Too close for comfort

Half term heaven was very nearly a prophetic title since I collapsed in town on Monday afternoon and had to be whisked away to the hospital again. The general consensus seems to be that my heart keeps slowing down to the extent that sometimes it misses a few beats.Knitting, brushing my hair and laughing also seem to cause problems which set off the heart monitor frequently while I was in hospital, on one occassion when N came to visit the monitor reacted so violently it was a close run thing whose heart would fail, mine from laughing or his with shock when the alarm sounded which of course just made me laugh even more. After a few days in hospital they let me out with the prospect of another battery of tests to see why it's happening, a little bottle of Nitrolingual to spray under my tongue if I get pains in my chest and instructions to ring 999 if it happens. All a bit too dramatic for my liking, especially the additional restrictions on driving, working, walking etc until the cardiologist thinks its safe.I'm confined to the sofa for a while but have to admit that just walking around the house to go to the kitchen or bathroom feels like a major achievement at the moment and sends me thankfully back to the sofa.
I got home on Thursday afternoon, in time to watch the plumber rip out the old cooker and see my son remove the old oven housing with a sledge hammer...he enjoyed that!
On Friday morning a big white van arrived containing my new (reconditioned) Everhot, having lost the racing green one I had contacted Everhot to ask if they ever got cookers returned in part exchange for the larger models. The initial answer was no but just a couple of days later I got a message to say that they had got a cream 60cm model with the wooden handles and if I was interested they would recondition it and fit it for me. I think it took almost a second to answer YES and I waited hopefully to see what it would be like. When it arrived it was wrapped in a padded cover and when that was removed I was amazed, the rope seals are all new and the surfaces have been polished so it looks brand new. By 11o'clock it was fitted and commissioned and the kitchen began to warm up. Oh the joy of having a warm kitchen at last! Because I spent most of last week in the hospital the cupboards and worktops in the kitchen haven't been sorted out so the Everhot stands like a little beacon in a sea of chaos. I'm not allowed to do much more than boil the kettle on it but it is a delight to use and will be producing meals and cakes as soon as I'm fit (in the meantime my son is learning to use it and proving to be an excellent cook).
To cheer me up my son has been suggesting some things I should do when I'm better one of which was to get a tattoo, suggestions have ranged from a knitted skull and crossed needles, a Royal Copenhagen logo, or a list of my medications tattoed down my back. Other possibilities include ride a motor-trike (oh yes please) or go and see the Northern Lights. He's offered to pay for the tattoo!

Half term heaven

October half term holiday, the lull before the storm of the Christmas half term. Half term holidays are a good time to begin the Christmas baking, fill the freezer up and generally prepare for winter. Today is a typically grey, chilly October day with odd periods of sunshine during one of which I managed a walk with Nino. He enjoyed pottering along snuffling at all the leaves.
It was good to come home and have a cup of tea and a slice of cake (more about the cake in a minute)the wind had turned very chilly and although I feel fine most of the time, exertion in cold wind does make me very tired. Nino headed straight for the sofa...it's hard to get a good seat when Polar Dog is stretched across it so he's making the most of the opportunities available to him as the Polar Dog will be coming to live with us on a permanent basis pretty soon I think!
The cake is a blast from the past, a recipe from my mum's 1960s Kenwood Chefette recipe book called Apple Spice Cake, perfect for this time of year.Although based on a Victoria Sponge cake recipe it contains a good helping of cocoa powder (Green and Blacks preferably) a Bramley Apple cooked to a puree and plump raisins as well as cinnamon, nutmeg and mixed spice.
It is not a quickly prepared cake but worth the fiddling about.
Ingredients
5 ounces SR flour
1 ounce good cocoa
4 ounces butter
4ounces caster sugar
1 large Bramley cooking apple
2 eggs
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon mixed spice.
A handful of raisins
First core and slice the apple leaving the skin in place. Cook in a small amount of water until soft and fluffy. Liquidise (with your Kenwood Chefette liquidiser no doubt) or push pulp through a sieve and allow to cool.
Sift the dry ingredients into a bowl mixing well.
In a separate bowl cream the butter and sugar until pale (using your Kenwood Chef hand mixer and beaters of course) add the eggs one at a time and mixing well. Add half the dry ingredients then the apple puree and raisins then the remaining dry ingredients. Grease and line an 8" tin, fill and bake in a medium oven Gas mark 4 for approximately 40 minutes. Leave to cool then turn out onto a cooling rack.
the original recipe had a chocolate fudge icing to go with it if I remember correctly
but we preferred just a dusting of icing sugar sprinkled on the top.
The Kenwood Chefette, and the recipe book have long gone but I had written the recipe down when I first left home and recently came across it. The Chefette was always an object of amazement at home as my mother didn't go in for gadgets at all and usually baked with a wooden spoon and a Mason Cash mixing bowl. When I was married I was given a Kenwood Chef mixer by my brother in law but never really took to it and just like Mum use a wooden spoon and a mixing bowl ...although I do have to confess a slight hankering for a KitchenAid mixer but suspect I wouldn't actually use that either.
It looks as though the kitchen plastering will finally be done next week and some other kitchen renovation started but more of that later in the week.

