Chilly? Just a trifle. Our central heating boiler is playing up. We have a Man coming to fix it (our former landlady had a stream of little Men who came to fix different things…and no, not those kind of little men, and definitely not wearing green either).
I have counted blessings as a way to calm down about it – we have separate gas so we can cook, we still have electricity for other stuff, we still have a shower that runs separately so can ablute, and so on.
Feeling rather foolish not to know to do boiler servicing – but there again, the people we bought from didn’t tell us anything about it, parents didn’t mention it, etc. The back of the little on box seems to suggest the boiler was last serviced in November 1999…hmm…
Meanwhile, however, there is always food as a distraction. Today have had a shot at making a different kind of trifle for our small church group meeting on Wednesday. My manager has been on holiday to Switzerland, and came back with Lebkuchen. It was rather sturdy just for eating this afternoon, but with a little liquid soaked in, it should make rather good trifle.
I have started to experiment with different kinds of trifle, mainly relating to variants on the cake part. Today lebkuchen. On one memorable occasion, panettone, with a little rum on top – that one went down VERY well.  Occasionally failed chocolate cake, sometimes cheap sponge on offer from the Co-op.
It’s not that I don’t want to spend money feeding guests. But I do like good leftover ideas, and trifle is as much a left-over dish as a create from scratch with wonderful sponge fingers kind of dish. In any case, I think the whole trifle sponge thing is really something you buy – a savoiardi biscuit, or something like that. I suspect macaroons would be good; I think brioche might almost work too.
My other innovation in the trifling department is different ways of soaking the sponge/cake bit – see rum reference above. Sherry – always good option. But was also rather pleased at using the juice from stewed fruit to soak through the sponge – success a few weeks back with brambles as the fruit content, and bramble juice turning the sponge a particularly exciting colour.
You could claim all this is just distraction. You’d be right, certainly tonight. It makes me grateful that we both go out to work, and can rely on someone else paying for heat, somewhere else, during the day.
But it’s probably better than too much kicking ourselves, which is always a bit limited after the event. Plus, this way, it entertains people – and perhaps it even entertains you, dear reader, finding out about it, or considering your own cake and fruit creations for the future.
Feeling better? More than a trifle.