Isolation Journal 104

We woke up quite late around 10.30am and then debated what to do and considered going to Spurn Point, but as the weather looked a bit dodgy and my toe was still sore and Alan's back was bad.  My Covid test result arrived and was negative and I was feeling less poorly today and didn't have a sore throat.  

Alan made delicious apple pancakes and we watched Friends and then I went and fed Fudge and Smudge and did the recyling and took the rubbish out and then hoovered the house and did a couple of loads of laundry and put away the washing.  I tidied and cleaned the kitchen.  I listened to more of the Wind Up Bird Chronicles and I'm now less than 8 hours away from the end - it's really felt like a marathon to get through this book!  Today was a 2 coffee day and Alan also made a pistachio tea from the Coffee at the Crescent order.  

Alan watched the Formula 1 and then I tidied out a drawer and cupboard in the Welsh Dresser and we now have a covid drawer with facemasks, wipes and hand sanitiser as well as binning a load of old diet coke with black lumps in that was 3 - 4 years out of date.

I ideally wanted to go for a run, but my feet were too sore and I could tell Alan would benefit from some fresh air so we decided to go for a walk around Pontefract racecourse and we've not been there since March when we did our last parkrun.  Both of us had high anxiety today.

There were lots of new wooden carvings "Peter and the Perrigrine" and we noticed lots of things we haven't before as we're usually running.  There were some beautiful sky scenes, we walked across a model aeroplane flying area and also saw a rainbow and then a double rainbow.  My feet got really wet.

We got home and Alan cooked a butternut Squash curry for Hello Fresh and I fed Fudge and Smudge and then mopped the floors.

We ate dinner and then Alan really wanted pudding so I finally had a go at making Sticky Lemon Pudding that I'd seen Jack Monroe tweet and it didn't take long to prep, but takes 30 mins in the oven and then 20 mins to let the lemon sauce all sink in.  

In the meantime I made chickpea, carrot and coriander patties and some rice.

Not so Isolation Journal 100

Another earlier start back into the office today.  I didn't sleep very well, it took me a while to drift off and I woke up about 25 minutes afterwards.  My alarm went off at 6.50am and woke me up in the midst of a dream.  I was a bit slower to get up and get moving, but I got downstairs, fed the cats, unloaded and reloaded the dishwasher, had some of the badly executed banana bread and yoghurt for breakfast and then got dressed left about the same time as yesterday around 7.55am, but as I got down the end of Whitecote Lane there was a load of farm equipment completely blocking the road and so I had to do a million point turn to go back on myself through Newthorpe, so it was probably around 8.40am by the time I walked into the office.

The morning was relatively productive, lots of trying to get on top of how the system works and I'm getting there slowly.  I managed to send some CVs eventually, but it seems a bit clunky getting eveything as I used to.

At lunch I ate at my desk and had rice and bean and also a naked bar as well as 2 apples and a satsuam for snacks.  I then went for a walk around the block along the canal with Nic again.  She noticed that there were a lot of people walking around the back of my desk and suggested that I move to a more corner area with less people around me so I'll swap with Rachel when I'm back in the office again on Friday.

I worked out that I still had 15.5 days of leave to take and so I took off a week in October with a plan of booking onto an online writing course with Arvon.  

The afternoon was fairly productive other than the frustration of having a meeting that lasted for 40 minutes which could have been an email about a client transfering over some temps.  I finished up around 6.30pm and then went to the toilet before heading to the car in pouring rain.  It was so wet that it took me a long time to drive back in the rain more slowly.

When I arrived back home Alan was cleaning the cooker which was impressive!

I cooked Hello Fresh when I got in - Toulouse Sausage and potatoes with a tomato and bean sauce and listened to PMQs as I cooked.  I also ate 30g portion of cheese, marmite and skips whilst I cooked as I was way too hungry.  I had thought about going for a run, but it got late after I'd let my dinner go down and so I decided to email the vouchers we'd not yet been able to book for our wedding as they are due to expire very soon.  I asked the Alfresco Adventures and the Yorkshire Heart Wine Tasting people to ask about how to book.

I also checked my course on Saturday and messaged my friend Jenny to see if she might be interested in meeting for a walk and she seemed interested.

We watched Friends, Taskmaster and generally stuff on Dave whilst Alan waited for an Amazon order to arrive and we ate feasts and then wine gums after the delivery had arrived and I had a beer as well.  I meant to go for a run, but it was too wet and I didn't fancy it, will need to do 10K tomorrow!

Not so Isolation Journal 99

I woke up this morning before my alarm to a horrible bad dream, someone was attempting suicide in a most horribly graphic way, it was like something out of a film, but not a film that I've ever seen.

I then got up with my alarm at 6.50am and quietly went downstairs, emptied the and refilled the dishwasher, collected up all my food for the day and drank a coffee, ate some cornflakes and fed the cats (letting them out the back door as they were confused by me being up so early).  I then made another coffee and put it in a mug to take on the journey and put make up on and got dressed - I'd laid out my clothes the night before to make it less stressful this morning.

