Rain, rain and more rain

I know we needed some rain, but seriously! This much! Henry woke up at 640 this morning and I managed to make him wait til 655am before going to get him. Bundled him into the stroller, much to his disgust, got the dogs all psyched for a walk and when we got outside around 710am it was already sprinkling. Then the rain came, and continued to come, and got worse! Around 4pm it was light enough that the dogs went to the bathroom for the first time, but then it started raining heavily again. So much rain!

We skyped every English-man you can imagine. Baked fresh bagels and then proceeded to eat about 4 each for lunch! Ok, Henry ate just a half a one like usual, but Danny and I pigged out! DInner was no less of a pig out. We attempt to re-create a British favourite; Bangers and Mash. No, not chopped up drug dealers, bangers are sausages and the reason we never have it is because we cant find delicious sausages here in town. They sell some nice ones at Whole Foods in Memphis, but thats a heck of a long way to go for a banger. I bought some pork and garlic sausages (thats what they were called) at the only butchers in town, L Bs Meat Market. It is chorizo. The meal was still really nice but not what we were exactly looking for. Mash was delicious though (I use sour cream with butter, instead of milk), Carrots and green beans were yummy and the onion gravy, well, what more do you need to say. Henry only ate half of two baby carrots. His loss. What kind of a kid doesnt like mash potato!?

The best part of the day was when Danny and Henry splashed in the puddles in the rain! Twice! Henry had a great time and they came in just intime before another serious down pour. It was pretty hard to explain to Henry why we couldn't play outside and at one point this morning he just stood at the back door looking out for about 15 minutes. Poor little fellow.

Maybe the rain will stop tomorrow and maybe Ill get to go out on my bike as I had planned today. Then the sleepy bliss ends Tuesday when I start my new job. Not overly excited, rather enjoyed playing with my baby for two weeks. OH and on the new baby front, we think its a boy now. We looked at pictures from being pregnant with Henry and my belly is exactly the same, all below the belly button, or Bee Bo and Henry likes to call it (we have a Bee Bo book).

What a weekend!

What a weekend, and no pictures to show for it, even though the photographer is back home! Useless!

So I had this great idea Friday that I could try to get all of the things done that afternoon, that I needed to have done before the Vegetarian Potluck being hosted at our house Saturday evening. So I got busy! I left work early and kicked out an hours worth of exercise at the gym. Still getting eyes drawn to my ever expanding tummy, but I guess Ill get over it. Rushed over to the grocery store and spent a small fortune on random crap. The most exciting find however, is that they have lemon curd at Kroger. This may seem like a small discovery, but I kid you not, I LOVE LEMON CURD! Its not the best brand Ive ever tasted, but in small town America and lack of time and my own chickens for the thousands of egg yolks it takes to make from scratch, one really cant be fussy. Walked the dogs when I got home and then set to cleaning. Managed to explode a Pyrex 9x13" dish in spectacular fashion (don't ask; stupidity), then had to spend an hour picking up tiny pieces of glass. Then had to sweep, vacuum and mop the kitchen floor to try and make sure I got all of the glass up. Fun! Suddenly remembered to eat, thankfully, as I was getting cranky, although there was no one there to reap the benefits of this crankiness. Made what turned out to be the most incredible cheesecake that has ever melted on my tongue! I made the base out of ginger snaps, spread lemon curd on the base (then proceeded to eat the rest of the jar) and the cheesecake itself was lemon (adjusted from recipe). Sat down, exhausted at about 1015pm to wait for my most handsome one, who rolled in at 1045pm. Both of us were exhausted but hadn't had a real conversation in weeks, so chatted a little. I asked if he was ready for a shock and moved the quilt of my tummy and stood up. He was in shock at how much one little tummy can grow in two weeks; its no longer a little tummy, that's for sure!

