Messes

Today started at 7am, I did 30mins WiiFit, and a basket full of ironing. After getting the scales working yesterday, I decided to make the eclairs I’ve been promising. 

Not unusually for me, this did not go without issues.  I made the choux pastry more easily than expected, where I usually them spoon the pastry out to make buns, this time I piped out eclairs. They cooked well, actually they cooked quicker than expected and came out darker than normal.

After they’d cool, I melted chocolate for the top in a glass banana-spilt bowl. I selected that as being best for dunking. I took the bowl out of the microwave, stirred the chocolate, it still had lumps, so I went to put the bowl back in the microwave – and dropped the whole lot on the floor!

Melted chocolate is not easy or fun to cleaned up. I was wearing my favourite comfortable Merrells, and they got covered.  Most came off, but the stains look really bad. So those shoes which I used to wear out often enough, have become for indoors only.

After that, I had to go for a walk, I needed more chocolate.  Hubby and I took our usual 3.5km route, popped into a local shop, and once home, I finished the eclairs. Woohoo! Okay, they don’t look good, but they taste fantastic.

On the walk though, something annoyed me that I’ve spotted before but not mentioned. There is an increasing amount of dog mess on the streets. It’s like (some) dog walkers have decided if there’s no one around to see they don’t clean up after their pouches, they don’t bother. It’s disgusting. If your dog made a mess, you clean it up, non-dog owners shouldn’t have to put up with that muck on the pavements.

Rant over.

Powerless

Like a lot of writers I often feel that I’m going to found out as rubbish, that I don’t deserve to the title author (despite repeated publishing contracts). Such voices are also part and parcel of my depression, the constant negative voice that I can never be good enough.

It’s a debilitating way to think about yourself. Leaves you powerless and vulnerable. Anyway, this morning I stumbled on an article about the syndrome, I found it very interesting. Here it is if you want a read:

https://makeitultrapsychology.wordpress.com/2020/04/26/how-to-identify-overcome-the-imposter-syndrome/

Yesterday, more by luck then anything, my husband actually managed to get hold of a bag plain flour! Yay! Baking time.

The plan was to make eclairs. I got all the ingredients out, put the oven on, started heated the water (salted by then), went to weigh the butter. The weighing scales briefly showed the code “Lo” then wouldn’t do anything. The batteries were dead. So I checked for spare batteries, and found the card for the type I needed – only to discover it was empty. Since I don’t have an alternative scale, there was no way for me to weigh the ingredients and I’m really not that good at guessing.

Another supermarket trip was required, so we managed to get more of the right batteries, got them home, put them in the scales – and nothing happened! It seemed the scales had died completely. Even my hubby had a look – after claiming that I’d put the battery in the wrong way around – loved that reaction, as you might imagine. But he couldn’t get it working either.

Turns out there was a sticker on the back of the battery, once that was removed the scales worked perfectly. By then I was wasn’t in the mood for baking.

So, powerless today, but baking tomorrow.