Soledad's Journal

... because my mind is like a sieve sometimes. To my defence, I had a somewhat busy day. I cooked for two days in advance (a dish of tuna, tomatoes, and sweet corn, with a cheese sauce and baked in the oven, plus a carrot soup), I made six more little egg baskets, and my friend Elise dropped by around 1am to fetch her cookies.

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Afterwards, we decided to have just the soup and some leftover Faschiertes with buttered bread for lunch, watched some telly and had a nap. Well, I had a nap. Mum decided to do the washing up in the meantime, before her lady friends would call her, which always is a lengthy affair.

So, the plan for tomorrow is to be lazy, for both of us. Just puttering around in the flat, doing small things for ourselves. I look forward to it.

I had to make a round in the morning: post office, bank, Kik, Pepco, Tedi, as well as the Lidl and Auchan supermarkets. At least it was a successful run. Getting home, we opted for an instant soup, a sandwich and the last rests of the yummy cake, so we could save the leftovers from yesterday for tomorrow. Cool! Two days without cooking! I love it!

In the afternoon we were both a bit exhausted, so we took nice, long naps, after having watched some telly. Then I did work a bit more on preparing those dratted toilet rolls, in the hope that I might turn them into little egg baskets in time. After all, I've even bought new acrylic paints for them!

The weather remains to be fairly cool, which is good news for my cookies. I'm going to deliver most of them tomorrow, so the chocolate icing might actually survive. Which proves that even unpleasant things can have their use occasionally.

I was very busy today. First, I made these lemony egg biscuits, mostly because I wanted to finally put the lemon curd I bought at Aldi to good use. They turned out fairly well; I put white chocolate icing on them to counteract the lemon curd that was really sour. The two fit nicely with each other.

Then I baked Grandma's fabulous, idiot-proof sponge cake (a small one) because I had Quark creme left from the previous baking project. I stirred in some homemade raspberry jam and filled the sponge cake with it. Then I poured some milk chocolate icing over it and sprinkled with freeze-dried strawberry cubes - both left over from various former baking projects.

We had leftover soup and toasted cheese and ham sandwiches for lunch, after which I made the last batch of biscuits for this Easter: the orange-flavoured ones. Of course, I forgot to buy orange juice yesterday, which would have been a requirement, and I refused to go to Lidl again. So I used diluted blood orange aroma and some orange blossom water aside from the grated orange peels. The end results are... interesting. Not bad, just not what they should be. But since my friends don't know how the biscuits supposed to taste they (hopefully) won't complain. I'll add some lemony icing tomorrow, just for the citrus flavour. Ah, well, at least I'm done.

These activities ate my whole day; and we also had laundry day, this being Saturday and all that. But I did call H. for a friendly family chat, and I got Mum an appointment with the hairdresser - tentatively, but at least with her we know that she might not be able to come, after all. She'll call us in time to tell what's the case.

I'm tired but relieved that the baking is over. All those disasters along the process really took much of the joy out of it.

... seems to be back, at least for the time being. Yay!

I've baked - and decorated! - two different sorts of Easter biscuits today, and I'm ridiculously proud of them. Firstly, I gave a new recipe a try: these white bunnies turned our really well, even though I didn't have any walnuts and had to make them with hazelnuts only. But mine look better, as I was really creative with the decoration. There'll be a picture later. The other ones were something I've done before: bunny heads of quark-oil dough that also turned out nicely.

That about cost me the whole day, and then I came to the hard decision to bin the disastrous carrot cookies because they were absolutely disgusting. Standing around for a week in a cookie tin didn't help; even Mum, who heroically tries everything I produce, declared them inedible. So into the bin they went; I really couldn't give them away as Easter gifts!

