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All that Gobbledygook up there might look like a bit of nonsense to you, and most certainly me, but that my dear reader is the special code which will allow me to claim my blog on bloglovin'. I just joined this week and I think it's really easy to understand and get the hang of, so be sure to sign up! 
In their own words 'Bloglovin' is a very easy way to follow your favorite blogs and get notified when they have written something new'. Each day you recieve an email from the site telling you about new posts from the blogs you follow and also keeps track of the posts you haven't had time to read yet. 
So be sure to sign up and you can follow 'All that Glisters is not Gold' in just a click with that handy little widget button on the right hand side. press it, I DARE YOU! (:

My Mum's Mother's day

Mum's presents

So as my family are a la'al bit out of sync with the rest of mankind (see Dad's birthday post for why) my Mum had Mother's day today. My present to her was to cook all the meals for the day as well as the card I made above (you can NEVER have too much glitter in my opinion), a card stating I would made her afternoon tea on a day of her choice, granola, rhubarb jam and cooked all the meals for the day.

the card

 For the granola I used a recipe from bbc good food and only added dried cranberries for dried fruit and no coconut so called it 'cranberry crunch'.  
For the rhubarb and vanilla jam I used an excellent recipe from cook republic, it was incredibly simple but also incredibly delish. We had it on apple scones with clotted cream for breakfast after the granola, I don't think I've ever had scones for breakfast but I think it could be a new breakthrough.
I like to put fabric circles tied with string on top of jar when I give them as gift because I think it makes them look really pretty and homemade. To make them all I did was measure the diameter of the lid, double it, find a plate or bowl with that diameter (I really cannot use a pair of compasses to save my life), draw around it and cut out. Simples!

Rhubarb jam on apple scones, breakfast breakthrough! 

Next up lunch! For this I used my new fabulous baker brothers' cook book. It's a really good cook book in my opinion and has some of the recipes they make in their new series (more 4, 9 pm on a Tuesday) as well as some new ones. They make really different and delicious food, things like creme brulee porridge, mushroom ketchup, how to make your own sausages, viking pizza, pulled pork burgers and looooads more.
For lunch I made 'gunpowder lamb' on rotis (a type of flat bread) with salad to test out some of the skills I learnt on work experience. The recipes used lamb neck fillets (NOT lamb necks like I asked the butcher for, turns out they're completely different!), you marinade them in lots of spices such as cumin, coriander, turmeric and a few more while you make the roti dough. The flat breads were extremely good and very quick because you only need to let it rest for 5 minutes, after kneading, in which time you can start grilling the lamb. I managed to get them really thin ready for shallow frying, all that pizza practise on work experience must have payed off! 
I also decided to put my creative salad skills to the test so made a cous cous salad to have in the flat breads too.

red onion and pepper cous cous salad

makes enough for 3-4 people as a salad

• flavorless oil
• 2 tsp of mustard seeds
• 1 tsp of dried chili (add more if you like it hot!)
• a red onion, cut in half and sliced
• a red pepper, cut into strips
• 120 grams of cous cous
• fresh coriander finely chopped
• a lemon
• a red chili, deseeded and diced

1. put a really good glug of oil in a heavy based pan (about 2- 3 tbsp I used) and put over a medium heat before adding the dried chili and mustard seeds.
2. wait until the mustard seeds have begun to pop and the oil has become infused before adding in the onion and pepper and stirring well. 
3. Leave for about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally, so the veg becomes slightly cooked but still has a bit of bite crunch.
4. Meanwhile measure out the cous cous, add a good pinch of salt and cover with boiling water, leave to absorb.
5. Take the veg off the heat and add in a good sprinkling of fresh coriander and fresh chili (you might want to save some to decorated) add the juice of 1/2 the lemon, taste and season accordingly. I found I needed the juice of almost all the lemon and quite a bit more coriander.
6. stir in the cous cous, you shouldn't have to add any extra oil or butter to the cous cous because of all the extra infused oil with the veg which should also help flavor it.
7. put into a bowl and decorate before serving straight to the table, enjoy!

