Pretzels and feet

I went to see my foot surgeon earlier this week. This man is fast becoming a member of the family. After all he has had more intimate contact with my left foot than anybody I've ever met. I've also howled over his shoulder twice (once because having 60 stitches removed from my new foot was so bloody painful, the other because I'd been waiting outside the X ray theatre for over 2 hours for my turn and was still too drug addled from prescription painkillers to be rational about it), clutched on to his shoulders while dragging myself across the room in my orthopaedic boot, and flung my arms around his neck after taking my first unaided steps. OK it doesn't hurt that he is serious eye candy. A friend of mine had a similar issue with one of her feet and I recommended my surgeon, and she hasn't stopped talking about his sauve good looks ever since her first consultation. Anyway. I digress (but you can see how that would happen, a bloke like him). I went back to see him as I have new pains in my new foot. Essentially the tendons that my fit surgeon rerouted in order to give the foot new stability, compromised its ability to complete the range of motion that it needs to take a step. Essentially, my big toe won't finish the job. And this tiny lack of movement has resulted in crippling pain across the bridge of my foot. This is all correctable, with even more physiotherapy and differently shaped orthotics - after all, this is me we are talking about, and if you are following this blog you will know I am not one to Give Up. But still it's wearing to find myself back in orthopaedic outpatients, subject to my usual 3 hour wait (though recently I've discovered that if you insist you can screw a 9am appointment out of the booking bureaucrats, thus cutting your wait to less than 15 minutes - this is tantamount to the invention of the wheel). My usual response to the next orthopaedic challenge is on a par with my response to any quirk in my daily life, which is to bake. The tougher the challenge, the more adventurous my baking session. This one was mammoth. It included a gateau St Emilion - no base involved, just a concoction of creamy dark chocolate with amaretti in brandy broken up and scattered across the top (yummmmm), tomato and oregano pizza for my cheese-hating eldest, and another thick cheese pizza for my cheese-obsessed Youngest.  Chocolate fridge cookies with white chocolate and creme fraiche buttercream. A crumble of squash and parsnip with nuts, mustard and blue cheese. And finally, Pretzels. I watched these being made with some curiosity on the Great British Bake Off. Things always look very easy on GBBO but of course you are watching the Heavily Edited version of events, so it always looks a bit weird when you see them turn out their beautifully rendered pretzels with deftness and ease, and in the next shot you catch them wiping their brows and swigging back water like they've just navigated the Karoo on an outward bound weekend. I want to see how hard these things are. And they are. They're really hard to make for my first attempt. No problem with the dough, which proves obligingly in a corner. No problem to make 12 doughballs out of the mixture. Rolling out each one while maintaining its integrity, and looping each long rope into a pretzel shape without breaking it, is a fantastic bicep/tricep workout, I discover as I do this. With each one I become warmer and more achey, I start to sweat - quite a lot, even for someone like me, experiencing my Personal Summer for the nth time this week alone - and when I have all 12 done I have to lie down for a few inutes before dunking them each into my water and baking powder, which by the way froths fabulously, not unlike a scene from one of Professor Snape's potion lessons. This is a perfect antidote to my orthopaedic encounter. You see, when the medical profession takes on the challenge of your malfunctioning body, either you instantly cede all control to He Who Knows What He Is Doing, which leaves you totally helpless. Or you take on the challenge of Self Help, which even the strongest patient will tell you can leave you staring, metaphorically, at Mount Everest. You're at the bottom. How to get to the top. Nobody would blame you for giving up and just seeing out the rest of your life with limited left foot mobility. Baking a pretzel reminds me that tricky though it is, control, even triumph, even a temporary win, is not just possible, it is endlessly satisfying. I sprinkle my puffed up pretzel dough with sesame seeds, slide them into the oven, and take them out 20 minutes later, deeply golden brown, crusty on the outside, chewy on the inside. They are delicious, especially with a last minute inspired addition of sprinkled rock salt on the outer edges. I made a pretzel (twelve of them). Surely I can get my big toe to take a proper step.