agapanthus 4, creme caramel, creative moment

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The art of creme caramel is to cook it slowly in the bain marie so that no holes appear in the custard when you turn it out.

Regular visitors to this blog are, I believe, the sort of people, who are at their happiest when they have made a picture, finished a story, an article, a picture, a poem, with which they are satisfied, and enjoy a sense of relief when they feel that there is nothing more that they can do to improve their work.. They will excuse therefore my reference to a passage in A La recherche du temps perdu, which describes that feeling.
The young Marcel has just declared his doubts that he has the ability ever to to develope the capacity to become a great writer. He and his family, while returning from a country walk are given a lift by Dr Piercepied, and Marcel is sent to sit beside the driver of the doctor's carriage. From this viewpoint, he becomes fascinated by the way the two steeples of the village of Martinville, bathed in the setting sun, constantly change their position as the carriage follows the windings of the road, and then a third steeple that of Vieuxq joins the frame. Inspired by what, he sees, he borrows some paper and a pencil from the Doctor and writes a description of what he is seeing. "I was so filled with happiness, " Proust writes, "I felt that it had so entirely relieved my mind of its obsession with the steeples and the mystery which lay behind them, that, as though I were a hen and has just laid an egg, I began to sing at the top of my voice."