A biscuit baking disaster

 

This week I tried my hand at Anzac biscuits and do not be fooled by the photograph, they were a disaster. These are the only reasonable looking ones I could salvage to take a picture of. 

Don't get me wrong they taste fine. But apart from these few, they look a mess. They spread too far and too thinly and mostly all ran together into an amorphous blob. Very discouraging. 

I will however not allow myself to be discouraged. Check in next week to see what biscuit recipe I can massacre as January draws to a close. We might even have managed to finish eating the Would-Be Anzacs by then; they will go nicely with ice cream. If I'd only put in some ginger I could have pretended they were brandy snaps....

I think the problem was that the oven was too hot. It's difficult to set with any accuracy; I may have to look out the oven  thermometer. And new ovens are definitely on the agenda although not for a while as they will be expensive. 

A Dayin Edinburgh

 Last Thursday we went up to Edinburgh for the day. 

I love how I can just say that, almost as much as I love that we can do it. There were a couple of exhibitions we wanted to see ( a recurring refrain over the next twelve months I suspect and not just applying to Edinburgh) so we just hopped on the train and there we were. 

Edinburgh was blessedly empty. Empty is a relative term of course when you're talking about a much visited tourist capital but there weren't all that many visitors about (well, it is January!) which made walking not only easy but actually a bit of a pleasure. Walking down the lower half of the Royal Mile it was possible to  look up and appreciate all the beautiful architecture from  many different periods without worrying that you were gong to bump into anyone while you gawped upwards. 

Here's a photo which is a great example of how the old and the new live alongside one another.  On the left, The Palace of Holyrood. On the right part of the Parliament Building. Bottom left a car which I would have liked to edit out,  but the editing software thing-y has changed and I'm bowed if I can work out how to use it. 

First stop was the cafe at Holyrood where we swelled the Windsor coffers by having a snack.

That was,by the way,the second most disgusting scone I have had while out in my life. Scones are not meant to have a crust on either the bottom or the top, let alone both. The walls were adorned with lots of large photos of the Royal family. It occurred to me that even if I ran a cafe with my family I would not decorate the walls with pictures of the OH, the sons, the siblings, etc etc but I suppose it's different when you're royal. 

Annoyingly we had passed several very nice looking cafes on the way which would probably have served us much nicer food, but we had no idea what the queues would be like for the exhibition so wanted to get to Holyrood to suss that out before we thought about eating. In the event there were no queues and I think next time we go to an exhibition at the King's Gallery we will pass on the Windsor caff and eat elsewhere. 

The exhibition was something the OH was keen to see - Drawing in the Italian Renaissance. When I say the OH wanted to see it, I don't mean to imply that he dragged me there kicking and screaming, because he didn't; have to do that. I just prefer paintings to drawings, probably because, as noted here many times before, I cannot draw to save my life, and therefore the techniques of people who are talented in that direction are a Closed Book to me. That said  there were a few drawings that caught my eye 

A pleasingly muscular Enthroned Christ  and 

a little botanical drawing of a blackberry branch. 

There was of course a shop and it did not, of course have postcards of the exhibition but it did have a box of notelets relating to it that was half price so I got that. 

Once out of Holyrood we made our way back towards the station, opposite which is the City Art Centre.  I've been there before and it has some excellent exhibitions.  The one we were there to see was Scottish Portraiture and this was much more my cup of tea than the drawings. I loved it. What I didn't love so much was the lighting which,  as always seems to be the case at the CAC was very badly placed so that too much light reflects off the pictures. I also didn't love the fact that you're not allowed to take pictures, but that seems to be a bit of a lottery with galleries these days so I didn't stress. I wouldn't minds seeing that one again before it's over but we'll have to see if we can fit it in again on another trip. 

When we'd finished there we crossed the road to the station and by the time we'd found when the next train to Stirling was and located the platform it was only five minutes before the train arrived. So much easier than seeing things in Edinburgh used to be for us. 

Happy Mail and 2026 Finished Project No 2

I was never going to knit a Sophie Scarf. For those who may not know the Sophie Scarf is a pattern which has gone viral in the places where people knit, and everyone and their grandmother has made one. I wasn't going to bother; partly because I thought it was just a little bit of nothing and partly because I tend to be a bit iffy about making things that everyone else is knitting. This may be why my wardrobe includes neither a Love Note nor a Ranunculus; both patterns for knitted tops which  have also gone viral. I went to Glasgow School of Yarn one year and of the first ten people I saw six were wearing Love Notes. It's probably a great pattern but you know - I was on the road less travelled. 

