We're good guys, but we can't be good every night.

When I was a child, I used to love being in our kitchen. The cliche about the kitchen being the heart of the home is pretty accurate, and even though ours was quite small, I felt most at home there. I wish I could wax eloquent about dishes my mother cooked, but honestly, the dear woman would happily forego cooking for the rest of her life if she were able. She'd probably live on cups of tea, if she could, too. Though I think the snack food industry would have some seriously problems if she were able to do so, because despite being tall and willowy, my mother loves salty snacks with her glass of wine.

I don't remember any kitchen disasters. My mother's cooking was just your normal, white-bread, middle-class western meals. She made beef stroganoff, schnitzel, chicken casserole, chops, honey soy chicken, sausages, roast beef, and various barbequed meats... see a pattern here? We were a meat-and-three-veg family, though we were thankfully blessed with more than three veg, steamed to barely-soft because my brother refused to eat his vegetables if they were well-cooked.

The one area where my mother truly excelled, far from the savouries that we devoured daily, was baking. Which seems odd, in retrospect, considering that I've heard her say on many occasions that she'd be happy not to need to cook ever again. Baking is that newly-rediscovered art that spawns potential food-bloggers left, right, and centre. I read more baking blogs than I'd care to admit to, because coincidentally, many of those great bakers are also great stylists and great photographers. I can't say anything for my mother's photography skills, because she rarely takes photos of anything other than my niece, but if her house is anything to go by, then perhaps the modern styling holds true.

My time in the kitchen of my childhood home was spent watching. And happily devouring, of course, seated on the tall stools at the breakfast bar. But I loved to watch as my mother's hands sifted and mixed, folded and blended and rendered smooth layers of creamy frosting. I learned to bake by watching. I can't honestly say that I only loved to watch the in-house cooking show that was enacted in our kitchen. I was a child, and accordingly, I hovered closely when my mother was baking, in order to scrape the last of the batter from the spoon, the beaters, the spatula, or my personal favourite, the bowl. Of course, I had three siblings to contend with, so really I never got the lion's share.

My mother also learned to bake by family tradition. She came from a slightly Irish-Catholic family, and her grandmother, the affectionately-titled Granny Jane, lived with my grandparents and their six children. Every Sunday, they'd do the baking for the week - all the breads, cakes, and biscuits that a large family could possibly eat. Granny Jane was the head of the kitchen, and I know that my mother speaks of her with nothing but love and admiration. I can only lament that I never met her, but I'm sure I could have made her a delicious vanilla slice to go with her cuppa.

My mother took cake-decorating classes at some point. As a result, our birthday cakes were phenomenal. The cupcakes that we took to shared school lunches and celebrations were the first to disappear. And I used to love to pour over her cookbooks, seeing all the beautiful creations within. I learned to cook by sheer gluttony - I wanted to try everything that looked beautiful enough to tempt me. I've never had that fear of baking that the uninitiated have to combat. I've made fluffy sponges, dense and crusty loaves of zucchini and sundried tomato bread, choc chip biscuits, butterfly cakes filled with vegan chocolate custard, about a billion (or more) vegan 'chicken' pies, and so many chocolate cakes that my slightly-too-generous tummy wobbles just thinking about. If I wanted to eat it, I could bake it.

But I've come to a point in my life where I'm unsure about baking. Unbearably weak German baking powder, a lack of custard powder, strangely textured flours, the world's slowest oven (don't even get me started on my oven!) and an incredibly annoying and ignorant Mitbewohner have combined to make me hesitate. I want everything that I pull from that god-awful oven to be perfect, so that when it gets stared at and scrutinsed by the aforementioned Mitb- and his ever-present girlfriend (seriously, doesn't she have a home to go to? She's been here for 2 weeks!) then I know my baking will hold up to my high standards.

Today, I can only say, that I'm glad they're not home. Somehow, in my recent shopping trip, I managed to grab Pasta Flour. Which, in Australia, is perfectly acceptible. It's just plain flour, milled to 0 or 00 for that beautifully textured pasta that has enough strength to withstand a quick boil. In Germany, however, it means half-flour, half-semolina. Jeez, Germany, can't you do anything right? I could make a joke about how I've finally found semolina, after looking for so long, but it's not as funny because it's still mixed with flour. Dammit!

What this means, is that I have a carrot and zucchini loaf in the oven, that is likely to never actually bake. Or at least, not to the fluffy load consistency that I want to drizzle with olive oil and flakes of salt, or warm slightly and eat for breakfast (slathered with margarine accordingly). Being the ever-confident baker, I had my grated vegetables, leftover from tonight's frittata, already in a bowl. I liberally poured in my olive oil, soymilk, and added some baking powder. (Because we all know that self-raising flour is much too difficult for this continent to manage!) Then, in the midst of slicing my baguette and flipping my frittata, I poured the pasta flour directly into my bowl. Oh, goddammit.

I find it unbearable to waste food, after the time and effort and food miles and petrol (and occasionally love) that has gone into getting it from someone's patch of dirt to my concrete cabin of an apartment. So I shrugged, mixed it in, supplemented with a little normal (albeit wholemeal) flour, and put it in the oven. It looks fantastic - all golden and crusty on the top. My kitchen smells phenomenal - a mix of soft baking, dried thyme and oregano, and the slight sweetness of the vegetables. But every time I test my loaf with a skewer, it comes out with damp and sticky dough still attached. It's been baking for nearly two hours. My confidence in my unkillable cakes is feeling a little subdued, to say the least.

Stay calm and carry on, as they say. This loaf gets another half hour. And if it's still too moist inside, well, to hell with it. Truthfully, I can't think that a semolina loaf would be too terrible... especially not if I sliced it thickly, and sauteed it on both sides in some hot olive oil to make it all caramelised and golden like all those nonnas I've been stealing recipes from for years. Nothing is ever perfect, and I'm pretty sure that my mother has passed that along to me. I'm sure that she had things in the oven that didn't turn out exactly as she hoped, but there's a good reason for why I don't remember any kitchen disasters. My mother, like her mother and Granny Jane, knew how to adapt. For everything in life, we use our skills as best as we're able. And I'm damn good at sauteeing.