Sarah Cawkwell's Blog, page 2

WWX: Lazarus [Extract 3]

Next up, we have the young Spirit Priest, Stone Fur – a quiet and reluctant hero to his people.

There was little alcohol consumed among this community. That was not, of course, to say that the occasional bottle of bourbon didn’t find its way in from the nearby settlement. One such bottle was being surreptitiously passed from young warrior to young warrior, each daring the other to pretend they liked the acrid taste of the alcohol. Stone Fur watched, something between amusement and longing in his expression.

Once, he had been able to engage in games like that. Now, though…

Now… he had responsibility.

The weight of it all briefly touched on his shoulders, and he felt the sheer oppression of the task he had to perform. As a Spirit Priest, he would be looked upon to perform rites for the dead, for the newborn, to bless and prepare hunting parties… to perform marriage ceremonies, to call forth the blessings of the Great Spirit when and if the People went to war… somewhere in there he would also be expected to continue the contributions he made to the community in the form of hunting and trapping game.

There was no lack of equality amongst Stone Fur’s people. The women and men hunted and fought alongside one another and often, marriage bondings came about as a result of two young people forced into hunting as partners who found their kindred spirits.

There will be no kindred spirit for me, mused
Stone Fur. Only the Great Spirit. That is all I will ever need.

Some of the People were now dancing before the fire, working out their grief for the loss of the old Priest with shameless abandon. Tears streaked the faces of many, and Stone Fur kept his head held high as he watched the outpouring of grief take on a new form.

The sorrow at Curved Bear Claw’s passing became unashamed joy at all he had been, and tears prickled behind the Priest’s eyes. Tears of affectionate pride. A zephyr kissed the bared skin of his neck, behind his ear and despite the comparative warmth of the April night and his proximity to the fire, the Priest shivered. A hand came up to scratch at the now itching spot and when he brought it away, it was covered in blood.

Book is here:

https://www.waylandgames.co.uk/wild-west-exodus-core-products/93894-lazarus?fbclid=IwAR38ubSQM9aqBgeEt9U9Ht7w7pn-UGK8VLObAA1POQJmlIbU1ZDTGaSRGyU

WWX: Lazarus [Extract 2]

Second extract from ‘Wild West Exodus: Lazarus’ (link in comments).

Next up, Mrs. Kelly, the indomitable undertaker from the town of Little Beam.

She’s amazing.

Mrs. Kelly was aiming for where its heart should have been, where any natural, living thing would have been vulnerable.

“Damn thing’s tougher than stewed boot leather,” said the old woman as every shot she fired passed cleanly through its flesh with no effect. “An’ my guns sure as hell ain’t powerful enough to put it down. Ain’t you got somethin’ bigger? Better? There’s gotta be somethin’ else we can try.”

Shaw’s eyes raked over the creature,assessing it, measuring it, taking in how big it was and how tiny the window of destructive opportunity actually was. The answers to those two questions were ‘goddamn huge’ and ‘ridiculously tiny’ respectively.

“We need those cannons back,” she said, simply and Mrs. Kelly nodded. Then the undertaker’s face split in a mostly toothless grin and she jumped from her mount. “Cover me,” she said, without affording any sort of explanation whatsoever.

Before Willa could so much as say a word, the woman peeled away from the group and began running directly at the rampaging monstrosity. It registered her with a strangely childlike curiosity, its lumpen head tipped to one side. Then it took a flailing swipe at her with one of its massive fists. The old woman smoothly dropped into a diving roll that seemed incongruous with her age and passed cleanly beneath it, coming out the other side. As distractions went, it was most certainly effective. Mrs. Kelly ran at full pelt toward one of the other abandoned ‘Horses.

“Fire at it!” Willa screamed the order at the
top of her lungs. “Keep it off her!” She glanced at the big man. “Is she completely out of her mind?”

“Don’t look at me,” said the man mildly, shrugging easily. “Mrs. Kelly is totally her own person. I ain’t gonna start questionin’ the whys an’ wherefores of what she does now. Besides, she’d take my head off if I tried.”

Book is here:

https://www.waylandgames.co.uk/wild-west-exodus-core-products/93894-lazarus?fbclid=IwAR38ubSQM9aqBgeEt9U9Ht7w7pn-UGK8VLObAA1POQJmlIbU1ZDTGaSRGyU

WWX: Lazarus [Extract 1]

First of a few little extracts from ‘Wild West Exodus: Lazarus’ – link in comments.

First up… the very impressive Loud Thunder of the Warrior Nation.

Bright, azure sparks began to stream from the warrior’s skin as he rode, leaving retina-scarring contrails in his wake until his flesh glowed with barely contained radiance. Then he opened his eyes, revealing smouldering pits of blue-white fire. Incredibly, impossibly, the big man leapt from his horse but continued to lead the charge, his huge stride pushing him ahead of the mounted host. Hamilton’s army raised their claws and blades to greet him.

There was a blinding flash at the point of impact and a dozen broken, ragged bodies were flung high into the air. Where the warrior had been was now a huge, spectral buffalo. It charged, ploughing through the shambling horde as though they were nothing more than toys. It crushed and rent, trampling everything in its path.

As it burst free of the first rank of creatures,
Willa realised that she and her companions were also in its path.

