the quiet revolution

Last night the Awesome Hobart Kat came over. We drank wine and gin, ate sheep's cheese and curled up on the couch to watch Julie & Julia. It was an utterly lovely evening, however I temporarily forgot that alcohol is not my friend. I trundled off to bed a little after midnight, nicely tipsy and fell straight asleep, only to wake up at 4 am with a body too over-loaded with boozy sugars for sleep (and a brain that decided to fret over a small worry). Annoying! I finally accepted that I wasn't getting back to sleep at 5, so got up to enjoy the dawn and made cake.

Yes, half past 5 in the morning, on about 3 hours sleep. is clearly the time to start baking. I have a dozen Christmas cupcakes (bischoffsbrot, if you're wondering) in the oven now, plus a loaf of seed bread gently rising in the warmth. The cupcakes smell amazing, but I cannot try them! They are being baked as gifts for friends, and since I'm not eating them and Housemate had normal flour in the house they are made with wheat. After almost 5 years of cooking entirely gluten free it was very strange to bake with wheat. There was only one flour to measure! No getting the right ratio of corn starch to rice flour to soy flour, no adding xantham gum to bind; very odd indeed. I'd also forgotten how wheat batters handle: its so sticky! Hopefully they taste as good as they smell.

Once the bread is done I'll have to decide what to do with the rest of my day. I'd planned to go hiking, though I'm not sure how I'll manage on so little sleep and there's plenty of things I could be doing around the house. I'll venture out to the Farm Gate market when it opens at 9 to pick up some fresh local veggies and hopefully some goat (I haven't had goat in years, but I hear there's a new seller at the market with locally raised, happy Boer goats and Dorper lambs. Mmm, happy ethical meat is tasty!). I have an afternoon tea date with my new friend Norm, a retired geologist who lives out the back of Wellington, where I go walking, and gets a little lonely for company. Then I think I shall have a quiet evening and make an attempt at an early night. A decent night's sleep would be a very welcome anomaly.

Oh, cake is done. Onwards!