It’s only a rough guideline

I am extremely tired. It’s one of those horrible tireds that makes me slightly weepy and very, very thick headed. I cannot get my words out properly. I have resorted to gesticulating and saying the word ‘thingy’ a lot.  This is never great.  Stupid tired. Lovely. 

I am not getting on with my anti-grinding brace guard thing.  I wore it the night before last, and at some point in the night, which I don’t remember at all, I obviously decided it was rubbish, and took it out.  I woke up sans guard.  I put it in last night and it hurt my gum again. I immediately took it out.  I must ring the dentist and take it back for him to grind at some more. Only I don’t really want to, so I didn’t do it today.  Which is very naughty.  It has cost me £300.  It could be the most expensive and ugly bit of plastic I will ever own.  I will give myself a stern pep talk and do it tomorrow. Honestly.

On top of being bothered by the anti-grinding guard, Oscar has been waking up with nightmares and being too hot, and I have been working until the wee small hours.  I am surviving on about five hours sleep a night at the moment.  It is beginning to catch me up. I need more.  About a week I think.

This morning I also realised that I should have gone to the doctors yesterday for my MRI scan results.  Only I forgot because I was with son of chicken pox, the revenge.  I rang them to apologise and she said: ‘but your appointment was for Friday,’ to which I replied: ‘Well, I cannot blame my son for that because he didn’t have chicken pox then. I can only apologise for being a half wit.’ Luckily she was fine with me being a half wit and told me over the phone that my scan results were normal, so I don’t have to go in anyway. Phew.

I worked last night.  I worked on and off again all day.  I do not like this work thing.  It is far too regular and demands that I be articulate and functioning and organised.  This is very, very hard for a woman who has developed scattiness to a fine art over the years.  I feel like a husk.

Oscar is still sprouting the odd pox.  There is absolutely no hope that he will be in nursery on Thursday and Friday.  I am very sad about this.  There is only one more week to go before the summer holidays and then I will not get any time off from the children again.  Because I will be home schooling Tilly for the forseeable future  I am doomed. Doomed I tells ya.  I’m hoarding up the time I have off and writing everything down. Soon it will be but a dim and distant memory.

In other news I did make myself laugh today.  Every week I religiously buy a bunch of delicious ingredients from Ocado and have them delivered.  Every week there is no plan, no forethought, nothing.  I just go: ‘Oh that looks nice!’ or ‘Oh! That’s on offer.’ etc.  Then depending on how hungry I am I either order loads of stuff or not enough stuff and so it goes.  Yesterday I had a huge order delivered but totally forgot bread, bacon and olives.  Three things that we eat rather a lot of .  Today I realised I am down to the last dregs of washing powder, again something we use a lot.  Hopeless.

On the other hand I did buy some duck breasts because they were on offer.  I have cooked duck approximately twice in my life.  The first time I made a kind of oriental casserole from Nigel Slater’s Kitchen Diaries (my favourite cookbook ever).  It was marvellous, except that I didn’t realise that my casserole dish did not do hobs as well as ovens, and it exploded all over the top of the hob and I nearly ended up with a large shard of ceramic tureen embedded in the top of my head.  The second time, I cooked it again. This time with a proper casserole dish, and it was fantastic, rich, aromatic and toothsome.

This time I had no idea what to do with the duck.  Hence me rummaging around the cookery book shelf at six o’clock this evening muttering and cursing.  I ended up with a recipe from Gordon Ramsay’s Sunday Lunch (a surprisingly good book).  It was for duck breast with gooseberry sauce and wilted greens.  I thought: ‘that will do’, and set about it.

Firstly I realised I didn’t have any gooseberries.  I did however have some cherries.  I de-stoned them, plonked them in a pan with some honey and balsamic vinegar and reduced them.  You were supposed to use sugar and red wine.  I didn’t have any of those things either.

Then I realised I didn’t have any Szechuan peppercorns to make a crust for the duck.  I substituted ordinary, common or garden peppercorns.  I sliced the duck into bite sized pieces like it showed you in the photograph, only to read that I was supposed to do this after I had roasted it down in its own fat in the oven.  Damn!

I threw the jigsaw of duck into the bottom of the roasting pan, sprinkled it with salt and pepper and whacked it in the oven.

I then came to the startling conclusion that I had no spring greens.  I sent Tilly down the garden to forage amongst the lettuces.  We had four sorts of lettuce and some pak choi.  I wilted them in butter instead.

We had it with baby new potatoes and peas.

It was bloody lovely.

And nothing at all like the recipe.

I do this all the time.  I think that the recipe books are mostly for kindly tips and a bit of off hand guidance.  I cannot remember the last time I had everything for a recipe out of a cookery book, even when I have on the rare occasion actually decided to make something and then gone out specifically to buy the ingredients.  I always forget something.  Always.

Still, they ate it and nobody has yet died.

A cooking seal of approval, no?