a day of satisfactory domesticity.

 
This morning I made oatcakes - they looked like this..
and then Mouse walked by and they looked like this..
and then when I objected that they hadn't even cooled and he'd already pinched two, he pinched a third and rearranged the tray so there were no gaps! Just as if I hadn't been in the kitchen when he stole them and so wasn't going to notice.

Actually I've been in the kitchen most of the day, it's warm and cosy and still smells of baking, overlaid with mixed spice and cayenne - more about that later.

Then I made four loaves of bread, supposedly enought to last us for a week. As we were down to three and a half loaves by the end of lunchtime (mushroom soup made by Handsome when he returned from the farmer's market) I have my doubts. I have differently shaped loaf tins, although I have tried to persuade Handsome to let me have four the same. However, he stubbornly insists on the metal tins which give the loaves square edges, because he likes his bread with square edges... I like the silicon squashy moulds because it makes the bread squashy, and I think it looks more home-made. Thinking about it, that's really silly, because obviously it's home made, when I make it, but I still think it looks better that way

However, when I was stretching to get the flour off the top shelf of the cupboard, I managed to drop it, and ended up with flour everywhere... It's always difficult to believe how far it goes, much the same as when you drop a bottle of milk and discover that it can actually cover the whole kitchen floor. Once I'd finished sweeping and hoovering, I decided to sort the cupboards, and put the flour in a logical place, on the bottom shelf.

Six hours later, I have immaculate kitchen cupboards (well the food ones, I'm going to have to tackle the crockery ones next), with nothing in them that is out of date - we had dried fruit that expired in Sept 06, but the record was the walnut oil with an expiry date of 1997 - no actually, I don't want to think about how old the walnut oil was!

I didn't take a photo of the kitchen cupboards, that would have been just too sad.

I emptied all the old out-of-date spice jars, so that I could recycle the glass, so for a while the kitchen bin was a delightful mixture of cayenne pepper, cloves, mixed spice and various chutney type things that were greenish. The mould that grows on Worcester Sauce, however, is yellow-blue. I wonder why?

And, scientific fact of the day, if you empty white vinegar, walnut oil and worcester sauce down the previously somewhat sluggish kitchen sink, it fizzes up and then the sink empties like a dream! I'm not sure it'll ever take over from commercial drain-cleaner, the smell was a bit fierce, but you never know, it might one day be handy information.