Mycroft is back at school on Tuesday, Sherlock shortly thereafter. We've been talking about the honeymoon a bit, with Sherlock ruling out places that are too nice and interesting for us to go without him. I was thinking about trying to see the aurora borealis, but, apart from it being a fairly long way if we want to ride the bikes, I think Sherlock and Mycroft both might be a bit cranky if we went to see those without them.
It is a good year for it though, apparently. I read that it peaks on an 11 year cycle, and the peak is either this year or last year, depending on which article you read. September and March are supposed to be the best times. You can stay in a glass igloo if you want to:
Anyhow, more realistically, L mentioned Prague last night, and I was looking at Lugano, in the Switzerland, which seems like a nice place, but there are about a thousand other places that would be good too, I'm sure - if anyone has suggestions, let us know?
Editing in this pic of Sherlock's cake - it's delicious :)
It is a good year for it though, apparently. I read that it peaks on an 11 year cycle, and the peak is either this year or last year, depending on which article you read. September and March are supposed to be the best times. You can stay in a glass igloo if you want to:
Anyhow, more realistically, L mentioned Prague last night, and I was looking at Lugano, in the Switzerland, which seems like a nice place, but there are about a thousand other places that would be good too, I'm sure - if anyone has suggestions, let us know?
Editing in this pic of Sherlock's cake - it's delicious :)
94 comments:
For now, I can offer you an all-expenses paid trip to the cafe? If you're free, that is. There's apple crumble tart and ice cream on special...
You can give me ideas of how to respond to a suspect collared for attempted murder protesting 'It's not fair'....
All right, but only if I get to kiss you as well.
...I may not be much help on the second item...
I could probably fit in a spot of kissing, yeah.
Those igloos look amazing. If a bit...exposed ;)
I tried not to call him a name in my surprise... But, really?
You're very restrained. Especially since it's the exact opposite of not fair!
The igloos might have curtains? Not sure.
Looks like some sort of 'walls', at least. Plus you'd freeze to death trying to be a peeping tom!
True. You'd have to be extremely dedicated to your peeping.
I think Ewan and Charlie went to Prague when they did Long Way Round on their bikes and it looked gorgeous, I'm sure you'd both love it. It would be just a nice distance to give you a great run for the bikes, but not too far to impede any other activities. ;)
That igloo looks amazing - it would be perfect for the northern lights, of course, and I bet Mycroft would be able to do some fantastic general stargazing too from that high up north with such clear skies. Would you maybe be able to squeeze in a trip later in the year.
Mycroft would be able to do some fantastic general stargazing too
Yeah, I was thinking that too. I don't know if we could or not - depends on a lot of things, and not least the weather! It'd be a shame to get there and see nothing but clouds.
That would be terrible. But Sherlock would enjoy the snow regardless...
I got asked out for a drink earlier. I apologised and waved my hand, complete with ring...they apologised profusely :)
Looks nice, and it's useful! :)
Aww, it's so nice that you guys have that. It's just a sense of belonging, isn't it. So special, you're really lucky. :)
For some reason, people find it easier to believe a band of metal than me saying 'sorry, I'm gay'... I find it weird!
Also people find it easier to believe any 'excuse' than 'no thanks'...which is wrong.
I suppose if you've summoned up your courage to ask someone for a drink and they give an "excuse" you might not feel your confidence was as dented as if they'd just said "no thanks".
Prague is beautiful, I went with my mum in the Autumn half term a few years ago (both teachers and we specialize in going away on city breaks!).
I MADE A CAKE ON MY OWN
Well done Sherlock :-D
it's chocolate and orange and what flavour was yours that you made? Mine came out of the tin but it fell apart a bit and Lestrade said I tried to get it out too soon and wasn't careful enough but I ate the bits that fell off.
That's brilliant, Sherlock, well done. Is it chocolate? I bet everyone will love it whatever flavour it is. Did you take a picture? :)
How did your party go, Anonybob, did Tiny have fun? :)
It was just plain sponge Sherlock, yours sounds delicious and I'm glad it came out of the tin for you :-) is it for something special or just because?
Yes I took a picture. It's because Lestrade said we could bake but I did it on my own and he just reached things for me that were too high and put them in the oven and took them out and washed things up I did everything else. We haven't eaten any yet but I want to.
I hope we're going to get to see the picture Sherlock and that it tastes as lovely as it sounds :-) we've eaten all ours :-)
The party went really well thanks joolz :-) tiny's had a great time apparently :-)
John said he would put it up and then he's doing the thing where he doesn't swear but he wants to because the picture won't go on the cloud and he doesn't know why. We ate some and it was nice but next time I'm making even more chocolate icing with cream like Lestrade does.
