"Brevity is the soul of wit…"

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Spake the irritating Polonius in Hamlet, before launching into a lengthy speech, unaware of his foolishness…well at least I’m aware that this is a long post.

As I type I am having a very serene afternoon tea- a bowl of miso soup (made by adding boiling water to a spoonful of white miso paste.) I am even drinking it straight out of the bowl, both hands cupped around its warm curves – how very zen!


Above: What Othello might have called “Ocular proof” that I am, in fact, having soup. Anyway, I need all the “zen” I can get, as I have Shakespeare coming out my ears, rather than staying in my brain where he belongs, and our exam (Monday by the way) looms ever closer.
Last night I decided to peruse a much-loved but never used book of mine – the Victoria League of Auckland’s Tried Recipes, 5th edition (price: 2/-) It has recipes sent in by Good Women of Auckland, and has many chapters, including “Creams, Jellies, and Pretty Sweet Dishes” and “Gravies, Forcemeats and Sauces for Meat Dishes.” How I yearn for the days when cream-based puddings had their own category in cookbooks. I must admit, I was surprised to see the chapter “Vegetarian Cookery and Salad Dressings,” in that I small-mindedly didn’t think anyone was ‘allowed’ to be vegetarian in ‘those days.’ Should the discerning vegetarian about town in the 1940s/50s be looking for a meat-free substitute for brawn, this book has it. (And I quote – “The sago binds it”)

This book, like all good books of its kind, has three trillion variations on fruit cake, not to mention a plethora of obscurely named puddings that all seem to be the same – has anyone out there ever heard of: Chandos Pudding, Russel Pudding, Verney Pudding, Totnes Pudding, Marlborough Pudding? I think it’s worth pointing out that you could replace the word ‘pudding’ with ‘disease’ or ‘syndrome’ and they would sound quite credible. I know they were economising on eggs and butter but surely not beautiful words too? (also noted – the book includes recipes for both American Pudding and Canadian pudding and they are different, thank you very much.)
I know it sounds like I’m making fun of this book, but oh how I love it, and others of its ilk (Aunt Daisy, I’m looking at you.) In fact, last night’s dinner came from it, and I was snared instantly by its straightforward, thrifty title: “A Way to Cook Fish.”
It goes thusly: Fry an onion in butter, add some fish, lemon juice, and two egg yolks (into which I stirred a little cream.) It took as long to cook it as it did to type it out, and it is very, very good. I served it on top of pasta, with some greens that I had squeezed the rest of the lemon over.

Above: Yes, not much based on canned tuna will ever be photogenic. But, it tasted great. So, to Miss E.T Rose, of Stonehurst, Auckland, from whence this recipes came, I salute you.

In the spirit of economy, I decided to use the egg whites for dessert. I had found a recipe on Nigella.com for Butterscotch Mousse, which sounded like one of those store cupboard recipes that the Victoria League would go nuts for. It is very simple. First of all, make a caramel sauce, by melting 75g butter, 1/2 cup brown sugar, and 100 mls cream together in a pot. Let this cool thoroughly, and then whisk up two eggs whites till stiff, and fold them in, followed by 200mls whipped cream (I used the same bowl.) It is rich and creamy and has a wonderful caramel flavour. If you cannot be bothered with whisking things, the sauce on its own would be great poured over ice cream.

Above: The Mousse, partially eaten.
It doesn’t ‘set’ like a gelatine-based mousse but completely makes up for its gloopiness with its voluptous butterscotch kick. We all (even Emma – it’s gluten free!) ate out of the same bowl, passed from person to person, as we watched Outrageous Fortune (technically studying since the title is a quote from Hamlet.)

A Simple Tart…

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When I bought the rhubarb that has graced many of my posts here, I also grabbed a big bag of apples for $2. As they sat on our kitchen table, threatening to fester at any moment, I realised I’d better do something with them. Apple Crumble was the first thing that popped into my head, but although I love it immensly I felt like something a little more challenging. Nigella’s butterscotch tart from How To Eat called my name, especially after reading about its success on this lovely blog.