“Move,” she bellowed as the massive animal
bore down on them. “Move!”

The blue, ghostly form of the buffalo took more solid form as it passed and it lowered its head, great horns pointed at the shambling corpses that still advanced in the wake of the wild charge.

The book can be found here:

https://www.waylandgames.co.uk/wild-west-exodus-core-products/93894-lazarus?fbclid=IwAR38ubSQM9aqBgeEt9U9Ht7w7pn-UGK8VLObAA1POQJmlIbU1ZDTGaSRGyU

Thoughts

December 10th, 2000.

It was 7.30am on a Sunday and the phone rang, a shrill silence-shatterer. My then-husband wandered off to answer it and I can remember lying there, staring up at the bedroom ceiling, just steeling myself. Because you just *know* when the phone rings at that time on a Sunday it’s one of two things: it’s a spam call, or it’s bad news.

Oddly, when he came back into the room, somber and serious-faced, my instinct was that my grandmother had passed away. She was in her nineties at that point and had been in decline for a while. My mother, while never in the best of health, didn’t even cross my mind.

There was no easy way for him to break the news to me of what had happened and so he told me straight. Shot from the hip. I’ll be forever grateful to him for it: he didn’t wrap it up, he just fired those seven words in quick succession, his own shock evident in his eyes at the time.

Seven words. That was all it took to completely upend my world, to shake my belief in everything.

Seven words.

“It’s your mum. She’s collapsed and died.”

As soon as the last syllable slid from his lips, my body went into what I can only describe as Extreme Coping mode. I got out of bed. “I need to call my dad back,” I informed him. “Can you get The Child out and ready, we will have to drive down today.” I called my dad back. He answered the phone from across the other side of the country, five hours or more away and he sounded so tired and sad.

“I love you,” I said when he answered. It was the first time I can remember saying it to him with such bluntness, such utter certainty and such conviction. He gave me the details: mum had suffered what the paramedics were fairly sure had been a massive heart attack at about 3am and had passed away in my dad’s arms despite efforts to resuscitate. It was quick, he reassured me. He also said that he’d wanted to call me straight away, but my brother had stopped him, saying it would be better to let us have sleep so we would be safe driving down.

I told him we would be there just as soon as we could be, then hung up.

An infinite period of time passed. A period of time that was perhaps five, maybe six seconds. We’re talking 22 years ago and yet I can still quite clearly remember those moments. I can remember walking into the living room. I can remember the feeling of utter, awful loss. I can remember actually crying out, like they do in books, ‘not my mummy’.

And that was it. It looks pitiful written down, but there was real, heart-felt emotion behind it.

Then I turned my mind to the important business of dealing with everything that was suddenly going to be thrown at me. I stood in the shower. I gave my son his breakfast. I laughed and gurgled along with him. I sat in the car as we drove south, an awkward silence between us. He didn’t know what to say, I didn’t know what I needed to hear. We stopped on the M1 halfway down and I can remember him pushing a sandwich in front of me and gently telling me I needed to eat.

“Yeah,” I said.

I didn’t eat.

When we got to my dad’s house, I hugged him for the longest time. I soaked up his grief like some kind of sponge. I took my brother’s grief as well. And by this point, I hadn’t shed a single tear. I remember, at some point, going up the road to see my mum’s friend who welcomed me with her tears and sorrow. I soaked that up, too. Then she said something very simple, very sweet and which I have carried with me every day since mum died.

Seven words.

“She was a kind woman, your mum.”

Yes. Yes, she was. She was kind and she was thoughtful and she was funny and she was the buffer that stood between teenage me (a hormonal monster) and my dad (politically diametrically opposed to me in every way) and stopped us from actually killing one another. How was life going to go on without her? I can clearly remember going into town for some reason or other with dad, sitting in a coffee shop and watching people going about their Christmas shopping business like nothing had happened.

Don’t you know the news? I wanted to scream. Haven’t you heard?

And I realised with the cold shock of water to the face, that life goes on.

The funeral came and went. It was so close to Christmas – 21st December – that we decided we’d have a Christmas carol instead of a hymn, because mum loved carols. Silent Night will never be the same for me. After the funeral, a friend came to me and said the fact I stood so straight and without tears throughout had been the thing that made her cry the most.

I soaked that up as well. For a good couple of years, I didn’t release all that pent-up grief and when it finally burst, it was a relief. Because I’d been afraid there was something wrong with me. How was it I could cope and manage all this tragedy without emotion? Was I too hard?

All of which is preamble to today. HM the Queen’s passing is a sad thing, certainly. Yes, she was born into a life of wealth and privilege. Yes, there are all sorts of political reasons for not giving a stuff. I am sorry for her family on her loss: losing a beloved relative is an awful thing. But I cannot for the life of me fathom out the Queue.

The Queue, in case you’ve somehow missed this bit of news, is perhaps the single most quintessentially British thing to emerge in years. Even before HMQ was settled at the Palace of Westminster in her lead-lined, solid oak coffin (pity the pallbearers), the Queue began. People pouring from all over the UK – and apparently the world – to stand in line for an opportunity to walk past the coffin, perhaps incline their heads respectfully, or curtsey, or whatever – and then go on with their day. Queuing is a British pastime. The world knows that as a nation, we love nothing more than an orderly queue.

