a camera for Christmas

A key rule in relationships (well, my key rule) is that selflessness helps with sanity.  Expecting gratitude or even reciprocal gifts is a quick route to disappointment.  Especially if your boyfriend is an alcoholic.  For D's birthday I got him a lovely lumix camera.  For my birthday he got me, well, nothing.  Soon after that he told me to fuck off back home if I wasn't prepared to sleep with him (I wasn't so I did and life has been calmer and happier since) thus confirming that I wasn't ever going to get that birthday present.  All it took was a whiff of a PhD stipend and I decided that I could just buy myself a present if I really wanted it.  After much searching on ebay I tracked down another lumix in a charity shop being sold cheap since no-one knew if it worked or not.  After a bit of shoogling with a generic battery charger I got it up and working so I've started running around the damp Scottish hillsides experimenting with all sorts of gloomy colour schemes.

Heriot Watt University (where I'm doing my research) are short of space for research students so I've been given a university laptop on condition that I don't turn up to the university every day.  Since it's an hour trip to Heriot Watt that suits me fine but it does mean that I miss out on the camaraderie of colleagues.  Thankfully my boatbuilding course payed dividends again with not one but two Christmas parties.  The second one was a full-blown Christmas dinner for all volunteers, staff and trainees with food donated by Morrisons served on the workbenches.  I was trying to use up food before heading north and so I made an orange and almond cake based on Claudia Roden's classic recipe but with the added yumminess of a chocolate truffle icing (adapted from Julia Child's recipe in Mastering the Art of French Cookery).  It was eaten swiftly, enjoyed by all and much praised.  It's also very, very easy with most of the cooking time taken up by waiting.


orange & almond cake

3 oranges
6 eggs
250g ground almonds
250g sugar
couple of drops of almond essence (if available since sweet almonds don't taste that almondy)
1 teaspoon baking powder
~
100g plain chocolate
50g unsalted butter
grated zest from one orange and some orange juice

* simmer the three oranges for one hour, cut open to remove pips then purree the soft oranges, peel, pulp and all
* heat oven to 160C, line a loose-base 22cm tin with baking paper
* mix the orange puree, eggs, almonds, sugar and baking powder
* bake for roughly 1 hour (it varies depending on how watery your orange puree is) until a skewer comes out clean
* remove from tin and cool upside down on a wire rack
* melt the chocolate, butter, orange zest and juice together ... only stir lightly in case it separates and once combined leave aside to cool until it's spreadable
* spread icing on cake and serve at room temperature

rain

I was up in Drumbuidhe two weeks ago with C, attempting to fix the boiler but hampered by the lack of a crucial photocell (actually it's a thermocouple rather than the 'photocell' referred to in the manual but it's still crucial).  My lovely, but temporary lodger called me to say that my kitchen ceiling had fallen in.  There's just too much damn rain.

 I took this as a sign from God that I should continue with my planned trip to Marseille and get serious about the kitchen refurbishment I've been dithering about for ... ooh, ages.

Marseille was lovely (sunny, warm, filled with French folk and lovely food) and I squeezed in a walk through the Calanques, a visit to the MuCEM archive, an Olympique Marseille match, a deeply French theatre experience (Genet's Splendide preceded by his 1950 film Un Chant d'Amour) and much wandering round the Panier et al.

I arrived back in Glasgow to discover that C had been contacted by fraudsters following a visit to a porn website.  After much badgering by them, they managed to withdraw £2,000 from his bank account.  His bank refunded it but it's left him shaken, nervous about his computer and even more confised about passwords.  I got his macbook sorted out (remote access software removed, password restored and admin access removed from C himself) and he's agreed that a new (more expensive and more hip) macbook may not be the panacea he was hoping for.

While my kitchen is still (mainly) intact I got back to my standard of fasting for 2 days a week which I'd put on hold whilst looking after C and then sampling yummy French food.  I'm keen to avoid my mum's trajectory of weight gain, immobility and early death so it's a return to no carbohydrates and lots of vegetables which needs a but of ingenuity to stay interesting.  Although it's not particularly low in calories, this recipe is low in carbohydrates and did use up the odds and sods in the fridge leftover from pre-Marseille ...

gorgonzola custard

2 eggs
2 cups milk
1 oz grated gorgonzola
salt & pepper (the cheese is very salty so easy on the seasoning)

mix well and bake in a water bath in a low oven for one hour

The gorgonzola doesn't fully mix with the custard but it does taste lovely and is particularly good with bitter greens