*ake Off

Being so far removed from my homeland and without any voting rights, I have little, in fact, no idea of what is going on in "normal" life in the UK. Almost every day some message comes from one of the children mentioning a person or event which forces me to google in order to find out what they are talking about.

However, I do try to keep up with current news and almost daily watch Sky News' nightly review of the following morning's newspaper headlines. As they show the front pages of the Times, FT, Telegraph, Guardian ...... eventually the joke Daily Star is quickly passed over with a headline that usually includes "Bake Off" and/or "Strictly". So I am aware of these two TV shows but have never seen an episode and haven't got a clue who the judges (who seem to make the most news) are in Bake Off and not a single "Personality" contestant in Strictly (apart from one prominent politician a few years ago.

Strictly remains off limits to me as I am a dedicated follower of the Mrs May School of Dancing and I didn't watch any of the 424 Come Dancing episodes between 1950 and 1998. I researched Bake off on the web today and learn it is actually a "brand" TV programme seemingly belonging to Good Housekeeping and moves around TV stations depending on how much money can be made. It also seems (like Strictly) to be largely about sex "The top 16 spiciest innuendos in this weeks episode" being the sort of web-line eyecatcher. Shame as Good Housekeeping was always for me one of the backbones of British Society and indeed my very first port call when cooking is the ancient GH Basic Cookery small paperback of standard recipes. When I want to be adventurous I move to Delia Smith.

In recent years I haven't ventured far outside these two cookery books despite the bombardment by friend and Bliper Nogbad of his daily supermarket trolley on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and usually a nightly Blip of the resulting creation. Frankly, I don't even recognise many of the dishes (exception when he traditionally sets the Xmas Brussel sprouts on to boil on August Bank Holiday Monday) because they invariably have foreign words in them. Yesterday it was "Parkin" ? that got a Blip mention but no photo due to immigration fears.?? Even caught out 99% of his Facebook friends. Didn't exist in the South of England until the recent completion of the M1 and M6 or the new extension of the Stockton-Darlington line to York and points south. Don't panic, unlikely to catch on south of the Severn-Wash Line.

Some may remember I made a large quantity of Lemon Curd a week or two back and am a bit concerned as to how long it will keep. So today needing a bit of a sweetener from the dreary weather, looked up on the web for a recipe that used it as part of something else. This is where GH & Delia let me down - Lemon Curd recipe yes but no hint as to what to do with it apart from adding an inch or two to a slice of toast.

So off into the wonderful wide world of Google and Donald's your Uncle, up sprung a great looking photo and 5 very golden stars and 5,487 Reviews. I went for it: "Lemon Curd Pound Cake with Limoncello Glaze". Knew it had to be good with that reassuring UK £ in the title. Off to the hob with the Tablet charged up and to line up the ingredients: 2 eggs - a dash to the fridge. Done: 3/4 Cup milk ............. oh NO, here we go! and scroll down to see what else was coming my way - cups, cups and more cups, in whole cups, fractions of a cup and multiples of a cup.

Way way back when the Greeks were sinking Roman ships, my mother had a large aluminium cone-shaped measure in our Trinidad household with the entire outside marked with items of food. I believe this was the standard "Cup" measuring instrument which may still exist in a museum.

Have you tried working out the difference between "liquid solids" and liquids or solids? "Flour" differentiated from "Sifted Flour"? You need to have done a 5 year PhD to have a chance of finding the right conversion. I wish I had paid more attention at school to learning how a slide rule and the accompanying bible of logarithm tables (not algorithms) and such foreign matters worked.

Somehow battled through it all but didn't bother with looking for a 9" x 5" baking loaf pan as I only have one rectangular size and it's metric. Had to take the risk. In the oven it went while I prepared a snack lunch of warmed up squash/pumpkin soup I had made the other day and sat down with a tray to watch the TV programme Angie was looking at on the dreary, not worthy of going out afternoon. And it was some US/Mexican dog trainer named after a brand of expensive dog food. And he was dealing with dogs having the same problems we have with Luna. Found it interesting and watched episode after episode until I smelt a light hint of something burning coming from the kitchen.

Luckily it wasn't too bad, just the very outer 2mm on the sides were somewhat dark. A search for the Limoncello bottle that seems to always have been kicking around for the last five years since Aldi first presented it to the German world on a special "Taste of Sicily Week"., proved unsuccessful - I suspect someone has been tippling at it when my back was turned. So quickly squeezed out a lemon, threw some icing sugar at it (too little) and tried to artistically cover the cake with a glaze.

The photo was taken while the cake was still warm and the anyway too liquid glaze not set. I couldn't wait longer and was pleasantly surprised. Very sweet and it appeared to me that the Lemon Curd which I had carefully spread around in the batter had reformed and sunk towards the bottom. On balance quite acceptable in small slices but I will try to find another use for the remaining Lemon Curd.

What I did like on the recipe webpage was the author's thoughts on Lemon Curd and I do agree with her - no foodstuff has ever earnt the unfortunate shame of having the letters "U R D" included.

Talking of which, son J and mate Mathison were enjoying their last few rays of sunshine on the US/Mexican border. Tonight (19:25 US Pacific Coast Time) they are set to fly back to Heathrow. I think at least for J, a holiday of a, so-far, lifetime. Mathison as part of his work gets to see such places pretty regularly.

I am looking forward to hearing and seeing more when they are back in good old Europe, assuming that they get through UK Homeland Security or whatever it is called nowadays. They have posted lots of very questionable photos on social media and the likes in the course of 16 days. Apart from the damage done to their images along the entire southern English nightlife community, I suspect any urine tests will show they are carrying concealed and excessive amounts of alcohol, far and away above anything that could reasonably be termed "Only for Personal Use".

Have a good "Take off" guys and once again thank you the USA for giving them a great, safe time in your fascinating country. Just please make sure it remains that way - open, tolerant, fun, free and whacky.