With that in mind, I thought I ought to have something relatively healthy for dinner. And so I turned to someone who would never replace butter with a low-fat margarine – Nigella. Her Vietnamese Coleslaw from Nigella Bites is so good, it would be one of her recipes that I make the most. It is basically a shredded cabbage, carrot, and chicken salad with Vietnamese dressing, but I hardly ever put chicken in it as it is wondrous and cheaper without. I’ll give you my adapted recipe for the dressing as no one needs to be told how to chop carrots and cabbage (mind you, it is infinitely easier and quicker whizzed up in the food processor)
Mix together:
-1 1/2 t rice vinegar
-1 1/2 tablespoons each of lime juice, fish sauce, vegetable oil, and sugar.
With this goes a crushed garlic clove and as much chilli as you can handle. I suppose you could replace the sugar and chilli with a spoonful of sweet chilli sauce. I usually have lemons, not limes, to hand, which works fine, and I quite often leave out the oil and replace it with a few shakes of sesame oil. Anyway, mix all this into the vegetables, along with chopped mint, which gives it an incredible freshness. Seriously, I could eat this by the bucketload. It even looks quite beautiful, so one can revel smugly in their healthy dinner –

Above: World’s. Best. Coleslaw.
With that I made the Chicken with Soy and Sherry from the New Zealand cookbook. Except…we don’t have sherry, so I replaced it, a little recklessly, with Sake, ie Japanese rice wine, a substance that I looooove to cook with. This recipe (which I deviated from slightly) is a very simple combination of great flavours. Basically, in a roasting dish I put chicken pieces, ginger, soy sauce, garlic, onions, Sake, and sesame seeds for crunch. I realise that putting Japanese and Vietnamese flavours together may seem a little dismissive of the respective nations’ cuisines but…if food tastes good, eat it!

Above: A sliiightly blurry photo of the chicken. Despite having no added fat (oh alright, a few shakes of sesame oil) it was crispy and toothsome.
While the chicken was in the oven, I got started on the pastry. I have to say, pastry makes me nervous, but Nigella does have it pretty sorted. As with the cole slaw, life is much, much easier if you use a food processor. Okay, so cleaning it is a bit of a pain, but it knocks so much time off the making process. I am suspicious of anything labelled ‘fool proof’ (ie, my learners driving liscence…”any fool can pass it,” they said…not this one) but Nigella’s pastry pretty much is. The crucial thing is to freeze the flour, and half its weight in fat, for a bit in the actual processor bowl. Cold= good, warm=bad for pastry, and the less you handle it the better. Whizz the two together, add a little cold, lemony water, refrigerate for a bit, and then roll out. It actually is remarkably do-able, even for someone like me who gets flour everywhere.

Above: the pastry, which was a dream to roll out waiting to be pressed into my silicone pie-tin.

One of the BEST things about this pie, no, THE BEST thing about it, is that it doesn’t need baking blind. Oh, how I hate baking blind. I can never manage to escape from burning myself while removing the weights.

Above: I did manage to use quite a few apples in this and thus justified my desire to make pie!

This doesn’t really further the plot but I thought this looked pretty, which I am not always capable of in cooking. Looking capable isn’t always my forte either, come to think of it…
All that happens now is a dense mixture of brown sugar, cream, eggs and flour is poured over, and the pie is baked.
Above: The finished product. Isn’t this wholesome and comforting to look at, with its monochrome butterscotch colours and bits of apple peeking out from the toffee flavoured filling. That’s a statement, not a question.
This was so, so yum, the filling had a texture similar to frangipane and contrasted delightfully with the sour apples, while the pastry was feather-light and crisp.
In other news, Tim and I have been studying hard for our exam next Monday, so things may be a trifle slower round here…I had a dream about Shakespear’s Cymbeline last night in which I altered the ending, I don’t know if this a good thing or not!

Hey Hey, Chai Chai

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Yes, that is a slightly forced Neil Young reference in the title.

Nana kindly emailed me a recipe for some delicious sounding Chai spiced cookies, which I tried out this afternoon. I have had Chai tea before (as you know from previous posts) and I absolutely love its aromatic warmth. It is funny because I was just thinking about how Chai would make a great flavouring for something when I got the email from Nana. Doo dee doo doo (twilight zone theme, etc)
The recipe gave a blueprint for Chai flavouring – a heady combination of ground cinnamon, cardamom, cloves and white pepper. Unfortunately I didn’t have the cardamom like I thought, so my biscuits weren’t quite what the recipe specified, but were still fantastic, and pleasingly complementary to a mug of hot Chai tea.
Above: Cookies, straight from the oven…with the malevolent black beans lurking in the background…
Above: Cookies and Chai…I was trying, not altogether successfully, to imitate the photography in posh food magazines. I should point out that I never store or serve my bickies like this.

