Mavis, before she left for university, had a cake business, which led to a significant amount of my kitchen cupboard space being occupied by ingredients and icing tools, cake tins and other fancy equipment. My worktop bore a food mixer in the proportion of those seen on Bake Off, and leaning against the wall in one corner was, and is, an ENORMOUS bag of self-raising flour, so large it has a plastic handle on top to aid lifting it.
As soon as she went, I reclaimed some of the space, sorting and boxing nozzels and washing and stacking tins, turntables and trays.
Now, Mavis is home from university. This means that the cake making, pudding planning and confectionary purchasing has begun once more. Christmas activities such as cup-cake decoration and the making of gingerbread Christmas jumpers took over from, well, nothing much really. My activities in the kitchen are minimal now. Whizz is indifferent to food and dinner parties are a thing of the past – for now at least.
This is the reason why the flour in the cupboard (not the bag on the floor which is, as yet, unopened) had turned from snowy white to an unpleasant buff colour. I tipped it straight into the outside food bin, and Mavis used a more recent purchase (still not the one on the floor) to make many cup cakes. Of course this was just what we needed on top of the mince pies, Christmas pudding, chocolate Christmas pudding, salted caramel Christmas pudding, lemon torte, cheesecake and chocolate gateau.
I will pause here to explain that today, on Chrismas Eve, we have already celebrated Christmas. We snuck it in before lock-down, hence the fact that I can highly recommend the 30 day matured Christmas pudding from Aldi. It packed a very alcoholic kick, which I have never before experienced in a shop bought Chrismas pud. This kick was enhanced by my three attepts to get it to the table with the brandy still flaming.
Back to the story: We now have two dogs in our household, the second belongs to our lodger, Beamish, whose dog. Grabber is as interested in food as our own, and, it has to be said, less polite about it.
But at this point I’d like to refer you back to a previous post about the greed of our dog, Milo, and Milo’s preoccupation with gaining access to the food bin, which he still has…
So grateful that the above mentioned, enormous bag of flour is still white.