At bake-two-flanns

Yesterday was characterised by the unusual event of two bakings in one day. A luncheon baking by BH of a bacon flan, better known in the suburbs as quiche lorraine, and a tea-time baking by myself of cheese scones. All in all, rather a lot of cheese in particular and cholesterol in general - although, to be fair, we only did half the flan.

Cheese scones not up to their usual standard, with my having been warned during construction by the odd, crumbly texture of the dough. It was warm yesterday and in discussing the matter afterwards we decided that I should have cooled both the ingredients and the subsequent dough in the fridge along the way, this having been the proceeding with the prior flan. Never had to bother with this before, perhaps because cheese scones are much more a winter than a summer thing, but clearly a point to be borne in mind. Notwithstanding, we did ten out of the dozen in the first sitting, with two surviving for breakfast.

Before the first bake, I took a few blackberries at the bridge over the stream at the northern end of our road and between the two bakes I took rather more, illustrated, from the western side of Horton Lane, around gmaps 51.338506, -0.292418, where streetview offers a view of the bushes involved, plus common convolvulus. Lots more at the same place for anyone who shares a taste for blackberry and apple. (I find them a bit strong by themselves these days, even when very large and ripe, which these were not).

Rather a poor composition from the Lumia, but it does get the two tubs from the second picking, near full, and it does capture the corner of one of my thirty year old Karrimors. They have served well over the years, although I am told that Karrimor is not the brand that it once was, having failed to move with the times, while having succeeded in moving onto cheaper materials.

Closed the day with a second viewing of 'Wild' from Wetherspoons. Entirely satisfactory as a film, although the walk, apparently by someone with no experience and little if any preparation, seems wildly improbable. Not least the weight of the pack at outset. But I shall reserve judgement until I have read the book of the film, now on order from amazon. I paid around £2.50 plus another £2.50 for P&P, but there seemed to be copies at all sorts of wildly varying prices - plus study guides and other educational collateral, if that was your fancy.

With apologies to Flann O'Brien, whose masterpiece I am presently studying. Another of those masterpieces of western literature not even much talked about these days, let alone read. At least not in the rather restricted circles in which I move.

References: for previous mention of black fruit see http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/a-suggestion.html and post following. Two and a half picks so far. Rather better and rather earlier than last year. See http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/last-of-summer-wine.html.