They tasted seriously good together though. Will definitely be making these again – thanks Nana!

The black beans (sent to me by Mum, by the way) ended up in a sort of loose Mexican style dinner, as you can see below. I love how they look more like gleaming beads than something actually edible.

Above: Dinner. I sauteed an onion and some garlic, tossed in some cumin and coriander seeds, browned the mince, added the mild chilli from a jar, paprika and a little cocoa for kick, biffed in beans both black and frozen, stirred in a tin of tomatoes and some water and let it simmer for half an hour. I served it over rice and it was really good – I just wish I’d had some fresh coriander to go with.
We ate this while watching the Christmas special of Outrageous Fortune on our DVD, the one where they go camping…it made me want to go to Awhitu so bad! Roll on summer! (And once again, no, TV3 isn’t paying me for free advertising of their show. I wish…)

Christmas is a-coming…

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As I mentioned in earlier posts, I had acquired a glut of rhubarb, which I finished off today while making Nigella’s Rhubarb Vanilla Mincemeat from Feast. I don’t like it when Christmas starts tooo early (particularly in areas of retail) but I didn’t want the rhubarb to wilt and mincemeat can only improve on sitting. Nigella says it would make an excellent gift, and after tasting some of the end result, I’m inclined to agree. So if you like what you see, take a number, stand in line…

First of all, I chopped up my stash of rhubarb-
 It’s really that colour! To paraphrase Anne (she of Green Gables, that is), you could say “pink” a thousand times and it wouldn’t describe how pink this rhubarb is.

I then did something that falls into the category of “silly but not surprising for Laura.” I measured in the brown sugar, and the spices, and the dried fruit (raisins, sultanas, currants) before realising that the rhubarb and sugar needs to be simmered alone first before adding the fruit. So I spent a good ten minutes fishing out 300g of raisiny things out with a spoon, before I started simmering the rhubarb.

 

A darkly fragrant vanilla bean, sliced in half and then into bits. All the seeds are scraped into the rhubarb and the pods are chucked in for good measure.

 

Once I had simmered the rhubarb, I returned the fished out raisins, currants and sultanas to their rightful place! This needed simmering for half an hour, and filled the flat with a gorgeous, spicy fruity aroma.
Mincemeat! The rhubarb sort of “melted” into the fruit. The final step was to toss in some brandy (which I don’t have and so used the more-than-worthy substitute of Marsala All’uovo)
The mincemeat is now cooling, along with some black beans which I boiled and left to soak in anticipation of tonight’s dinner (I’m thinking something Mexican-esque.) Once the water heats up, the beans turn everything black:
Above: Oh, you sinister beans!

What would Scarlett O’Hara Do?

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I admit that I haven’t actually seen Gone With The Wind, but I remember reading years ago in…a Sweet Valley High book (oh the delicious juxtaposition between high and low culture) that she was particularly resourceful. Incidentally, is it worrying that “Johanssen” not “O’Hara” is the first thing that pops into my head upon hearing the word Scarlett?

Anyway, what S’OH might have done, if she found out that her boyfriend had deleted the photos of roast pork and the ensuing stir fry (when of course, she should have uploaded them sooner so the blame is on both sides)…is shown the world some photos she prepared earlier! This year, before I started this blog, I was taking photos fairly regularly of recipes (usually Nigella’s) that I’d made. In fact, it was in pondering why I took these photos that I first considered starting a blog.
So; with a flourish to distract you from the empty promises of previous posts- a trip down memory lane! Disclaimer – these photos were taken before I started this blog and so aren’t that great – not that the rest of my photos are – but, well, this is what our food looks like under the light of our kitchen.

Above: Custard Cream Hearts, from Nigella’s Feast. The custard buttercream filling is quite, quite addictive. I’m lucky there was any left to fill these beauties!

