Aw, Fudge!

Did you know that evaporated milk and condensed milk aren't the same thing?

I didn't!

Why is this startling fact important? Well, if you try to make fudge with evaporated milk, it doesn't work! As I discovered tonight after purchasing the following in an attempt to make fudge:

A pot (a nice shiny, new pot)
A little baking tray thing for the fudge to cool in
A set of 2 spatulas - 1 wooden, 1 wooden with a rubber spatula bit
Butter (unsalted)
Sugar (soft brown)
EVAPORATED milk (big tin)

Listed my ingredients on a forum I was on, and someone replied saying "Evaporated milk? I thought it had to be condensed?"

Checked up... and discovered that evaporated and condensed milks were NOT just the same thing with a slightly different name. So my batch of what was basically fudge sauce, because it wouldn't set, was poured down the loo.

My brother was heading out to Tesco tonight, so I got a run there with him, and returned with:

CONDENSED milk (big tin)
and Sugar (soft brown Fair Trade)

ready for Fudge MkII (I still had some butter left).

Not checked it in a while, but I fear that this time we might have gone past Fudge, and veered into Toffee territory...

The really annoying thing is when I think how many bars of Orkney Fudge I could have bought for the money it's cost me to try to make a few bits!

Maybe from now on I'll leave the culinary things to the Delia Smiths of this world? I just wanted to do something fun and a bit different to take my mind off today!

Labelled With...

Love?

Er... no... Actually I spent the first 3 hours at work today labelled with a "SALE - NOW £7" label hanging down my back!

You know how it is - Monday morning, you're running a bit late, you've just washed your hair, you've not got your glasses on yet... and you grab the top you bought a couple of weeks ago in the January sales, which you've never worn yet... and you pull it on, stick a cardigan on top, and dash off to work...

And then, halfway through the morning, you get an itch on your back - so you put your hand up to scratch it... and then you feel it... that "SALE" ticket that you forgot to take off... proclaiming to the world that your posh new top is, in fact, a CHEAP new top!

So you swipe the ticket off... surreptitiously throw it in the bin... and hope like mad that nobody noticed, and that everybody hasn't been pissing themselves laughing at you all morning...

I just hope that my hair's long enough now that it covered the ticket, since I didn't tie it up this morning (my hair, not the ticket).

D'oh!

Nothing much else exciting on the go today. How about you?

Catch you tomorrow, no doubt...

D'oh!

My Dear Blog-Readers,

You join me tonight after I have scaled new heights (or possibly that should be plumbed new depths) of Muppetry... The tale I recount for you now...

'Twas after work, and I'd spent a couple of hours with my brother, then he'd taken me past work to procure some cable for him (don't worry... the boss will be told!), and he drove me home... I got out of the car, waved him off and he duly departed... and I headed to the door, opened my handbag, and reached in to grab my key... and it wasn't in its usual bit! So I rifled around in the main body of my bag (where I'm sure Lord Lucan resides along with Shergar and the Lost City of Atlantis!)... and I couldn't feel it (now, it's not a single key... it's a dirty great big bunch of mainly keyrings, and a few keys)... so I started pulling things out of my bag... and then I remembered - when I last used it on Saturday night, I had a coat on... and today I'd left the coat - yep, you guessed it - hanging on the banister at the bottom of the stairs... inside the house...

So I phoned my brother, coz he's got a spare key - and, after he'd finished laughing, he said he'd come up with the key... but was I sure it was the current key he had, coz remember we'd had to get our lock changed about this time last year?

At this point I really started to panic!

However, you can tell by the fact that I'm sat here typing this, that the key was indeed the right one... and, sure enough, when I got inside and put my hand in the pocket of my coat, there were both my bunches of keys - home lot and work lot (how did I manage to get into the office then? Well, there's a side door with a combination lock on it, so I'd never needed my keys there).

Both lots are now safely in my bag for tomorrow... but I'll check again in the morning...

Not much else exciting today.

Now, come on - please tell me someone can compete with my dingusity... confess on a comment... just to make me feel better...