Reading Roundup and date nut official trials

 Quite a bit of my reading these days is electronic, what with the bother of having to make appointments to pick up physical books, and then driving a fair distance to pick up, just lazy, me.

So, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norell is back off my Kindle and at the library again. I already borrowed and renewed twice and I'm still only halfway through.

 I'll have to try again when I get to the top of the waitlist again. Can't renew when others are waiting. This book is good, but long enough it feels like a part time job.

Meanwhile, The Gown, Jennifer Robson, thank you, Dogonart, was very good. It's a really well written, easy read, taking in post ww2 britain, embroidery for Princess elizabeth's wedding dress, with forays into Toronto, some streets I knew, having been there, occupied France, sad reflections on Jewish suffering, all woven together very well. A bit of a quest and a mystery, too. Plenty of triumph. A couple of unlikely scenarios, but even if unlikely, they're things that ought to happen, so there! The history and social life are very well researched, I do like accuracy. I read this as an ebook.

And The Amateur Marriage,an Anne Tyler from quite a while ago, is as engrossing as she always is, based, as often,  in Baltimore with a bit of California thrown in, and a three generation saga.  The characters are never confusing even though we end up with many of them,  very well written. Audiobook, well performed.

And I continue with the audiobook Spoils of Poynton, a long, leisurely Henry James, unfolding slowly and you have to slow down to match the pace. Worth it. One of the classics I'm catching up on. Since I read print at warp speed, it's good to be slowed down to really appreciate the writing. 

Speaking of slowing down, that date nut bread has definitely improved with sitting. I made labneh for a spread, to be authentic, since it used to be a New York favorite with cream cheese. 

The tartness of the labneh is really good against the sweetness of the dates.

Still not sure all the prep was worth it, nearly as much fuss as a Christmas fruit cake. It did however use the little container of good leftover coffee I'd frozen a while back thinking there would probably eventually be a cake to use this in. I found the container when I did the Freezer Winnowing. So there's that.

If you have books to recommend, please do! Always open to suggestions.

Date nut bread, better be worth it

 Since it's raining today, not good for walking, but good for baking, I made a date nut bread thing.

It was a pretty fancy recipe, with about 12 ingredients, including a slug of vodka!  They claim it's about flavor, but I wonder if it's just to keep  the cook going, if she takes a nip in the process.  Anyway, it's a pretty high maintenance bread/cake. I don't do spirits, so that was absent.

 I buttered and oiled the castiron skillet again, since it's great for cakes and I wondered if my square pan would be big enough for this fairly extensive recipe.

As I say, high maintenance.  I think recipes ought to come with charts showing how many bits of kit you need in the course of making them.  This is just the dishes from this recipe, the three mixing bowls already washed and put away to make room in the sink for the ever growing pile of equipment.

Compare this to the total of the equipment above, including pot, needed for my giant loaf of bread. Just sayin.

Anyway, back to the date nut bread, which used almost all my high-end dates from Misfits, and nearly all my midrange walnuts from ShopRite. Also the three mixing bowls you see in the background here. There's also a tinfoil hat it required after thirty minutes so as not to get too brown.

I had to take it out of the pan in two halves, since though it was willing to come out easily, my wrist isn't strong enough to hold up the iron pan complete with cake in one hand, tip it onto the other and then to the cooling rack.  I started then decided that way madness lay. So I halved it and lifted it out without incident.  And cut a slice to try.  The texture is very nice, all the ingredients nicely distributed. Looks moist. So I took a bite.

Hm. Maybe this is the sort of cake that needs to mature a bit for the flavors to work.  Right now, it's okay, but it tastes a bit random.  And I'm not at all sure it was worth all the time and effort.  I think the simple sweet potato bread was better.  This one may benefit from cream cheese, though, since a lot of people like to spread it on.  For that I need yogurt which I don't currently have. So we'll see. I satisfied my curiosity, but I'm not sure this is a hill to die on.

I wonder if you can use cooked beets in cake? it would certainly make a nice rosy color.  Hm. Maybe I'll investigate that next. In a while.

Date Nut Bread and No Looking Back

Possibly the last baking of the year, a date nut bread thing.  Some now reposing in the freezer for the next invitee to afternoon tea.  Some in the fridge for me to eat at whatever meal I think fits.  Could be breakfast, late night, mid afternoon, no rules on this.

Showing you here in the cast iron pan I swear by for baking.  I took a slice out to show you the crumb, nice texture, and to demonstrate how cleanly it comes out of the pan.  

The recipe is adapted from the one I use for my trusty standby banana bread, from the Sunset recipe book from the 90s, held together with masking tape and rubber bands.  Instead of bananas, which I didn't have, I used dates, which I did.  I'd already done all the work on soaking (they were dried), boiling and pitting, for the roast veg dish I did for Christmas, so they were ready to go.

Added in a handful of crushed walnuts.  And the last spoonful of homemade cranberry sauce. And, since the dates weren't as moist as bananas, I added in a sploosh of milk.  Worked fine. Those books that tell you you can't experiment with baking are all wet.  You can, within sane limits, substitute practically anything for anything.  Liquid for liquid, solid for solid, I mean by sanity.

And this is likely to be the last entry in Field and Fen for the year. But I am not going to do the thing I really dislike about end of year stuff, the lookback.  For one thing, I have a terrible memory for what happened when and where and to whom, and I have a massive aversion to looking back.  Life is forward movement to me. I do study history, largely to inform myself of the origins of what's up now, not just for nostalgia.  And when it comes to blogs, we can all scroll back if we want to see that stuff again!

The Dollivers point out that it would be good to look back and note all the stuff I failed to make for them, but that's a different sort of lookback. And I pointed out that dolls with new silk dresses have no standing to complain about what else they should have, neener.

The other thing is that is makes me feel really tired to look back over what I've done, and the more I've done, the tireder I get.  I read yet another book about writing a journal recently, since I often wonder if it's a good thing. I have never succeeded in writing more than a couple of little entries.  But some people have a shelf full of journals, their lives chronicled right there.  As they say, it's just the kind of thing you like, if you like that kind of thing.  For me, it's exhaustion on a shelf.  But I like to read about it, anyway. 

A friend of mine, now departed, used to say she loved watching DIY on HGTV.  Not that she wanted ever to do it, just liked watching other people working!  That's me and journals.

However, moaning aside, I do want to wish you, and all of us, a wonderful New Year, hoping for better things for many of my friends for whom this has been a very hard year.  

Take care of you, first, remember the oxygen tip.  Then your nearest and dearest, including your animal friends.  And thank you everyone who has emailed, commented, texted, written, and been in touch as a result of reading my blogs!  I'm honored that you do this, and I treasure every word from you.