Well, I guess that's one measure of how I'm doing

It's, um, half twelve on Sunday, and I'm cooking up a storm, but it's a black one. I've aggravated my hand again already, and I've burned the bread; nothing but chaos lies ahead. I'm absurdly tense and swearing at the cats, playing Dylan (Blonde on Blonde, since you ask) - who isn't helping at all - and I really, really want a drink.

Liveblogging the catastrophes

So: I told you already that I burned the bread. That was my fault entirely: I got the timing right, but neglected to turn the heat down a couple of notches when the loaves (Moroccan flatbread, as it happens) went in. Scorchio. I shall cut off a bit of blackened crust soon and chew on it, see whether it's edible or not.

Meantime, I am trying to make a Bey's Tagine - which is not what you think of when you think of a tagine. This is a Tunisian dish, and basically it's a savoury baked egg concoction in fancy layers (can we say quiche? only without the pastry?). And if the recipe had thought to stress the importance of a broad flat dish, I wouldn't have got halfway through trying to persuade the second layer to set before I realised that doing it in a loaf-tin was going to cause problems. So I transferred it into a bain-marie and doubled all the timings - and spilled half the water when I took it out to add the third layer, and so extinguished the oven. So there has been a second hasty transfer to the second oven, which will have to heat up from cold of course; and I have spent a happy five minutes trying to regenerate the main oven, which I need for something else. Aaargh.

So far, it's all been my fuck-ups; this doesn't help. Also, the hand. I had to knead the bread-dough myself, because the machine just wasn't drawing the dough together properly (dunno why, unless it needs to be wetter for the hooks to get a grip?), and as we know that does me no good at all.

Now I'm going to bake a rhubarb cake that I ganked from la_marquise_de, and see what novel and exciting ways I can find to screw that up also. Will report back; I know you're all agog.

Something old, something old

It's about this time of day that I readjust my schedule.

I started the day thinking "Cool, nine hours before people start to arrive; that's plenty of time to cook a meal and clean the house."

I do this every time. About one o'clock, I start to have doubts. Now it's four o'clock, and half the cooking is still to do, and I'll be lucky if I get the table cleared before my guests turn up, never mind all that hoovering and sweeping the stairs and so forth.

"They must take me as I am!" I cry. La.

Also, I really should read recipes properly at some point, preferably in the planning stage. I do tend to cast a casual eye across the ingredients list, "onions, garlic, yes yes yes," and not worry too much about the detail.

That would be the detail like half a pound of garlic, which I do not have.

Happily, I don't think I actually want it; and I don't mind playing with a recipe, even first time out. Indeed, I rather like approaching them with that combination of improvisation and experience which means that I decide not to put the onions and tomatoes in together, I'd rather sweat the onions down first, thanks, to draw out their own natural sweetness; and when I realise how much trouble the tagine is in, I can think to slip it into a bain-marie before I double the timings. And so forth.

In other news, I have just had to evict Mac from his bed in the bathroom, where he likes and expects to sleep away the afternoon all undisturbed. Alas for him, there is nowhere else that's catproof where I can put the rhubarb cake and the tagine to cool, bar the bath. (This is an old habit: a friend's new beloved came round to his place for what she thought was an intimate Sunday à deux, and was greeted by Nick & me on stepladders, wallpapering the living-room; when she thought to slip off to the bathroom for a minute to recover her composure, we cried as one, "Watch out for Lady Baltimore in the bath!") And I have had to barricade the door. Barry is, um, rather interested in that tagine. I'm glad someone is.