For tea I made a sweet potato lasagna from bbc food by one of my favourite chefs,Lorraine Pascale. I absolutely love vegetarian food because it focuses more on the flavors rather than the huge hunk of meat and this was true to that. I was able to make it yesterday too while my Mum was out of the house, it was really simple as you only have to cook the sweet potato (I left out the butternut squash). The white sauce is mainly ricotta mixed with Parmesan so doesn't need heating and isn't too heavy, it tasted nothing like your average lasagna but in a good way. It was mashed sweet potato, then a layer of chopped rosemary, sage, pine nuts and spinach leaves before layering on the pasta sheets and a final layer of the white sauce before repeating. In the recipe she uses dried lasagna sheets and cooks then for 5 minutes before assembling but when me and Mum make lasagna they always end up sticking together so we uses fresh and save half the time. For this recipe I found whole wheat fresh lasagna sheets from the local health food shop, which really helped add to the whole vegetarian vibe running through the dish! 

sweet potato lasagna with rocket

For pudding I once again turned to the fabulous baker brothers' book and made rhubarb Knickerbocker glory as I've never had any kind on Knickerbocker glory before. I also made part of this yesterday as you roast the rhubarb with rosemary and ginger before draining and use the juice to set a jelly in the bottom. Another layered meal! This one was rhubarb, ginger and rosemary jelly in the bottom, roast rhubarb, ice cream and sweetened whipped cream whipped cream before repeating and topping with pistachios. A great first taste of Knickerbocker glory and a nice way to finish my Mum's mother's day.

I hope you had a nice mother's day last weekend, if you're normal and celebrated it on the 10th, and had a lovely day today too.

Rhubarb Knickerbocker glory!

Work Experience at Chesters!

The beautiful langdale fells near Chesters

Monday to Friday this week has been work experience for pupils at my school and I decided I would like to go to the cafe and shop 'Chesters by the River' near Ambleside.Trust me to pick somewhere awkward in terms of location from where I live, it's quite a bit further than the rest of my year's placements, but I've always loved going there with my family. Cafe and shop work is something they sadly don't teach in schools which is a real shame because it's a lot different from all of the subjects they teach (all the subjects I've taken for my GCSEs anyway). It's always been a place I've loved to visit (you should definitely stop by if you get the chance) because it has such a friendly atmosphere, the shop feels really open and light as well as being full of a variety of things to buy. You would only have to walk into the cafe to understand why it's usually heaving! It has generous portions of extremely yummy cakes which you would have to do very well to ignore. It has a pizza oven serving crispy pizzas and flat breads, the chefs even let me make some for my lunchs, as well as exciting salads and much more. I suggest arriving with an empty stomach!

My crispy margarita pizza! 

just an itsy bitsy peak at some of the cakes

My week at Chesters was brilliant and I learnt so much that I now have a headache and feel my brain shall soon explode. It's worth it but I feel tomorrow may be a power nap day, I truly don't understand how all the fantastic staff there never stop. They couldn't have been more friendly and made me feel more welcome, I'm surprised they don't all have sore mouths from their permanent smiles and collapse from exhaustion from their rushing around.

the thank you card

To thank all the shop staff, the cafe servers, chefs and bakers I made a card using their logo (Chester the dog) their moto/ slogan (bad dog no biscuit) and, of course, cake. I also got some flowers and chocolate since I thought all the staff must be sick of cake so bad idea to bake one!
At the end of the day when Ashley (the amazing manager who organised all this, she should be called amazing Ash!) had filled in the extensive forms for my school I was given presents too! (much to my suprise since they were the ones who put up with me all week). I was given a chester top, apron and beaker all with the logo on from the shop, five cakes from the cafe staff, a sourdough starter from the kitchen (I'll have to start trying out some sourdough recipes if I manage to keep her alive, she's called Susan the sourdough starter) and a Saturday job offer.