Then - a friend made me a Sophie Scarf for Christmas and I completely changed my mind. It's a fun little thing that's easy to wear and I really liked it. Might bear it in mind to make myself one I thought. And then ...

I got an e-mail offering 10% off the price of a redye job of Yarn Unique's Artist Club for December. Some of you may remember I gave up on this club round about last August? because of mix ups, never knowing which artist was going to feature, missing one that I would have liked etc etc. But the December colour was gorgeous and I thought immediately of my plans for  Sophie scarf. As I just needed one skein I splashed out and got it on  a base that included yak as I've neve knitted with yak before. It arrived last Wednesday 

and I cast it on that same evening. 

It got cast off on Saturday 

and here it is modelled

To maximise use of the skein I made it a little longer than the pattern calls for. Then I used some of what was left to put a square into my cosy memories blanket and I've still got 10 g to play with. You can't do a lot of playing with 10 g of yarn,  although a Ravelry search threw up an alarmingly high number of possible projects (over 1100) that you can make with approx 20 metres of DK! Who knew?  

  

I Puritani

 

Apologies first of all for the quality of the picture; it's one I took at the cinema and subsequently cropped and it's not great but it's the only reasonable one I have. This is Lisette Oropesa taking her curtain call after performing the role of Elvira in the Metropolitan Opera's new production of I Puritani; we went to see the filmcast version at the University  Arts Centre on Monday.

We weren't sure what to expect really. We saw it lasted nearly four hours with the  interval. (We took snacks!) Our previous experience with serious rather than comic bel canto was confined to a very poor production of Lucia di Lammermoor by Opera North decades ago. It had all the cliches (bar servants folding up laundered sheets which directors seem to confine to comic opera, but which I have still been forced to watch more times than I would like) and was very very dark. (Literally. I mean it's a dark story but that doesn't mean you have to force your singers to perform in dangerously low light levels) I don't know if we would even have bothered to go to be honest but a friend from University days who I am in contact with on Facebook had actually been to see the Met performance live and was very enthusiastic so we thought we would give it a go. 

I'm so glad we did.  In a way it was like seeing opera for the first time because it was just so different to anything I had ever seen before. Which is quite something considering I've been going to the opera for  - oh dear - I just worked it out and at Easter it will be fifty years! The not quite four hours flew. I loved the music from bar one, and  the playing and the singing were all exceptional. I know people say harsh things about the Met sometimes, and point out that great opera is not guaranteed just because you chuck bucketfuls of money at a production, but this really showed that if you throw bucketfuls of money at the right people then what emerges is truly outstanding. I honestly can't remember the last time I enjoyed an opera this much. 

And it was great to be doing something again, I feel life put itself on hold after New Year; well let's be honest the weather hasn't been conducive to going out and I've felt a bit hemmed in and restless. However we are supposed to be going up to Edinburgh tomorrow for an exhibition so what with that and the opera things are starting to perk up a bit.Which is a Good Thing. 

Are Biscuits Boring?

 I realised recently that I've never been big on baking biscuits. A couple of times when I had the baking subscription I made cookies or biscotti but left to my own devices I wouldn't really think about baking  a biscuit. And in my younger days I made a lot of millionaires shortbread. But otherwise - nada! Not sure why, but it wasn't something my mother or my aunts ever made; it was cake or scones all the way, so presumably I just internalised the attitude that biscuits weren't something you made, you just bought them. 

I had thought about renewing my baking subscription when we moved as my baking had fallen into a rut and was sporadic at best, but I couldn't because the company has gone bust. But as is so often the case with me at New Year, I had a 'bright idea', which was to try and make biscuits instead. I could look at all the biscuit recipes in my baking books and make a different sort each week of 2026. 

This plan immediately ran into difficulties. The first was that as far as I can see I do not have 52 biscuit recipes and the second was that of the biscuit recipes I do have lots look very very similar indeed. And the third was that I came to realise that actually I'm not really a biscuit person. 

There again I won't be here for a whole 52 weeks, because we plan holidays, and if I work my way through the recipes I do  have I might find a biscuit about which I can wax lyrical and want to make again and again. Also when I run out of biscuit recipes I can switch to muffins. 

To be honest I don't think I will ever wax lyrical over a biscuit, but anyway, I made my first batch yesterday. These are Cornish Fairings, which are  basically ginger nuts with added cinnamon and mixed spice. They came out rather smaller than anticipated, probably because they didn't spread very much. That said they have the all important 'snap' whihc the judges on Bake Off are always on about in 'biscuit week' and, for a biscuit, they're very nice. 