But this Queue (capital letter justified) is – at time of writing this – five miles long. Five miles. The estimated wait time is at least eleven and a half hours. HMQ’s lying-in-state is being live streamed and out of some sort of morbid curiosity, I switched it on. A seemingly endless sea of (mostly middle-aged, white) faces filing past. The silence is deafening in this stream. The little nods of respect are strangely touching. I saw one woman blow a kiss to the coffin.

I’ve never really understood this thing people have of being overwhelmed with grief due to the death of someone they’ve likely never met. In this instance, I have concluded that the end result of the Queue has become secondary to the experience of being in the Queue; being part of this utterly, utterly weird piece of history. According to some news reports, people are travelling to look at the Queue. There is a Queue for the Queue. It’s… bizarre.

There’s no real conclusion to this brain dump. My feelings on the monarchy are for me to keep to myself. I feel sadness for those who have lost a beloved mother, grandmother, aunt… but just like that December day so long ago, life goes on.

What I will say, though, is this.

If you have a family member you love, who you’ve maybe not called for a while, or spoken to in a while – particularly if they are aging – then take those five minutes to get in touch. Never forget that every time you speak to someone, it might be the last chance you have. Cherish every precious moment you have with the people you love and never, ever forget to tell them you love them.

Pay your respects while they’re still living and can appreciate it.

Love you all.

Back to the Seventies

Welcome to December! Never mind autumn, that literary season of mists and mellow fruitfulness. Let’s talk about December, the seasons of… dark mornings, gloomy days and fairy lights gleaming through the grey to bring that sprinkle of joy at the end. It also happens to be the birthday month for both me and Himself (mine is 17th, his is the 20th). When this month’s baking box arrived with its glorious 1970’s offering of a Black Forest Gateau, it took us approximately fifteen seconds to decide that would be our joint birthday cake.

Off he went to do the shopping for the bits needed. Therein lies comedy of errors part one, but more of that shortly. Let’s talk about Black Forest Gateau a little bit, shall we? Check out this Wikipedia definition.

Black Forest gâteau or Black Forest cake is a chocolate sponge cake with a rich cherry filling based on the German dessert Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte, literally “Black Forest Cherry-torte”.

The article then goes on to explain that under German law, it MUST have Kirsch to be called a Schwarzwalder Kirschtorte. This makes me sad, because there is no Kirsch in the finished product. Then I stop being sad, because it’s a chocolate and cherry cake and how can that even be wrong?

Anyway.

On this misty, moisty Saturday morning, my cat decided that 7.30am was a perfect time to drag me from my warm cocoon, where I was having dreams about Henry Cavill in the Witcher (we were binging season two the previous evening. These were good dreams. My cat and I are presently not on speaking terms). I left Himself sleeping and came downstairs to feed the cat. Once awake, I’m always awake, so what else do people do on a Saturday morning at 8am but make cherry jam for a cake.

Frozen cherries, introduced to sugar and a splash of water… and wait.

And wait.

Boil, cherries. Boil, I say!

Then, to break the monotony, wait a bit more. It was my clever strategy to make the jam early so it had time to set. This part of my plan worked brilliantly. The cherries bubbled away contentedly, never once threatening to turn my stove top into a chaotic murder scene and I left the pan to one side to… en-jamify? Bejam (wait, wasn’t that an actual shop in the 1970s?)… jamulate? What is the right verb for something becoming jam? Oh. Set. What a dull option.

Moving onto the batter. Usual state of affairs here: butter, sugar, eggs, dry bits. Bash it all together and you get batter enough for three tins. Two were the same size. The third one was just ever so slightly bigger, but eh. I’m a rogue. But they looked passingly acceptable pre-oven.

See the jam in the background trying to be a jammy hero?

What I will say about this bake is that I’m fairly certain it used every bowl, pan and spoon I own. Because once the cakes were baked – and let’s just take a moment to appreciate how deliciously glorious they looked… mostly… (also check out that beauty in the background – these are Baked In’s new Cookie Jars, and they are stupendously pretty – see them here as part of the cooking kits range).

There were the ones in the same size tins. Not shown: The Leaning Tower of Cake PIsa on the other side of the room.

Then came the fun that was making a) ganache; and b) the whipped cream for the filling. Himself’s trip to the shop highlighted a gap in his understanding of cream and it wasn’t until I took it out of the fridge that I discovered he’d bought extra thick double cream. By ‘extra thick’, we are talking clotted cream levels of rigidity. Do not overwhip, cheerfully stated the instructions and I stared between them and the cream in some sort of dairy-based paralysis. In the end, I just attacked it with a whisk and hoped. It sort of worked. I count ‘sort of worked’ as a win.

Constructing the cake though, that was actually genuinely fun and it all felt so 1970’s that I should have been wearing roller skates, a kipper tie and listening to ABBA. I honestly thought for a moment I might have opened the fridge to find a prawn cocktail manifesting in there. Cake. Cream. Jam. Cake. Cream. Jam. Lop-sided cake. Ganache. Remaining cream. Cherry liquid. ‘Swirled’. (Or at least manhandled with a skewer). Decorated with chocolate curls.

And what do you know… this happened.

Let us overlook the bit where I forgot to dust it with icing sugar. Nothing to see here, move along.

