Anna Aden Writes

No, not a hotel room! So on Lockdown, where there is little division between home and work and things are getting blurred. Normally all the times I used to treat myself was food related. Food, food, food.....biscuits, sweets, pizzas, takeaways, cakes... However I soon discovered a new treat. A visual treat, and that was making up my bed.  Normally making up my bed is a chore, and sometimes I used to wonder what the point was, I was only going to go back into it. Why bother? Also because I go on morning walks, I see a lot of people are of the same opinion. They rarely make up their beds until I realised it was a VISUAL TREAT!  After a hard day at work, and yes Lockdown work, is busier than normal-in-the-office work, I realised that after sitting at my desk for so long, there was nothing more welcoming than a make-up bed at night time.  So now, I've been making up my bed reminding myself that even though the treat is not an instant grati...

Once in a while, I make pancakes where I add hot (pepper) sauce to them. The pepper gives it a sharp kick.  For lockdown, I used my normal recipe but the only difference was I used equal parts of cornflour (polenta) and self-raising wheat flour. The polenta gave it a grainy taste - so perhaps not to everyone's palate but who cares? My mother also bakes a lovely cornbread - more like a cake so I'll happily use it as a substitute for flour.  This polenta was finely milled. At times my normal recipe varies depending on if I have the ingredients but what is normal? Flour, milk, eggs and sugar. I normally use self-raising because I like the fluffy or spongey feel to the pancakes, rather than just plain flour which feels and tastes a bit heavy. It just depends on the texture. Normally because I LOVE pancakes, I tend not to have flour at home. I could just live on pancakes, which I normally do until I run out of flour. HOWEVER, due the lockdown, I grabbed a pack before officia...

Hello everyone, I hope you and yours are all safe and well. There is so much going on that I try to switch off because it's what's everyone is covering and let's face it I'm scared and so is the world including leaders. There are people out there doing amazing work - the key healthcare workers (including caregivers in home and on hte field), the postal service, the local utility service - refuse collection, gas, water etc. Then the brave supermarket workers and delivery workers, the law enforcement and everyone else. So what have I been doing on Lock Down? Baking, lots of baking I tired to make some biscuits, and they didn't quite meet the mark but they hit the spot. I love biscuits but I used less ingredients than I should. A lot less sugar and butter. I used more flour but in hindsight that is now a scarce commodity.  But this was before everyone started baking. Staying in touch with Family and Loved ones. I ring Sis and my mother ...