And here it is!

 The first finished WIP of 2026.

The first picture shows the colour much more accurately than the second one,but the second one shows the whole thing  off  while it was still on the blocking board. 

This is not, self evidently, the humongous project mentioned previously which I  picked up at the the end of November and hoped to get finished by the end of the year, thereby finishing the 2025 stash reduction on a massive high. I am still working on that and it is inching towards completion. 

This one had to be finished as a mater of urgency. I started it in the autumn as a baby gift for the daughter of a friend. For some reason I thought the baby was due at the beginning of March and that there was no hurry to get this done.  Imagine my panic therefore when said friend posted on FB at the weekend  that the daughter had gone into the maternity ward! I rootled this out and set to immediately and finished it yesterday. Today it has been packed up, along with a book and it will go out  in the  post tomorrow. Phew!

Still, a project finished in the first week of the year - not bad going. 

2025 Reading Round Up

 Alert readers will have realised that I stopped recording all my reading back in May and I think realistically the days when I reviewed everything I read are now well behind us. There's just too much else going on. Look out though for the occasional post if something totally delights or annoys me. 

On the subject of totally annoying books can I just warn you off The Malt Whisky Murders by Natalie Jayne Clarke? This is the current reading for my U3A Crime Fiction group and it is dire. No plot to speak of, clunkily written and actually not really a crime novel at all. 

I see from my reading journal (exercise book with a list of what I read, decorated with the occasional sticker) that I set my self a challenge for 2025 which was one book every week, and that I was also intending to incorporate  the Agatha Christie Reading Challenge into that. The Christie thing fell by the wayside very early on; not sure why. Boredom? difficulty accessing the books without spending money? Not liking being told what to read and when? Whatever the reason it wasn't fun so I knocked it on the head. 

Despite this I read or listened to at least 72 books in 2025. I say at least because that's the number I have written down, but I am fairly sure I forgot to add some of them. I tend to re listen to things on Audible when I need to have something to help me sleep and although I get through these from beginning to end I tend to forget about them as books I've read and hence don;t record them. 

So. some highlights and lowlights. 

1) Biggest Disappointment of the Year Faithbreaker by Hannah Kramer. I've really enjoyed the first two books in Kramer's Godkiller trilogy so I was delighted to find Volume 3 in the library. I was not so delighted to discover half way through that I was totally bored with it and couldn't be othered to finish it. A real let down. Possibly this is a case of 'It's not you, it's me.' I don't know but it was a shame. 

2) Really irritating totally overblown book of the year The Hallmarked Man by J K Rowling There was a good plot somewhere in the hundreds of pages of this novel, but it was almost buried by a lot of tedious and repetitive relationship angst. I recognise a lot o readers come back to these books in the hope of a resolution to this 'will they-won't they' tension, but please - enough already. In any case I won't be back, I have totally lost patience with JKR and her unpleasant ongoing twitter spats with all and sundry. Her review of Nicola Sturgeon's memoir this year was the last straw for me; it wasn't a review, it was bile wrapped in slime. I get they disagree politically and on gender issues  but there's no need to descent to the insultingly personal.  

3) Discovery of the Year - J D Kirk and his D I Logan books.How have I not come across these before? I really enjoy them; they're dark but there's lots of humour in them and a good cast of recurring police characters whose relationships develop nicely over time. I've read 4 and there are another 17 to go which is good news. 

4) A total and unexpected delight was Bryony and Roses by T Kingfisher, a retelling of Beauty and the Beast with a very down to earth not very beautiful Beauty, a sympathetic beast and a vengeful rose tree. Funny, beautiful and sad by turns. 

Authors jogging on with whom I will keep faith; Natalie Haynes and Mick Herron ( although Herron's Clown Town was slightly disappointing). Jodi Taylor is hanging on by her fingernails, if her next one isn't better than the last two I shall give up. Banished to the No More list is Ann Cleeves after her pedestrian revisit to Jimmy Perez in The Story Stones. And I reconfirmed my inability to 'get' Rebus, by reading A Heart Full of Headstones, so I will waste no more time trying. Ditto incidentally Joe Abercrombie who is well thought of and writes grimdark fantasy. I have given him several chances, trying out both his series and his standalones, most recently in October this year and have come to the conclusion that, whatever he has, I don't get it any more than I get Rebus. 

I'm not giving myself an official  challenge this year, I don't need the hassle. My aspirations are to read a lot of the books on my bookshelves that I haven't yet read, and to try and read a lot more non-fiction. We'll see how it goes.