So there we have it, folks. The Black Forest Gateau birthday cake for two children born in the 1970’s feels weirdly appropriate. All in all, a brilliant cake to make, super-easy and weirdly rewarding.

The washing up? Less so.

For now though, have a splendid seasonal holiday of choice, enjoy your baking fun times and see you on the other side for what can only be a better 2022.

Right?

It’s All About That Base

The new kitchen is settling in nicely. I’m starting to appreciate the nuances of my new oven, still marvelling over the fact that I can fit my roasting tin in sideways and generally finding that being in the kitchen makes me even happier than I was before I replaced units that were basically older than Methuselah. So when this month’s box arrived, I was well prepared for the fun and challenges ahead. Little did I anticipate the tragedy at the end of it all… but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Note: Pecans, not Toucans. Toucans are birds. These are not birds.

I am a great fan of pecan pie, I freely admit it. It took all my self-control not to eat the pecans straight out of the bag before I even started baking. But I managed to remain focused and began the first all-important job of creating brown butter for the base.

I feel we need an aside here. How did someone discover that by staring at a pan of melted butter for a specific amount of time produced something that is almost but entirely not unlike the starting product, only COMPLETELY DIFFERENT at the same time? Was it a happy accident? That’s got to be it, hasn’t it? A chef, at some point in the past left the butter on the stove for too long while he popped out back for a crafty smoke or something, then said ‘uh, this is a new creation, I shall call it Brown Butter, for lo! It is brown and verily, t’is also butter…” and thus it came to be.

I digress. It happens.

This is butter. It is extremely boring to watch and in no way offers any form of entertainment.This, however, is its demonic counterpart, brown butter which is bizarrely exciting. I kept shouting OH MY GOD LOOK, BROWN BITS until my husband quietly shut the door.

Butter excitement level sixteen duly reached, I moved on to adding the other ingredients, mixed it all up, chucked in into the tin and stared through the door of my eve-level oven for a while. I was harbouring a deep, deep suspicion that what would emerge, forty minutes or so from that point would be either:-

a) Horrendously wrong; or
b) Outstanding.

I am proud to announce it was the latter and this picture is so glorious, its content so screen-lickingly delicious that it is worthy of presentation without comment. Imagine some soothing background music is playing while you look at it.

Words would render this worthless.

Onward then, to the joy of the topping! Melting more butter (fortunately not to heart-racing levels of excitement this time), then adding the sugar mixture from the bag to produce what can only be best described as sugar napalm. The ‘roughly chopped’ pecans were added to this (sidebar: ‘roughly chopped’ in this instance involved my setting about the innocent nuts with a rolling pin whilst still in their bag. Eh. It worked). Entire mixture was set aside to cool a little and looked very much like Squirrel Nutkin had been out the night before on the booze with Peter Rabbit (don’t judge them, Mrs Tiggywinkle is known to be far worse) and his stomach had rebelled. But it smelled phenomenal.

Squirrel Nutkin needs the Resolve, STAT.

So I moved onto the final part. Spread the topping over the base, then melt the white chocolate in the microwave, put it into the piping bag and then drizzle onto the finished bake.

So simple, right?

I’m going to break that sentence down a little and analyse it so that I can share with you what I shall call ‘Topping: A Tragedy In Three Acts’.

Act One: Edges Are For Losers

In this act, there was comedy as I realised there was not quite enough of the pecan napalm to cover the entirety of the base, but you know what? It didn’t matter. It was enough. So despite a few naked bits on my bake, I girded my loins and moved onto part two.

Act Two: Death and Loss

‘Put the white chocolate into the microwave in ten second bursts, stirring between each burst until melted’. Ten seconds. Stir. Twenty seconds. Stir… ooh, it’s melting. Twenty two seconds… uh, pretty sure that the microwave shouldn’t make fizzing noises and melted chocolate rarely smells like burning electrics in my experience, hello power switch…

Yes, the microwave had run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. The only remaining item from the Kitchen of the Before Times had decided to go toes up during this final, critical phase, leaving me with a half-melted bowl of chocolate chips. I improvised using some water boiled in the kettle and sitting my small bowl in a larger bowl like some kind of weird baking Russian Doll thing, but it wasn’t good enough.

Act Three: Self-Flagellation (or ‘I Don’t Do Piping Well’)

So there I was. Half-melted chocolate, frantically being scooped into a piping bag. It wasn’t melted enough and my attempt at ‘in a circular motion, drizzle over the base’ became a desperate race against time before the dratted stuff solidified again. Thus, we ended with more of a Pollock than a da Vinci, but hey. This blog was always going to be warts and all, so here’s the horror of what happened.

Quiet in the cheap seats.

Regardless of the nightmares, the end product was nothing short of utterly delicious. I meant to take a photo of a singular piece to share with you, but I mostly ate it first. But here you are anyway. This bake may well have surpassed the Brookies for me. I can’t emphasise enough how delicious the base is. Would I make it again? Yes. Absolutely. So until the next bake… enjoy!

OMNOMNOM

Buttery Biscuit Base!

In Which Some Things Go Well. Others… less so.

So… here we are again, this time looking at one of my Baked In cake options. This wasn’t the mystery monthly box for October (I’m scared of that one), but a re-make of a previous box which I enjoyed so much the first time, I did it again. Welcome to the grand Brookie bake.