Saturday, even though I was exhausted and had gone to bed at midnight the night before, I still woke up with sore hips at 7am. Great. Walked the dogs with my good friend Summer and went to the Bottletree with her and her husband for late breakfast to play catch up. I had to order extra food after I had finished my Danish, as I was still hungry! Piggy! We popped over to Home Depot for some random stuff and then home to set to cleaning again. We cleaned off the beautiful deck in the hopes that some folks would take the party outside, since our house is rather small. Then my life was all encumbered by a cake. I baked a German Chocolate Cake for Danny's father. I would say overall, between Saturday and Sunday, I probably put in a good 12 hours to this cake. Baked the cake part and set it up in the pantry to deal with Sunday. Sat down at 530pm Saturday evening with my book and folks started arriving around 630pm. It was an interesting crowd. We hardly knew anyone that came, which is pretty funny! But the deck did get utilised and the fire was a great success. I had to ask some stragglers to leave at 1030pm because Danny and I had cleaned all we could clean and I was tired! Everyone left their beer, and we had brought a case of Natty Light for those mooches that didnt bring beer, but no one drank it! Now we are going to have to have a party just to get rid of the cooler of beer in the back yard!

Sunday I woke up even earlier! 6am this time; I struggled to get comfortable and finally gave in and got up at 7am. Started some bread for my lovely husband, then started some English muffins as I know he loves those too, then I began the assembly of The Cake. It needed a custard filling which I literally had to sit and stir for 45 minutes so that it didn't burn on the bottom. That then had to cool. I then made a chocolate frosting unlike any other, it then had to cool. Then a syrup. I walked the dogs while everything cooled. Proofed the various breads around the kitchen, then assembly began. It started out well, but since I had been instructed not to use coconut and pecans (main ingredients in the filling) there was nothing to grip the layers of cake, so they started to slip off. Then I broke one layer, transferring it onto the growing mountain of sugar, eggs and butter. I began to panic that after all of this effort, my cake was going to be a flop! I actually shouted at my baby for the first time. Here I was, having a cake disaster and the baby was having playtime in my abdomen, seriously poor timing. I snapped at it to calm down as Mummy was concentrating, and of course, it made no difference! It was playtime and that was that! Danny came running and had the bright idea to toothpick it together and then we stuck it in the fridge in the hopes that this 'set' the custard. Remarkably this worked! The chocolate frosting went on beautifully and I piped flowers on the top. I have to say, it was beautiful and I am so disappointed that there is no picture for you. Somewhere in there I managed to slice my thumb on the oven. Yes, you read that correctly, on the oven! It was the part where the decorative stainless steel meets the actual oven, apparently its sharp. I started yelling as I was in shock that I had just cut myself so deeply on the oven. Danny was on the phone to my mother but eventually got his arse of the couch to come help me. I ran it under cold water and announced that I was over it now, it was just the shock. Then Danny looked down and laughed, 'oh my god, look at your stomach, its huge!', so I burst out crying. Shocked, he asked me what was wrong as he thought I was over the cut, and I managed to blub out that my stomach was huge and that I just couldn't take it! He tried to rationalise that there was a baby in there, but come on, rationalising with a pregnant woman about how fat she is, seriously, you thought that would work! We finally ate breakfast just after noon, jumped in the shower and drove to Memphis to celebrate Danny's father's 52nd birthday with him. Danny made me taste the cake since I had put so much effort into it, but rather predictably for someone that does not like chocolate, I thought it was disgusting. Everyone else thought it was delicious though, thank goodness! Happy Birthday Paul!

Im exhausted.

Its actually a relief to be sitting at my desk crunching numbers with no physical activity or thought processes acting at all.

We didn't manage to grocery shop in all that fuss, so we will be eating whatever we can find in the cupboards and freezer this week! Save for the $2 pineapples they had in the Holly Springs Walmart, steal! And possibly the other three jars of lemon curd that haunt my every waking moment!

Breakfast Muffins

These are so easy to make (if you have a food processor!) and such a great mid-morning snack! So tasty!

Breakfast Muffins

Preheat oven to 350F. Grease two muffin pans (spray oil works wonders).

Mix the following together:
1 c Wholewheat flour
1 c Spelt Flour
1/2 c ground flax
1c Sugar (I used raw, you could use honey)
2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp salt

Stir in:
2 c shredded carrots (2-4 medium carrots)
1 apple, core removed, shredded
1/2 c raisins
1/2 c chopped walnuts
1/2 c sunflower seeds

In a separate bowl, mix together:
3 eggs
1/3 c canola oil
2/3 c apple sauce
2 tsp vanilla extract

Stir egg mixture into carrot/flour mixture, and stir until just combined. Use ice cream scoop to place mix into muffin pans. It made 16 for me. I also sprinkled a little mix of cinnamon, brown sugar and flour over the top for a crunchy topping.

