Ungleblarg*
The ME has been an ungleblarg** for two days now. I managed to stave it off a little bit yesterday because I wanted to go to my voice lesson*** but when the adrenaline of that encounter wore off I was a jellyfish.†
I’ve been squashy, semi-transparent and tentacled†† all day today. So let’s have a recipe. The blueberry season is starting over here. I’ve done my moan about domestic English blueberries as compared to wild Maine blueberries before. But even fat slow mild-mannered English blueberries are better than nothing.
Blueberry bread
¼ c lightly salted soft butter
1 ¾ c all purpose flour, although replacing about half a cup with wholemeal/whole wheat is good
1 T baking powder
½ c ordinary white sugar
1 large egg
1/3 c apple juice
¼ c port wine †††
2 c blueberries
Add dry to butter, smush well. Add egg, juice, and port, and beat smooth with your little electric mixer. Gently stir in blueberries. Pour in greased and floured 8” loaf pan; 350° about an hour. Let cool before you turn it out of the tin, and it’ll slice easier if you refrigerate it first. (Then toast it and put butter on it.)
And, just by the way, the apple-cornmeal muffins which are already in Playing with Your Food are good with blueberries. Replace the chopped apple with blueberries and use orange juice—and what’s really killer is if you use blue corn flour.
* * *
* Well, I’ve been overusing ‘frell’.
** And ‘ratbag’
*** There was also a dentist involved. Mr Prufrock may have measured out his life in coffee spoons^ but I am measuring out mine in dentists. Garrrgh. This was a needle-and-drill free visit however. Sometimes when there’s nothing too urgent going on they just bring you in to take new x rays and then threaten and menace you. What do I know about x rays? See that grey spot on the x ray? they say forebodingly. Sure. It could be the technician’s thumbprint or the ghost of Elvis trying to get a message through.^^
^ . http://www.bartleby.com/198/1.html +
+ This is a great poem. I don’t care how clichéd it is or that the Sugababes have set it to music for their new album~ or that they’ve figured out a way to sell toothpaste with it or whatever. It’s a great poem. It interests me too that I liked it when I was 19 and I still like it at 57. And it’s about getting old. I perhaps understand the bemusement of the narrator better than I did (almost) forty years ago.
There hasn’t been any great poetry written about having ME though.
~ Now that really will be the end of their career
^^ Saying, Please! I’m dead! Leave me alone!
† I was a jellyfish on a piano stool. I realised that one of the things during my lesson that went Awfully Wrong—more Awfully Wrong than I was expecting—is that at home I’ve been singing Sebben Cruller and Panis Andronicus phrase by phrase and then stopping to regroup. I’m stopping to regroup because, Euterpe knows, I need to stop to regroup—because I’m trying to sing the wretched thing if not right, then let’s say recognisably, which is all very well except that this plan leaves me dreadfully unprepared for being dragged through it bar after bar after bar after bar by the sergeant-major on the piano. At home when I break down, my accompanist breaks down too.
†† And gosh don’t I sting
††† And please don’t believe all the nonsense about cheap wine being okay for cooking. Sure, it’s okay for cooking if you don’t care how your cooking tastes. You don’t have to buy top of the line, but you need to use something you wouldn’t mind drinking neat.
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