-
Made some focaccia to a recipe of the American website “bon appéit”, and I choose to blame the foreign units of measurement for my accidentally making such wet dough it was more of a crumpet batter. I think it would have been fine if only I’d used a bigger shallower tin, and nevertheless the salty crusty top – the upper crust! – was good. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with measuring flour and stuff by volume – I’ve found myself without a scales before, looking up the density of things in order to convert from grams to millilitres – but cups, ugh.
Also this week I done a cassoulet. It was inauthentic in several ways, including the inclusion of a lot of tomatoes, really I might as well have opened a tin of sausage and baked bean, but let the record show that cassoulets are good.
-
Bicycling thoughts. It’s become autumn and I made the mistake once of forgetting gloves on a cold wet day, but then at some traffic lights I waited behind an Audi A5 instead of filtering through the queue of cars, and I so enjoyed warming my hands on the exhaust emissions, so that’s a benefit of not having good segregated infrastructure.
Attached a pannier rack to the back of the lightweight bicycle making it a bit heavier. There exist things that clamp to the seat post for maximum compatibility with bikes that don’t have threaded holes in the right places, but I had holes and I wanted to damn well use them. As I feared, the rear brake gets in the way of where one of the mounting bracket arms would go, so I simply didn’t attach one of the arms and it still seems sturdy enough as long as I don’t overload it. Immediately I went and carried home too much alcohol-free beer; there was some disconcerting squeaking but I completed the journey OK and with a less sweaty back than if I’d carried a rucksack.
-
Now none of the residences overlooking my window have the same residents they did when I moved here. Part of me half-wonders if the horror of sometimes seeing me pottering about in my underpants drove anyone to move, which is insane narcissism. The last one to change hands did so without appearing on any listings websites as far as I can see, which is a blow to nosiness, is there a secret backchannel where people swap houses or what?
-
Cultural highlights of the week:
-
🎦 See How They Run (2022), a likeable bit of fun. It was nice to see the all the actors in it in it.
-
East Anglian tribute band Steemy Dan. I was definitely the below the average age of the audience, which is nice, but nicer still there’s always some even younger people for someone to patronise “how on earth do you know of any music from before you were born?” instead of you.
-
Public Service Broadcasting put on a good show, a whole audio-visual sensory experience. A new-to-me venue where I learned it pays to turn up earlier (like I normally do but didn’t for a change) and avoid trips to the bar and loos to secure a good position in the room, it sounds obvious now I think of it. But doing multiple wees and having to stand on tippy-toes behind tall fellows isn’t so bad.
-