Bake in preheated oven for 25 minutes. I also broiled/grilled on high for 2 minutes to make the top crunchy, but kept a close eye on it. Use toothpick to check they are fully cooked.

Original recipe from all recipes.

Don't Panic Mr Mannering

Water now comes out of our pipes and the heating is working, for the time being!

Went for a beautiful walk in the sun with my good buddy Meg at lunchtime. Thank goodness there was some respite in this otherwise awful day! I have been in a meeting since 10am this morning, going round and round in circles. Ugh. Why can't some people just give straight answers? It would make things less painful to endure!

Got to frost my cake when I get home as I chose to enjoy the last 'warm' day in a while at lunchtime instead ...

British Antics

Our journey to England was a little manic, it has to be said. We taxied for 40 minutes on the runway in Amsterdam, so when we got off the plane we only had 30 minutes to our next flight. Instead of booking us onto the next flight, Delta chose to book us onto the one after that. Of course our cell phones didnt work in Amsterdam but they had given us phone credit so we were able to call my mum, who was picking us up; but her cell phone was dead so I had to leave her a message and hope she got it. My poor mum sat at Heathrow for 5 hours, having dropped her friend off earlier in the day. Best 1.75GBP coffee she ever bought! The parking ticket meter ate our ticket so we had to stand there in the freezing cold waiting for the attendant. Then we hopped on the motorway to sit in traffic, so we put the radio on to get the low-down, and Sally Traffic said there was stand-still traffic on the M25 (London's ring road) from junctions 12 to 22. We were at junction 13. At which point, my mum realised that the numbers were going down, not up - we were going the wrong way round! But by that stage we had skipped all of the stand-still traffic on the other side of the road, so we decided just to keep going. Then it started snowing! Eventually we got to my parents house around 9pm ish, instead of 130pm ish had we caught our intended flight - exhausted!

We visited my grandmother on the monday and it snowed again on the way home. Really heavy snow in a short amount of time. It took my mum and I six hours to get home; a 1.5 hour journey. The first 12 miles took about 5 hours! I was starting to realise that I was going to sit in a car most of my holiday!

Tuesday we drove (see, more time in a car) up to Fort William, Scotland; a 9 ish hour drive. The snow up there was much thicker and made for a pretty white christmas. We had a daily trudge through the snow and was fed abundantly by Dave's sister Lorna. We played cards every night with randomly chosen teams, and the teams I was on only lost once! My claim to Samba fame!

We flew out of Edinburgh airport Tuesday morning, probably much more efficient than leaving from Gatwick or Heathrow, where delays were much greater. We flew to Amsterdam again, where they scanned your stuff, and went through each bag individually, and patted everyone down, seriously patted you down. As a result, our plane left an hour later than scheduled and it was a close call on our third flight, but we made it with a hair to spare. We were awake 24 hours that day but unfortunately still jet lagged, so despite finally falling into bed at 1130pm, I still woke up around 430am, but managed not to wake Danny up til about 630am! Wasnt I good!?

We had the Klimetz' over for NYE last night but I got tired and so sneaked into bed when they went outside to do fireworks at 10pm. They woke me up to celebrate and drink sparkling grape juice (god that stuff is awful, tastes like a rubber ball) at 1150pm and I went back to bed at 1210am! I had cooked lots and lots of food, mostly unnecessarily as there was tons left over, and we played board games. Oh, dont ever buy Battle of the Sexes... the boy questions are easy and the girl questions are impossible. Although the boys we played with, summized that it just showed how selfish girls are that they dont learn anything about things that interest boys. Although they didnt know half the answers to our questions! I mean seriously, any ideas what the engine in a dune buggy is? Or the second longest continually running sporting event? (I have got this one now though, Kentucky Derby.) Needless to say, we lost miserably. Break out the Boggle, Ill show you a thing or two! We didnt get to eat the delicious cheesecake I made yesterday as no one had room after the baked brie, Bruce's Southern Caviar, pulled pork, wedge fries, braised cabbage, french bread and blondies, to mention just a few things that took up my day. So perhaps its cheesecake for breakfast!

