Never look a gift yak in the mouth

There are some days at work when you feel entirely put upon and under-valued, and then there are days like today when the sun is (sort of) shining and your students are enthusiastic and say nice things and it makes you feel like all the crappy marking is worth it! I've just had one student saying thank you for the module I run and how much he's enjoyed it and how much he feels he's learnt, and another student who was very grateful for my help with her dissertation - so grateful in fact that she gave me a gift. Chinese students often give small tokens to their lecturers - I quite enjoy it to be honest. Sometimes the gifts are a bit quirky(commemorative coins for example), but I've also had several rather pretty silk fans which I've used to great effect on the London tube in summer! Today's gift does not seem ideal for summer. It's snack food from the Chengdu province of China where this student comes from and one of them is a lump of dried black yak's meat. Vacuum packed for freshness. Apparently it's good to break up and eat when I'm drinking wine. I'm mildly terrified...but on a day like today, definitely still grateful. It's the thought that counts after all....


It literally is a hunk of dried meat. What's that quote from Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy...??



See - black yak dried meat. I am rather tickled at the last instruction though: "Eat after opened (bulgy)" - what on earth do you suppose that means??



Hello gorgeous...

Progress! Finally finally we are moving forwards! We now have an installed and completely operational oven! And look how utterly gorgeous it is...

The picture does it no justice at all, but surely you have now come to expect dreadful pictures from me

Oh the baking fun we will have, this oven and I. I truly love it. It's a thing of total beauty - so much so it seems a shame to soil it with actual cooking and grease. I spent much of last night caressing it and at one point gave it a cuddle. I want it to stay shiny and new forever. But as gorgeous as it is (why do I keep saying 'it'? I've named her Josephine...she'll come, in time, to be Ol' Jo), it's once I start cooking that she's really going to come into her own.

I had thought that the very second she was installed, that I'd start cooking with a vengeance, but actually that's not at all practical. We still have no bench or sink and the cupboards aren't yet finished or attached to the walls. So really, any kind of cooking would involve making a giant mess in an already stupidly messy room (it currently looks a bit like what I imagine the inside my head to look like) and that's more of a pain than anything. Josephine will have to be content with heating Waitrose prepared foods for another week I think, but that's ok. It's still progress. And after all this time, any step forward is one I'm not going to sniff at! 

Two steps forward...

The kitchen was meant to be finished by now. Hell, it was meant to be finished by mid-January. But certainly by now. Alas, all it currently has in it is a fridge and one unit of drawers which don't have handles. You see, when we started assembling last Sunday night, we discovered that the company who had planned it, had royally cocked up and mis-measured, such that the new kitchen couldn't FIT in the space allocated. Arggh! Much hair-pulling and yelling and the odd measured discussion later, the problem parts have been returned and new ones ordered which will fit (if they don't, I swear I'm going to strangle the designer and cook him in my new oven). Sadly these bits won't be delivered until Tuesday, so we are delayed even further. There have been other issues in the construction of the units which do fit, namely that the instructions are utterly useless and I'm sorry, but if we can't work them out, I struggle to see how others would manage. We're fairly competent DIYers - I would go so far as to assume that we probably have skills that are a bit above average. But these instructions are like a Byzantine pick-a-path story. God knows how it will all turn out - it's a leap of faith (and I'm not sure that something like kitchen construction should really involve prayers and crossed fingers). The new (gorgeous, shiny) range was meant to be installed yesterday, and then today, and now I am told it will be Sunday. Our gas plumber who is fitting it is leaving for Poland on Tuesday so he'd better bloody well come on Sunday and sort it. Sigh.

I am past the point of sobbing and frustration now really...we are sort of just blankly stumbling along hoping that at some point things will be done. We've run out of gas for the camp stoves too, so we're down to solely food that can be microwaved. Did you know that you can cook tortellini in the microwave fairly successfully? No, me either, but turns out you can. But weirdly, microwaving popcorn has not been at all successful (15 minutes later and only half the kernels had popped. I gave up...) I think we might order takeout tonight - my ulcer has been relatively calm for about a week, so hopefully I can eat a curry without angering it.

Oh, and, in more exciting news, and in preparation for the installation of the new range, I have just bought two new cookbooks: The Boy Who Bakes by Edd Kimber and Short and Sweet by Dan Lepard (I actually already have the latter on my Kindle, but turns out with cookbooks, I can't be swayed from real books. Electronic ones don't have any of the same appeal). Looking forward to their arrival and the frenzy of baked goods that will soon begin...

A page from the Boy Who Bakes. I want this cake more than I've ever wanted baked goods before