Disaster Circumvented

So last time I wrote I had just acquired a quantity of yeast through semi-nefarious means. I had decided to get up early and tackle crumpets. I’m quite a big fan of crumpets – in terms of the commonly available supermarket variety. I have discovered that homemade crumpets are a slightly different beast – not dissimilar to yeasty pikelets. In the true tradition of Edmonds the quantities were not entirely as I had expected – we now have a bounty of crumpets in our freezer. They are quite small though and I am concerned that there may be difficulty in removing them from the toaster. Fingers crossed the husband remembers to unplug the toaster before chasing the crumpets with cutlery.

I felt I should really tackle as many yeast recipes as I could – there are 5 - White Bread, Brown Bread, Bread Rolls, Crumpets and Yeast buns. So the plan was to cook white bread on the Sunday and then on Easter Monday cook hot cross buns for a family lunch and then I would be half way through. Not that there are hot cross buns in the Edmonds but there are yeast buns which sound suspiciously like they would fill the role with the white cross piped on the top. At least that was the plan.

In reality what happened was that my oven tripped out – AGAIN. Admittedly I had three pots on the stovetop and the oven on high browning chops. So it was my fault. I admit that. But that does not change the fact that I was standing there with a fully proved bread loaf and no oven to bake in.

Now one of the three pots on the stove was apricot jam. I had bought apricots during apricot season but I was not quite aware of how quickly they deteriorate on the bench – so when I looked at them several days later they were a slimey brown mess with a hint of blue and green. So I had to buy apricots again – surprisingly they were not as excessively priced as I had imagined and I made a very small quantity of jam. Apparently it is quality not quantity that is important and I am willing to bet that it is quality jam.

The other two pots were my sister-in-laws lamb shanks. These are no pampered sheep, the shanks took a full 8 hours cooking. When I get meat from the supermarket it is labeled by what it is, from the sister-in-law’s farm I get “Romney X Merino” From the in-laws lifestyle block the meat sometimes has a pet name.

Back to the bread disaster – I hope this is giving a realistic impression of how many directions I am pulled in on an average Edmonds day – this day was more average than most. Fortunately my mother lives a mere 5 minutes drive down the road so my loaf of bread and I went on an expedition. This was at 7pm at night so the probability of the husband getting a home cooked dinner was becoming increasingly slim. Mum has been impeccably trained and had the oven on and ready to go and I was seated on the couch with cold beer and cuisine magazine while the bread baked – now that is service I could get used to. In fact I did get a little too used to it and slightly overcooked the bread which the electric knife did not appreciate one bit.

So I arrived home and had to cook dinner –only now am I thinking that this sounds slightly off – baked potatoes with tuna and mayonaise and microwaved vegetables – and freshly baked bread with Lurpak butter. Mmmmmm.