Curly-haired with yoghurt

Well, for the first time, after dalliances with every kind of live yoghurt Waitrose offer, wasting countless pints of milk, and results ranging from the unpalatable to the unchanged to the verging-on-ricotta-cottage-cheese-type-thing that was okay in pasta, or at least better than wasting it, I have actually managed to successfully make yoghurt that looks and tastes pretty much like yoghurt. Woo. The exercise was largely financial (although the challenge of making something new was also welcome) - now we get the veg box and buy meat in bulk, I found I was going to Waitrose just to buy milk and yoghurt and also ending up coming home with 40-odd things I didn't need (special offer crisps are my biggest downfall), so, since I also date my good, fair food obsession roughly from when we stopped getting milk delivered and started getting the watery, homogenised pap from Tesco and have always hankered after the reusable glass bottles, we've taken the very retrograde step of organising a doorstep delivery, which is much more convenient and works out financially if I make yoghurt instead of buying it. After a month and a half of failing miserably and allowing another six months or so to make back the cost of the thermos flask (I'm tempted to use the word 'capex' here), I expect it to pay dividends by Christmas. And the satisfaction I get from being able to make yoghurt (and the thought that if feed prices rocket, the economy crashes, our just-in-time food system breaks down and the milk from the local dairy delivered a short distance to my door continues to be viable, I will be the only person in Wokingham with dairy products) are just a smug foodie bonus.

Barbara Kingsolver (in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, a wonderful book, you should read it) has now inspired me to make proper ricotta and mozzarella, and she's lactose intolerant so it must be good!

The latest batch of bread, however, was a disaster - flat, burnt and incredibly dense.


I had my hair cut yesterday. What is it with hairdressers? Why can't they just leave well alone? I gave her a very clear brief (hack off the split ends, leave it easy to manage without an arsenal of styling products, a Level 3 NVQ in hairdressing and the intrinsic advantage of someone else's head being in front of you) and halfway through she said, 'Your hair's really curly, you know?'

Curly? My hair has been described as many things, from 'flat and lifeless on top' via 'so easy to straighten' to 'a total mess, darling, please get a haircut', but never 'curly'.* Curly was new. So, foolishly, swept away by the experience of a stylish stranger massaging my head and paying me compliments, I somehow agreed to let her put some squidgy stuff from a blue bottle on my head, twist my hair painfully through the drying process and then shunt me out onto the street (maybe so she could have a cup of tea before her next client) by telling me it would be much better to let it finish drying naturally.

It didn't really take. Nik, bless him, came home from work and gave me the standard must-remember-to-notice-girlfriend's-had-a-haircut line of 'it looks nice', but when he actually looked at me, he agreed it was somewhat peculiar.

And then he brought a friend home for dinner, whose overriding impression of me will now be as a straw-haired, muddy person who sits upstairs listening to five-second segments of audio over and over again and can't make bread rise.


* Though I did go through a phase at school of sleeping with mini plaits in and having it frizzy in the morning.