The best cook ya ever had.

[reddragdiva]

I had a job interview by phone on Thursday and will be attending the second interview in fucking Reading on Monday. Looks like an interesting job. I'll be practicing sleeping on planes, I can see.

We didn't go to B-Movie, due to poverty and illness. redcountess has been notably unwell lately, although she does seem to be improving a bit.

It's been a quiet and domestic few days. Liz repotted the largest plant at last and had fun hacking away at the garden, clearing a bush away from the lounge window yesterday morning, which left her utterly exhausted but greatly cheered. arkady came over to play and successfully used her 'l33t haxx0r sk1llz to remove a particularly evil bastard plant (which we think is responsible for water leaking into the bedroom) from the front yard.

Arkady made some very cheap, quick and nice scones. These are imperial scones, note — Americans should take care with their weirdly deficient pints. We expect to be living on these as soon as I get the knack.

8 oz self-raising flour
2 tablespoons butter/margarine
A tablespoon of sugar
1 egg
Somewhere under 1/4 pint of milk

Preheat the oven to 300–350°F. Rub the butter and flour together in a mixing bowl until it resembles breadcrumbs. Stir in your sugar. Put the egg in a separate measuring jug and pour in enough milk to make it up to a quarter pint; whisk together. Pour this into your butter and flour mix and stir thoroughly until it forms a single lump of dough. Knead it thoroughly, get that air in. Form into twelve lumps of dough and put them on a baking tray. Bake for ten minutes or so (ours took fifteen) at about 300–350°F. If you have a crappy gas oven like ours, keep an eye on them and turn the tray in the oven to account for hot and cold spots. Eat with butter and maybe jam. Everyone will eat all of them immediately.

Variations: Use olive oil instead of butter and leave out the milk; this results in more savoury scones. Use whole-wheat flour, then they end up brown. Couple of ounces of cheese and they end up more savoury cheese scones. Add a couple of ounces of dried fruit for fruit scones; toss them separately in flour before adding them to the butter and flour mix or they'll all sink to the bottom.

(Translations: 225 grams, 50-60 grams, 25-30 grams, 1 egg, somewhere under 140mL, 200°C.)

I shall be meeting mjg59 at the Porterhouse at 4:30pm to see what we can do about the laptop.