The first lockdown baking session since non- Christmas took place yesterday. Orange and Almond Cake , as above, and Onion Bhajis. Both cooked because they appeared in articles I was reading and because they sounded impossibly easy to make. In my reading/baking experiment they proved to be as easy as the narrator/author suggested. They were only easy because we are nearly a year into Pandemic Lockdowns. In a pre- pandemic life they would still have been easy but a trip to a supermarket would , almost certainly, have been needed. @theoldmortuary we have become much more confident cooks, driven by dietary and lifestyle changes that were needed when a health problem revealed itself early in Lockdown 1.

Now we have a multi cultural larder cupboard that facilitated yesterdays cook with the aid of the internet.

Onion Bhajis , always a thing of great expectation and sometimes soggy dissapointment. No dissapointment at our house yesterday. In the book excerpt I was reading , set in East London, an unexpected visitor was welcomed with hugs, a cup of tea and freshly cooked bhajis!

Hugs!!! How retro is that.

So good was this experiment of bhaji making there were none left for a photo shoot.

Not so the Orange and Almond Cake created because a food critic said eating it reminded him of his dear mum.

It seemed implausible because it contained four whole oranges.

Whole Orange Cake – rind and all!

Follow the link above to find the recipe I used.

The cake was fabulous. Thank goodness there are the lifestyle changes that were needed to go along with the dietary ones in Lockdown I. Increased exercise for good health and immune system boosting helps to burn off the calories created by the baking experiments.

Yesterday was a ‘ bobbing’ day. Cold water swimming is very good for boosting the immune system. With cake and coffee packed we set off for Firestone Bay. Seas around Plymouth had been rough and messy earlier in the day but all that was left when we arrived were some curious currents and water that wouldn’t have looked out of place in our post-baking washing up bowl.

The cake was consumed post ‘ bob’ with hot coffee on the way home. Once home we checked a local swimming site on Facebook to see how other swimmers had fared during the day. To our surprise ‘bobbers’ were featured in a photograph.

Featuring the post swim rush towards cake!

https://www.facebook.com/groups/214153495854310/?ref=share

The link above is to Plymouth Open Water Swimmers. A fabulous Facebook page that we always refer to before and after a ‘bob’ just in case there is anything that we need to know about swimming locally.