No regrets..

The racing green Everhot was relisted on ebay yesterday by the seller and has been sold to someone else, he needed it to be moved by tommorrow and without a van there was no hope of us doing so. Ah well I'm a tiny bit disappointed but not as much as I thought I might be. I'm back on the hunt again for a second hand Everhot. Maybe there is a pretty cream one just waiting somewhere...we'll see!
On a happier note, my CT and Doppler scans came back with no abnormalities. I have one more heart test still to have but I can resume driving as from next weekend! The enforced walking has been good for me but it will be lovely to be able to use the car for longer journeys again.

Drugs, money laundering, or a cooker?

Today was to be the day my son and the friend with the big van drove to pick up my new (second hand) cooker. Almost there the van developed a fault and within minutes was alight and burning hard. They jumped out and retreated to a safe distance and called the emergency services who came along and put what remained of the van out. The police arrived and at some point mention was made of the fortunate recovery of the money (to pay for the cooker) that had been in the glove compartment. Immediate police interest, why did they have said money, what for, who did it belong to etc. My son explained that he was on his way to pick up a cooker for his mum and had the cash with him to pay for it. Could I confirm that, well yes but he wasn't to tell me anything till the police spoke with me. So at just after 12 noon I was in the library when I got a call on my mobile phone, my son was not allowed to talk to me to explain anything despite telling the policeman about my TIAs and heart problems before a police officer began quizzing me about the money.The van had burnt out he said, I asked about my son and friend and was told not to worry about that just to explain why my son had an envelope full of £20 notes in his possession. The lowest point came when the policeman asked if I could identify the driver, he meant give him the driver's name...you can guess what I thought and the tears began to flow, and I have to admit using some quite unladylike language when he explained he just wanted his name, made worse by the fact that it then took me three goes to get it right because I was so upset. Calamity Mane was kind enough to drive me to pick them up from the motorway roundabout and I can honestly say I have never been happier to see them both very much alive, on the drive home I kept looking at the pair of them reassuring myself they really were okay.Thankfully both men are fine, but I have to say that Diesel would not be my choice of name for a fragrance having smelled the two of them! The van is a burnt out shell, the fire apparently spread from a slight smoky smell around the dash to flames engulfing the cab within minutes, they took photos on their mobiles from a safe distance up the banking and they are terrifying. The cooker remains in its original place of residence for the time being, the cooker money is now a sodden mass of singed wet paper (it was saved from total immolation by the metal glovebox and rescued by the firemen) but frankly if it had gone up in smoke I wouldn't have cared so long as they were safe, it is indeed only money.
Edited to add: The Co-op bank were very sweet about the money and accepted the soggy mess back and credited my account fully. The insurance company is sorting out the replacement value of the van and in the interim N is driving my Saab since I'm still unable to use it.

