Chaz'z Busy Day. By Chaz.
Dec. 1st, 2006 12:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
desperanceToday I got up early, and wrote a couple of pages of a short story before coffee-and-teacake breakfast [a note to the curious: yes. Barry does like teacakes. Barry likes teacakes to the point where he doesn't want to wait for me to toast them and feed him bits, even with butter on; he exfiltrates them from the breadbin and takes 'em straight]. Then essential e-mailing and mailpackets, including sending off the opening chunk of New Book to agents hither and yon, for first opinions (nervous? me? nah...). And so to town, to queue for ever in the post office, my UK agent being still offline after a tale of unending moving-home catastrophe; then to the Lit & Phil to check proofs; then to the pub. For a business meeting, thank you very much. One pint. One.
And then shopping: shopping everywhere, all across town, for everything.
And so home, and a blitz in the kitchen: white chocolate torte and a spicy oxtail stew for tomorrow, confit of partridge for indeterminate future eating. The oxtail is a Spanish recipe, and an experiment; I felt I had to make it, straight up-and-down as per instructions, simply for the sake of the final admonition: "Serve this with bread alone, as only peasants eat potatoes." It's not just a Spanish recipe, it's a damn hidalgo recipe. I wonder if the Germans have Junkers recipes? Etc. Recipes as a tool of social criticism: discuss. Do not add water or overheat, as this will impair the argument.
Oh, and I cooked my own supper too, while all that was going on. Then I left the stew stewing in a v low oven, while I swanned off to the opera.
Not too much to do tomorrow, now (I do like this kind of dinner-party, where I have every excuse for cooking ahead). I'll go into town for the farmers' market, see if I can pick up something nice for starters. Oh, and lift the fat off the stew. I'd roast some vegetables in it, if that weren't so blatantly to defy the hidalgos. After that, God knows. Fret, I expect. It'll all be horrible. Or I'll start meddling with the stew, in defiance of the recipe, and we'll end up with a boiling cauldron to transfer across town (one of the many good reasons for preparing in advance being not to travel with loose hot liquids, which is bad, and I used to have a scar on my wrist to say so [acquired from a pot of boiling coffee, when I walked into a porter on Oxford railway station while looking at the steam-trains with my dad; it's vanished now, abruptly, after forty years, and I feel like I'm missing an old friend]).
And then shopping: shopping everywhere, all across town, for everything.
And so home, and a blitz in the kitchen: white chocolate torte and a spicy oxtail stew for tomorrow, confit of partridge for indeterminate future eating. The oxtail is a Spanish recipe, and an experiment; I felt I had to make it, straight up-and-down as per instructions, simply for the sake of the final admonition: "Serve this with bread alone, as only peasants eat potatoes." It's not just a Spanish recipe, it's a damn hidalgo recipe. I wonder if the Germans have Junkers recipes? Etc. Recipes as a tool of social criticism: discuss. Do not add water or overheat, as this will impair the argument.
Oh, and I cooked my own supper too, while all that was going on. Then I left the stew stewing in a v low oven, while I swanned off to the opera.
Not too much to do tomorrow, now (I do like this kind of dinner-party, where I have every excuse for cooking ahead). I'll go into town for the farmers' market, see if I can pick up something nice for starters. Oh, and lift the fat off the stew. I'd roast some vegetables in it, if that weren't so blatantly to defy the hidalgos. After that, God knows. Fret, I expect. It'll all be horrible. Or I'll start meddling with the stew, in defiance of the recipe, and we'll end up with a boiling cauldron to transfer across town (one of the many good reasons for preparing in advance being not to travel with loose hot liquids, which is bad, and I used to have a scar on my wrist to say so [acquired from a pot of boiling coffee, when I walked into a porter on Oxford railway station while looking at the steam-trains with my dad; it's vanished now, abruptly, after forty years, and I feel like I'm missing an old friend]).
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(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-01 09:17 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-01 09:19 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-01 02:44 pm (UTC)So, if we're Hispanic, maybe the Chilean red?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-01 10:51 pm (UTC)Not that it matters.