Back is back

Owie. My back has been really sore for the last twenty-four hours, and I have no idea why. Didn't do anything yesterday to deserve this, and yet here it is. A night's sleep didn't help, and neither did a morning's walking; I went to the post office and the bank and the Indian grocery and the pharmacy and the other bank and the grocery store and home, which is the better part of two hours on my feet and moving, and nothing is easier yet.

It may just be that I have been working too much at this desk in this chair; ergonomically it's shocking. I always had bad posture anyway, but the chair is too low and if there is any way to adjust it any further upwards I cannot find that way; so I end up hunching forwards with my back bent and my arms at angles and yeah. It is neither pretty nor clever. I don't like to blame the chair, because of aforementioned poor posture, and there are a dozen other reasons why my back might be bad; but it ain't helping.

I will be spending most of today away from it, though not by design, things just worked out that way; this morning I shopped and ran errands, this afternoon I will be mostly in the kitchen cooking things. Chicken kofta and kidney-bean curry and salads and such. Tuesdays, Karen goes to yoga after work; I get an extra couple of hours to cook in, and often a guest or two for dinner.

One down

Kidney bean curry: achieved. Om-nom.

I wonder when I can start drinking?

(and furthermore)

The kitchen is starting to smell bready as well as curry-y. The roasted apple bread is an odd affair, because the dough goes into a covered crock (or in my case a cast-iron lidded pot, as I don't have a bread crock [yet]) and then into a cold oven turned up high. In my case, the oven took fifteen minutes to come to temperature; I have no idea why the dough wanted that slow warm rather than the shock of a scorching oven, the way I usually do it. We will see, I guess. In about ten minutes...

Okay, I need a bread crock

...or else I need to reseason my cast iron pan very thoroughly indeed, before I try this again.

Grr. The apple bread looked lovely in the pan. Hell, I even took some photos. Only then it didn't want to come out of the pan, thank you very much. The sounds of crackling crust as I levered and struggled and forced were utterly heartbreaking; and it left the most of its bottom in the pan. I guess I can do something with it - bread-and-butter pudding, if nothing else - but oh waily woe is me.

*investigates bread crocks*

Aaargh!

Also, I need (a replacement for) my kitchen timer. For I have radically overcooked the rice, by dint of forgetting all about it in the catastrophe of the bread.

I loved my kitchen timer. It would time four separate dishes simultaneously, and tell you the time on top. And several times in the weeks before I fled England I thought "I must remember to take that, in a pocket, as I go. For how would I ever survive without it?"

How indeed, sir. How indeed.

Expletives defeat me

So the second time I forgot the rice - I was toasting spices! they required all my attention! - at least it was only a couple of minutes and I think it's recoverable. While I was draining it, I contrived to knock a plate into one sink, a pan into the other sink and a bowl onto the floor, in an ever-increasing cascade of drama. Happily, nothing broke (I caught the bowl on my foot, inches above the tiles: you would've laughed if you'd seen it), so I am busily regarding this as a good omen. Where does the space go? This kitchen is three times larger than my last, and there is never anywhere to put anything down...

Anyway. Disasters averted, time flitting away. I have to go to the store now, because chicken kofta without chicken are not of the best. And when I come back? I am starting to drink. Heavily. You can call it self-medication if it makes you feel better.

Okay, better now

I was remarkably abstemious, and didn't start drinking till six; and even then it was a sip and a dash, hither and yon through the house and garden. (There's about three pounds of tomatoes gone into tonight's dinner. I ... don't think anyone is going to notice. We have a lot of tomatoes.)

Still; by now I have half a bottle inside me, where it's best. And I have three pots bubbling gently on the stove (in varying shades of sludge, from yellow through khaki to brown, but hey: I don't care, 'k?) and very little left to do now, except drink more and wait for people to turn up. I may not make the salads after all. Or I might. Dunno. There's only going to be four of us, and we already have chicken kofta in cashew sauce and kidney-bean curry and anaheim chillies in spicy tamarind sauce. I was going to make a spinach raita and a cucumber salad, but. Mostly now I just want to sit here and feel better. (This, of course, is why I came so close to cancelling Stephen Maturin Day; I get soooo tense and fretful as soon as something isn't perfect. Basically I'm a Michelin three-star chef with the skills of a common domestic cook, and I tear myself apart.)