I wish I could go because the contents of handbags fascinates me.  I know I ought to empty the contents of mine but would certainly be too embarrassed.  It so full of “stuff” that I pack in just in case I need it, but very rarely do.  A random sampling includes a (beautiful) Fossil purse; a notebook; +-20 pens in different colours; 6 lipsticks; a cosmetic case with rouge, transparent powder, a mini mascara and gold eye shadow; multiple lip glosses and lip ices; sun cream; hand cream; a fold-up hat; my Kindle; my Sansa audiobook player; my bashed up mobile phone; countless receipts; hand wipes…  The list goes on.

Hans-Peter Feldmann said in his interview – very engagingly – that he’s always been fascinated to know what it is that women carry in their bags, and when asked if he now feels that he understands women more by knowing the contents of their bags, he admitted that he feels more confused than ever.  This made me smile.  Honestly – can you judge a woman by her bag?

Apparent the answer is yes.  There is a lady in the UK named Debbie Percy who reads handbags!  Who knew…

Should it be “Whitbys” with no apostrophe, or “Whitby’s” with an apostrophe?  In my mind, it felt like “Whitby’s” was correct, but there is no possessive.  ”Whitby’s” what?  Nothing.  Just “Whitbys”.  Like “Harrods” or “Barclays”.   Right?

Wrong!  I fired off an email to my wonderful editor friend, Marj, and she corrected me as follows:

You do need an apostrophe because it is actually possession, but what you’re possessing/owning is understood: Whitby’s [business] or Whitby’s [place] or Whitby’s [restaurant] or Whitby’s [inn]. “Whitbys” without the apostrophe means plural: you are Martin are the Whitbys (or should be!).

However: from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostrophe:

Possessives in business names

Where a business name is based on a family name it should take an apostrophe, but many leave it out (contrast Sainsbury’s with Harrods). In recent times there has been an increasing tendency to drop the apostrophe. Names based on a first name are more likely to take an apostrophe (Joe’s Crab Shack). Some business names may inadvertently spell a different name if the name with an s at the end is also a name, such as Parson. A small activist group called the Apostrophe Protection Society[45] has campaigned for large retailers such as Harrods, Currys, and Selfridges to reinstate their missing punctuation.

A spokesperson for Barclays PLC stated, “It has just disappeared over the years. Barclays is no longer associated with the family name.”[46] Further confusion can be caused by businesses whose names tend to look like they are pronounced differently without an apostrophe such as Paulos Circus, and other companies that leave the apostrophe out of their logos but include it in written text, such as Waterstone’s and Cadwalader’s.

Case closed. Lesson learned.  Welcome to the world, Whitby’s!

Thanks Marj!

I do however have a weakness.  Biltong.  Ah, biltong.  Dried, seasoned meat – beet, venison, ostrich (although I’m boring and I’m partial to beef) that comes in twig-dry sticks, slabs that you can slice yourself, and my favourite, thinly sliced and slightly wet.

The word comes from Dutch with BIL meaning buttock and TONG meaning strip.

Sounds like the American dried meat, jerky, right?  Well, descriptions are obviously misleading.  I’ve been trying out jerky recently (in my ongoing quest to lose a billion kilos in  5 minutes!) and it’s just not the same.  Not by a long shot!

From my experiments, jerky seems to be dried red meat, normally beef, but it’s chewy, and slightly sweet, and it has the texture of… sorry, plastic!

Biltong, on the other hand, is simply marvellous.  Real pieces of meat, the width of a decent steak, are seasoned (typically with brown sugar and “secret” spices that include pepper, salt and whatever else grabs the biltong maker), allowed to drain, then dried (in the outdoors if you’re being authentic and have no concerns about maggots, or in front of a fan whilst being exposed to a bright light) for a few days until it’s dry enough for you.

The final outcome, if you dry the meat to around 85%, is a delicacy with the a soft, chewy texture (think prosciutto, but thicker) and the wonderful flavour of a cured meat like bresaola.  It’s steak-like with a lovely beefy flavour, subtly flavoured with spices, tender and definitely not sweet like the jerky I’ve tried.

It’s a simple snack, consumed in vast quantities whilst watching the rugby or the cricket or watching a movie at the local cinema.

And lord knows, I miss it!

The good news

I’ve found a supplier in the US.  The US is a bit picky as all products have to be USDA approved, and so my 2lbs (+- 1kg) of sliced, wet biltong has set me back $50+ including postage, but I am thrilled to bits and looking forward to receiving my parcel next week.

