Just a small slice then
It’s been a very unsuccessful few days in terms of Guardian-ness. Also in terms of being a reasonable human being. My phonecam keeps breaking, it keeps getting dark before I’ve had me photo done, I keep getting a bit ‘merry’ before my work with caraway seeds has been successfully completed.
The sum total of this week’s cookery attempts is a half-burnt, half-raw cake that contained no caraway seeds at all because there weren’t any in the corner shop and I had drunk too much gin to make it to the supermarket.
I took a slice of this cake to the pub for my friend Jess’s birthday. It was an attempt to win her trust back after last year, when I promised to bake her favourite cake as a birthday treat. As she left the house to meet some friends, I was mixing the ingredients. When she got back, I was in bed with a tummy ache. Something happened in between that I can’t exactly explain. All I know is, all the cake went in my tummy.
One year later and I’ve not really got a handle on this rapacious impatience around baked goods. You can see below there’s a fair amount of crust missing where I’ve removed the cake from the oven and picked off the nice bits before the middle has finished cooking.
Caraway and orange seed cake
Carried away with greed cake
I put the rest of the cake in a tupperware container in a cupboard, thinking Jess wouldn’t want the whole lot (that’s generosity for you). Later that night – after 10 hours in the pub, it must be said – I was found squirreled in the corner of my kitchen with the remainder of the cake in one giant piece between my paws, gnawing away while belligerently refusing to go to bed. Next morning, the internet told me that I had been hounding my long-suffering manfriend with nonsensical instant messages while he was trying to work; my memory told me that I had been monopolising the conversation in the pub with incessant talk about vaginas; my stomach told me that jagermeister, red wine, gin, rum and cider ‘don’t go’. Miraculously the words ‘it’s over’ didn’t crop up, so I’m going to do it all again next weekend.
Fashionwise, in contrast, I have managed to keep up appearances in the form of flattering, glamorous outfits and dangerously seductive poses.
Stripes sight
Partial sight
Conclusions:
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Know your sensible limits
I've always found it funny when people write letters to the Guardian's Weekend magazine complaining that the recipe ingredients are too middle class and the fashion only looks good on thin people. After all, it's just a magazine. Or is it? I decided to follow its recipes, fashion and lifestyle advice as closely as possible, to see if the aspirations promoted therein can really be achieved by the average reader who is not especially wealthy, not necessarily model thin and is obliged to work regular office hours. This blog has no affiliation whatsoever with the Guardian but I link to the Weekend magazine website for the purposes of illustration. 
Guardian Girl 
Oh, we are cut from the same cloth. Reading this was like reading my diary.
The ‘prizing-cake-from-hands’, oh my, how I understand!
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Oh, you made my day with this post. I have to wonder whether you cooked last years cake before it ended up in your tummy. I once decided that the batter was so delicious it did not need cooking, ate it all, and now have a severe allergy to eggs….yet still, I can’t help feel it was worth it.