Above: Chickpea and Zuchinni Filo Pie, from Nigella’s How To Be A Domestic Goddess. It sounds much more like something you’d buy at a cafe and not ever contemplate making at home, but it isn’t tooooo fiddly (despite the word ‘Filo’ in the title) and tastes soooo good, all fragrant with cumin and tumeric. I recommend this if you are ever needing to seduce a vegetarian.
Above: Chocolate Fudge Cake, from Nigella Bites. It is an old fashioned, solid chocolate cake and the icing is just ridiculously good.I made it for Tim’s birthday in September.
Above: Pasta from my impulse-bought pasta machine. It is more delicious than any pasta I have ever had…definitely worth the effort! I used the pasta recipe from Nigella Bites (1 egg to every 100g flour, which feeds one person – an easy equation) and got Tim to help me crank the machine. It cooks in literally seconds, in boiling salted water, and I dressed it simply in butter and nutmeg. If I had the time, I’d probably eat this every day.
The roast pork, by the way, was from Nigella’s Feast, and was an Italian recipe for New Years called “Roast Pork Cinghiale.” The marinade involved marsala fine, pink peppercorns, garlic, allspice, olive oil, brown sugar, and a few other bits and pieces. Once roasted, the sugar and the wine caramelised it wonderfully while the pepper and spices provided a densely earthy flavour. A seriously great way of treating pork.
In honour of the New Years Pork: I resolve to be more organised!

Oh, wouldn’t it be luver-lee…

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Tim is off at his awkwardly early staff Christmas party, to which partners (ie me!) are not invited. With him is the camera you see, and since I forgot to upload the latest photos it will be a wee while before you can see how the roasted pork turned out, and indeed, the Thai stirfry with cubes of leftover roast pork that we had for dinner the next night.

All is not lost though, because as per usual, I have plenty to ruminate upon. I walked into town with Tim today, and left him at Starbucks to begin his shift while I went off to wander round town, clutching my complimentary Chai steamed soy milk. It was cold and drizzly today- the perfect weather to be inhaling the spicy gingerbread scent of Chai. While on a fruitless mission locating Kilner jars (for Christmas food projects!) I ended up in Kirkcaldie and Staines – a place I don’t really frequent for fear of knocking over something expensive, or having some long thin woman look down her long thin nose at me.

However, in their “Cuisine” section, I found the place where I want Santa to visit for me this year. It’s as though they read all of Nigella’s books, wrote down everything she uses, and then sourced it out for this shop.

I found all manner of enticing goodies including (not exclusively, by the way, I’m sure I’ve forgotten a few things in the excitement):

-Dried Trompette De Mort mushrooms, sold 25g at a time, along with chantarelles and porcini
-Beautiful glace fruit, glistening with sugar; Orange slices, figs, and muscatel grapes
-Gelatine leaves
-Carnaroli Rice (like arborio rice for risotto, but well, more expensive)
-Tiny sugar flowers for decorating cupcakes
-Smoked paprika
-Canned chesnuts, whole and pureed (I was lucky enough to get a can of them last Christmas)
-Mushroom Ketchup, something that has presented a giant question mark in my mind since Nigella mentioned it in How To Eat…well, it exists!

In the cookware section I salivated over copper pots, mini bundt and savarin tins (although what on earth would I do with them?) ceramic pie weights for blind baking and of course, Nigella’s range of Living Kitchen gear. I had a moment of wishing I could buy the lot (singing “If I were a rich wo-man, do do do de do de do de do de deeee) but sometimes it is nice just to dream, and happily I felt satisfied and inspired, rather than resentful and skint. In the end I bought a present for Tim – some very classy looking sugar-free shortbread. The man before me at the checkout had bought some leaf gelatine, but he didn’t look at all pleased about it like I would have. I suppressed the temptation to say to him, “Isn’t it a trifle off-putting that in large letters the label states that the main ingredient is pig skin?” Maybe he’d already noticed.

Thus, with my Starbucks takeaway cup and Kirk’s bag I must have looked a lot richer than I really am, strolling down the road.

