Kitchen Alchemy

As a child my first encounter with sugar came when my dad slipped a chocolate under both my sister’s and my pillows while we were asleep. I woke up and found the chocolate and ate it immediately. My sister was still asleep at that point, so I got out of bed, retrieved her chocolate, and ate that too. This early acquired obsession led me to an exploration of sugary after school delights, in the absence of my parents of course! My favourite, for sheer ease of access, was the chocolate sprinkles jar. Step one: remove lid. Step two: pour contents into mouth. Repeat until satiated. I tried this one on my little brother recently. Since I’m a grown up and he’s not, I think he was shocked by my childish behaviour! Another favourite after school snack was Milo mud. You get a glass, half fill it with Milo, drip some fresh milk into and mix it until it forms a thick, pasty mud. Then you eat it with a spoon. I also liked making sherbet – only I didn’t bother with the excessive sift...

An anonymous reader left a message saying they'd over cooked their fruit cake, so I thought I'd add some more on this topic. Firstly, I want to say that where cooking is concerned, let your intuition be your guide. Begin with the aroma of the thing you're cooking - in this instance, the fruit cake. Your cake will release its aroma as it begins to reach completion. That's the time to start checking on its progress! 1. Check the surface of the cake. Is it shiny? Is it sticky? These indicate it's not yet cooked. 2. Pierce the centre with a skewer, pushing all the way to the bottom of the tin. Draw the skewer out and check for raw cake mix. If the skewer is clean, the cake is cooked. 3. Is time up? I've found all my fruit cakes require the full cooking time. I then give them an extra 15 minutes, just to be sure. 4. Is the aroma making you want to get out a Christmas tree and decorate it? Do you feel like bursting out into song? Namely, Christmas carols? If ...

I’ve mentioned my first cat, Bill, and I’ve mentioned my current furry friend, Derek, but I think I have completely overlooked Angus, the gorgeous ginger manx who came to live with us when I was seventeen years old. Angus came to us via Vesna, a girl at school who lived on a farm out near Ludenham. She spread the word at school that she was giving away kittens, and I thought my sister, who had just moved in with her boyfriend, was in desperate need of a little kitty kat. It took some time for Angus to be handed over – he was the last of the litter, and the runt to boot. His mother kept taking him off and hiding him in the paddock because she didn’t want to lose her last baby. Never the less, Vesna arrived at school one day with Angus in a box. He hadn’t been weaned yet, so I had to take him to Mrs Knoffs, an art teacher and a well known animal lover, who helped me show Angus how to drink milk from a saucer. He was a sweet little ginger and white angel who attended French class (he...