Im still jet lagged so Im sneakily writing this post in bed while the sun comes up and the three young men in my life snore away happily (only one of them is in my bed, dont worry! Id never sleep with two massive dogs in the bed, there would be no room for me!). I have some sewing and knitting to do, so I suppose Ill get up and do that now, while everyone else sleeps. Excited for our typical NY day activities of a nice long walk with the dogs and afternoon trip to the cinema, perhaps Sherlock Holmes today.

I think its going to be a great year this year. No resolutions as you only end up breaking them. Instead Ill give thanks to all those that love me and are so generous with their friendships and time. I hope I do as much for you all as you do for me. I am particularly thankful for my wonderful husband (who cleaned the entire house yesterday so that I didnt have to worry about it, and the oven when my cheesecake base leaked butter that burned to the bottom of the oven and filled the kitchen with black smoke!). Im also thankful for my mummy who is always there with the perfect comforting words and a hug. Even big girls need tlc!

Now, to plan what cake I shall make myself for my birthday next week, hmmmmm! Sweet potato perhaps, with a cream cheese frosting!

Im sure Ill find some pictures to post next week.

Happy New Year!

Sunday seemed to be no more relaxing!

Why do I do it to myself! Busy busy busy, all of the time!

Sunday actually began rather slowly and with lots of relaxing, so perhaps I just went through my day backwards! I woke early and sat knitting until Danny woke up. Then I went into town and walked the dogs whilst Danny went to his photo shoot. He was a lot longer than I had anticipated and it seemed a lot warmer than 64F, so Tux had some problems. He overheated and we had to go down into the woods for some shade and to rest. We hustled in Home Depot and ate a delicious salad at Newks, as I was about to bite someone's head off if I didnt get some food, asap!

My afternoon consisted of bread baking, two batches of ginger apple marmalade, finishing the small flower bed that now lines our beautiful new deck and mopping the kitchen floor. Phew! No rest for the wicked eh! I then boiled the gnocchi I so lovingly made yesterday and when I poured them out into the colander to drain, they all mushed together into one big pile of slops! So I wont be sharing that recipe until I have tried again and got little gnocchi's instead of a big heap of ickiness that got washed down the drain. I quickly boiled some spaghetti and we had that instead for our dinner! I always forget how incredible my marinara sauce is! Why did I only make 8 quarts! Its going to be harsh late spring when there is no marinara left in the pantry! Must remember to make two lots next year!

We enjoyed the cool evening air of our lovely new and expanded deck, then I went to bed, unsurprisingly exhausted!

Maybe Ill rest in my next life!

Tomorrow's the day!

Tomorrow is the day that we leave for New Zealand!

Its a rather hellacious journey, all in all. We are leaving our house around 10 am in order to drop the dogs off in Olive Branch with Danny's parents and take them out for an early lunch. Our first flight is at 1430 hrs, Memphis to L.A.. Then a ridiculously long lay over in LA and a 2330 hours departure to Auckland. We get there at 730 am and take an internal flight to Christchurch at 1230 pm. Then we will pick up our camper van and drive on over to Pancake Rock for early exploration the next day! If we manage to survive this, and the time difference, we might be ok!

I spent the evening making granola bars for the journey and decided, albeit rather foolishly, to try making English muffins. You make them the night before and leave them to rise in the fridge over night. So hopefully we will have a deliciously toasty hot muffin for breakfast!

See you on the other side!

Sunday slow-down

Today seemed much more relaxed than yesterday, though I still seemed to achieve a lot, oh and Im quitting early!

I did not feel like cycling, so I did skip that, which gave me an extra two hours. Oh and I didnt sleep in since Danny and Timmy came home at 830am, so I got up and talked to them before they went to sleep!

Mostly spent the day weeding in the back, though I did manage to make 2 zucchini bread loaves and two rosemary garlic focaccia, which look irresistible! Im quitting now, at 4pm, to chill with my book for an hour or so. I would work some more in the garden, but I split a chili with my finger nails earlier to put in the bread for some kick and now my fingers are really sore! Wimp, I know.