In other news, after seeing the headlines in the Dominion Post (can’t remember specifically, but it was tantamount to “The End Is Nigh and nothing you can do will stop it”) I unplugged all possible power cords at our flat, and quaked nervously for a bit. Our flat is actually pretty green – most of our lightbulbs are the aforementioned long lasting ones, we recycle religously, we only use cold water in the washing machine, we only buy free range eggs, do all our groceries in one go (less car trips!) and anyone who leaves a lightbulb on while out of their room gets a withering look. I know every bit helps, but it’s not easy to keep from freaking out at such headlines as the Dom Post had. I do, however, see the irony of doing all this while drooling over imported foreign Nigella-friendly food items…c’est la vie…

24 Little Hours…

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After all that steak-and-cake, I felt like doing something a little lighter for dinner last night. A bit difficult to say this with a straight face though, as I currently have almost 2 kilos of pork marinading in the fridge…

Above: Marinading pork – you know those arcarock plates aren’t small either!
Well, the pork was only $7.99 a kilo at New World Metro in town, which is actually cheaper than mince was when we last went to Pak’n’Save. Nothing against mince though, as it was used to great effect at last night’s dinner, Thai beef in lettuce from Nigella’s Forever Summer. It is so quick, all you need to do is zap some rice to go with. It is also cheap to make and a great use for Fish Sauce, should your bottle be languishing in the cupboard. The kindest way to describe fish sauce is pungent…but it really is worth getting over the initial scent for the salty depth and flavour it brings to food. It’s only about $2.50 a bottle, to boot.

Thai Crumbled Beef in Lettuce Wraps
-1 t vegetable oil
-1 red chilli, finely chopped (I used some of that chilli and lime that comes in a jar, because neither Tim nor I can handle tooo much heat)
-375g beef mince (or however much will feed the people you are serving – this is a loose recipe)
-1 T Thai fish sauce
-Zest and juice of one lime
-Coriander and iceberg lettuce to serve.

This is a loose, undemanding recipe, which I have adapted slightly from the book. Heat the oil in a wok/pan, and when it is hot add the chillis and stir till softened. Add the mince, and cook till it is no longer pink. Stir in the fish sauce, lime juice/zest, and most of the coriander. It might look quite dry and crumbly, but don’t worry. To serve, rip off whole lettuce leaves and fill with the mince, so the lettuce acts as a kind of bowl. Sprinkle over the rest of the coriander. It might end up looking something like this-
Above: Last night’s dinner. I sprinkled sesame seeds over, and stirred some frozen beans into the rice because, well, it’s so easy.

This is seriously delicious! Speaking of which…here is the blonde mocha cake, 24 hours later…
Above: That’s how good it is! 

Shameless Self Promotion

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Hoorah! This page has had 200 views! Not bad considering I have about 4 readers. Also exciting is that this blog has been around long enough to have archive pages…

The 200th view may or may not have had something to do with me clicking the ‘refresh’ button…

The Hardest Button To Button…

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We had a bit of a feast yesterday because, well, yesterday marked two years since Tim and I started going out. Yay for us! We toyed with the idea of going out to dinner but (a) it would cost too much, (b) I like to cook too much and (c) we didn’t want to make too big a deal of it. So instead, we splurged on some steak, which I marinated, Scandinavian-styles, in vodka, garlic, thyme and olive oil. This recipe comes via Nigella’s Feast and is very simple. I did take a photo of the steak marinading in one of those bags you get at the bulk section at Pak’n’Save (which I always hold on to for this very purpose) but…it looked a little too unattractively like something out of “Silence of the Lambs” for my liking. For all of our sakes, it will not feature here.

I had a hankering to do something with white chocolate for pudding and found the perfect recipe in Nigella’s Forever Summer: Blonde Mocha Layer Cake, so named for its pairing of coffee and white chocolate flavours. Sounds like hard work, but really it isn’t. It is a coffee flavoured sponge sandwiched together with creamy white chocolate icing, and it’s a doddle to make. So, while the steak was marinading fleshily, I got on with the cake.

It is based on a Victoria Sponge recipe, one that Nigella often adapts in her books. I creamed equal amounts of butter and sugar (225g) and added four eggs, 225g self raising flour, 1/4 cup strong black coffee and a tablespoon of milk. Dollop this into two buttered and lined 21cm caketins and bake at 180 C for 25 or so minutes. This recipe can be made plain – with all milk instead of coffee – and roughly halved (that is, 125g butter, sugar, and flour, 2 eggs, 2 T milk) it makes fantastically easy cupcakes, which you bake for about 20 or so minutes. Anyone passing through our flat earlier this year will remember my brief but torrid affair with cupcakes, which resulted in all sorts of creations (mostly Nigella’s)…lavender cupcakes, orange cupcakes, carrot cake cupcakes, coca-cola chocolate cupcakes…The point is, it is all kinds of versatile.