I’ll keep you posted…

And mid-way through the glorious process, I discovered that I had to fill in state tax forms too.

God Bless the US Tax system! (And for that matter, weird and wonderful tax systems everywhere).

Little did I know how many steps were required and how many recipes I would have to consult to create a Black Forest Cake that, in the end, was a worthwhile first effort and indeed, could probably give a few German and Austrian home bakers a run for their money!

For starters, let’s consider what a Black Forest Gateau looks like when sliced.

The cake has 3 layers of cake. Some people use three thin sponge for the layers, but you’ll see that I use Dr. Oetker’s alternative suggestion, which is to have a thin biscuit base. Between the 3 layers of cake are 2 layers of filling. The first layer of filling is a cherry and cream mixture, the second just cream. The finished cake is lathered in cream, sprinkled with chocolate flakes and decorated with cream and cherries…

This is not your weight watchers cake, I fear!

Now, the recipe.

This recipe takes bits and pieces from several recipes that I came across online, in my “Das Goldene Kochbuch” (wedding present from the City of Innsbruck when we had our registry wedding), in Dr. Oetker’s “Backen macht Freude” and in the book on Austrian cakes that m! Bought me a few years ago. So it’s not a pedigree recipe!

Ingredients for the “stuff that needs to be baked”

Base:

• 125g plain flour
• 10g cocoa
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 50g sugar
• 1 pack vanilla-sugar (If you don’t have vanilla sugar, substitute 1 tablespoon sugar plus 1 teaspoon vanilla extract.)
• 1 tablespoon kirsch
• 75g softened butter

Sponge:

• Butter, for greasing pan
• 6 egg yolks
• 4 whole eggs
• 1 cup sugar
• 85g (3/4 cup) sifted plain flour
• 45g (1/3 cup) whole wheat flour
• 45g cocoa powder

Ingredients for the filling

Syrup:

• 1 1/2 cups cold water
• 3/4 cups sugar
• 5 tablespoons kirsch

Cherry filling:

• 400g jar of drained sour cherries (reserving the juice)
• 30g cornflour
• 25g sugar
• 4-6 tablespoons kirsch
• 1 teaspoon corn starch
• Pinch grated lemon zest
• Pinch cinnamon

Cream mixture:

• 1 packet of gelatine
• 750mlheavy whipping cream
• 2tbsp kirch
• 40g icing sugar
• 1 packet vanilla sugar

PLUS: a good handful of sliced almonds (my addition)

Garnish:

• 100g dark chocolate, grated (for chocolate flakes – I use Lindt 85% cocoa)
• Cocktail cherries, for garnish
  

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The Steps

Step 1: Make the base

Preheat over to 200ºc.

Sieve flour with cocoa and baking powder into a mixing bowl. Add sugar, vanilla-sugar, kirsch and softened butter. Mix using a fork or whatever you have to hand.

Roll out to a 28cm circle, and place into a lined 28cm tin. Prick the dough all over with a fork and bake for 10-15 minutes. Make sure that you check at 10 minutes because the dough is very thin and burns easily.

It looks a bit like this:

Step 2: Make the sponge

Preheat the oven to 190ºc.

Butter and line a spring form round cake tin with parchment paper. Butter the parchment paper and set aside.

Whisk the eggs yolks, eggs, and sugar in a large metal bowl over a pot of simmering water for a few minutes until the mixture is about 50 degrees F. Remove the bowl from the heat, and keep whisking to aerate the mixture until it is thick and fluffy, about 10 minutes. The mixture should increase in size 3-4 times and become very pale in color.

Gently fold in both the sifted flour and wheat flour, and the cocoa powder. Pour the mixture into the prepared cake pan, and flatten it out carefully with a  spatula. Bake for about 20 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out cleanly.

Invert the cake onto a wire rack and let it cool completely.

Mine came out quite light, but very fluffy!

Step 3: Make the Kirsch Syrup

Combine water and sugar in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly. When sugar has totally dissolved and a thin syrup has formed, remove the pan from the heat and add the kirsch, and stir to combine. Set aside.

Step 4: Make the Cherry Mixture

In a small bowl, combine 2 tablespoons kirsch, sugar, and corn starch. Add lemon zest and cinnamon to the bowl, and stir to combine. In a small saucepan, bring the reserved juice to a boil with the remaining 4 tablespoons Kirsch. Reduce the heat to medium, add the sugar mixture, and stir. Then add the cherries, stir again, and heat through. Remove from the heat, pour into a bowl, and let cool.

