Lo-text hi-cal Monday
I got up this morning possibly a little later than I meant to*. The fact that once or twice I opened my eyes long enough to look out the window which was a solid grey blur** was not encouraging and with a pillow over my head I don’t have to hear the rain. Finally had to get out of bed because I started thinking which is fatal to sleep.
It was still raining.
I washed all the dishes.***
It was still raining.
I swept the floor.
It was still raining. The forecast had said there would be breaks in the rain. Well, it slows down a little occasionally. I haven’t seen any breaks.
I hoovered the floor.
It was still raining.
I took the hoover apart to see if I could figure out why the little flexy-hose thing that you get into the corners with has no suck. Discovered plug of hellhound hair in the weird ill-designed elbow of connection between the hose and the hoover, pulled it out with a shout of triumph, put hoover back together and . . . the hose still has no suck.
And it was still raining.
By this point it was getting hard to move around because I had hellhounds welded to various parts of my anatomy making muted but persistent noises of the our-sphincter-control-is-magnificent-but-we-would-like-to-go-out-please-no-not-the-back-garden-are-you-kidding-it’s-ankle-deep-out-there† variety.
The weather report had said that the day would improve. And—lo—there was an actual beam of sunlight. I can sure see how sun worship started. So I flung harnesses on hellhounds and we leaped forth.
About ten minutes later the sky cracked like a vase and the water started streaming—no, oceaning—down. Even turning around and bolting for home we were Beyond Wet by the time we arrived—we had discovered a new dimension of wetness. This is the kind of rain that laughs at Goretex. Chaos, who has a slight turn for the dramatic, was convinced that he had been damaged by being that wet. Darkness merely wanted to know why I don’t do something about it. I bundled them into the car and we went down to the mews, where there’s more usable space for fidgeting.
And we fidgeted.
By this time it was the middle of the afternoon and we all wanted our lunch. Except that we didn’t want our lunch because WE HADN’T HAD OUR HURTLE YET.
Eventually we went out in light rain.
And then had lunch, listening to the rain on the windows. Have I mentioned the wind?
We went squishily out again this evening. But it was barely raining at all. There was even a hazy moon. Made hazier by the light rain on my glasses.
The weather report says ‘a band of heavy rain will move in over night to reach all areas by morning’.
I need chocolate. And we haven’t had a recipe in forever.
Mint Brownies
1 pan’s worth of your favourite brownie recipe.†† Don’t use nuts, and do use a few drops of good peppermint oil. †††
Mint icing: 1 ½ c icing sugar
6 T soft slightly salted butter
Handful of crushable peppermint candy. Which you duly whack to crumbs with your rolling pin. The availability of crushable peppermint candy varies, I find, especially if you’re a nut case like me and want it organic and no weird dyes. I’ve had excellent results using sugar cubes and a few more drops of peppermint oil. Mix in a bowl and let sit while you make the brownies. Then when you’re ready to put the icing together, smash the cubes. You want it a little lumpy. Don’t put it in the blender.
Do the usual smushed-together icing thing with the confectioner’s sugar and the butter, and then when it’s all nice and smooth stir in the almost-crushed candy.
Spread on your pan of (cold) brownies. Put it in the refrigerator for the icing to set and melt about half a bar (50g) of Green & Black’s dark chocolate (or equivalent) and drizzle it over. You can melt a little butter in with the chocolate to make it smoother if you like.
Alternatively, if you’re feeling seriously in the need of cheering up, make the icing with 1 c sugar and 4 t butter, and then just barely melt an entire bar of G&B’s mint chocolate. Now their mint chocolate is dark chocolate with drooly mint centres. So this takes a little agility. My most successful attempt(s) involve using a biggish pan with a heavy flat bottom and breaking up the chocolate into its individual squares, warming it gently, while standing over it like an alchemist expecting gold, and the MOMENT it starts to go soft and lose its shape, whip it over to your brownies, dump it out, and rub it around with a knife. ‡ You want a nice swirl of icing, chocolate, and runny mint. Note: even if the result looks a little funny, it’ll still taste great. Supposing you wanted mint brownies in the first place, which I assume you did, if you’ve got this far.
Maybe the weather will change its mind.
* * *
* I was reading Elizabeth Moon’s HUNTING PARTY last night and I kept just wanting to know what happens. . . .
** Yes, all right, without my glasses on everything is a solid blur, but it doesn’t have to be grey.
*** Not that there were all that many. Two powerful reasons for eating as many meals^ as possible at the mews: Peter doesn’t merely do the cooking, he can’t bear not to do the cooking^^, and he has the dishwasher.
^ human and hellhound
^^ He’s sort of an interesting house guest.
† This is on gravel, mind you. The hellhounds’ courtyard is gravel.
†† I can recommend ‘gooey brownies’ already on Playing with Your Food
††† Be sure you get food quality. I believe a good aromatherapy peppermint is also edible, but check. Also peppermint oil varies in strength and flavour quite a lot, so you’ll have to experiment. But be careful—generally speaking a little bit goes a long way.
‡ I almost forgot. If you rub the tiniest smidgen of butter over the bottom of your pan first–just enough to slick the way for the chocolate–you raise your chances of success considerably.
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