As ever, there’s always a ridiculous thrill on opening the box and seeing your ingredients so nicely packaged and laid out. One of the things I genuinely love about these boxes is the extreme lack of waste (both in terms of ingredients and in the eating of what’s left).

Things! Stuff! Stuff! Things!

So off we go. This is a lovely bake: a soft, chewy brownie on a chocolate chip cookie base and I remember it as being delightfully easy to make (and unfortunately easy to eat as well – they’re bordering on the obscene). Straight into weighing the butter for the Buttery Biscuit Base. 110g, says the recipe card. Well, would you believe it? This is a good sign, right?

It photographed appallingly, because FML, but it’s exactly 110g on just two guesses.

Add sugar. Cream sugar/butter together. Pause for thought and wonder which genius it was who discovered that these two unlikely ingredients, smashed together, produced what is indubitably the single most delicious by-product of baking. Don’t pretend you’ve never tried the sugar/butter mix, I know you’re fibbing. Egg, added. Flour, added. Chocolate chips added. We’re on a roll, guys. Everything is going 100% according to plan. Splat mixture into tin and use my shiny, brand-new offset spatula to spread into the tin before putting it into the fridge to chill while I make the brownie.

Whole process interrupted by my contemplating of the fact that an offset spatula is, without a doubt, the thing that I’ve been missing all my baking life. I’ve frequently wondered why people wax lyrical about the virtues of this handy little utensil and now I know why.

BUTTERY BISCUIT BASE BEAUTIFULLY BREAD… Uh.. spread.

Then comes the joy of making the brownie mix and I just don’t even care. Some of this fell out of the bowl into my mouth before it ended up on the chilled biscuit base. It was a terrible catastrophe and there’s so much regret. So much.*

*this may be a small lie.

No caption required.

Then, into the oven with it for between 35-55 minutes (turned out that 42 was perfect in my oven) and remove to sit for a while in the tin before stripping it of its papery coat and leaving it to cool fully on the side. We (Himself and me) stood in the kitchen and admired it for a while. “Are they ready?” The hopeful question was dismissed with the stern announcement that no, there was still white chocolate drizzle to be done and he moped sadly out of the kitchen, a man robbed of his chocolately joy.

This is the point at which things didn’t QUITE go to plan. This is nobody’s fault but mine. Don’t blame it on the Baked In, don’t blame it on the chocolate, don’t blame it on impatience, blame it on the boogie. Actually, impatience. Blame it on that, because I couldn’t be bothered to let the white chocolate melt properly. Thus, exit drizzle stage right, pursued by bear and enter the world of the white chocolate splat.

The moons of Jupiter were in my eyes.

Fear not, with assistance from my now indispensable sidekick, the Offset Spatula Kid, I managed to get something passably presentable – and I mean, just look at it in its completed glory. Note: chef’s privilege is the right to claim the first corner piece as your very, very own.

I mean…

The Brookie bake is really a very simple one – and the results it yields are nothing short of utterly delicious. I’m glad I decided to go for it again, but I fear my waistline may want to have words with my willingness to make them again!

Tune in next time when I may attempt the terror that is the Toffee Apple Drip Cake…

We’re Running Out of Thyme, Marty!

Well, we aren’t actually, but it was too good a title pun to *not* use. Deal with it.

So I decided my new kitchen has been in-situ long enough for me to make one of my Baked In boxes, but I didn’t have fresh ingredients for any of the cakes. So I went for the bread that’s been waiting for me – Olive and Thyme Loaf. As always, the first joy comes from opening the box. These little blue boxes of utter joy are what you get by joining the Baked In Bread Baking Club. Lookit! Look at those lovely neat little bags of STUFF. And… and… THINGS! You may be asking yourself ‘but where is Bag 5, Sarah?’ I asked myself that very thing. Bag 5 had become stuck to a leaflet in the box and I’d hidden it. But it didn’t get far, the sticky little customer and rejoined its companions in packaging heaven. Want a monthly box of your own like this? Check it out RIGHT HERE (RIGHT NOW).

Hey, Bag 6, what the devil are YOU? Just killing thyme. Also, you’re nothing compared to the suspicious thing that is bag 5.

There’s something wickedly enjoyable about looking at all these little beautifully numbered packets, so off we go! Bag 1 and 2 – bread flour. Dump into bowl. Add bag 3 – sugar and salt, bag 4 – yeast. So far so bread. Then we add bag 5. Let’s consider bag 5 for just a moment, shall we? Bag 5 is a substitute. It’s dried black olive granules instead of dried green olive granules (the horror). Or… IS IT?

Bag 5 is looking suspiciously like something that might get me written up at the roadside if I was caught with it.

Open bag 5. Sniff curiously. It’s olives. Pitch into bowl, add bag 6 (dried thyme) and stir about gleefully to combine. Add a tablespoon of oil. Tablespoon. Tablespoon? Oh yeah. New kitchen, thrown all old measuring things away, waiting for new ones to arrive in pack of Giant Kitchen Tat that’s on its way. Measure 15ml of oil. Added water, combined until I had a dough. A tacky dough, says the instructions, but who am I to question this dough’s lifestyle choices? Anyway, even with all the water combined, my dough isn’t particularly tacky, not so much. So in a moment that probably caused Paul Hollywood to suck in air over his teeth and shake his head disapprovingly, I went for it anyway. Eh. It’s combined. It’ll be FINE.

