Guess what I got for Christmas? And what a piece of glory and wonder it is. A fabulous, on the hob, no nonsense, edible heart maker. Otherwise known as a waffle iron.
So himself and I, whilst others may have begun the arduous task of stuffing birds, rolling flesh and peeling for all they’re worth, spent Christmas morning endlessly scraping waffle mixture from very irritating metal peaks, until eventually, a second batch of mixture later, we cracked it. Mainly due to the fact that we worked out, through blood sweat and tears, that the correct way to cook the mixture was to add it to the deeper ‘pan’ part of the waffle iron. It’s all in the detail.
But hang on a minute, I hear you cry, we hear nothing, zilch, nada from you for months and then you waltz back into our lives with not an iota of an explanation. Where the bobbins have you been?
Well, it turns out that it’s quite difficult to write a blog that loosely hangs itself on the notion of food, if you don’t have an oven, the struggle only being heightened by having no internet connection.
However you will all be delighted to hear, I’m back and on schedule to share with you the day to day ramblings of someone who, against all odds, manages to create mostly edible day to day foodstuffs amidst the chaos of daily family life. And a puppy.
Which allows me to seamlessly sashay into a short list of what our ever growing boundless ball of energy, has been up to recently.
She has, since we last spoke, eaten most of the Christmas cake, devoured endless bin loads of recyclable goods, toys and other small objects, swallowed whole a stretchy plastic octopus (which came out the other end completely intact), eaten the collar of a pyjama top, floored the Christmas Tree ‘due to unforeseen circumstances’ and, most recently, taken a good chunk out of my favourite wooden spoon.
She has also learnt to smile, and her helicopter tail twirls with delight at the mere sound of her family members all of whom she relishes and protects with a fervent, unconditional passion. She is, in essence, an absolute delight, which is probably a good thing as we have stopped counting the amount of times we walk in to the kitchen which has been ‘redesigned’ by an over exuberant puppy.
Meanwhile, we still have many seasonal days left, and today I will be attempting, for the second time, to make some gingerbread in my new to me, electric oven (with a gas hob. Oh yes, I’m in the posh cook league now…), which has embedded into it the element of surprise. By which I mean, it cooks everything on time, unlike the old trusty steed which cooked everything as and when it felt like it, if at all.
I’ll let you know how I get on…
Being Nigella 