Tomorrow will be a bit stressful again - we're expecting a visit from our talkative chiropodist lady, so I have to do the grocery shopping before she arrives. That means getting up way too early for my comfort. *sigh*

I did literally nothing today - well, nothing beyond Mum duty and making a Tütensuppe, that is. I slept half an hour longer than usual, lay on the bed with my iPad and watched YouTube videos/solved crossword puzzles between breakfast and lunch, and left for choir practice a bit earlier because I had to go to the pharmacy.

A visit to the pharmacy is always something of a shock. We don't take many medicines, but even so I left there an ungodly amount of money. But that can't be helped. Mum needs her stuff to slow down her osteoporosis, I need my stuff to prevent the developing of the same, plus something for my cartilages. And medical gels have become so insanely expensive lately! Sometimes I can't help thinking this is all done to get rid of old people: either food or medicine is possible for those with little income. Not for us, fortunately, but it still hurts.

Choir practice was so-so. We practiced the one (so-called romantic) piece that I hate like the plague for most of the time. But we also practiced three amazingly beautiful pieces, so it was okay. Erica brought me the big bag of empty toilet rolls, so the Easter presents for my fellow choir members might actually come into existence. *fingers crossed*

Tomorrow will be either crafty or kitchen-heavy, or a combination of both. We'll see.

It started with an extremely short and disturbed night, due to the stupid daylight saving move last night and to the fact that I woke up every second hour for no obvious reason.

Then we spent the morning (and part of the afternoon) rearranging the whole flat, so that cleaning can happen tomorrow. Hopefully with help. All the stuff that usually resides on the balcony, plus some of the kitchen things, are now piled up on the corridor next to our door; I'll have the questionable delight to put everything back to place after the cleaning. Still, at least with help that we'll hopefully have, the whole ordeal only happens once in every two weeks, unlike spread over two or three days like when I have to do everything on my own.

Still hate it like the plague, though.

The rest of the day was completely wasted. Granted, I did make a quick lunch and even managed to write two measly paragraphs, but that was basically it. We both took naps in the afternoon and alternately dozed in front of the telly. God, I'm so fed up with being a house elf!

I started the day with grocery shopping; nothing serious, just a trip to the Lidl next corner, the advantage of which is that I can push the trolley till the entrance of our building - which I did today.

After that (and a late breakfast) I did a tiny bit of writing, until it was time for the highly complicated cooking: making a Tütensuppe and shoving the frozen fish and chips into the oven.

After lunch (and some crap telly) I felt the urgent need to take a nap, so I did it. Plus watching some YouTube vids on my new iPad. I'd still prefer the old one, it was much easier both on the eye and using-wise, but the poor thing can only access a few chosen websites. Fortunately, AO3, SoA and Chakoteya's Star Trek episode transcripts are among those. I also watched part of the Enterprise episode I'm rewriting for my AU but found the old analog telly hard on the eyes. *sigh* I got so spoiled by the big telly in the living room.

I finally brought up the energy to put the white chocolate icing and the Kokosette on my coconut lamb biscuits. I made three black sheep as well, so that I won't be the only one in the family. *g*

And with that - and some more telly - the day was basically over. I have the feeling that I'm not being very productive lately. Being tired all the time is annoying... and exhausting. And ridiculous.

I had planned a lazy day. What I got in the end was a rather busy day, but that was (partially) my fault.

I started with washing my hair, which was overdue. Then I cooked for two days - not such a hard work, just fiddly, what with peeling the mushrooms and chopping the ham and all that. Pasta Bolognese (with Spätzle instead of spaghetti because we like our noodles to be substantial) turned out very yummy. So, to work off some calories, we went for a walk. It went really well, so we decided to go to the corner coffee for breakfast tomorrow, assuming the weather will cooperate.

My friend Evie had mercy with me and delivered my eggs in the afternoon. Inspired by that fact, I spontaneously decided to bake the Nutella bunnies today instead of tomorrow. Mind you, this is a recipe that I make every single year for Easter. I even made it with 30 kids in the Hort. Never had any problems. Today, my dough turned out a disaster. It crumbled so much that I couldn't even roll it out. Since this has been the second such disaster in a row, I strongly suspect that something is wrong with the package of flour I'm currently using. For tomorrow's baking session I've opened a new package; I'll use up this one for cooking.

