Saturday 26 January 2013

Burn's night

well of course it was burns night yesterday, January 25th, so I hope you all had your haggis, tatties and neeps (which I only tried for the first ever time last weekend). I have to say we didn't but we did have our family friends over in the four inches of snow to have venison stew with lemony dumplings which I would say  was quite Highlandy and Scottish, it was just as good too. 
For pudding me and Mum made a mincemeat frangipane to help use up our homemade mincemeat and had it with cream fraiche. It tasted really light and just a bit spicy and didn't put the walnuts on the top but flaked almonds. The one problem was we were feeling a bit lazy so bought some frozen sweet shortcrust pastry to make the tart and it didn't go too well...... here's our first attempt at the tart. For some reason after we blind baked it the pastry began to rise up and made air bubbles wile the sides shank. Mark 2 went a little better, we chilled it first and pricked it a lot more but it didn't go much better. The moral of this story is don't be lazy with your pastry making or don't buy cheap pastry! 

Wednesday 23 January 2013

Is it just me?

Well hello there! (I'm in a Miranda mood) Recently My Mum ordered me this from amazon and today it came, Miranda Hart's autobiography, Such fun! I can wait to start reading it, thank you very much to you God, please, Amen, (and my Mum). Now please excuse me while I gallop off for biscuit blizzards!




Sunday 20 January 2013

Les Misérables

I'll try to make this a quick blog because call the midwife Will be starting soon! So today me and seven of my of my friends went to see Les Mis at our little town's cinema. Our town's cinema is great for films like this (really long ones!) because it has a interval meaning you don't have to watch all three hours non- stop though does have very old hard seats which hurt your bum.

I had no idea about the plot before going to see it apart from the obvious thing, it's set in France at the time of the revolution and is very sad, it wasn't as sad as I expected however. I even managed to forget it was a musical until they started singing one minute in and didn't stop for the whole three hours. Saying that it doesn't sound great but I was surprised at how my attention managed and I thought it was amazing.

My favourite song was probably Master of the House sung by Thénardier and Madame Thénardier closely followed by ann Hathaways tear jerking performance of I dreamed a dream. My favourite characters were also Thénardier and Madame Thénardier, played my one of my favourite actresses (helena Bonham Carter, AKA bellatrix Lestrange) and were some of the most cheery people in the whole film, two avid pick pocketers. I would like to tell you the plot but I'd be here all night and was a tad too complicated to explain fully. Would I buy it? Probably not as I would never watch it all in one sitting and perhaps was a bit too sad for me.
I hope you all had a good Sunday and enjoy call the Midwife if you watch it (I strongly reccomend you do as it's 'such fun') 

Monday 14 January 2013

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow

It's finaly come, the first snow of the winter!                 It came yesterday in fact but I was too busy eating the celebratory spiced plum crumble to post, we had a glut of plums in 2011 and we still have some in the freezer which is lucky as we had one last year. We added some mulled wine spiced syrup to the crumble which the family got for christmas and had it with ice- cream which was just what was needed after a winter walk and bath.                                                          The snow started in the morning but in my town it was mainly sleet so me, my Dad and our dogs set off on an entrepid snow hunt to the hills ... in the car. We were however successful and found ourselves in a minor hipnotic snow blizard. I managed to get a few pictures before the camera battery ran out and so did my Dad before his phone ran out too. It's all melted today sadly and it was hardly enough to get the day off school sadly but hopfuly there's more to come! *fingers crossed*






Thursday 10 January 2013

Socks and Salad

I thought I would let you know that I've finished sock one, just one more to go now! I'm really surprised how fast I've knitted them and I do think I may have become addicted to double pointed needles, as well as grafting which is another technique I learned. I used it at the toe so the end seam is invisible and the stitches merge into one another. I love the colour wool the kit came with, it reminds me of the sea and the white capped waves but it's also really light and not itchy at all- cosy infact. 

The second part of this is about a new blog I found, you might of heard of it, wolf and willlow which is made by a crazy woman who has become a sugar free vegan! Hearing this you would think there wold be an extremely borring, small and strict ammount of food you can eat but she's proved otherwise. She uploads her recipes with really beautiful pictures along with really interesting ingredients and creative flavors.  This week I tried the carrot, beetroot and mint salad, without liking carrot, having no shredded coconut, cider viniger (we used white rice viniger) and no malt syrup it still tasted amazing. I added poppy seeds too and put it with falafel in a wrap. Far, far from your borring lettuce tomato and cucumber I would say!

Sunday 6 January 2013

speedy gonzales pom poms!