Zucchini Bread

2 tea loaves or reduce baking time and use mini-loaf pans and give as gifts

Ingredients:

2-2 1/2 c shredded zucchini, 2 medium zucs

3 c flour

1 3/4 c sugar

1 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

1 tsp each cinnamon, nutmeg and powdered ginger

3/4 c apple sauce

2-3 eggs, depending on size

2 tbs ground flax

1/3 c vegetable oil

1 tbs vanilla

1 c raisins

1 c walnuts

1 c multi-grain cereal (oats, sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, flax seeds etc)

1. Preheat oven to 350 F. Spray two loaf pans with oil.

2. Combine egg, oil, apple sauce, vanilla and flax and whisk.

3. Gradually add spices and sugar, continually whisking. Fold in flour and multi-grain cereal.

4. Mix in zucchini, raisins and nuts.

5. Distribute mixture evenly between loaf pans. Bake 1 hr 5 mins.

Cool in pans

This is a great breakfast when smeared with cream cheese! It freezes fantastically; I usually chose to slice then freeze. Enjoy!

My lesson with frozen shredded zucchini

So remember ages ago I said that I had heard that shredding and freezing zucchini is more space efficient than making zucchini bread and freezing that? Well I decided that I didn't want to keep freezing bags and bags of shredded zucchini without knowing how it would work out for baking. So this afternoon I decided to make some ginger zucchini cupcakes. Because I decided this at work this afternoon, there was no time to come home and defrost the zucchini, but I thought it would work out if I put the bag in a bowl of hot water. Well, no, that didn't work. So I emptied the block of icky green stuff into a colander and poured two kettles of boiling water over it before it was fully defrosted. Then I had to squeeze all of the water out of the zucchini. By the time I had done this, my two cups of zucchini was reduced to one cup. Save going through the whole mess again, I just shredded a fresh zucchini.

The end result is pretty delicious!

Lessons learned from using shredded frozen zucchini:

1. when bagging up, a sandwich sized bag filled to the brim is two fresh cups of zucchini

2. defrosting takes a long time so remember to take out the veg in the morning

3. squeeze really well to get all of the water out

4. you will need to use two sandwich size bags to get two cups of zucchini (a quantity most recipes ask for)

I had forgotten how much I loved these cupcakes!

Yesterdays antics

Evidence that I did cook all day, incase you dont believe me!

I had lots more pictures, but since Ive temporarily misplaced my camera, I had to use Dannys and its way too complicated, so they were all blurry!

My lemon plum tomato, isnt it cute!

So of course I came home and picked tons more tomatoes and cucumbers this afternoon. Why couldnt you have been ready yesterday to go in the marinara? eh.

I went cycling after work today and managed to see a turkey wandering through the woods and a rather large, and I suspect rather poisonous snake sunbathing in the road. When I got home I went out into the flower bed I had planned to do yesterday to at least get a start. I was considering going in to cook dinner when something that sounded awfully large moved in the bushes, very quickly. Since I had seen the snake in the road I instantly thought it was a snake and as I was only wearing sandles I decided to bolt out of the flower bed. I of course wanted to know what it was though! We have only ever had one large snake in the back, because of the dogs I suppose, and it was a King Snake, shame the dogs ripped it to shreds really, they are good to have around. So I stood on the bench out of harms way (on the other side of the small fence) and poked around with a stick and it moved again. Well it was the largest toad I have ever seen in my life. It was about as long as both of my fists together and as wide as one and a half. I fully intend to get a picture of him/her tomorrow if its still there. Oh mini-camera, where oh where are you!?

Still enjoying my Sunday!

I succeeded in making all of the things that I wanted to make and cooked so much today that I am not cooking dinner! 7 jars of fig ginger preserve, 2 quarts of marinara, 4 french baguettes, 16 bagels, two loaves and 5 rolls of multi-grain bread and 3 jars of pesto, oh and two cups of tea! I have eaten one bagel, and shared one multi-grain roll and a baguette and am about to eat two mini-cinnamon scones from the freezer. Ive got rather a lot of burns from stupidity and picked more tomatoes and cucumbers when I was out scouting for parsley. Now Im settling down to an evening of tv to ready myself for a week of work.

Enjoying my sunday

Today begun tremendously stormy with instantaneous lightening and thunder so of course both Tux and I were scared. I made sure I had a manly arm across my side (as I now have my very own man home!) and Tux made sure he was perfectly positioned next to my side of the bed getting tickled behind the ears. It was so dark in the room because of the black clouds that before I knew it, it was 9am! Thats about the latest Ive stayed in bed, asleep, for probably months!

