The day after the Christmas party, commonly called 'Saturday', I had few missions. Mission number one was to procure baking and cooking ingredients, mission two was to clean up an apartment that had basically been empty all week before dinner guests arrived.
My first trip was to my local kitchen shop, where I had gotten a meat thermometer for Thanksgiving. Miracle of miracles, they had colored sugar. Not just colored sugar, but a big thing of festive colored sugar, a green/red combo. I was like, yesssss, and then I saw the price and was like, nooooooo! So £7 later, I had my snickerdoodle ready sugar imported from American. I also sniffed around for a 13"x9" baking dish, but they only had ones that were fancy and cost £20. I have my limits.
The next trip was a quest to big Sainsburys at Earl's Court/Gloucester Road. I figured it was my best chance for cream of tartar. We had a long shopping list, as we needed stuff for dinner as well as all my baking requirements. All items were miraculously found, from light bulbs and drain cleaner to thyme and toffee fudge ice cream topper, until only one item remained... the freaking cream of tartar. I had spent considerable amounts of time in the baking aisle, stocking up on flour and sugar, but had failed to see any. After gathering everything else I went back and kept looking, by this time a bit grumpy. Having failed to find the baking powder and bicarbonate of soda before, I figured if cream of tartar was there, they would all be together. In the second miracle of miracles of the day, I finally found it, on the top shelf above a case otherwise full of flour. They are tricky. So for £1.03, I have procurred a many years supply of cream of tarter.
I spent the afternoon making a double batch of snickerdoodles and cleaning. The holiday sugar supply worked out absolutely perfectly with the amount of snickerdoodles. And on Sunday I made raspberry bars and carmelitas in my new pan (oh, they had a pyrex at Sainsburys for £6 that I picked up). I also candied a few more pecans. Everything seemed to turn out okay, so I was very pleased! All thanks to my cream of tartar, of course.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
Speaking of food and fun, I heard about this site on OPB. It's freerice.com
For every vocabulary word you get right they donate 10 grains of rice. Doesn't sound like much, but the game is so addictive you've donated 2000 grains before you realize it.
PS, my score is 40. Any takers on beating me?
That was "our" Sainsbury's on our last visit. We had a lot of fun looking at all the foreign-to-us stuff there, and the stuff that we would like to find here, and noted a few omissions that we would really miss. Can't remember what any of those were, though... Anyway, it's fun to go to grocery stores when traveling. In Hawaii you can buy snorkeling gear in the grocery store, for instance. I bet big Sainsburys didn't have any of that!
It is indeed the same Sainsburys. Having stayed in hotels nearby was how I knew it existed in the first place! There are a lot of things that are basically the same but branded differently and have different names!
My best score on freerice.com is 45. Studying for the GRE a year and a half ago finally paid off...
Post a Comment