Pre-Scriptum: For blog-only readers: fortunately it turns out that yesterday’s sore throat was most likely caused by allergies, which is something novel to me. Thanks for your positive vibes!
Easter Groundhog Day Christmas Who knows?
Does anybody else feel like all days are the same? I have lost all sense of time and space. I struggle in Zoom sessions: “See you …. erm… sometime next week? No, this Thursday!”; or I write the wrong day or date or time on a Daily Briefing, or on the weekly schedule. I keep trying to write it’s still February, yet we have only three weeks of the semester left. I apologize to all my students who have been confused as heck about what is happening or due when. Like everything else in my courses, dates appear to be “figureoutable”, too.
The old Tom Lehrer intro to “Fight Fiercely Harvard” song says, “long Saturday afternoons with nothing to do, because the library was closed,” and when I was at Cambridge, I knew it was Sunday because the UL [University Library] was closed. But now everything is closed so I have no clue what day it is. I wake up, make coffee, and avoid the news until 12pm, so that doesn’t help (but it helps with many other things), and now every day is like Groundhog Day. Except I’m not going to become a jazz pianist.
With my sense of time completely screwed up, a craving for something sweet tonight, and puff pastry and a couple of jars of mincemeat in the house, I decided we might as well skip Easter and head straight over to Christmas, and so I bring you the “quarantine square puff pastry mincepies”. It turned out I don’t have cookie cutters. Screw that. I’m having mince pies my way. The only thing that could make things better at this point would be a dollop of Rodda’s clotted cream, and a cup of Tregothnan tea, but otherwise, it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas here.
How to make them:
- jar of mincemeat (If not in the UK: keep yer eyes peeled between Thanksgiving and Christmas in the “British Food” section at your local grocery; stock up like they’re going out of fashion. They will.)
- sheet of frozen puff pastry, thaw for however long it says on the box (35-40mins)
- preheat oven to 370F (180-190C)
- roll out pastry a bit. Nothing too strenuous, this is not haute cuisine, but quarantine kitchen.
- cut pastry into about 9 squares. Some will be more square than others.
- place a bit of the mince in the middle
- wet edges with a bit of water (dip your finger in the nearest glass)
- fold the squares whichever way you want: rectangles, triangles, or crimp together some other way
- poke a hole in the top with the knife point
- place in oven for 20 mins
- like with all things Covid19-related: hope for the best!