The sponge is lovely. The icing rather...strong! You did very well, Kiddo.
It's there - I'm done not swearing.
You do not-swearing very well.
Better than me, apparently... Sherlock accidentally unleashed an icing sugar cloud earlier. He looked at me through it, very serious expression... and said "If you'd done that you would have said 'cock' or 'bollocks' but I won't."
I couldn't help but laugh 'til I choked on icing sugar.
Congratulations on the cake, Sherlock. And well done for not swearing.
I want a glass igloo now.
L - ha! He's right, too... I can't help wishing I'd heard that.
Isn't there meant to be some sort of reputation that Brits have for stringing together inventive swearing? Not, as Sherlock pointed out, either of those are exactly swearing...more like slang for body parts...sort of.
The cake looks lovely Sherlock - well done. I'm very impressed.
It's not safe to be too inventive with Sherlock around...
RSF - it's great, isn't it? I want one on our roof.
watch it, Sherlock will be insisting we build one when he wakes up...
Thanks for sharing the picture with us Sherlock, you're very clever making that cake yourself :-)
It's nice that he wants to do things on his own, even if he does get moody when they don't turn out exactly as he planned ;)
Still, no one here minds that he's glued it back together with icing apart from him!
Glad your party went well. I admit to being sort of glad Sherlock never wants things like that...that many kids in one flat sounds terrifying to me!
(think we can get Sherlock to mimic this octopus?)
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/aquarium-star-jock-the-octopus-learns-1128513
The kids played upstairs and the adults hid downstairs so it worked quite well really ;-) I couldn't do it with school/nursery friends but relatives I can just about manage!
If you find a way of getting Sherlock to mimic that octopus please pass the secret on ;-)
Will do!
Sadly I think he would use his tentacles to make more mess, not tidy up!
That's a wonderful cake, Sherlock. Well done, making it yourself and finding a way to fix it when it didn't turn out exactly the way you planned.
My kids were impressed by the octopus, but not by my suggestion that perhaps they could be inspired by it.
Excellent job on the cake, Sherlock, it looks wonderful, and chocolate and orange are a great combination! (And more icing can only make it taste better, I always say when I have to stick cake parts back together--which is most times I bake cakes. :))
Lestrade said my cake was better than my icing but he's wrong I think.
Oh I think that means you should get to eat his last piece instead of him then, Sherlock, unless it's all gone already of course. ;)
Do you all have any nice plans for your last holiday Sunday. We're having a barbecue so I hope the rain holds off. Hope you have a fun day. :)
I don't know if the boys had anything planned. I'm at work. Having about the least good time possible.
That doesn't sound good Greg :-( here's hoping your day improves a lot.
Oh dear, Greg,sorry you're at work and that it's not going well - hope things get sorted soon.
Maybe you could arrange to go out for a nice walk or ride with the boys when you've finished and use that idea as a happy thought to get you through the rest of your day.
(Sorry just realised that sounded very Peter Pan which wasn't what I was going for, but hopefully you know what I mean!) :)
just the very hardest of deaths to deal with.
I'm sorry Greg, good luck getting things sorted.
thanks.
Mycroft is making bread and I'm helping.
I hope you'll be able to manage a coffee-and-hugs meet up with your boys later, L.
I've found bread tricky to make--good for you for helping, Sherlock! Are you doing some of the kneading?
He is liberally covering the kitchen in dough as he uses his portion as a lethal weapon.
Bread dough IS sticky. (I'm not sure about the lethal part, though.... ;))
It isn't necessarily sticky. This was not.
Sherlock does favour throwing his dough around or stretching and slapping it, in a way which put all other occupants of the flat in danger from the swinging ends or bits which broke off and flew across the room.
He did, however, stop wielding it with such abandon when the dogs tried to catch it.
It is now proving, and Sherlock is examining yeast quietly.
What kind of bread are you making? (I've made several varieties of challah, and the doughs were all quite sticky!)
That's quite a vivid image, there, Mycroft! :)
Yeast is interesting--I can remember running a few yeast-based experiments in school. Are you finding out anything, Sherlock?
Just a basic white flour dough. I think we will make rolls, not a loaf.
I hope that whatever you are working on ends as satisfactorily as possible, Lestrade.
Thanks. It's...well, the best outcome is still basically just shit, really.
Hope the bread's doing okay. Well done for having a crack at it - I'm sure you'll do well! And a dead useful skill. Plus therapeutic, knocking it back.
knocking bread back is one of the best reasons to take it ;-)
I'm glad you and Sherlock are being successfully busy together Mycroft :-)
sorry about the case Greg.
