When imagination fails....

So I forgot to blog yesterday and today I don't have much to say, but I'm determined to say something. It was 95 degrees this afternoon and the roofers were working in full sun on the south side of the house. I was so worried about them. I kept offering iced water etc. but they had brought their own. It was too hot to do anything. I should have driven in my air-conditioned car to the air-conditioned library and read or cruised the internet in perfect comfort. But it was too hot to think of that.

The other fail today (the first being forgetting to blog and then blogging about nothing) was the mayonnaise I made. I had poached a chicken according to a recipe in the Guardian, meaning to make Poached Chicken in Dill and Basil Mayonnaise, with new potatoes and tomatoes.

I used a Nigel Slater (3 egg yolks, 1/2 tsp dijon mustard and 1 cup oil) recipe that was different than my usual recipe (one whole egg, 1 TBSP mustard, lemon juice and 1 cup oil) and it just stayed yellow goop. So disappointing. I don't know what happened. I went online to try to find out just what had gone wrong and whether there was anything I could do about it. But there was no help there. I could possibly have tried adding 2 TBSP of boiling water, but I didn't.

Nigel Slater (usually so dependable) didn't add the lemon juice until after the mayonnaise had chilled for a while. And he used 3 egg yolks instead of 1 whole egg and much less mustard. Did those proportions mess with the emulsification?

Was it the heat?

I've never had mayonnaise fail before, and I've made it many times.

Whatever,I started all over with my own recipe, which worked as usual. Then I stirred in lots of chopped basil and dill. In the end, it was much ado about nothing, but with piles of oily blender pieces and measuring cups to clean.