Best laid plans

I started the weekend thinking that I was very close to being done with a knitting project, and if I just concentrated a little I could finish it. I'd have my first finished object of 2010 in January, and wouldn't that be jolly?

Then I proceeded to do absolutely no knitting at all. Aft a'gley doesn't even been to describe it. Oh well.

Instead I read a little -- I am carefully sectioning out The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie in the same way I strictly ration a chocolate orange. It is exactly the sort of thing I love, and if I don't force myself to take a disciplined approach I will gorge on it.

Not that there's anything wrong with gorging on a book or the occasional chocolate orange, you understand, except I'm never very happy with myself after I've done it.

I cooked a lot; most of it not very exciting but several nice straightforward daily meals in succession, which is not something I pull off very often. Cooking every day is hard work, no matter what the cookbook writers or TV chefs say, and when one is also holding down a 40-hour/week office job, sometimes things slide.

I did make a couple things worth discussing, notably a butterscotch pear upside-down cake.



The idea for this was stolen shamelessly from A Wee Bit of Cooking, and like the cake there, the sponge is stolen --shamelessly-- from Delia Smith. I halved the recipe and converted the measurements to American ones; click through to Flickr for the bigger picture and the details.

I got a step closer to really good fish tacos, and also made my great-grandmother's Welsh rabbit recipe. The Welsh rabbit really deserves a post of its own, with photos and everything, so I'll save that for later.