L - I hope you're doing all right, love. Do you want to talk about the case, or can you?
My girls' favorite thing about homemade cinnamon rolls (buns, I think you call them) is getting to do a yeast experiment on the side.
Greg, sorry that you are exposed to the ugliest things. I hope you can find some measure of peace when you get back to your family.
Kestrel, do you make your cinnamon rolls with a disappearing marshmallow inside? My grandmother made those, or a cinnamon "rose" starting from plain white dough. And now I'm hungry again. These blogs are dangerous.
L, I too hope you're doing okay.
John - a young baby. Almost certainly Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. But the 'almost' is why we're here. You can't help but feel...guilt, really, to be intruding on the family in their grief. But we have to, for the tiny, tiny, percent of times it isn't natural causes. And it's horrible for everyone involved, but mainly for the family.
We're out of their way now, at least. Back at the Yard.
L - I'm so sorry. That's just...yeah. Horrible for everyone.
Yeah. Anyway, not a lot we can do now but wait for the paeds pathologist to get back to us. The FLA and certain bereavement counsellors who specialise in SIDS are with the family, if they want them to be.
Unimaginable situation to be in.
Sherlock texted to say you'd picked a load of tomatoes from the allotment. And Mycroft to say his bread rolls are rising too much. Is the kitchen now bulging with dough?
I hope that when the pathologist reports you still don't have anything to do, except express your condolences to the family. I lost a cousin to SIDS, many years ago, and she was never forgotten.
Dough plus tomatoes equals pizza?
The rolls are out of the oven. They seem to be cooked. We shall wait and see.
We didn't lose anyone, or any rooms, during the second rise. All inhabitants of the flat accounted for.
RSF - yeah, hope so too.
Mycroft - excellent! Well done. I hope there's one left for me by the time I'm home.
You're sure you didn't bake a dog into one of those?
Oh well done, Mycroft, I'm glad you all survived the experience.
Did Sherlock's extra exuberance with his dough make his flatter in the end or did they all expand just the same.
Fairly sure. Although they did threaten to become large enough to envelop a dog.
Joolz, all the dough was returned to the same bowl for the proving, so we don't know if Sherlock's wild treatment helped or hindered.
Lestrade, I believe we are to take them with us tomorrow, for lunch, if we choose to go on an excursion.
Oh, L, that's so sad, and hard.
Mycroft, my mom says our bread dough is always sticky because 1) we mostly make whole grain or partly whole grain dough and that's wetter, and 2) our recipes all withhold more flour than usual, to use while braiding.
REReader, Challah seems to involve eggs, too. And honey or sugar, which I imagine would lead to a stickier mix. But with kneading, does it become smooth?
Egg challah has eggs and sugar or honey (and sometimes raisins), yes; water challah doesn't. I prefer water challah, myself, but we usually have egg challah for holidays, and that's when we're most likely to bake our own. Either kind, the dough becomes smooth after mixing. (Although it's not easy to get the dough off my hands after kneading!)
(I should say, water challah usually has some sugar, but not enough to make it sweet.)
I see.
I'm unsure of the reasons for stickiness, then. I followed a recipe for the dough, and then added flour to knead it upon to the work surface. I'm unsure how much I added, or how much was incorporated into the dough by the end. It wasn't ever sticky, and didn't stick to my hands at all. But the structure changed during kneading, as it should, to become denser. Lestrade says that you have kneaded it enough if you pinch it between your fingers and it feels like an earlobe.
I must confess that I think of myself as more of a recipe follower than a cook or baker, and I don't know why either. I do know that while the dough gets more...elastic, maybe?...I always end up with lots of dough sticking to my fingers!
I like the earlobe direction--the best my mom could ever do was "until it feels ready." :/
We made these because they didn't have many ingredients and we had everything we needed.
http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/2902668/easy-white-bread-rolls
They smell nice but Mycroft says we can't eat any until tomorrow.
Well, they should be lovely for lunch wherever you go tomorrow, Sherlock, which will make it worthwhile to wait. And thank you for sharing the recipe.
(Fresh bread does smell soooo good, it's true, it makes it a great challenge to save them!) (Except when it gets burned. Which our oven has been known to do to us! ;))
Lovely sunset again tonight.
Did you all go out to enjoy it, L? Or are you only just heading home?
That recipe looks good, but it makes the kind of roll that I think tastes best five minutes out of the oven, so you shall have to try again now that you've begun to master the technique. Perhaps the next time you make it you can experiment by having Sherlock's bread and yours in a different bowl, Mycroft. I know that if you knead biscuit dough (American biscuits, that is) too much they come out flat and tough.
