Alarm and cookery
9 November 2024 09:27 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlodeMy alarm clock has failed to go off for the last three days in a row, with assortedly unfortunate consequences. It has been temperamental for a long time, but I thought I knew its ways; the old tricks no longer seem to work. And I'm reluctant to try replacing the battery *again*, which is what seemed to fix the problem last time, because it doesn't seem all that long ago, I no longer have a spare C cell and the body of the clock is securely taped up with brown tape to hold it together since the catch no longer functions after it fell off my bedside table one too many times about fifteen years ago -- when I put it like that, it does seem like time to replace it! But it still functions perfectly well as a *clock*, and I inherently dislike throwing things out while some use can still be squeezed out of them... The trouble is that every time I have set it in order to test the alarm, it rings as expected, but every time I actually need it to go off, it hasn't. And since I'm currently going to bed between 2 and 5am, I rather rely on being forcibly awoken.
(Today I think I went to bed around 2am and woke at half-past eight, which was unfortunately the time I needed to be actually leaving the house if I were to get to market and make my later appointment as well; I had set the alarm for ten to eight. The moment I touched it in order to cancel the now useless alarm, it rang...)
I suppose the sensible thing to do is to swap it for the 'guest' alarm clock, which so far as I know still works. It doesn't have the more advanced features of a light so that you can read it if you wake if in the dark, or a 'snooze' button (somewhat abused by me), but it should still ring reliably.
Edit: my alarm clock, re-set as a test for 10am, has just gone off again, precisely as happened yesterday when it was already too late... so I simply have no idea what is happening, other than that I evidently cannot rely on it :-(
I made a 'Bread meringue' from the "120 Ways of using Bread" leaflet; this is basically bread and milk simmered together and then sweetened and enriched with egg yolk and dried fruit, and I suspect it should have been cooked for longer (I note that the Chocolate Bread Pudding took a long time to set). Like many of these 1930s recipes it uses an *unsweetened* meringue topping, i.e. just beaten egg white piled on top of the filling. I was a bit sceptical about this, as I had always assumed that meringue was simply spun-sugar held in shape while it dried out, but in fact it did hold up without any sugar 'skeleton' to give it body. It does not, however, taste of anything to speak of!
I also used the Victory Sponge recipe from "We'll Eat Again" to improvise a raspberry pudding, using windfall apples and some very squishy supermarket raspberries. This is basically grated raw carrot and potato mashed with fresh breadcrumbs (the raising agent has no discernable effect), and I cooked it in the microwave with the fruit under it rather than steaming it for two hours with a jam topping, so this may not have been an entirely fair test -- but it did work. When the pudding came out, the topping still looked exactly like grated potato and carrot --I probably ought to have grated it more finely!-- but had set to a firm and quite tasty layer, so I can imagine this working as a solid sponge. And it has the advantage of requiring neither fat nor egg, neither of which I had available!
(Today I think I went to bed around 2am and woke at half-past eight, which was unfortunately the time I needed to be actually leaving the house if I were to get to market and make my later appointment as well; I had set the alarm for ten to eight. The moment I touched it in order to cancel the now useless alarm, it rang...)
I suppose the sensible thing to do is to swap it for the 'guest' alarm clock, which so far as I know still works. It doesn't have the more advanced features of a light so that you can read it if you wake if in the dark, or a 'snooze' button (somewhat abused by me), but it should still ring reliably.
Edit: my alarm clock, re-set as a test for 10am, has just gone off again, precisely as happened yesterday when it was already too late... so I simply have no idea what is happening, other than that I evidently cannot rely on it :-(
I made a 'Bread meringue' from the "120 Ways of using Bread" leaflet; this is basically bread and milk simmered together and then sweetened and enriched with egg yolk and dried fruit, and I suspect it should have been cooked for longer (I note that the Chocolate Bread Pudding took a long time to set). Like many of these 1930s recipes it uses an *unsweetened* meringue topping, i.e. just beaten egg white piled on top of the filling. I was a bit sceptical about this, as I had always assumed that meringue was simply spun-sugar held in shape while it dried out, but in fact it did hold up without any sugar 'skeleton' to give it body. It does not, however, taste of anything to speak of!
I also used the Victory Sponge recipe from "We'll Eat Again" to improvise a raspberry pudding, using windfall apples and some very squishy supermarket raspberries. This is basically grated raw carrot and potato mashed with fresh breadcrumbs (the raising agent has no discernable effect), and I cooked it in the microwave with the fruit under it rather than steaming it for two hours with a jam topping, so this may not have been an entirely fair test -- but it did work. When the pudding came out, the topping still looked exactly like grated potato and carrot --I probably ought to have grated it more finely!-- but had set to a firm and quite tasty layer, so I can imagine this working as a solid sponge. And it has the advantage of requiring neither fat nor egg, neither of which I had available!