Musings from the sofa

Cheerio, my poppets. Tomorrow morning I fly off to Anaheim, CA, for a weekend of fun and frolics at ALA Annual (the yearly bash of the American Library Association). The conference itself should be fine, mostly involving wandering around the booths of other publishers, saying ‘Ner ner ner ner ner’ to the company I used to work for (aka The Flipflops), trying to figure out just what is going on in library land, and chatting to a couple of librarians about the Future of Reference Publishing and Whether We Should All Just Give Up and Go Home Because Google Already Won the War. (Feeling envious yet, Emily?)

I can’t say I’m particularly looking forward to Anaheim itself, though, which is scaring me by being strongly associated with the forces of darkness that masquerade as Disney. However, I can pretty much guarantee that in fact all I will see of the city itself is the inside of my hotel and the inside of the convention centre, so perhaps I will be able to keep the terror at bay.

Since the flight is almost as long as going to England (but oh, how different), I have packed two audiobooks: ‘The Lemur’, by Benjamin Black (his first stand-alone mystery) and ‘Uniform Justice’, by Donna Leon. Also, an episode of Buffy; the film ‘Day Watch’; ‘The Towers of Silence’, by Paul Scott (vol 3 of the Raj Quartet); and ‘Travels with Herodotus’ by Ryszard Kapuscinski. Oh yes, and I have thrown some clothes and shoes into a bag. Let us hope they coordinate in some way.

Should you wish to get a taste of ALA, you can watch this. Not for the faint-hearted. Back on Tuesday!

Let’s hope this cake tastes as good as it looks, so that the trial run of the KitchenAid will be proven successful. I’d include a photo, but you know me and photos. They steal your soul and all that. You’ll have to take it from me that this mango upside-down cake is golden brown, and that the mango slices on the top are nestling in caramel that has also run down the sides of the cake so that it has soaked into some of the sponge. As the cake cools, the caramel on the sides will set slightly and provide just the right sweet crunchiness to counterbalance the lightness of the sponge.

(I used the Best Recipe recipe).

In all, I found the mixer quite disconcerting. I know that thousands of people use them every day without turning a hair, but it’s a different way of baking for me. There were the eggs, merrily being beaten to stiff peaks, and there was I, standing at the side, eating a bowl of cereal, reduced to the role of spectator. There is no doubt that moving a sliding switch from 4 to 6 is loads easier than whisking egg whites with a hand whisk, which is the way I used to do it. But at the same time, it feels rather like the cooking equivalent of driving an automatic car. You still get to where you want to be, but the journey is a whole lot less engaging.

I also had not realised how much I rely on the weight and texture of cake batter to tell me if the mixture is at the right stage. When a recipe says that the butter and sugar will be ‘light and fluffy’, yup, beat them long enough and that’s exactly what will happen. Add eggs and flour and beat until smooth, and again, you can see against the spoon that ’smooth’ is precisely the right word. The repetitious nature of baking vocabulary is soothing to me; it means I know what to expect from recipe to recipe.

But how to tell when the ingredients are whirring round inside a bowl and I’m just looking on? I ended up stopping the mixer, lowering the bowl, stirring a bit with a spoon to judge, then hooking it all back up again. It’s certainly going to require practice for me to feel confident judging by appearance alone.

The verdict on the cake itself is in, though. We both ate two slices and declared the sponge much lighter than I’ve ever managed to achieve by hand. I am emboldened to consider making bread tomorrow.

Well looky here boys and girls. It is 8.41am and I am still in pyjamas and have just popped the kettle on for another cafetiere of coffee. It’s a beautiful morning and I have a wonderful feeling of largesse, because this is the first of my Summer Fridays and the whole day is mine, mine, mine.

I intend to drift in leisurely fashion through this day. I’m having a lateish lunch with my friend Mr W around 2pm, and other than that I refuse to think that anything must get done. Perhaps it will, and perhaps it won’t. I’ll see. 

In keeping with this general feeling of good-temperedness, I have even decided to forgive the MFSOB who keyed the entire passenger side of my car yesterday. If I did believe in any gods they would be old, dark and chthonic. Vengeance would be high on their list of appropriate functions. Still, wishing an especially Aeschylean fate on persons unknown is guaranteed to drain the sunlight out of the day. Thus, with effort, I am clambering onto the moral high ground and taking the view that I can get the car fixed, whereas the Keyer is stuck being a contemptible waste of carbon until some gruesome accident befalls them.

Just colour me Pollyanna.

Speaking of books (and I did read all of the Pollyanna books, of course), I believe I have thought of a hero. Marlow, Flashman and Bond were good suggestions (thanks all!), but I think my fickle fancy has alighted on Captain Alatriste, whose latest outing must surely be in paperback by now. It seems I should certainly wander bookshopwards, to coin a precious pseudo-archaism.

(’Wards’ - what does it actually mean? Does it only exist in compound words? Is it enclitic? Do I care enough to get off the sofa and look it up? And why, when I work in electronic reference publishing and have access to some unquestionably first class online reference works, is my first thought for looking things up to go to the print book? I know the answer to that last one at least. It’s because books are better. Don’t tell the Monolith I said that. But until websites smell musty, the sensory part of looking things up remains unfulfilled.)

It is also likely that I will make a cake at some point today, because I have a very impressive, shiny new Mixmaster to play with (early birthday present from generous aunt), and I have promised my long-suffering husband that I will bake him an upside-down cake. Plus, the mere fact of now owning such a long-held-out-against kitchen gadget means I am compelled to use it so that I can get over the feeling that by doing so I am somehow cheating. But that’s hours away and now I am off to do nothing very much at all. And enjoy every second of it.