RR, my grandmother reserved some of the flour from the recipe specifically to dust her hands and the board before when she was going to handle a sticky dough. And then once she tipped the dough onto the board she flipped it so it had flour all over before she began to work it. Something to try, at any rate.
Sherlock, did you know that if you're going to bake something at a higher altitude you have to change the recipe?
think they want to do a loaf next.
The rolls still smell great, even cold. I think they'll taste fine. But we'll be adding in some wholemeal flour now.
RSF, I think that's already built into the recipe we use--quite a bit gets added in as we work it, and just in that way. :)
I like a mix of white and whole wheat flour, it adds flavor without going grainy.
I had to go over to my local bakery just to get some fresh bread after reading about all this. I'd try baking some, but with only me to eat it it never seems worth the effort. I'll have to try it when I'm visiting my mom in a couple of weeks, though.
Do you have a favorite kind of bread? I like cinnamon raisin best, with Italian bread coming in a close second.
Not really. I don't much like sweet breads though.
Probably olive, if going for 'flavoured'. But just a decent wholemeal will do me, really.
RSF, I have never heard of a vanishing marshmallow. I will look it up. Or the other thing...blooming rose?
I just make a vegan-style recipe that I've sort of cobbled together from various sources. No eggs, no dairy, as in nearly all of my baking.
Kestrel, I'm not sure there's such a thing as a vegan marshmallow. But if there is, it works like this: dip a marshmallow in butter/margarine and then roll it in cinnamon. Wrap it in dough and pinch at the bottom. (She made the rolls in a cupcake pan that was buttered and floured.) Once you've got all the rolls in the pan, let them rise, and then brush the top with butter and sprinkle on more cinnamon. Bake. The marshmallow melts and leaves a hole in the middle. Lately you can find it called a resurrection roll, but that's really recent. The recipe won the Pillsbury bake-off in the sixties and Grandma was indignant because she'd been making the rolls since the thirties from a recipe off of a Pillsbury flour bag.
The "rose" also was a cinnamon thing, this time with cinnamon sugar. Cut a round for the center and then moon shapes for the petals, dip each piece in butter and cinnamon sugar and add walnuts between as you set the petals like brickwork in a circle working out from the center until your round baking tin is full, then bake. I think that one's more possible, as you could use margarine instead of butter.
L - I don't think I've had olive bread. Something to look for to try! I like a good nine-grain bread if it isn't too chewy. Is "whole meal" like "whole wheat" or are there other grains in there too?
Oh, I miss real bread! Enjoy your home-baked rolls tomorrow, guys. I've made gluten free bread quite a bit, and it's a very wet dough. And, of course, you don't knead, as kneading is done to activate the gluten. I still love the smell of 'real' bread baking (except when it's coming from Subway shops - too overpowering!)
L, I don't mind a good olive loaf either, and am not fond of sweetened breads. I think it's a mixture of preferring savoury, and thinking that if I wanted sweet I'd eat cake, not bread! Speaking of cake - your cake looks great, Sherlock.
Cool, thanks RSF. The marshmallow needn't be vegan; we're not actually a vegan family. I just bake 'vegan style' because of my daughter's allergies.
Now I'm all hungry, but it's bedtime.
If anyone does need or want vegan marshmallows, I think kosher marshmallows would qualify. (They are in no sense natural, but ifcthey are labeled "parve", they would contain no animal products!)
I have seen vegan marshmellows. They exist. I don't know if they'd behave like regular marshmellows when you heat them, though. I don't think they melt.
Ella
What's the fun of unmelty marshmallows?
Mycroft, I hope you are enjoying your last day of no school.
As a kid I would have probably tried marshmallows with no animal products in them, even if they didn't really melt the same. It's better than being left out. As an adult I've never tried them. Hardly essential products!
(I should qualify my comment about "parve" labeling--it won't have any dairy or anything from an animal EXCEPT it could have eggs or fish. Not that kosher marshmallows have either, so far as I know, but not all parve foods would be vegan safe. :))
My dad used to make bread, this conversation brings back good memories. The last instruction on his recipe was "eat as much as you can while it's still hot" because there is nothing so delicious as fresh hot bread right out of the oven!
My understanding of kneading is that in addition to developing the gluten (protein), the fold/squash/fold/squash process mixes the ingredients down to almost a molecular level. Each time the dough is squashed and folded, the number of layers is doubled, so figure even if you only did it ten times, that's over a thousand layers.
S
Ooooh, just like making sword blades!
ReRe, exactly! :)
S
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