Gravity and grammar: a feline education

"Down, Mac. Down. It's a relationship with the floor. You haz it."

"Barry, you can't sit on the manuscript. You can't... Oh. Barry, you may not sit on the manuscript. You may not..."

Rinse, obviously, and repeat. At least I amuse myself, when I hear myself say these things.

Conan! What is best in dinner parties?

Best in dinner parties is to have leftovers, and a relatively tidy house; but the greatest of these is leftovers.

Soup and apple cake for lunch: and you have no idea how glad I am to be able to type those words. Not just for the eating thereof, but apple cake and I have had a fraught relationship for a quarter of a century, tho' we'd ever only met the once.

In brief, I made one - at least, I followed a recipe for one - 'way back in the eighties, for a dinner party again, and it was a catastrophe. The batter split and would not cake, the apples didn't cook... Urgh. And yet the whole apple-cake idea still seemed lovely to me, in that way that unconsummated relationships so often do; so I have held it in my head as a treasured ideal ever since, but never quite dared to ask it out on a date again. As it were.

Until Friday night, when I just decided to be bold. I had found a recipe that - after being absurdly, impossibly particular about the proper type of rare Dorset apple to be used - more or less said "mix up your ingredients and bake your cake" when it came to the actual instructions bit. So I giggled cheerfully and poked around in the internets, and came up with a more-or-less consensus view on the Dorset apple cake (cream butter and sugar, add eggs and flour and lemon zest, a couple of tsps of baking powder to give it a little lift, mix in chopped apple, pour into tin and sprinkle with demerara, and bake same).

So I did that, more or less, and it was very nice. I am no longer scared of apple cake, and will do it again. Perhaps with a little ground almond next time, substituting for some of the flour.

It is absurd, though, how long these anxieties persist. I have a similar omigod-I-can't-do-that about stuffed aubergines, because I tried one recipe once thirty years ago and it was horrid. Really, the problem is that I have too much choice and I don't cook enough, so I need never repeat a failure. Concomitantly and contrariwise, neither do I often get to try interesting variations. I'd like to bake a dozen apple cakes, just to figure out which one is best; but I don't suppose I'll do a dozen in my lifetime, just because there is always so much else.

Also, I would like to revisit Harold McGee to determine the difference between baking powder and bicarbonate of soda, and test same with examples, just so that I have actual knowledge rather than needing recipes. But I don't suppose I ever actually shall.

Heh

I am sitting here making my way through the scribbles on the typescript, making changes; and I have come to that page where "reluctant" and "reluctance" occur four times in a dozen - no, wait [*counts*] - in eight lines. And fond as I am of repetition for effect, that might be overegging the pudding just a little (an offence, I may say, of which I have never been guilty).

I had, apparently, made a little note to myself, presumably to this effect; the fourth occurrence was underlined to draw my attention to it, and there was a squiggle in the margin.

Which I sat for minutes trying to read, eliminating possibilities - sugar? sign? - until there was nothing left, and none of them had meant anything like reluctance. And the really irritating thing was that I remembered writing it, remembered thinking "am I going to be able to read that?" and deciding that of course I could, or at least that the scribble would be sufficient reminder of my thought.

Hah. I have been driven - which I almost never am - to my Roget, to look up synonyms for reluctance; which was no help at all, despite offering lots, including at least one word I didn't know (anyone for renitency?). And I still couldn't think of anything better, or even likely; so I went back to the scribble yet one more time, with Roget still on my mind - and, oh. Yes. I remember. I have written "syn". For "synonym". A prompt to think of one, because I couldn't do it just then.

As it happens, I still can't do it. But at least now I know what it is I cannot do...

Leftovers, cont...

A layer of the beef-and-sherry stew in the bottom of a pyrex dish; topped with the last of the buttered-cabbage-with-juniper; topped with the last of the smooth olive-oil mash; put in a hot oven till brown & crispy on top.

What is this?

Yup. This is exceedingly posh cottage pie. And absolutely yummy.

*eats*