Being Sad and Buying Stuff

My mood got better after Christmas, just before New Year.  Right through the first part of the holidays, however, I was like a spider in water.  The discharge of my responsibilities over the festival was not the catharsis for which I was hoping, but I coped externally.  My mother-in-law-to-be, sensing perhaps some of my disquiet, called out to me as I left her home on Boxing Day, “Everything you do is socially acceptable to us.”  It was a kind thought.

This was of course the first Christmas I spent with the señor’s family as well as my own.  As the day approached I knew I was worrying unnecessarily–had I not had any number of happy evenings with them this year already (including that staple of extended families worldwide, drinking in the kitchen)?–and yet I still worried.  I wanted the gifts I’d had a hand in choosing to be appropriate.  “Of course they will be,” said the señor, “they’re from you”, and yet I couldn’t quite accept the idea that whatever I did would be fine.  I need not have worried–the prediction was correct–but I didn’t enjoy the feeling in the days before that I was worrying far too much about everything (when not worrying at all would have been the best way to approach things) and not quite being able to stop it.

The self-testing time passed, however, and left me with a good idea of how to divide up the seasonal division of labour next year in terms of who will buy which gifts and for whom within this couple of which I now form one part.  Then I had the luxury of a week or so of sleep while the señor returned to work, resurfacing every so often to buy our  present for each other in the post-Christmas sales.

Towit: we bought a breadmaker.  It is a thing of beauty, or rather, the bread that it produces is so.  I don’t think we will ever go back to store-bought bread, as long as we have electricity.  The process is not exactly labour intensive (put the ingredients in the machine in the correct order, switch it on, select from various cycles and wait a few hours), although shopping for ingredients takes some planning.  It’s not the basics but the variations that need hunting down.  We’re not yet sure if it’s going to be cheaper overall than buying bread, although the gentlemen of Frugal Me strongly suggest that it is, by considerable means; however the señor and I are now eating a heck of a lot more bread (and not much else, at present).

We also bought a small food processor with a blender attachment, although the processor manual worryingly refers to the blender as the “liquidizer”.  The timing could not have been better, since is not New Year a time for home-blended cocktails?  (The answer is yes.)  On the evenings that we’re both home, our kitchen tends to resemble the kitchen of a hen party in rum bottles* and fruity detritus.  For years I have kept in one of my cupboards my grandmother’s original Kitchen Whizz, which she had serviced and gave to me when I moved in here; sadly, however, it has never worked.  It’s interesting to observe that the technology hasn’t changed since the appliance first became available: apart from being smaller, our new processor has by and large the same functions.  Growing up we had a hand-cranked slicer, grater and mincer resembling a blender that was itself a 1970s update on the old mincers.  Apparently, 2009 is going to be my year for thinking about appliances.

And finally, I also bought a yoghurt maker, as a result of which I have learned that powdered yoghurt mixes do not apparently generate sufficient culture to serve as a base for future yoghurt making.  My attempt to make a second batch of yoghurt using part of the powder-made first produced after the incubation period a barrel of milk with some extra-curdled yoghurt at the bottom.  That this is the worst thing to have happened to me thus far in the new year gives you an idea, gentle reader, of how pleasant life at the moment is.

CP

*Okay, only one rum bottle.  But everything else is true, I promise.

Tagged as: bread, Christmas, depression, shopping