Tip dough out onto clean, floured surface.

I consider my newly installed kitchen worktops and for just a moment, am delighted that I have the house to myself for this venture. The Husband might well have a cardiac arrest at the thought of what I am about to do to these shiny new sufaces.

I am not even exaggerating: these worktops aren’t even a week old at this point. But in true Baked In Crusader style, I GO FOR IT!

OH MY GOD MY NEW WORKTOPS OH MY GOD

I knead. I knead. I KNEAD. Lawks, and probably a-mercy, this dough is a tough customer. It’s like trying to knead a steel bar. But eventually I find some give and end up with a silky smooth, entirely non-tacky ball of dough which I sit in its clean, oiled bowl to prove for the requisite time of 60-90 minutes. I give it 90 minutes because I can. It sits there in the kitchen, quietly covered with its tea towel. I resist peeking. Will it rise? Will it at least double in size? Enjoy the power of the written word, dear reader, because I can take you to exactly 90 minutes later without missing a beat.

Arrr, Cap’n, thar she blows!

Dough is punched a couple of times (question: does anybody else visualise the face of someone they don’t like when they knock back proved dough? Or is that just me?) and shaped into a ball of olivey-thymey doughy goodness to sit for another 25 minutes until I make my attempt to make it look just like the pre-oven image in the instructions. Now, I may be bragging just a little bit here, but look at this. THIS is picture perfect. Now, though, it gets to go in the oven for 40-45 minutes. The new oven. That I am still getting used to. But look at this pre-oven comparison shot. Look at it several times, because 40-45 minutes is a while. Back shortly.

Which is the image, which is the real thing? One thing is for sure, one of those two will taste better after being baked than the other.

And so the alarm sounds. Let’s approach the oven with extreme caution and see what we see, shall we? How has my new oven taken to its bready christening? Well, judge for yourself:-

CHECK IT AAAAAAAAAART.

WELL.

It’s the first thing to come out of my new oven that didn’t start life out as the pizza the Husband brought home on Sunday. The first thing I have baked for myself. And when it’s cooled, I will no doubt enjoy eating it! Like all the bread kits to date, this one was super-easy to make, the instructions were crystal clear and I will also add that the loaf is cooling on one of the new stackable wire racks I got from Baked In with my well-earned Brownie Points.

Tune in next time for Probably Cake and Likely Less Success!

Resurrection

Well, I’ve been very quiet over here for a very long time. So I figured the time was ripe to stir the dregs at the bottom of the blogging pot and produce a delicious word stew. Or maybe a small, faintly tasteless snack.

I could wax lyrical for ages about the state of the world over the past eighteen months, but I’m pretty comfortable that topic has been done to absolute death and you do not need me to start blathering on about the pandemic, or the associated awfulness that has gone hand-in-hand with it. As you may (or may not, I’m not the boss of you) remember, I work for the NHS and am acutely aware of the impact the whole thing has had on the system and the people who work within it. Suffice to say, tough times for all and we aren’t out of it yet.

I am avoiding discussing it because the whole thing leans too closely into politics, conspiracy theorists and that collective group of utter crazies we call the ‘British Public’ – three topics that send me off into a state of ranting, so let’s avoid that and keep the blood pressure down, shall we?

Let’s start with what’s changed over the last couple of years.

The Son finished university, somehow completing his final year in the middle of the pandemic and emerging, blinking into the sunlight with a 2:1 Bachelor of Engineering degree in Biomedical Engineering. To say I was proud is the ultimate understatement. That he got such a good result under some pretty weird and unexpected conditions is nothing short of spectacular. It also means he has decided not to move back home and so my nest has remained empty since the day I drove him down to Uni in 2018. I’ve gotten used to it more now so it’s easier. I still miss him every day and his former bedroom has become a waste ground of ‘things we need to put in the loft but haven’t got that far’ yet.

Work remains work. Nothing has changed for me on that front, although I am more confident with the more complex parts of my role.

The Husband goes from strength to strength in his post-retail working life. Within a year of him starting what was basically a call centre job, he was identified as Someone Who Knows Their Stuff and has climbed the corporate ladder with an alacrity that is nothing short of startling. It also allows me to say ‘I told you so’ when he reflects on how glad he is to have left retail.

There have been films. We have even been to the cinema a few times once restrictions were lifted enough to allow us to do this. There have been TV shows. There have been computer games. Overwatch still makes me furious, Apex still makes me laugh… to a certain extent, because I live my life as a hermit, things don’t feel *massively* different to how they did before we weren’t allowed to go anywhere. The difference, I guess, is that in the Before Times, I could CHOOSE not to go anywhere. Now I feel annoyed that those decisions are taken from me.

What I have done a lot more of since lockdown, along with just about everyone else, has been baking. I subscribed to the Baked In baking club and it’s been one of the best decisions I ever made. There’s something inherently joyful about that letterbox-sized parcel hitting my doormat once a month without knowing what exciting contents it is going to contain. The quality of the ingredients is first rate, the recipes are nothing short of endlessly delicious and the community is an utter joy. If you’re so inclined, I suggest checking it out here! Tell them I sent you. That link sort of does that anyway. But you know what I mean.