At the moment I'm knitting my first ever pair of socks (that is first pair of knitted socks, I do have socks) and I've been thinking about when will I wear them? There too big to wear as socks with shoes and I don't want to wear them to bed because I'll get sweaty feet so I've decided on slipper socks. I'll post about them when I've finished them, I've almost finished sock on.  I thought that attaching a pair of pom poms to each sock would give them a cute, classy look (I think they may be binary opposites but trust me). I have to be honest though, I'm not a patient person and find wrapping wool round the same pieces of cardboard again and again for hours so tedious and then I've never got the knack of cutting it and tying it up at the end. So This christmas I devised a quicker and easier way to make pom poms (perhaps uses a little more wool)and I drew some pictures to show you!
Gather your equitment-
wool and
scissors
cut a long length of wool
(perhaps a little longer than you would if using the traditional method)
more wool means a fluffier pom pom!
fold the length of wool in half
and then in half again so it is now 1/4 the
length but 4 times thicker
(don't skip with it unless you happen to be a mouse)




this bit was a bit hard to illustate using a ouse claw
wrap the wool round and round 2 or 3 fingers, spread a little
(the more fingers the bigger the pom pom)

then cut a length of wool and tie it tightly inbetween your fingers in the middle of the pom pom

slide the pom pom off your fingers and cut through each loops
with a pair of scissors
(if you wrapped the wool around to tightly you can do this while it is on your fingers but is  little more trickier and dangerous)

your pom pom with probaly look like the first one shown above with uneven lengths of wool hanging off but after a trim it should look ust like a pom pom and in half the time!


thank you for reading and take a well deserved rest if you are a mouse!

I used this method this christmas to make 20 knitted hats complete with pom poms for my friends this christmas along with hot chocolate stirers and heart decorations, here a picture of one of the hats (from instagram).










Thursday 3 January 2013

Thurday's adventurous tea time!

Well through this blog you'll obviously find out about my personality, interests, hobbies, etc, etc. And one thing that I love to do is cooking and baking!
My favourite cook book to find tea time recipes for the fam is from our wagamama cook book which we bought five years ago in Windsor where we went to our first ever wagamama restaurant. It's all about quick, healthy, flavoursome and of course (if you looked at the URL) noodles!
this is the new recipe we decided to try tonight 'spiced mussels with wide rice noodles' which was absolutely nom despite us not being able to find any coriander in our town. I'm sorry about picture quality, as I said on my first blog most of my pictures at the mo are from an ipad. My Dad loves mussels and spicy food and this wasn't too spicy, a surprise from the amount of garlic and ginger, but also coconuty and creamy. 
On New year's eve I baked a orange and white chocolate panettone but sadly it has gone a bit dry, my Mum suggested we should make a bread and butter pudding from it so we changed the traditional recipe a little.

orange and lemon panettone bread and butter pudding

(before baking, it might not look appealing here but it tasted SO good)

Panettone bread and butter pudding
  1. slice up quarter of a smallish old, dry panettone and spread generously with butter on either side (triangles are easiest to layer up)
  2. butter an oven proof dish and layer up the buttered panettone before generously dolloping lemon curd over the slices
  3. instead of dried fruit slice an orange up and scatter over to make it taste even more christmasy
  4. beat 3 eggs and 50g of caster sugar and 1tsp of vanilla essence in a bowl
  5. heat 450ml of milk until almost boiling and add to beaten sugar and eggs until it makes a really thin custard and pour over the panettone
  6. leave the pudding to soak for 10 mins or a longer
  7. place in a bain marie and cook in the top oven of a two door aga for 35 mins (our families recipes all use an aga) or for 40-50 mins in an oven at 180oC/350oF/ gas mark 4
This original bread and butter pudding recipe was from my Mum's favourite chef, Nigel Slater.


My first blog on my blogger blog


Sorry if I get this wrong, I would like to think you can't get blogging wrong but I've been incorrect many a time. I have to be honest I'm pretty petrified about starting a blog but hopefully I'll enjoy it and I thought new year would be a good time to start (as cheesy as that may sound). 

I like to use instagram (moustache2005)but with it being on an ipad it's quite awkward to take decent pictures at the best of times. However soon *fingers crossed* I am going to get a job and be able to either get an ipod touch or camera which will make uploading pics a whole lot easier.

I don't expect to get many follwers, perhaps even none, but I'll keep this as a little diary any way blogging about significant stuff, my cake baking, nails and probably a lot of boring rubbish.

I had a great new year by the way, me and my family went to the Chinese in our town and then to the centre for midnight with half a dozen party poppers thrown in for good measure. 
I hope you all had a good new year too.



Emily x