Lucy and Jack are coming today, and I have made a cake.
I am at work now, and they have not yet arrived. I have taken a slice of the cake with me to work, because obviously it needed to be sampled. Also I know from general public cake-eating events that people are reluctant to take a slice from an untouched cake, and so I cut a slice for my picnic and left the rest on the side for Lucy and Jack.
It is a special cake, because I am trying to become thinner, and so it is a special Being Thin cake. It has neither butter, nor sugar, nor flour.
It is a mark of how much my diet has changed that I have even considered that this might be appealing. This time last year I would as soon have eaten one of my own socks as such an unattractive confectionery prospect. However, the recipe flashed up on Facebook last night whilst I was entering these very pages therein. I do not read Facebook these days, because of it being full of inaccurate twaddle, but I have been trying so hard to become thin that even pictures of cake are appealing, and so I scrolled on.
In fact the Facebook thing was nonsense, a few lines of recipe and you could only get the rest if you clicked on a load of advertising bunkum. I did not click on it, but read about other people’s frustration in the comments. Instead I investigated the rest of the mighty Internet, and within a moment or two I had the original recipe.
Basically you mix oatmeal with carrot, apple, eggs and a load of dried fruit. More or less. There are other details, like vanilla essence and chopped apricots, but that is about it, if anybody wants the recipe just let me know and I will send it. As it happened, when I read it I realised that I had all of the ingredients in the cupboards, and so thought that when I came back from my walk this morning I would give it a go.
I made the mistake of following the instructions to the letter. I have always been a bit wary of the possibility of internet fraudsters and recipes, ever since the Scottish fudge disaster some years ago. This one was not fraudulent, but if I make it again I will do it my own way, because it used up just about every bowl and utensil in the kitchen, instead of just one bowl and a wooden spoon, which is the way I like my recipes.
I shoved it in the oven whilst I took the dogs to the vet, which is always a bit of a risk. If there had been a queue or one of them had been an idiot then I would have been late and it would have burned, but as it happened it was all right. They were going for their annual massively expensive vaccinations. I have been saving up for these for some time. Rather to my surprise, and also to the vet’s, they were brilliantly well behaved, and stayed at my heels so obediently that I was beginning to wonder if they were sickening for something when we got into the surgery. They spoiled it then by remembering that the vet keeps a bag of dog treats and jumping about as if the floor had suddenly become too hot, but apart from that they were fine.
It was a new vet. I liked him very much. He wasn’t in the least patronising and said that they were the best behaved dogs he had seen all day, which means he must have had a complete performing circus passing through.
We rushed home and were in time for the cake, which to my utter astonishment looked exactly like the one in the picture on the mighty internet, and I am pleased to say, tastes splendid, a bit like a fruity sort of omelette. Well, I think it tastes splendid, but it is months and months since I have eaten anything bad for me, so perhaps my tastebuds have changed.
I made some more pancakes then, which was something else I picked up in the same cyber-surfing session. Somebody suggested making pancake mix by adding cottage cheese to the eggs and chopping it all up in the blender. Since I had just used the blender I thought I might as well make the most of it before it needed washing, so I had a go at that as well. For the record, they taste splendid but are a bit more collapsible than the normal type of pancake.
So I have got a cupboard full of nice things to eat, which is always a very welcome state of affairs.
I am going to leave you and eat some cake.
