All in a day's work

Ever since I stopped working, I've been trying to occupy my time with things that I always wanted to do when I'm free as I may not have that much time when Uni starts and I'm quite happy that I got to finish a cross stitch in 3 days [a record for me!], read through my whole bunch of Time magazines and did some housework [not that it was something I always wanted to do but I thought I should do something more productive for the family].



Tried out some recipes from Mum's cookbook too and I have to say that 95% of it was a success. The Macaroni Bake was not bad and the Minestrone Soup [not those canned versions,mind you!] was OK but the Sacher Torte, some kind of Chocolate Layered Cake which was on the cover page of the "100 favourite cakes" book looked too good to resist so I set out on my adventurous journey to make it. The recipe was more complicated than the others and I took almost 2 hours for everything to be done and I have to say the end result was a little different than the one on the cover, like this:

The black patches are supposed to be the icing but because I didn't have enough chocolate, it became like that and before you come to any conclusion about my cake-making abilities, let me tell you the challenges I faced:

1. I didn't have an electric mixer so I had to manually whisk the mixture to "perfection."

2. The turntable in my microwave oven did not live up to its function.

3. Some of the ingredients were improvised, like the jam which was actually a substitute for red currant jelly, for the layering of the cake.

So, if you wanna make a chocolate layer cake in the future, make sure:

1. you plan what you are gonna do and have sufficient ingredients.

2. you have an electric mixer.

3. that the turntable in your convectional microwave is working (!!) I had to open the oven door and turn it from time to time so that the mixture would be cooked evenly.

4. that you grease the baking tin well so that the cake would not stick to the tin when you take it out to do layering.

Anyway, I acquired new books cos Times Bookshop was having a 30% discount for members and I am done with "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time." It's quite interesting cos Christopher [the narrator] gives a lot of fresh insights on things which we tend to overlook/simplify and we get to be in his shoes and how he thinks and stuff. Sometimes I don't really agree with how he thinks. For example, when he decides to head to London for his mother's place after he discovers that his dad lied to him about his mum being dead and also cos his dad killed Wellington, the dog. But his dad had a reason for doing all this cos his mum committed adultery and decided that she was not capable of handling Christopher cos of his disability. But then again Christopher's still quite young so he doesn't see the real picture:he only chooses to focus on the part where his dad lied to him and killed Wellington so, we can't really blame him.

Anyway, it's both a good thing and a bad thing that he can be so logical and sometimes, devoid of emotion at times cos it ensures his sustainability [he would not be so worked up that he starts screaming and being sick] but it might not enable him to understand why his dad is behaving that way and such.

Anyway, the world is so complicated and if only families would stay together, even through tough times, I'm sure people like Christopher wouldn't have to have it that hard.