Combined with the fact that I have just had my kitchen ripped out and replaced (a mammoth task that has given enormous stress, but resulted in what is frankly, a room I now love to be in instead of the small corridor through which I hurried to the bathroom), I am thinking of resurrecting my blog to do more stuff about Baked In. I think it’d be fun to do blow-by-blow accounts of my occasionally ridiculous Adventures in Baking. I have a backlog of delicious treats to engage in at the moment:-

Jaffa Orange CakeChocolate Brookies (brownies with a cookie base – have done these before and they are amazing).Mocha Swiss Roll (another one I’ve done previously and ordered again because… coffee. Chocolate. What’s not to like?)Toffee Apple Drip Cake (see picture below. This one has caused chaos in the Baked In Community. When is too soon to take your toffee off the heat? When should you pour it on the cake for Optimal Drip? I mean, I’m that impatient that I fear I would end up with a lava-like puddle on a plate).Olive and Thyme Bread Heads-up. My cake will *NOT* look like this. There will be a lot more drip and a lot less cake is my prediction.

That’s a lot of cake.

Is it too much cake?

Is there such a *thing* as too much cake?

Discuss.

Dragon of the South Wind

“Saké!”

The call came from the corner table. It was the most private table in the bar, thoughtfully set back from the rest of the tables and offering a reasonable air of privacy. It was the kind of table where Deals, capital ‘D’ were clinched. It was the kind of table where dark plans were hatched, where arguments were born – and sometimes died. By design, it was set in deep shadow and only the glittering eyes of its occupant could be seen. The air of deep brooding emanating from the table was palpable.

It was as though, the barkeep mused, a permanent cloud hung just above the head of its occupier. If that cloud of bitterness and rage had been capable of raining on the man below, or of creating its own thunderstorm, the barkeep posited that it might well have done so.

The barkeep hesitated for a moment or two before reaching for a freshly warmed bottle of sake. He set it on a tray with a new cup and the waitress took it without a word, delivering it to the man in the corner.

There was a grunt of thanks, the clink of coins hitting the table and the guest crawled into the new bottle. The waitress leaned closer and murmured something inaudible. The man glanced up sharply, then shook his head and reached out to touch the back of her hand with his own. It was a gentle gesture; a show of gratitude. The silent tableau spoke volumes.

The customer, the barkeep observed, had been drinking steadily since his arrival barely an hour previously and by now must be quite inebriated, or must have the constitution of an ox.

Or a dragon.

Discomfited, the barkeep shook the words out of his head. He had recognised the man on arrival: even despite the poorly thought-out hood that had been drawn up to cover his face – poorly at that – had failed to hide the familiar features of a Shimada. The glance had been too brief to be totally sure, but the eyes, the brow… he knew them.

Word from those in the know, those from the family’s inner circle, had been conflicting. One brother was dead, both brothers were dead, one had chosen exile, one had been expelled by a raging father, nobody knew the truth.

The man in the corner knew the truth. Perhaps with more saké in him, he might be prepared to reveal what that was. The truth was important currency in Hanamura, and Sojiro Shimada might well be prepared to pay handsomely for the word. The inn might be small fry in the vast ocean of the Shimada holdings, on the edges geographically, but its owner was nonetheless loyal to his masters.

Another hour passed and the saké bottle was upended many more times. The barkeep went about his business, which admittedly was not very much. The little bar did not see much in the way of footfall, but was a useful and out of the way place where meetings happened, occasionally violently and sometimes fatally. It was good enough – and that, in and of itself, was good enough. The barkeep tended his bar, cleared away the debris left in the wake of the Shimada clan and looked forward to a day when he could live a quiet life.

The door opened, briefly letting in a gust of the sweet spring air. It was heady with the scent of the cherry blossoms and the barkeep glanced over at the corner, hearing the deep inhalation of a man taking simple pleasure in the aroma. It was worth it: the clean scented air was welcome and pleasant. The barkeep noted that shadows were lengthening and the day was drawing to a close.

He also noted other new details. The newcomer was dressed in a sharply tailored dark suit that did little to hide his bulk and musculature. Everything about him screamed ‘henchman’. His parents may have even christened him Henchman. He was that sort. The barkeep further noted that the line of the suit was definitely ruined by the bulky outline of the sidearm strapped to its shoulder holster beneath the jacket.

The new arrival was carrying a long bag, free of design or logo and from behind dark glasses, he looked around the bar. His eyes fixed on the figure in the corner and then turned to the barkeep.

“Close up,” he said and there was threat in the two syllables. “No more customers. Then find work in the cellar or out the back. Understand?”

The barkeep understood and although disappointment crept through him that he would not be able to listen in on the exchange, he was also rather fond of being alive. He produced another bottle of saké along with a spare cup and reluctantly set about the business of closing the bar. He ushered the waitress out the door early, he collected empty glasses and he bustled for as long as he could manage. The entire time, he felt the henchman’s hidden eyes on him.

“Done?” The henchman took up the offered bottle and cup. “Good. Now go.”

