Today I made puff pastry, a feat I had only attempted once before in my short yet poignant life. It was Helpdesk Man’s idea: he wants me to learn how to make custard squares. Always the champion of my self-improvement, that man.
If you’ve never made puff pastry, I warn you the process is quite daunting. It requires, among other things, shaping the pastry into a Maltese cross, folding it into an origami crane and scoring a reverse swastika on the base, while throwing salt over your left shoulder and pounding the butter with the scapular of a virgin. I’m not sure mine is all it should be - I think I turned the pastry nor’-nor’-east instead of nor’-nor’-west after its second chilling and muffed the hospital corners - but we will not find out until tomorrow, because tonight the oven was occupied with making little punkin loaves for a coworker of Helpdesk Man. (Eagle-eyed readers may notice* that I made this same item last week for the same coworker. I did, but she omitted to pick them up through a technological malfunction and we ate them during the week. Such is life.)
On the cancer front, apparently Muv’s doctors have piffled to a halt with the vague consensus that the cancer is probably all gone and they may not need to remove the thyroid after all. Which is a bit of an anticlimax, but there can be worse things in life, like having your unsuspecting thyroid torn from its parent gullet.** Anyway I hope all is well; that is, I hope they are basing their she’ll-be-right attitude on Medical Science and not, say, a golfing tournament. (”Wait, didn’t we have Mother the Magnificent on the 19th? Thyroid thing. Curses. Wait… how much of that malignant cyst did we remove? Ehhh, it’ll do. She’s a tough nut.”)
*Or not, because I can’t remember if I actually blogged about it. I blog a lot in my mind, sometimes. It’s called, um, thinking.
**Sorry, Mother.
AprilElf Says: