Although I have a wide repertoire of recipes in my capacious memory resulting from a half-century and more of baking exploits, I always have a sense of curiosity looking at the food section that appears weekly in the local newspaper we subscribe to. Or any other I may come across as well. And occasionally I come across a recipe that looks promising, so I'll cut it out neatly and put it away in a file that I can extract from when I feel I'd like to try it out.

There was one such recipe this week, 'Berry Citrus Squares' that looked appealing. Yesterday morning I went about preparing and baking this recipe I'd taken out of the paper on Wednesday.  There was a shortbread-type base of butter, icing sugar and flour. And a filling of 4 eggs mixed with sugar, baking powder, a small amount of flour, 1/3 cup lemon juice, tsp of grated lemon peel, all poured over the baked crust which had been scattered with a cup and a half of blueberries. It took longer to bake than I'd anticipated, but finally it was done and set aside for Friday night dessert.

That done, I set about making an ordinary bread dough that we would use tonight, making our Saturday-night pizza. And then another dough with a milk and egg base and a tad of organic honey that I planned to use to make croissants. There was a time that I baked croissants at least weekly. And because my husband enjoys them so much I've decided to take up that tradition again and weekly, on Friday, bake croissants to accompany our Friday night meal. My husband crumbles some of his croissant into the chicken soup with rice that begins Friday night's dinner.

We had chicken breasts roasted with ginger, garlic, chopped onion, sliced yellow bell pepper and sliced tomatoes topped with soy sauce and olive oil. Accompanying it my husband's favourite potato and onion pudding, and apart from that roasted cauliflower. With the parsnips and carrots that are in the soup, the tomato-pepper sauce that results from being done with the chicken, the cauliflower, that meal presents quite an array of vegetables.

And then came the piece de resistance (or so I regard the follow-up dessert). And it was, plainly speaking, quite awful. Devoid of flavour and fragrance, dull and unappetizing, no appeal whatever to its texture, it was a miserable disappointment. Win some, lose some. I do far better with my own wide repertoire of recalled recipes often altered over time to reflect little twists and torques that I've added over the years. So much for seeking out other bakers' versions of fortuitous flavour and ingredient pairings. This one a dismal failure.