(Note: you must let this cool otherwise when you add cream to the top of the cherries, it will melt! Trust me – I did this. So be patient. Let the cherry mixture cool before using)

Step 5: Prepare the cream

Mix gelatine with 5 tbsp cold water in a small pot. (Check your packet for instructions, as gelatines vary in strength). Place on a low heat for 10 minutes, stirring until dissolved. Beat cream until almost stiff. Slowly pour in the lukewarm gelatine mixture, whipping all the while, until the mixture is stiff. Add 1-2 tbsp kirsch, sieve in 40g icing sugar and 1 packet vanilla sugar and mix in gently.

Step 5: The Assembly

To start with, place some wax paper on your counter so that you can assemble everything and make a mess if needed!

Place base on the wax paper. Top with cherry mixture – the mixture should cover the layer. Top with 1 third of the cream mixture.

Slice sponge into 2 layers and place one layer on top of the cherry and cream layer. Sprinkle ½ syrup mixture on top of sponge until it’s soaked and top with half the remaining cream. Top with a generous sprinkling of almonds (this is not traditional but gives the cake a little something extra in my humble opinion).

Place the second sponge on top of the cream layer and top with remaining syrup until soaked.

With remaining cream, cover the top and sides of the whole cake.

Sprinkle grated chocolate flakes on sides and top of cake – be generous.

Finally, pipe cream rosettes onto the top of the cake and top with bright red maraschino cherries for decoration.

Pop into the refrigerator until ready to serve.

Mine came out much better than I could have expected, to be honest, and I moved it to a clean plate before serving.

What’s a girl to do? Turn to the remarkable C.G.P. Grey, of course.

We had a little dinner party on Saturday with Felix, Marianne, Todd, Del and Norma on Saturday. One of them brought over a wonderful bottle of red wine called Apothic Red Wine, which is now my favourite red wine that I’ve come across here.  Fruity, easy to drink, this wine begins with aromas of plum and blackberry and cherry.

Lots of lovely flavours. No doubt it’s not complex enough for true connoisseurs but certainly good enough for me!  Yum!

My challenge?  That I couldn’t organise the books in my Kindle PC download and sync the new collections.  I can’t tell you how frustrated I was when I downloaded Kindle and spent an hour or two organising my books only to discover that the lovely Kindle PC interface does NOT sync collections.

Next, I tried Calibre, which is an okay interface (I do like my thumbnail images and Kindle PC gives this to me).  Ultimately, the Collection Plugin is a great addition, but it assumes that you know the names of all your books (which I don’t – I’m a bit of a “cover” kind of girl, until the book grabs me!) and this caused me problems.

After a few weeks of faffing around (read “mucking about” or “messing about” for those who aren’t familiar with the wonderful “faffing”), I found…  wait for it…  Kindle Collection Manager.    It has it’s downsides in that you can’t sort by the author, but you can drag and drop multiple items into collections and sync them with your Kindle.

Highly recommended – thank you so much, Mr Colegate!

In particular, I spent time looking at the work she did for the San Francisco Library, and given that I am a bibliophile and in love with the libraries here in Boulder, it’s no wonder at all that this particular series resonated with me.

You really have to check her out to see the whole thing, but in short, she’s captured in images the following.  My comments are in (brackets).

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San Francisco Library Main Branch (honestly, insert any library in the US here, in my humble opinion)

People line up before we open (true, me included)

The regulars come in quietly, sit in the same place every day (I can’t be certain by on my few “regular” visits, this does indeed seem to be the case)

They have their routines. (Don’t we all?)

This public mirrors the population that we have in SF (in Boulder, in Reading, in Innsbruck, in Rosebank…)

The library is not just an information centre  (the non-American spelling is mine)

It’s always been a refuge for anybody to come to, whatever status in society (I’m South African.  I know that this hasn’t always been true, but I see it in Boulder.   I believe it in San Francisco.  I hope for it everywhere.)

To sit down next to each other every day. (Yes.)

People come here to get off the street. (And why not?  Why shouldn’t they?   I would…)

We started a homeless outreach team inside the library.  (Fantastic, San Francisco Library…)

(there there are a few wonderful testimonials…  but you’ll have to visit Wendy to see these)

If it exists, we have it.  If we don’t, we’ll find it.  (In more ways than one…)

Ask and we’ll answer. (Biblical?  Or just human?)

And it’s free.

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This made me a bit weepy.  But so proud to be a reader, and even more appreciative of libraries.

Many thanks to Wendy Macnaughton for a wonderful series, to the San Francisco Main Library for commissioning her.