Above: Two moons! Actually, the golden coffee flavoured sponges fresh from the oven. (incidentally, I found out that it was the place where I work that was behind the “Two Moons” ad all those years ago! It has been their most well received ad campaign ever apparently.)

While they were cooling I boiled the potatoes in preparation for another recipe from Feast, “Sticky Garlic Potatoes.” While they were bubbling away I heated up some olive oil in a roasting dish in the oven, and chopped some garlic cloves. The idea is, once you have drained the boiled potatoes, you bash them up a bit with the end of a rolling pin or somesuch, tip them, with the garlic into the hot roasting dish, and roast them, the garlic and oil sort of “catching” the fuzzy bits and making it all crispy and delicious.

Once they were in the oven, I heated up the pan for the steak and put some frozen beans on to boil. Now I have to admit here that I forgot to scale down the marinade ingredients (Nigella’s recipe feeds a lot more than two) so…the steak was a schmeer on the intense side. To be honest, I had to send it back for a second go in the pan in order to cook out all the vodka. I was a bit annoyed with myself because I’d made this before with great success. In the end it tasted great – and looked pretty good too.


Above: Say it with steak, not flowers, I reckon…the potatoes were all they promised to be: crunchy (but creamily fluffy within!) and garlicky. The beans were…well, they made our dinner look healthier.

Because the table was too covered in junk for us to eat on we opted for the lounge where we watched another installment of Season 2 Outrageous Fortune on DVD…before switching over to TV3 to watch the current season’s episode. They should definitely be paying me for all the free advertising I’m giving them! In the ads I made the icing for the now-cooled sponges. It involved butter, (90g) white chocolate, (250g) sour cream (250g) and icing sugar (250g) in rather terrifying proportions. It was very easy to make though – melt this, stir this, sift that – and looked absolutely wondrous:


Above: Mmmmmmmm….There was actually rather a lot of icing, which made licking the bowl all the more gratifying.

I then thickly iced and sandwiched the sponges. It has to be said that the baked sponges look rather shallow and unimpressive, but once they are filled and iced it is another story altogether. I thought a dusting of cocoa on top might make it evocative of a cappucino…See?


Above: The finished Blonde Mocha Cake.

I have to say, it is an inspired flavour pairing. I think if I was having an actual espresso, I would rather have some dark chocolate, but for coffee in cake-form, white chocolate is the way to go. It’s rich fudginess is the perfect foil for the smoky depth that the coffee provides, the slight bitterness of which means that the combination isn’t at all cloying.

Happy Labour Day!

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Tim and I decided to honour Labour Day by doing as little as possible.
We did consider going for a picnic in the Botanical Gardens, but concluded that it would be far too much effort and easier, not to mention just as pleasant, to have lunch outside our flat. Not only did this capitalise on the fab weather, it also dealt with some leftovers, “European Style.” We had the minestrone and crepes-canneloni from the other night, and I whipped up a quick pasta salad. It is based on one I have eaten at Tim’s place a few times, (I believe it is his Mum’s recipe and a family favourite.) I can’t say that mine was as good as the original, but still pretty moreish. I boiled up some pasta spirals, ran them under cold water, and then added sesame seeds, soy sauce, sesame oil and chopped celery. I also made a batch of rhubarb muffins from Nigella’s Feast, which made a small dent in my enormous bunch of the stuff.


Above: The chopped rhubarb for the muffins – look how pink it is!

The muffin recipe is very easy, as most tend to be. While they were baking, we had our lunch, with a table fashioned from Stefan’s chilly bin.


Above: Pasta Salad, Minestrone, Crepes-Canneloni…

Can I just say that the Minestrone tasted a trillion times nicer after its time in the fridge? Make it before you even think you might want it, is my advice. We managed to put away quite a lot, and it was lovely sitting out there in the sun. We had Rufus Wainwright on the stereo because we are seeing him in concert next year (am Very Excited about it – for those of you who don’t know, he’s the guy who sang Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah for the movie Shrek) After eating all that, plus wine and beer (European Style!) I wasn’t sure we’d have room for muffins but…look at these babies.


Above: These muffins were awesome – soft and warm from the oven, with a great sweet-sour contrast from the brown sugar sprinkled on top and rhubarb encased within. What a great day…back to work tomorrow though!