OT
I made angel food cake last night. I've never made it before. I used a box and followed directions. Mix on high until blended (whir fine white dust *every where* whir) and then medium speed for a minute DO NOT OVERBEAT. So I do what I always do to count a minute, instead of trusting a clock. It takes me exactly a minute to sing 1-100 via the song I learned while playing Blue Aardvark. This of course caused my husband to mumble about why the hell was I singing a timer when he has a perfectly good clock... Clocks cannot time a minute perfectly unless you start just as the minute turns or you have a second hand AND you can spend time looking at them. I wanted to look at the mixing and not at a clock. In the one medieval cookbook I have read lots of (Curye on Inglysch), they do a lot of timing by reciting psalms. You can mix this while you recite psalm 23 three times, "Yea, though I walk through the valley of carbs..."
Fortunately, Jazz asked if we had clothespins. I asked what for? And he told me about how his mother and grandmother always let the cake cool upside down or it ends up like pound cake. The light clicked on. Apparently if you make it from scratch, it's a LOT of egg whites. Like a souffle, it can be scared into falling flat. I have made one souffle successfully (and a few not so successfully). I know the concept. On reading the directions, it did indeed suggest cooling the cake upside down, but it wasn't emphatic about it, and in fact down right confusing because of the way it also mentioned cooling "loaf pan" baking of this cake. In case you don't have a large round pan with a hole in it, you can make Loaves of Cake. This seems just Odd. And yet amusing. I feel I ought to make Loaves of Cake some time now. But no, I have the Pan with the Hole in It, and I've had it for years. Because you have to have one of these pans, to my mind, in order to have a complete kitchen. Mum's kitchen and every other kitchen I have thoroughly explored always had one of these pans. Even if said pan has never ever been used. So I've had one ever since I've had my own kitchen. I am not completely sure where it's from - Meme's kitchen, Gram's kitchen, or even from Mum, or I found it in a garage sale for a nickel. It's an old pan, and I used it for the first time last night.
Angel food cake tastes like a huge marshmallow. Yum. And you eat a huge slice and wonder what you just had that made you still hungry for dessert.
Um, I think I should explain Blue Aardvark because it was probably a local game. We played it at Girl Scout Camp. Get a circle of people holding hands. One person goes in the center. They are the Aardvark. Or IT, but I guess they want to call it an aardvark because it's more amusing. Everyone in the circle sings a counting song. Meanwhile the Aardvark runs through the circle trying to break the chain by running down some in the circle. They then take the place of one of the people who let go. That person becomes the Aardvark and has to repeat. This goes on until the song ends, and that person in the middle is the Blue Aardvark because they lost. Repeat song and game. One - two - three- four - five - six - seven - eight- nine - ten- 11- 12- 13- 14- 15- 16- 17- 18- 19 - 20- one and twenty, two and twenty, three, four, five, six, seven twenty, 28, 29, 30.... etc.
I also made Scotch eggs. I am tempted to take them down to the bar and have Danny slip them in the deep fryer. I'd like to say I don't believe in cholesterol but sometimes I worry cholesterol believes in me.