Today is an ambitious one for me. I started french baguettes yesterday so I get to bake them today. I have already prepared bagels and multi-grain bread, Im just letting them rise. I pruned the rosemary bush yesterday so I intend to make garlic focaccia bread today also, but I might prepare it and put the dough in the fridge for tomorrow. Its not all for me! In fact I probably wont keep much of the bread I make today. It was my friends mums birthday friday so I thought Id send her some jam and fresh bread. My girlies have expressed an interest in some baguettes (although Im going to keep one of those!). I am making some as a thank you for Glenn Wilson, a gentleman from work who brought me 3 bags of blackberries, 2 bags of plums and 2 bags of figs during the week. And I thought my handsome young husband would like some fresh hot bagels for his breakfast, if he ever gets out of bed! Its 1030am already! While all of the bread is proofing Im going to attempt to make my own recipe up for fig and ginger preserve, which I am especially excited about! The list goes on... I have an entire colander full of tomatoes from my garden so Im going to make some marinara with those and finally I have to trim to the basil so Im going to make pesto, although I couldnt find pine nuts at the supermarket yesterday so its going to be roasted hazelnuts instead.

Oh and its stopped raining now and should be clear til about 3pm so I might go out and weed a flower bed! Ive got a new outlook on weeding... rather than being daunted by it and never getting started because there is too much to do, Im just going to go out and do a flower bed and then quit for the day. Yesterday I did a small flower bed by the house and the veggie patch. It only took about 4 hours and it felt good to get some done but I didnt feel exhausted and like Id spent my entire day in the garden. So which bed today!?

I found a bright green tree frog hidden among the cucumber and bean vines, so Ill try and get a picture of him if I can just find my camera! The veggie patch is beginning to look a bit better, with all this rain. Some of the tomato plants are dying (too much water!) but some are thriving and I finally got some Plum Lemons; they are incredible, bright yellow and just like a lemon! Ive now got marigold bushes, zinnias and sunflowers within the tomatoes so it even looks pretty! There are lots of little cucumbers getting ready and some green beans. Summer 's grandfathers hot pepper plant has gone crazy this year and the basil and oregano is finally growing well, but other than that, its a bit of a loss this year, no squash or zucchini, no bell or banana peppers and the corn all got eaten while I was away.

Awesome weekend!

So much to tell you about, not enough time in the day to write!

Ha! I was going to start at saturday morning, but having just downloaded my photos, I realised I forgot a particularly important event friday night!

Friday night I checked on my wormies. The little Night Crawlers have been living in our laundry room for almost a year now.  They had started to smell lately, which usually means the balance is all out of whack. Yes, they were all out of whack! They had eaten all of their food and all of their bedding! Greedy buggers! So I now have an entire tote full of beautiful worm poo that my soon-to-be-planted tomato plants are going to absolutely love! But then there is that dilemma of how to get them out of the poo and into another tote. So at Nicole's suggestion, I made up another tote of bedding and food and placed it on top. However it was higher in the other tote because there was so much poo in there. So I then had to tape a ripped up plastic bag around it so that any escapies would be caught. It was a good job I did this because lots of little guys have lost their way and ended up down there. Im going to give them a month to move house, then I guess Ill have to pack their bags and evict them.

Getting the new home ready for inhabitance

Freddie, Larry and Lee

What an exciting Friday night!

Saturday morning I woke up good and early. In fact, the singing birds outside my bedroom window woke me at 7am. Then I felt this strong manly arm wrap around me and I thought it wouldnt be so bad to start working in a little while so that I could enjoy a snuggle. So I finally got up around 740am to start my busy day.

It began with bagel baking - always delicious warm and fresh in the mornings.

I moved on to cup cake making.  While I remember, dont make the jelly donut cupcakes in Veganomicon. They just dont work. You had to drop the jam into the batter before baking. Well it sunk, duh. So if you want to make these, bake the batter and then spoon in some jam when they are cooled.

Then, having eaten my lovely warm bagel I went to work outside... last week, Danny's aunt Karen gave me four trash bags full of day lilies from her garden. You all know how much such generosity means to me, and how desperate I have been all week to plant them! So I got to work. After the entire day outside splitting and planting day lilies, I was sun burnt but still not finished... but I had to make cookies and some more cupcakes for the gathering at my boss' house.  I apologise to every one at the gathering saturday night, I was tired and Im not used to eating at 830pm, so I was really hungry. Well obviously I went into total shut down!

