Moving and shaking

Possibly a misleading title to this post since I am not referring to the horrific and devastating earthquake in Japan. I am, somewhat frivoulously perhaps, referring to my rather busy and highly productive morning. I am sitting writing this post and it is not yet 11am, yet despite having had a lie-in*, I have already made:

(*these things are relative)

Bread – oak-smoked malted dough that is currently in its second rise for baking later today

Cheese – I now have three of these in various stages, the latest begun this morning and some tweaking done to the other two. I won’t bore you with the details.

Red Onion Marmalade – 6 jars of this made and cooling down awaiting labels

Beef – I’m doing some spiced beef, which takes a week of marinading, so that’s been spiced (much grinding with pestle and mortar) and turned.

That doesn’t count all the tedious stuff, like washing up after that lot and scrubbing out the water jug and installing a new filter. (I’m furiously slapping on hand cream in a vain effort to re-hydrate my hands.

Admittedly, I did let the bread machine deal with making the dough while I got on with the cheese, but still, you have to admit that that is one productive morning. Also a quite enjoyable one, as I have a visible stack of evidence of my efforts.

The rest of the day should be a bit more relaxed. We have to go and pick up a ladder shortly, then it’s off to the pub for lunch, er, breakfast and a pre-match pint, before knuckling down to an afternoon of rugby*. At some point, the bread will be baked and then scoffed with lashings of real butter and perhaps a little cheese on the side.  Bliss.

(*I like rugby, so there!)