Saturday 4th November

 I was wrong about yesterday - there was a tiny incident...

I went outside in between the rain showers and discovered a huge bumble bee struggling slowly across the patio. It didn't look at all happy. I have no idea if I killed or cured it, but I persuaded it onto a piece of cardboard where I had put a little drip of runny honey. It crept toward it, and then I saw it  stick its long thin black tongue into the honey and start eating, or maybe drinking it. After a minute it clearly wanted to move on, so I carefully deposited it into a pot with leaves and left it alone.

Bombus lapidarius, red-tailed bee - I looked it up on the internet later. 

I had forgotten about the bee until I came to write up my 'end of day' diary.

It's about this time of year that I start getting all anxious about Christmas cakes. Most recipes are for HUGE cakes, and when I tried to scale them down they never turned out quite right. 'too sweet' or 'too dry' or 'too soggy' or 'not dark enough'.....Delia Smith's recipe included! we have never yet bought a Christmas Cake from a shop that lived up to our hopes and dreams.

I looked back to my Common Place Book entries for November 2021, the last time I made a serious attempt at Christmas Cake. 

Today, I have thrown caution to the winds and embarked upon - let's not call it a Christmas Cake yet. I have tried making the well-hyped '3-ingredient Christmas Cake' which is all over the internet. It was unimpressive, and indeed I wonder how it could be rich and sticky and dark and delicious as the original recipe called for a can of iced coffee (!), dried fruit and SR flour. No fat, no eggs, no spice, no almonds, no lemon or orange zest, NO BOOZE?

So what am I making? A different version, culled from the internet (will I ever learn? Unlikely) and made a slow cooker 3-ingredient 'Christmas Cake'. A 'first draft'. I used the last of the plum shrub and some English Breakfast Tea as the liquid. The plum shrub is now a dark, sloe-coloured and potent liquid. I added a chunk of butter and melted that lot together, with the dried fruit. You are supposed to just mix the liquids and fruit and leave them overnight; I heated them in the microwave and left them to cool a bit, Then I added the self raising flour, plus a few ounces of ground almonds that needed using and a decent amount of mixed spice.

I did feel a little more confident with this recipe (probably misplaced) as it is scaled for a small slow cooker like mine.

It's just had 2 hours on high in the slow cooker, the pot being rotated through 90 degrees every half hour to avoid any hot spots, and I shall report back tomorrow.         

Himself was not well yesterday - not ill, exactly, but just not on top form. This was entirely confirmed when he took the unusual step of wrapping himself up in a rug all morning. He's improved today, thank heavens, but taking it easy. It has certainly concentrated my mind on how much I depend on him for every day matters. 

The Great Bedroom Upheaval schedule for this weekend is to tackle the Giant Paper Pile in the corner of the bedroom

(Something has gone awry with the perspective of the desk...) There is a defunct computer (we have several of those) topped by a teetering pile of letters etc that need filing/shredding, with more on the desk, more beside the desk, more on the little cabinet and shelves.... Unfortunately this is not a job I can do as they are not my papers! (My paper heaps are downstairs - people who live in glass houses should not throw stones....)

I'm hoping that BB will be sufficiently recovered that enough can be cleared so that The Enormous Challenge of Task Three 3 is possible - involving 2 chests or drawers with bookshelves over, and the dismantling and rebuilding of our bed with head and foot reversed. But I seriously don't want to over-reach what is possible.