The man in the corner had not so much as looked up during this exchange but now he did, Seeing the barkeep leave, he pushed back his hood and stared up at the henchman from eyes that known no sleep for days. They were red-rimmed from grief and alcohol and several days of stubble graced the previously clean-shaven face. The young man’s hair, once his great vanity, hung limply in greasy strands that had been nowhere near a shower.

The henchman looked him over and shook his head. He set down the new bottle and squeezed into the seat opposite. “You look like death looks when it’s feeling particularly bad,” he observed artlessly. “Everyone’s looking for you, but frankly, I reckon they’d be disappointed if they found you.”

He sighed.

“You found me.” Despite how much he’d drunk, the man sounded remarkably sober.

“Yes, but then I knew where you’d be.” The man gestured at the empty sake bottles on the table. “At the bottom of a bottle.”

“Well done. Pour another.”

There was a long pause, then the henchman sighed again. “Fine,” he grumbled and upended the bottle into the other’s cup. He pushed it across the table and poured one for himself.

There was another long pause and then the henchman leaned forward on the table. Despite his resolve, the young man shrank back. It was a tiny movement, barely perceptible, but it was there. The henchman shook his head and started a quick-fire conversation, the kind he had shared with the other man all his life.

“We’ve been friends since we were children, Hanzo.”

“That was before.”

“You have nothing to fear from me.”

“That was before.”

Eyes locked, a silent war ensued. Hanzo, exhausted, grief-stricken and bereft of reason, was the first to look away. He’d never been the first to look away.

That was before.

The henchman, whose name as it so happened was Hayato and who had, indeed, been Hanzo’s friend since childhood clenched his jaw.

“I am not here to kill you, Hanzo.”

“Has my father put a contract out on my head yet?”

“It’s not formal, no. Not yet. It’s still too soon. However, I cannot lie. The reward is quite healthy. A man could have a comfortable retirement on a reward like that.” Their eyes met again. “Very healthy indeed. A man with a price like that on his head would do well to get extremely far away from Hanamura.” He pushed a sealed packet across the table and lifted the bag. “A man with a price like that on his head would need money to get out of the country and the means to defend himself against those who might seek to claim that reward.”

Hanzo stared at Hayato in silence for a few moments and then unzipped the bag. His hands closed around the familiar grip of the bow, neatly packed inside, its limbs not attached, its string carefully set in its own pouch waiting to be strung. He took out the riser for moment or two and hefted its weight, then he looked at his childhood friend.

“Why would you do this for me?”

“I told you, Hanzo. You are my friend. I have two sisters. You are the closest thing I ever had to a brother.”

It was the wrong choice of words. Hanzo’s face, momentarily showing vulnerability hardened again.

“And you have seen what becomes of my brothers, Hayato. You would be wise not to allow yourself to remain close to me.”

“I have no intention to remain close to you, Hanzo. Indeed, I plan to report that I checked this far afield and found nothing. In a moment, I am going to leave this bar and you are going to finish that drink and you are going to head west.”

“Is this money yours?”

“Yes.”

Hanzo shook his head and pushed the envelope back across the table. “I cannot accept this. I will take the bow and you have my thanks. But I will not be a thief as well as a murderer.”

“Consider it payback for the times you helped me out.” The two men hesitated, both hands on the package and they met one another’s gaze. “If it helps, consider it a bribe for you to leave. Vanish. Let the Shimada clan continue their work and allow you to fade into obscure memory. It is easier this way, my friend.”

Hanzo, born and bred to carry himself with the grace and dignity appropriate to a scion of the Shimada clan, seemed to deflate. He buried his head briefly in his hands and Hayato coughed loudly and perhaps a little over-theatrically to cover the stifled sob that came from his friend and former employer. The uncomfortable moment passed and Hanzo finally nodded.

“Very well,” he said, “but I will find a way to pay you back.”

“That is a simple thing. Live, Hanzo. I have no wish to see both of my friends dead. I do this for our friendship and I do this because it is what Genji would want.”

“I have not spoken his name since…”

“You will speak his name again. When you feel ready to.”

Hayato drained his cup and stood. “I must go,” he said. “And so must you.”

Hanzo stood and in a moment of rarely demonstrated emotion, clasped his friend’s forearm in a warrior’s grip of friendship

“Yes,” Hanzo said. “I must go.” He gathered up the envelope and dropped it into the bag with the bow. He shouldered the bag and without further hesitation moved across the bar. His hand paused on the door and he glanced over at Hayato one last time.

“Thank you,” he said. “The strength of the dragons go with you.” Then he pulled up his hood and slid out into the gloaming.

“And you, Hanzo Shimada,” murmured Hayato and rose to his feet. He put his dark glasses back on and turned, very slowly, to face the barkeep whose sudden movement from behind the bar had caught his attention.

“That was Hanzo Shimada!” A statement, not a question.

“Yes,” replied Hayato. “Yes, it was.” He reached into his jacket, a motion missed by the excited, nosey barkeep whose thirst for gossip had brought him to this, his very last afternoon on Earth. If Hanzo was to stand a chance of getting clear of his father’s extensive reach, then nobody must know where he had gone.

When the issue of the barkeep had been dealt with, Hayato paused.

Nobody must know where he had gone.

Nobody.

The gun fired for a second time and outside the inn, the cherry blossoms eddied on the winds, pulled ever onward in the wake of the dragon of the south winds.