Ginger cake

After the birthday and halloween shenanigans Emm came down with a temperature last night, which got up to 39.3 today, she's not herself at all! I've been up since five, as I drove my sister and her husband to the airport this morning. I thought I'd have a nap while Emm has hers but because she's been poorly she had a sleep this morning, which was too early for a lie down for myself. I did make a ginger cake though, which turned out more like a gingery treacle cake, but very nice none the less.

I also made two lasagne, and froze two one-pound-bags of bolognese (We cooked a big batch yesterday, I'd say we had a little more than 4 portions of it last night, gave 4 to P's mum to bring home (they couldn't stay for dinner), have now 4 in the freezer and the two lasagne probably count as 2 portions each, too. 16 generous portions, I like when the work that goes into cooking yields a substantial amount!)

I must get my hands on some rye flour and try this http://mydutchbakingblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/ontbijtkoek-dutch-spice-bread.html, I'm suspecting it might be as close as I'll get to the kandiskuchen i've been craving lately.

In a week and a half we have the next eye appointment, hopefully they'll have good news for us then, as in, they might have found a cause that is not linked to any further degeneration of her eyesight! We couldn't find any further information on babies being born with 2 identical looking retinal folds through the makula (of course not having any official medical terms to search for doesn't help) but I got a reply from the parent I contacted in Germany. He was surprised to hear about another case, they got their daughter's eyes tested about a year ago, and their specialist said he didn't know of another case like it in all of Germany (population of over 80 million!) but then their specialist mightn't have access to all the data... They were never given a cause for the findings, just that it most likely happened before birth.

I'm officially in the 3rd trimester now and feel very big, I have another appointment on the 5th I should get my iron results then. I do feel quite tired, but I think it's probably down to not sleeping. I'm just lying awake all night, either worrying about Emm or the baby, or having nightmares or other strange dreams with convoluted plots and no conclusions...

By the way, do you ever feel like you should be able to function on four hours of sleep a night, like some highly efficient people seem to do? I was very happy and sad to read that there's a gene mutation responsible for the ability to survive on so little sleep, nothing to do with the rest of us being lazy bast*&%s! In fact, I also read this article suggesting it might be bad for us to sleep less than 7 and a half hours per night! Now, there goes my hope that once I get over my lazy sleeping habits of at least 6 hours per night I will finally have that clean tidy house with lots of home cooked healthy food on the table, while also having time to play with my daughter, keep up with current affairs, read literature, knit, sew, help others or charities more, and keep up with fashion and some kind of beauty regime, in addition to earning extra money to afford said beauty regime and fashionable clothes... did i mention regular exercise? and socialising? and blogging? and yoga and writing and photography? ...or that there's a baby on the way....

I had 5 hours of sleep last night and can't you tell, rambling... I better get the little one to bed now, she's done with her puzzles and looking for some attention! I wonder will I stay up until P comes home from swimming (he goes straight after work) or should I give in and go to sleep as soon as Emm does...

plum cake, blackberry jam and crumpets!

i had a bit of a cooking day! no photos unfortunately, but i made crumpets and blackberry&apple jam from darina allen's 'forgotten skills of cooking' book. The crumpets turned out beautifully, I made the whole recipe, thinking i'd wrap the leftovers in clingfilm and toast them tomorrow... alas, i am a pregnant lady, and over the course of the afternoon they were all gone!! and Emm had no more than one! i had to throw out the first three though, in my defence, but still, i must have eaten about 10!!!
For the jam I made the mistake of listening to too many cooks, using Darina's recipe but adding my mum's advice that I definitely should use jam sugar rather than ordinary sugar, so the consistency was on the verge of wine gums!! very very set. i added the juice of half a lemon because i knew the berries were quite sweet, from my friend's husband's jam experiment, which worked a treat, my jam turned out just the right balance of sweet and sour.
I used the last of the plums from our tree to make a small 'Pflaumenkuchen', using a pastry base instead of the favourable yeast dough base. (I made that one last week and I think out of the two versions it's definitely the better one) The bready base makes you think of bread and plum jam, only it's less sweet, much tarter and with only just cooked plums, rather than mushy sugary jam.
In the evening I still managed to cook a yellow thai curry, inspired by Jo's post! Emm was tucking in, except for the peppers and mushrooms. I had to make sure she drank lots of water afterwards, because I suppose the paste is quite salty, much more so than other dishes I cook. I forgot to put in the broccoli, my concentration was definitely waning by then!

I had bought Bill Grangers new book (can't find it on the amazon associates search engine), but returned it when I realised it was 12.50£ on amazon (13.25£ at the moment), after I'd paid 33€ for it in the shop! I know there's exchange rates and shop overheads, but I don't think that kind of price difference is justified!! They took it back, no problem. I haven't ordered it yet and am thinking almost everyday of a dish i saw in it and then remember, oh yeah, must buy the book! I had half decided to return it when I realised what most of the ingredients were going to cost!! If I was able to source them, that is... But now I keep thinking back and I think I will get the book again. Or maybe I should just get his first book? Are chef's first books usually their best?

making gnocchi (a fairly colourless post)

I made gnocchi today. I figured it was time to have potatoes as we haven't all week, but fancied something different! The Silver Spoon had a recipe, it's basically a kilo of spuds, a fifth of that in flour, a pinch of salt and an egg, quite simple! I steamed the peeled potatoes (Queens), mashed them and mixed them with the flour, salt and egg (make sure the mix isn't too hot when the egg goes in!). This mix is kneaded until you have a flexible dough.

I divided it up in two batches, as 600+g seemed quite enough for the three of us! One half I put aside, for Kartoffelklösse tomorrow.

The other half I divided up again, and rolled into thin sausages.

Those I cut up with a pairing knife, into little pillows.

The pillows were rolled into little balls

 ...lots of them! You can see how I started to flatten them a little with the fork (I think too much, I was looking up some other recipes and you're supposed to hold the ball in your hand while pushing on it with the fork, but I left them on the plate! The Silver Spoon says to push them against the underside of a grater.). The other half of the dough I made into 7 Klösse (or Knödel) which I wrapped in cling film.

Emm was fascinated with the process, she probably thought it was playdough! I gave her a little piece to play with, but she immediately tried to eat it, and with the raw egg I reckoned that wouldn't be a good idea!

I didn't get to take pictures of cooking them, as I was too busy cooking them! You put them in small batches (I did seven or eight at a time) into salted boiling water, and when they start to float to the top you take them out with a slotted spoon.

I made a spinach and philadelphia sauce, improvised, to go with it, with some of the perpetual spinach from the garden. (I fried some garlic and chili in a bit of olive oil and butter, and removed them as soon as the garlic started to get golden. I added the washed and chopped spinach and put the lid on, for about 5 minutes. Then I added cream cheese and tomato cubes and seasoned with nutmeg, salt and pepper.)

I know, it doesn't look too appetizing in the photo, but trust me, it was delicious! They were light, soft and kept their shape and didn't disintegrate or dissolve! All in all a quite colourless dish, it could have done without the philly, but I tend to not think much before I throw something together! I might serve the gnocchi with a tomato sauce the next time, or with sage butter and a mixed salad!

By the way, Gnocchi is pronounced something like [n'yog-kee] rather than [g'nok-chee] or [g'no-chee[ as you might often hear, to the confusion or despair of Italian waiters wordwide, depending on the level of their experience!