Weekly Update 08 JUL 2017

So, week one of getting up at 5.30am, because I have to get into training for a 5am start during the semester (and it's easier for me to make a half-hour shift than it is to make a full hour shift) and I've managed the new wake-up time six days out of seven (I wound up sleeping in on Thursday because I'd just got too tired for a 5.30am start that morning). I'm also getting a fair bit of work done on the two main writing projects. I'm adding about 300 words a day to the large fanfic piece I'm working on, which isn't a huge amount, but is definitely better than the 0 words per day which was being added before I started working on it on a daily basis. In addition, I'm spending 5 minutes a day working on a plot outline for an original piece - I have a certain amount of stuff written for this already, and I figure what I want to do is get a workable plot outline done, so I can shove the whole thing into Scrivener and start writing the first draft. Again, there's a limit on what I can do at five minutes a day, but it's more than I was accomplishing before, when I wasn't working on it at all. More than zero words is good, in terms of progress.

The weather has been getting colder here, which means I've started baking again, mainly because putting on a cake to cook is a good way of heating up the house using the oven. The oven leaks heat like nobody's business through the base of the grill space, so having it on and the grill bay door open means the house gets warmed past the standard 1 - 2C difference from the external temperature. It can even get discernibly warm in there, if I have something like a fruitcake cooking and all the doors leading off the main area closed. Which is a bit of a plus. However it does mean we're having lots of cake sitting around needing to be eaten (I'm busy working through a boiled fruit cake I made on Sunday, and I made up a coffee cake yesterday, so that's going to be started next).

Also, for low-spoons (in terms of energy expended) cake making, I can recommend the Women's Weekly "Quick-Mix Cakes" cookbook - it's got heaps of recipes, and most of them are things like "one bowl cakes made with an electric mixer, blender or food processor", "melt and mix cakes" (melt together most ingredients in a saucepan, mix in flour and eggs once the melted stuff has cooled to the point where you're not going to cook the eggs straight away), "cake mix cakes with a twist", "rub in the butter to the flour" cakes and muffins, "beat it with a wooden spoon" mixtures and so on. All fairly simple, and there's also suggestions for decoration and recipes for icing up the back of the book. It's one of the generation of Women's Weekly cookbooks from before the point where they decided home cooking was effectively in competition with high-end restaurant chefs. It's basically arranged around the idea cooking is something you have to do on a regular basis to feed the family; it can be a bit of a chore; and quick, easy, simple recipes with a minimum of ingredients are more likely to be made than complicated show-pieces. The version of the cookbook I have is a reprint from back in 1999, which I picked up in one of those discount books pop-up stores, possibly while I was living in Canbrrra.

To be honest, I prefer these older-style cookbooks to the newer ones - mainly because at some point between about the mid-1990s and today, it seems like home cooking suddenly turned into this massive competitive wank-fest, requiring professional quality equipment and professional-level skills out of even the most everyday home cooks. Cooking for the family isn't just about getting a nutritious and/or filling meal on the plate any more, it's all about displaying your skill at plating things and creating an attractive display. Given I have all the artistic skill of a particularly isolated rock, this rather annoys me, because I cook food to be eaten, rather than looked at. The meals I cook are never going to look like the ones on the page. Meanwhile, the older cookbooks are more about a form of perfection achievable on a budget and without specialist equipment and training, which suits me far more.

Tonight we're heading out for dinner with Himself's parents, a much-delayed celebration of Himself's birthday back in early June. We're also going to count it as a slightly early 20th anniversary dinner (we officially got together at about the end of July 1997, so yeah, twenty years).

So that's where I am at the end of this week. How's everyone else?