I am turning into my mother...

Now, this is not to say that I think this is a bad thing, but today I made some "out of date" cake.

Last weekend I meant to cook some date & walnut loaf, but was stymied by opening a pack of Biskin Gold to find out that it was, in fact, white.  And basically lard.  Apparently, what I need is the Biskin Blue which is yellow.

So this weekend, I was feeling smug that I'd remembered yesterday to buy some butter from Kaiser's, although they didn't have the Biskin Blue I picked up real butter instead.  I was in the middle of my "I belong here" wander through town, shopping for food, knick knacks and looking at the obvious tourists come to visit the market.

However, when I opened the packet this lunchtime, it was to find that I had bought Sauerrahmbutter, basically a butter made from sour cream.  And called me sensitive, but I could smell that it was different to "normal" butter or cooking margarine.  "Eben so," I decided to go ahead and make the cake - the worst that could happen is that it would taste awful and I would put it out in the garden to feed the birds, or in the bin or something.

I opened the cooking ingredients cupboard to find three packs of walnuts, the sell by date on the opened packet was December, so no problem there, it's not the end of the month yet.  The unopened packet of dates  said they should have been eaten by mid November, but it's dried fruit right?  A preserve?  Should be OK.  The eggs and milk had been hanging around a couple of days but that wasn't a problem.  I thought to disguise the potential sour milk taste of the butter with a sachet of vanilla sugar and some mixed spice.  I hate to think how old the spice is, but it moved here with me and it probably wasn't fresh when the removal van was packed.

So as I put the cake in the oven I thought "I am turning into my mother"; her experimental approach to cooking ingredients is a family joke, the story of Cheese and Peach loaf will get us all smirking in no time.  I know that turning out like her is nothing I should worry about, being quirky and original and experimental are all aspects of who she is and aspects I am happy to have picked up from the genetic shuffle and the longer experiment called "bringing up a child".

Also, the loaf actually turned out rather nice...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MUM

xxx