Alan was confused as I'd planned to get to the office for 8.30am and so I planned to leave at 7.30 and ended up leaving about 7.50am as I dropped my eyebrow shadow on the floor and had to clear it up as it was all black and manky.  The traffic was super quiet and so I ended up getting in for 8.20am and it was really quiet in the car park as well.

I put my mask on and walked across to the office carrying my run club stuff as well as my hand bag, Alan's Macbook and Rachel's bag of stuff that I'd been looking after for her.

The office smelt really clean and it did seem quite spacious, but it was weird walking back in and not chatting in close proximity to everyone.

We logged on and started to fire up the new Salesforce system and had a kick off call as normal and then I cracked on with trying to work out how to use the new system.  I had a new job to match as well as CVs to send (the system wouldn't let me do this) and I think it will be good, but will take me a while to get back to the normal speed of doing things.

At lunch the team went out for a meal, but I'd brought my wild rice and black bean salad so I ate that instead with left over cucumber salad and Nic was too busy as well so we went out for a walk at lunch.  I wore my mask to go to the bathroom and the rest of the time I was at my desk.  The one thing that threw me was when my boss threw my mobile at me to answer which I was super uncomfortable doing.  I held it at a distance and then sanitised my hands.

Today was definitely more productive that it has been, even though I was cross at the system and constantly on the phone to work out what to do.

I finished my last call at around 7pm and then went to get changed into my run kit and drove over to Woodhouse Moor for run club at 7.30pm.  I was nearly late and had to run fast across to meet at the end of parkrun (Queen Victoria Statute) and it was really nice that I knew everyone in the group - Zeni leading, Clare E, Lizzie and Emily.  We had a lovely chatty run and some effort on my intervals and my "peaking" on garmin went down to "recovery"  I ran around 6K in about 35 minutes including running back to my car at the end and I drove home which took around 40 minutes in total.

I called Alan on the way and then spoke to my parents briefly and got in and put on a load of washing and had a shower whilst Alan finished off the Hello Fresh for tea which was Pork burgers with wedges and coleslaw.

We watched an episode of Spooks and he went up for a bath and had been for a run earlier.  I then I tidied the kitchen, loaded the dishwasher and made banana bread which finished cooking at midnight and turned out terribly, the edges were burnt and the insides uncooked and fell out.  I'm a total idiot and should leave these baking things to Alan sometimes!

Cupcake Baking and Decorating Class

So back in the Autumn my friend Jenny suggested that we buy a Living Social voucher that she had spotted for a 3 hour cup cake baking and decorating class for £22 from Zarina's House of Cakes.  We booked it for today to give us something to look forward to after Christmas and it was really good fun.

First of all we had a look at some of the cakes that Zarina had decorated whilst we waited for the rest of the class participants to arrive and were offered a coffee.  We were then shown through into Zarina's lovely (and huge!) kitchen where all our ingredients were ready and laid out for us - just like on a TV cooking programme!

  
There were 4 of us in the group in total and the first thing that we had to do was to bake our cakes after we'd been talked through the recipe - similar to a sponge recipe, but with the addition of cornflour to make it a smoother mix.  The recipe from memory was as follows:

4 oz self raising flour
4 oz stork / butter
4 oz caster sugar
2 large eggs
2 tablespoons corn flour
1 teaspoon of vanilla essence

All the ingredients were added into a bowl and then whisked for exactly 1 minute.

If you've ever wondered how to make cupcakes that don't bake too high...then we learnt how to do this - using an ice cream scoop you fill it 2/3rds full and then use the scoop releaser to put the cake mixture into the cupcake case.

The cakes then went into bake and Zarina showed us how to make our fondant icing decorations to go on top of the cupcakes.

First of all we blended two blocks of white fondant icing with our chosen colour pastes.  I went for Tangerine and violet and Jenny went for claret and ice blue.

We then used Zarina's huge array of cutters to cut out decorations for our cupcakes.  The cutters we used included butterflies, shoes, stars, flowers and geometric shapes.  Some of the cutters just cut out the shape, but others emboss patterns on top.  We also layered up the decorations and used just a drop of water to attach the icing pieces together.

After we had made enough decorations for 6 cupcakes, we took our baked cakes that were almost perfectly flat and Zarina showed us how to ice them with very smooth and perfectly whipped butter cream icing.  First of all we were shown how to "Flat ice" the cakes - spreading the butter cream icing over the top of the cake and using a palate knife to neaten up the edges.  

Zarina then showed us how to pipe butter cream roses onto the cakes - simple, but a definite technique required to make them look like roses.  Then when we had iced our cakes with butter cream roses or flat icing techniques we placed our fondant decorations on with some really lovely results - even if I do say so myself.  (Mine are on the left and Jenny's on the right)

Zarina then gave us a cupcake carrier box to put our cakes in and I think that they are almost too pretty to eat!

We then went back to my house so Jenny could see my decorating efforts on a larger scale (I've just repainted my entire lounge - photos and post to follow shortly) and I introduced her to the wonder that is Kirkstall Morrisons with the best salad bar in the UK (only rivals I've found would be in New York!).  Jenny is here looking very pleased with the selection.