Sunday was more chilled. Finished planting the day lilies in a snip. Then moved on to some long over due weeding! ugh. Actually it was nice. I just sat at various spots around the garden pulling up weeds. I chatted to a good friend and pulled away.  The only frustrating thing is the sheer volume of gum balls, and it seems that as I pick them up (as I dont want them in my leaf pile for next years mulch) more fall off the trees. But all in all, Id say I had a very theraputic day!  We popped to the farmers market and grocery store later on this afternoon, picking up a gorgeous lamb shoulder at the former. 

Dinner was masterful and so little effort! I throughly recommend the following with your choice of meat.  I cut lots of fresh rosemary and mint from the garden and placed it in the bottom of a 9x13 baking dish, along with a bulb of garlic split into cloves and some canola oil. On this I placed the lamb shoulder and rubbed it with cumin, sea salt and pepper, covered the whole thing with tin foil and baked at 325F for an hour. After an hour I lifted up the lamb and placed potatoes and rutabaga (large cubes) underneath and then carrots and parsnips around the edge, and baked for another hour. Perfect. We had this with stuffing (just because!) and a mix of steamed greens tossed in the leftover lemon vinaigrette from salad the other day. Like I said, a masterpiece!

Ill leave you with more tulip pics and the pups outside earlier on.  They are snoring right now, food comas after the lamb shoulder we just gave them to gnaw on!

Mojo

Tux

Off to bed now to read my book. What a relaxing, but productive weekend!

Cinnamon dipped mini-scones

Well, for all of you who enjoyed these at the baby shower sunday, and for those of you who got the not so good batch I took to work monday morning (as they werent good enough for the shower!), here is the recipe for the cinnamon dipped mini-scones from "A Passion for Baking" by Marcy Goldman.

Makes 36 mini scones

Ingredients:

3 c all purpose flour

1 c sugar

3/4 tsp salt

4 tsp baking powder

3/4 c unsalted butter, room temp, cut into chunks

2 tsp vanilla extract

2 lg eggs, room temp

3/4 - 1 c heavy whipping cream

Cinnamon Dip

4 tbs unsalted butter, melted

2 tsp ground cinnamon

2-3 cups confectioners' sugar

whipping cream or milk as required

Preheat oven to 425F. Stack two sheets together and grease top sheet. Arrange oven rack to upper third position.

In a food processor, add flour, sugar, salt, and baking powder and blend brielfy.  Add butter and pulse to make a coarse, grainy mixture.

If you dont have a food processor, I feel your pain... I just got one for my birthday this year. No, seriously, if you dont have a food processor, use your fingers to rub the butter into the flour.  This is the most important stage of scone making, if you skimp here, you scones will be a flop.

Turn out mixture into a large bowl.  Make a well in the center and stir in vanilla, eggs (whisked) and whipping cream to make a soft dough.  If it is stiff, add more cream.

Using an ice cream scoop or melon scoop (depending upon size of scones desired) deposit balls of dough onto sheets.

Bake until scones are puffy and golden brown. 22-25 minutes for large ice cream scoop scones. 12-15 minutes for miniature scones.

Meanwhile, for cinnamon dip, whisk together all ingredients until you have a thick but drippy glaze.  Add more confectioners' sugar or cream as required.

Cool scones to warm and dip into cinnamon dip (holding by edges of base). Dip again once topping is set.

Pop them in your mouth and enjoy!

On a different note...if I think I had a good ride monday, today blew it out of the water. Oh my gosh, I had the wind at my tail on the way out to the lake and made it out there at an average of 20mph! A personal best by far! Got stopped by an irate British man and Danish (I think) woman looking for someone's house. Strange. Obviously the wind was against me on the way home, but my average had only dropped to 18.8 mph by the time I made it to the house. Still a personal best for lone riding. Didnt draft off anyone! 

I need my thursday morning yoga now to stretch out those sore muscles.

Yes, I hear what you are saying... yet again I had vowed to go to bed early and I am now posting at 1018pm. I know people, I know. I got stuck at work late, so my ride was late and it just spiraled down hill from there.  Did manage to mop the kitchen floor and finish the laundry though, so it wasnt a wasted evening.