Cinnamon Bun Day

Today was Cinnamon Bun Day (kanelbullens dag) in Sweden, what a splendid idea...a special day for buns!
I planned to make proper Cinnamon buns but discovered that the last two weeks of not doing my own shopping have resulted in a dearth of essentials in the breadmaking cupboard (I'm not complaining, I'm extremely grateful for the shopping my son has been doing while I've been recovering from the TIA, I just don't always remember to ask him to buy things which I'd buy automatically if I was at the shop)so I had to think fast especially as I'd already told Calamity Mane that I was baking and she was on her way over to knit with me. A quick look through the recipe books and I found Cinnamon and Nutella cake which became Cinnamon and Nutella buns. The smell as they were cooking was wonderful and nearly drove the dog insane. They taste pretty good too and are simple to make.
Recipe
6 ounces butter
6 ounces caster sugar, the golden brown type
6 ounces Self Raising flour
3 large eggs
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 tablespoon milk
2 tablespoons Nutella (hazelnut and chocolate spread)
chopped hazelnuts
Cream the sugar and butter until soft and light, add the eggs one at a time, mix in the milk and Nutella beating until well incorporated.Fold in the flour and cinnamon. Spoon into bun papers in a bun (cupcake)tin. Sprinkle chopped hazelnuts on the top. Bake for 15 minutes in a medium oven Gas 4, 180 degrees or 160degrees in a fan oven.
Allow to cool on a wire tray and dust with icing sugar. Not kanelbulle but very tasty all the same!

Jumping for joy

and quaking with terror....I've done it, I bought an Everhot cooker yesterday, secondhand from ebay, unseen. I must be crazy but I'm so excited. I've been obsessed with having a heat storage cooker for years and for the past 12 months have been watching various Agas, Rayburns, Esses and similar cookers sell on ebay. In all that time only three Everhots have come up, the first two were too wide for the available space and sold for ludicrous amounts of money, the third one is the perfect width and also sold for a ludicrous amount of money (apologies to the bank manager)to me yesterday afternoon. It is racing green, yes I know I wanted a cream one but beggars can't be choosers, it is in desperate need of a good clean by the look of the photos ,it has the wooden handles, the newer ones have metal handles like the Aga but I like the wooden handles, it weighs 250kg and is miles away in Bourton on the Water but my lovely son and the owner of the Polar Dog will drive down and bring it back for me.I've thought of a way to sort out the cupboard problem next to where the cooker will go and I'm going to have a warm kitchen this winter. Now I need to go and lie down quietly in a darkened room and calm down.

Domestic Goddess-ity

Yes I know there is no such word but I know what I mean!
After my little stay in hospital and the ensuing "taking it easy" demanded by family and friends I've been feeling very restless. Much of this restlessness centres on the kitchen, still half-stripped and still in need of plastering thanks to the plasterer who very sweetly said he didn't think it right to make any more mess in my kitchen while I was in hospital. My CT and Doppler scans will be done next week and hopefully then I can get back to stripping the walls and getting the replastering done assuming nothing too serious is found. I'm still havering over what to do about the cooker... and the badly designed corner cupboard next to it that you can't open properly because the door hits the handle of the cooker. I would love an AGA (correction I'd love to be able to afford an AGA) but accept that without major alterations to the layout (and robbing a bank or finding a rich husband) that isn't even a possibility. Alternatively an Everhot cooker would do the same job, costs less (we're talking relatively here, it's still a small fortune)it would keep the kitchen warm at a fraction of the cost and is smaller (or larger, they do 60cm, 90cm, 100cm, 120cm and 150cm wide models)than the AGA. The 60 cm would nominally fit in the space that the old cooker would leave with a bit of cupboard surgery.
Mulling over the options was making me decidedly irritable so I decided to clean out the kitchen drawers and attempt to mend the one that keeps falling apart. The piece which should hold the drawer front to the drawer is broken on one side and will need to be replaced, no driving allowed so no quick trip to the DIY shop for new piece but I have managed a temporary repair and moved the drawer to the bottom of the unit where it won't be used as frequently. That done I needed to change the contents of the drawers around so what better time to take everything out, clean them and rearrange the contents neatly.
After a happy and not too strenuous afternoon folding tablecloths and napkins and polishing silver fish knives and forks(why I keep these I have no clue except that they were my Mother's and she kept them clean and polished so I can't quite bring myself to take them to a charity shop...does anyone still use a separate set of cutlery for fish)I may not have solved the cooker problem but feel reassured that I can find a clean tea-towel or a Paddington Bear shaped biscuit cutter at a moments notice and should fish-eating visitors demand the correct cutlery it is there shining brightly ready for use!