Sunday

Two bakes on Sunday. I found another recipe for chocolate chip cookies that uses the ‘make a dough log, pop it in the fridge (or freezer), slice it and bake it’ technique. The dough for this recipe was stiffer as I prepared it, and the ratio of chocolate to mixture was less than last week’s. The baking time is also almost double that of previous recipes, so unsurprisingly they are a much crispier cookie. I’m planning on taking the best bits of each of the three recipes, to make my ideal ‘comfort cookies’.

Inspired by last week’s Great British Bake Off, I found Paul Hollywood’s soda bread recipe and decided to give that a go. I didn’t have enough Buttermilk for the full recipe, so I scaled it down to being two thirds. I got a bit carried away with the slashes across the top but I rather like it looking like one of those paper fortune tellers that we made as children.

Monday

I started a new Future Learn course on Building human connection in a digital world. I thought this might be relevant and helpful to me as I work and socialise from home on various different sized screens of glowing light. It’s a two-week course, so feels manageable. So far it’s not quite hitting the spot for me, but I’m willing to continue with it as it’s such a short course.

Wednesday

Another online book launch event. This time for Clare Balding’s new book Heroic Animals with her being interviewed by Fi and Jane (of Fortunately fame). Three lovely ladies chatting intelligently. So enjoyable to watch and chuckle along with.

Friday

Richard and I visited Fabrica together to see their new exhibition Earthworks. It’s restricted to 12 people at a time, so I had lots of space to allow myself to be absorbed into the projection and soundscape. Glorious.

Saturday

The first outdoor use of the dog-carrying rucksack we’ve added to our collection of dog-related paraphernalia. Skitters still needs to rest to try and allow her body to heal her collapsed disc as much as possible. But her brain still needs a workout to help keep her energy at a manageable level. And we want to go to interesting places. So this seemed like a reasonable compromise. We’ve been getting her used to it at home over the past couple of weeks. But Saturday was our first “in the wild” attempt. And she was terrific about it. She climbed in lured by a carrot. And then sat down and sniffed her way along the 20 minutes or so she was in it.

I tried another scone recipe from the book. This time I went with apple and raisin, as it felt like an autumnal recipe. The scones looked a great colour and were enjoyed warm with butter (well marg actually) as suggested by the book.

For more Try Something New posts, and the explanation of this project/intention, visit this page.