My unexpected gifts

I hope you had a nice week too and take a visit to Chesters if you happen to be in the Lakes! 

Dad's Birthday

First of all I'm going to tell you as far as I'm aware Mother's day is certainly not on march 10th and is really next weekend (this is not my excuse for forgetting to buy anything) so this blog won't be on Mother's day at all, sorry. This weekend has been my Dad's Birthday but he was away so we celebrated it yesterday, meaning we already had a birthday cake in the house and there was no need for a Mother's day cake (one of the reasons why Mother's day is next weekend). 

So this is the monster Birthday cake! I got the recipe from 'The Great British Bake Off Showstoppers' but I won't be typing out the recipe, sorry, because it would take up a lot of time and space. 
It may just look like an ordinary cake smothered in butter icing from the badly taken photograph, and this is partly true; it is smothered in butter icing, but this is no ordinary cake. Underneath the mountains of butter icing is a almond meringue sandwiched with butter cream to a genoese orange flavoured sponged, sandwiched to another meringue, sandwiched to another layer of sponge covered in almond praline and orange flavoured butter cream and topped with more almond praline. Wow. Weight watchers and the ambulance are now on speed dial and if no other blogs are written you may presume I have died of heart disease. I have to say though, it tastes good.

On to the presents! Well Dad being the modest, practical and not really having an interest in the luxuries of life is really quite hard to buy for. We eventually decided to stick with the traditional annual T-shirt (from Boden) a hankie for each day of the week (from not on the high street, great gift site!)and Mumford and Sons older album, 'sigh no more' (mainly because I wanted it).


I don't think we did too badly this year and finally I just thought I share the Birthday card we bought him. It's not particularly Birthday related but the dog reminded me of one of our three dogs and I loved the illustration, extremely cute indeed! I hope if you decided to be Orthodox and celebrate Mother's day today you had a very happy day too. 

I hope I taste 'cracking'

Just a quick up date of some of the things I've got up to this week. 
First of all to explain the title this week I drew faces on the 22 eggs in the fridge, not too sure why. It got to making a frittata for lunch and my parents were forced to become murderers as they killed off 6 of the innocent eggs! 

 I also drew a birthday card for my Grandma to give to her friend of a hungarian vizsla eating a black leather wallet as apparently that's just what the dog did to his old wallet. Luckily his Birthday present was a new one was to be a new one... until the dog got hold of it!

And one more Birthday, I felted two cumbrian sheep onto a green felt purse for a friend. It was really cheap and simple as the plain purse only cost £3 and you could put a far more intricate design on it if you chose but I thought I'd keep it simple. 

Thanks for reading! 

Our two day break to York

Yesterday me, my Mum and Dad drove for just over two hours through sleet, snow and rain at three degrees to get to one of our favourite cities: York. I have to say most of yesterday it rained and was freezing cold so we started the holiday off at a lovely little cafe with sheet music covering the walls, soup, a sandwich and for me a hot chocolate to pull we through the harsh weather. 
We spent most of the afternoon safe inside at the castle museum and went to a few shops as the wind died down. We spent a while looking for a place for tea but finely settled back at our all time family favourite of Pizza Express, you can't go wrong! All three of us managed to stomach three courses, even after an anti-pasti to share and four seasons pizza I still found space for a chocolate glory (vanilla ice cream with chunks of chocolate fudge cake and chocolate sauce). 

Today the weather's been a lot better so we went round the shambles and a few of the quirky narrow streets to look at some of the shops, along the castle wall, which surrounds centre of the city, and to the Yorkshire museum before going to Betty's. 
If you've never been to Betty's you need to. We went at twelve O'clock and narrowly avoided having to queue outside the door on a Monday, not in the holidays! I can tell you it really was worth it though, I had a potato rosti with spinach, ham and a poached egg then a cherry frangipane with berries and even a fondant fancy (it was a treat as there are only three in the country, all in Yorkshire!). 

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! 

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!

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') 

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*

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!

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