a bit of minor 'surgery'

So, once again, I've been going through an uninspired blogging phases, hence the recent lack of posts. But today, I have a legitimate reason not to be working, and I have a few things to blog about, so here goes...

What is my 'legitimate reason' for not working? I have just - as in an hour ago - had two fat wisdom teeth removed. Eughh. That's all I can say. I am so unbelievably thankful for anaesthetic. The lovely dentist who had a brilliant bedside manner told us (me, the girl on work experience and the two nurses) about the charity he runs in Romania, and how the children there came running to him, begging him to give them an injection because they had all had teeth removed without anaesthetic. That just makes me want to cry. So at the moment I am blissfully unaware of how much my mouth is going to hurt when the anaesthetic wears off. Even though I can't feel any pain at the moment, my jaw is telling me that it didn't really like all of the tugging it was submitted to. And I do feel very much like a hamster, though apparently the steroids are meant to stop you looking like one. They had to cut my gums to expose the roots - hence classifying the procedure as 'surgery'. So I now have dissolvable stitches in my mouth in place of my gammy tooth. I kindly donated my teeth to the hospital for research purposes. It was the least I could do.

I am fully stocked up on delicious fruit and yoghurt supplies to make myself smoothies, as I'm going to be on a liquid diet for the next few days, which I am quite excited about.

I do a lot of baking, and I have noticed that recently the phrase, 'I've never tried this recipe before' comes out of my mouth a lot - at least once a week. This is not a deliberate thing - baking new recipes - which is kind of satisfying that it just comes naturally to me. This week, I baked Nigella Lawson's London Cheesecake. It was a disaster. As I read through the instructions and diligently followed them, I was already preparing myself for the high possibility of something going wrong, so I was not too devastated when it didn't work out. Still, I hate wasting food. I varied the recipe ever so slightly - I used the remainders of some orange and poppyseed biscuits I baked (recipe from this amazing site) for the base instead of digestives and had the recipe worked, I think this would have been a change that I could have been proud of.

Anyhow, the cheesecake was a disaster because you had to bake it in a basin of water, and my tin foil wasn't hardcore enough to stop the water seeping into the cheesecake. I tried to dry it off by putting it back in the oven at a low temperature but it was still soggy when I took it out. I had been thinking recently how I haven't had many disasters with baking, but I figure after this little disaster that the more I bake the higher the probability is that something will go wrong. So as bizarre as it sounds, I am kind of excited that I have got to the stage where I bake so much that things have started to wrong...hmmm...I'm not sure that there is any logic whatsoever in that statement - just put it down to one of the side effects of anaesthetic.

Yesterday was a beautiful day, so on my way home from the office I took a little detour along the path by the alotments that leads to city farm. I love it at this time of year where there is so much green foliage arching over the pathway. It's amazing how much shade they provide from the bright sunlight - I love the contrast of light that you get.



The picture of the butterfly at the top of this post is from city farm. I found it hanging on one of the trees there.)