Category Archives: Blogging

This, That and the Other

I had this idea you see, that I would take the blog to the boatyard and sort it out, make it all tidy and organized, fill in the cracks, redo the varnish, stare at the many blog themes that WordPress has to offer, tweak this and that – after all I have been chucking posts on here for nearly three years now. I was going to write an Index and organize all the posts into neat little categories but…

guess what?

they don’t fit into categories

and it will take me days

and I just don’t want to do it

but people are wondering why I made the blog private, well, that was so I could mess it up in peace and quiet, because if you, dear reader, are reading it while I am trying to sort it out, it runs slow at my end

so anyway

I am just going to leave them as they are. I feel a moment of T S Eliot coming on. You know that bit about not being Prince Hamlet, but a pair of ragged claws scuttling across the sea bottom? That’s me.

My tip if you are desperate to find something on this blog, do an internet search using the blog name as a term i.e. zeb bakes plus the name of the thing you want and a search engine like Google will find it for you better than the search box on the blog does. That is what I do, yes, I use the net to search my blog.

i.e. Zeb Bakes rye bread will give you …..

Very simple and quick!

The old definition of a blog was a weblog. Like a diary, not a cook book, not a website, not a content producing factory, not a source of free images for people to stick on to their Pinboards. So that is what this is, an old-fashioned blog, where the tides of words and images rise and fall, sometimes big, sometimes small, following my rhythms and my energies. The world is full of stuff, the internet more so. I have no image to maintain, no hidden agenda from blogging, no book waiting in the wings or small business opening.

On Pinterest and similar sites

Thanks for reading. I really, truly thank all of you who read this drivel but to those of you who don’t read, who are just busily scavenging away this is addressed to you….

Please don’t pin my stuff on Pinterest ever. Please do not copy my stuff onto your sites without asking me explicitly first. I have an irrational hatred of Pinterest. It just plops me in with a host of other stuff and devalues my work. Makes me feel like I am part of some huge online shopping catalogue. No one has ever come and left a commment, saying, oh I saw your photo on Pinterest and wanted to get to know you or chat to you. It does nothing for me in the least.

Call it vanity, call it what you like. I don’t need traffic driven to this blog or whatever other justification you put on doing it. I am more than happy for you to copy stuff to use at home, you can email it to your friends, print it out for a class or whatever, just don’t copy it and plaster it all over the net with some link back and assume that I will see it and be OK with it, because I am not. As far as I am concerned it is the height of bad manners.

If you want to stare at bread photos all day, then copy someone else’s who wants to be copied, who buys into the whole Pinterest thing, there are lots of them out there who love it and welcome it. They have buttons on their sites saying ‘Pin Me, please pin me’. I don’t.

Clotted Cream Vanilla Fudge with Cherries

Fudge on its way to make someone happy

Did you think I had gone for good? Not yet. Hello! Happy Middle of January everybody! I have lots of lovely photos of things to share but I haven’t got round to writing the posts. I look at the photos and then I look at the keyboard, and my back hurts and I can just think of other things I would rather be doing than blogging, but this one was just begging to be written so here goes with one of those recipe posts with asides designed to let you into the cluttered (clotted?) thought processes of my mind. I think there must be a name for this type of post. Food Confessional? Bridget Jones Does Food? or the ‘OK it is a recipe post but really I am lonely and want you to love me by leaving me lots of comments sort of a post’ ? I am not sure, but they are fun to write anyway.

Clotted Cream Vanilla Fudge with Glacė Cherries

Do you have food stuffs like this in your home? I am sure you don’t, but every time I have opened the fridge since Christmas this tub of Roddas finest clotted cream has waved at me.

“Yoo, hoo”, it says, “What are you going to do with me????” And today it was waving slightly frantically and whispering in an out of date sort of way,

“Surely, you are not going to chuck me, just because of a date, no-ooo-ooo!!!”

Chopped up small!

Why didn’t we just eat it as it was? All will be revealed…

We don’t eat cream out of the carton on account of the asthma thing plus I am not good at eating fresh cream, it makes my tum gurgle and roil, but if it is boiled up and turned into fudge then suddenly it does neither of these things. Oh dear, this is turning into one of those 7 not very interesting facts you never really wanted to know about me sort of posts, get a grip Joanna – right now. OK here goes…. (pdf for recipe without all the asides click here)

227 g carton out of date but perfectly good Roddas clotted cream (meant for Mother-in-Law at Christmas who couldn’t come due to an outbreak of winter virus at her nursing home, well you did wonder I am sure, and you see that bag in the first picture, it’s going to her today)
275 g of organic unrefined granulated sugar (Billingtons must have had an offer on when I bought this)
50 g golden syrup (do you like those new bottles they sell this in? they sort of crackle don’t they? I find them very unnerving)
50 g Danish (probably Swedish, see Misky’s comment) light syrup (another lost soul in the pullout purchased circa 2008 as I had squeezed all I could from the golden syrup bottle)
pinch of sea salt
1/2 teaspoon of homemade vanilla essence (I have a litre of this made circa 2009)
a teaspoon of glucose syrup (bb 2007, unopened)
120 g of glacė cherries (2012 Yay!) cut up with scissors for speed (meant for a Christmas cake that didn’t happen, not the natural ones, but the bright red ones that my husband considers to be ‘proper cherries’)

Have a glass of cold water near your hob.
Line an 18 cm square tin, bottom and sides, with baking parchment.
Put the extra halves of cherries in the pan, which should appear on the top when you eventually turn the fudge out. (This was an afterthought, I freely admit, I am big on afterthoughts)
Put everything except the cherries, in a deep heavy bottomed pan.
Gently heat and stir until the sugar is dissolved and everything is well mixed
Increase heat and put your sugar thermometer in the pan.
When the mixture reaches the soft ball mark (116° C) lift pan off heat and drop a blob from your wooden spoon into the glass of cold water. it should form a nice soft but distinct mass, if it just dissolves into a cloud, it is not hot enough. I get little blobs with tails usually.You should most definitely taste to confirm the evidence of your eyes and the thermometer of course. You could do it again to double check if you happen to be fasting on the day you make this. (I am a mad impetuous fool).
If you add the cherries about halfway through the next stage or as close to the end of the beating part as you can, then they won’t break up as much as mine did.Though ours went a delightful – some people might mutter ‘lurid’ under their breaths – shade of pink (hidden benefits).
Halfway through Beating up the Fudge
Find someone who likes beating a pan vigorously with a spoon for about five to ten minutes and offer them some inducement to do the hard bit, which is to beat the fudge until it goes thick and starts to seize up, the colour also changes from super shiny, through to a matt look. Or do it yourself if you are firm of arm and enjoy such activities.
Pour and scrape the mixture into the prepared tin and leave to cool completely or even over night.
Turn out, peel the parchment away, and cut into small squares with a heavy knife and swiftly dispense to everyone who likes it. If you have any left, then keep it in the fridge and it will get more grainy and less creamy over time. If one small and delectable square happens to find its way into your mouth, forgive yourself. Life is short and there will be more steamed vegetables tomorrow. Steamed broccoli fudge doesn’t have quite the same ring to it though, does it?
Do you have any exotic leftovers from Christmas in your fridge that you need to use up?