A few mid-week pseudo-tweets. I’ve termed them super tweets to cover the fact that they may well notably exceeed the maximum length of tweets…
Monday. Another intense teaching day. Lunchtime lecture again precludes time for lunch. Not so much of a problem this week. Paper giver in each of the four classes brings a cake. Three of the four are home made (cakes, that is).
Tuesday. Browne report on funding of HE published. I chair a meeting of the Parliamentary University Group addressed by the Minister for Universities, David Willetts. Packed meeting; very high turnout of Vice-Chancellors.
Wednesday. Deputy PM Nick Clegg gives evidence to Constitution Committee on the Government’s constitutional programme. I pursue the relationship between the purpose of change (restore faith in politics) and the particular measures proposed (e.g. fixed-term parliaments). Lord Irvine goes into lawyer mode in questioning the Deputy PM on the issue of the Lords.
Wednesday continued. This evening, first seminar with my students on placement at Westminster. Then catching a late train to Banbury: I’m speaking to US students at Wroxton College in the morning.
“Paper giver in each of the four classes brings a cake. Three of the four are home made (cakes, that is).”
Bah humbug – no one ever brought cake to my classes!
Croft: You were clearly in the wrong classes!
I should have added that they were very nice cakes as well.
Possibly a mixed blessing though LN – I presume you’re not a great frequenter of the bars after lectures as some of my more esteemed and generous pint buying lecturers were!
LT:”any tips for grating a sufficient amount of chocolate (a heavy sprinkle) before it melts in hand. ”
Have you tried freezing the chocolate first – it makes it more brittle as well as tending not to melt.
Croft: A valid presumption!
Lord Norton: Well LN you must consider you will miss out on important cultural experiences – for instance my course’s apres bière rendition of Monty Python’s Philosophers’ Song was a thing to behold
LT: Horses for courses – Flapjack and Scones are really the only sweet foods I make with regularity as they are ideal in an aga.
I’m having the devil of a time finding a decent recipe for Black Forest Gateau. The cake bit of the ones I’ve tried are way too dry, even after a healthy splodging (technical term) of kirsch+syrup.
Advice gratefully received. Plus, any tips for grating a sufficient amount of chocolate (a heavy sprinkle) before it melts in hand. Thanks!
Thanks, Croft, for the suggestion on chocolate and I’ll try it out. I have got around the problem by getting the spouse to do it – he is as happy as Larry and so may resist the new method.
laddytizzy: You may be surprised by the number of men who appear to enjoy baking! (One or two who have occasionally commented on this blog have, I noticed, written about their baking experiences on their own blogs.) I should add that I am not one of them. I fear that it is one cultural experience, along with those referred to by Croft, that has passed me by.
I am rarely surprised at what men get up to when dressed in an apron. Baking is one of my penances.
I find baking wonderfully therapeutic
The nearest I’ve come to cooking recently is adding hot water to a Pot Noodle.
I thought that was generally considered one of the few skills some students gain at university