To save the yummy (not to mention pricey) dough, I shaped little balls and eggs of it by hand and baked them anyway. I'll give them some chocolate icing and coloured candy decoration tomorrow, to save face. But to prove that the recipe actually works, here are several pics of the Nutella bunnies I've made since 2015.

Writing-wise I managed to write the first part of the hunting scene for my current WIP. I'm fairly content with it. I also decided to post to AO3 a funny scene to an as-yet unrealized Andromeda/Star Trek TNG crossover on its own, just for a good laugh.

No actual crafting was done today. I did put my 6 of my coloured styrofoam eggs into their respective baskets, but that's all. Originally, I planned to make three more baskets of the toilet rolls I had pilfered from the waste paper bin yesterday but couldn't bring up the energy for that roughly 6-minutes-long work. ;)

I started the day with putting red icing on my carrot-shaped biscuits (that contain actual carrots). I wanted orange icing, closer to the natural colour, but mixing red and yellow food colouring resulted in a sickly pink hue, so I added drastically more red and now I have red carrots. I'll ice the leaves green tomorrow. The poor things should at least look nice, considering that they have the consistency of rubber. I've seriously messed up the measurements, apparently - and that after I'd made those biscuits several times with no problems, even with twenty-some children involved! Ah, well, I'll tell the recipients to consider it chewing gum - their little ones will have fun with them. As long as they don't try to blow bubbles...

In the early afternoon I went back to school, where Erna, our arts teacher had her weekly workshop with the kids. I painted all 24 styrofoam eggs and the six existing little baskets - with various degrees of success. Styrofoam sucks. It refuses to allow the paint to stick properly, resulting in striped and spotted eggs. I'll never use styrofoam again! And I'll tell everyone that the somewhat marbled results were intentional. Marbled eggs are very fashionable. That's my story and I'll stick to it.

To add insult to injury, I had to discover the hard way that metallic paint isn't suited for cardboard or for styrofoam. And I had bought two 200ml bottles of it last week, thinking that it will look good. Grrr! I'll try them on lolly sticks, perhaps they work better on wood. If not, I'll throw them into the rubbish bin. The fact that I got them 30% cheaper at Kik doesn't really lessen the pain of having thrown out precious money for them.

Well, that was my day, basically. At least I met quite a few of my former colleagues at school, as I was there by 2pm. I usually don't met them before choir practice, which takes place at 17.30.

... as it always happens on Saturday. Starting with the fact that Saturday is our laundry day. Plus, I had to cook today - a very cauliflower-heavy meal that would make noadvertising run for the hills, I'm afraid, but we liked it. *g*

I also did some crafting: finished the little felt gift box, made another simple egg basket from a toilet roll, glued on the basket handles to all five finished ones and finally put that little bunny-making kit bought at Pepco a few weeks ago to good use.

This is the result.

I'm not too impressed with the design - why they gave the same size pom-poms for both heads and bodies is beyond me, and there were unnecessary duplicates of certain body parts of foam rubber that didn't seem to have any purpose. The "user instructions" consisted of a small number of microscopic pictures on the back of the package that didn't truly reveal how all these parts needed to be used, so I simply didn't use them. Perhaps I'll make 3D Easter cards of them later.

I also did a little bit of writing; not much, but for that I re-watched another sequence of the canon episode. We then watched "Salvage Hunters - The Restorers" (two episodes) as well as "The Repair Shop", before I more or less fell asleep in front of the telly and decided that the sensible thing would be to take a nap.

And now I'll try to type up everything I've written in the last couple of days. I'm terribly beyond schedule with that. Fortunately, there isn't anything else on telly to watch, so I can do that.