love those cupcakes

Bits of the weekend

Baking no-knead wholemeal bread using a Rose Elliot recipe.

A bunch of my favourite tulips.

Practising the "sit" command..........

.........watched closely by The Enemy.

A delicious dinner here (risotto for me) with a group of friends we haven't seen for a while.

After a busy and demanding week at work, finally joining in Book Snob's Virago Reading Week with this choice.

I'd read and loved "The Weather in the Streets" years ago and this story, of Judith Earle's fascination, perhaps obsession (she even dreams about them), with the five Fyfe cousins who, as children, come to stay during the holidays with their grandmother in the neighbouring house, was the author's first. 

The novel opens with an eighteen year old Judith noticing that the by then unoccupied house (the grandmother having moved to London for health reasons) was being made ready and wondering, as she had when they were children, if the cousins came back,  "would they remember Judith at all, and be glad to see her again?  She knew that, anyway, they would not remember so meticulously, so achingly as herself: people never did remember her so hard as she remembered them.....".

 I'm not sure that the book will prove to be in quite the same league as the later work; we shall see.

 

Birthday cakes

Not mine, the Gorgeous Girlie's.  Actually, it's not her birthday until next week but she was home for the weekend.  Boo isn't yet at the stage where he can be left for any length of time so, instead of our usual celebration at a local restaurant, we had a special dinner at home last night.

For pudding I made the "I Can't Believe You Made That" cake from the Baking Made Easy television programme.  Although I followed the recipe to the letter, the cake turned out very crumbly (it disintegrated) and ended up in the bin.  This was the second attempt, using a basic chocolate sponge cake recipe. 

Of course, in our house it isn't a birthday without cupcakes and GG (she requested the Hello Kitty ones, honest!) will take these into work tomorrow.

Meanwhile, Boo has been introduced to his outdoor lead.

He's not impressed.

Shhh!

Whilst the pup was sleeping I managed to plonk a bunch of supermarket flowers that had been languishing in their wrapper in a vase,

make a little batch of chocolate topped fairy cakes (of course I won't be eating any)

and bake some bread. OK, so Boo wasn't asleep for the whole of the breadmaking process.

I have a machine but much prefer making bread the traditional way.  Apart from achieving better results (in my view), all that kneading and proving and knocking back is so relaxing and satisfying.  Especially after doing the night shift which had Boo and I in the garden at 4 a.m and 5:25 a.m. (He widdled so much yesterday we thought he'd sprung a leak).

There are other signs of progress.  The cats are slowly (very slowly) coming round, we're mastering (sort of) the "Sit" command and periods of frantic activity (what is this fascination with sockets, plugs and wires?) always end with a pup keen to climb into his bed. 

Ah yes, we ALWAYS let the sleeping Boo lie.

Teething problems

We've been using the textbook on puppy training.

I don't think we'll be graduating any time soon.

 

Update

 Why is it that, as soon as I start to focus on eating healthily (as in half a bowl of trifle is not a healthy breakfast), I crave Mars bars?   I don't particularly like Mars bars and I couldn't tell you when I last bought/consumed one, but it happens every time.  What's that all about?

I think soup rather than Mars bars will feature quite a lot in my meal planning over the next few weeks although, to be fair, it always has and particularly for lunches though I'll probably leave out the dumplings for a while.

This recently acquired book, which I read about here, should provide some much needed inspiration.   Anna Thomas' "Vegetarian Epicure" was one of the the first vegetarian recipe books I bought when, many years ago,  I found myself romantically attached to a young man who had never eaten meat and fish and who also had a hatred of eggs. (And yes, Readers, I married him).  I'd soon exhausted my meat free repertoire of beans on toast, cauliflower cheese and vegetable curry and needed some help. Armed with a couple of other classics from the 70's, I tried new recipe after new recipe (some are still favourites) and soon found I actually preferred a vegetarian diet. 

But back to soup.  This was today's offering - lentil, carrot and swede - concocted with what was available in the post-Christmas fridge and cupboard. Lunch doesn't get much healthier, does it?

I'm sure there was something else I wanted to tell you about.  Now, what was it?  Ah yes.

Let me introduce you to Boo Radley (just plain Boo will do), our 8 weeks old Cocker Spaniel pup.

We only collected him last night so if you think he looks a little nervous or confused, that's probably because he was.

 
Well done to those of you who guessed our plans.  Predictably, the new arrival has not gone down at all well with our cats, particularly Bea who is very withdrawn and refusing to have anything to do with anyone.  It's very early days, I know, so time will tell. 

It's about 17 years since we last had a puppy in the house. 

I'd forgotten how much they widdle.

 

P.S.  Fortunately we have no carpets here.

 

Putting away

A week into the new year already and we still haven't entirely put away Christmas.  Whilst the decorations are back in the loft and the tree and cards have been taken for recycling, there are still rolls of wrapping paper in the bedroom, gifts are still sitting in their festive bags and, despite tremendous effort on all our parts, there are plenty of goodies yet to be eaten.  I'm thinking that what's left of the Christmas cake will be transferred to the bin before my date with the people at Slimming World on Monday as I want all unboxed temptation (the untouched Toblerone and tins of biscuits can be safely stored in kitchen cupboards for munching later in the year) to be completely out of the way.

Whilst sorting my presents, I've realised Father Christmas was very clever this year, having obviously looked at my Amazon wishlist and very generously giving me everything on it.   I now need to find homes on the bookshelves for all of these.  (I was also given Susan Hill's ghost story, The Small Hand, and Patricia Cornwell's latest in the Kay Scarpetta series but I've been reading those).

The Rona Jaffe novel wasn't on my wishlist but apparently FC had spotted it in a scene from my favourite series, Mad Men.   Nice one.

I'd have to admit that we do go a bit overboard with gifts in this family, probably because there are so few of us (and we're all a bit overly enthusiastic about shopping, if truth be told) so I couldn't possibly show you everything I received but here's a small selection of the rest. 

The person who gave me this tea towel (which I may well frame - after ironing, of course) clearly knows me very well.

As does this person. (In my defence, toast crumbs get EVERYWHERE).

I love fountain pens and was delighted with this teeny one.

These two have been no help with the putting away, clearly otherwise occupied doing their shift on the neighbourhood watch.

Speaking of Buzz and Bea, boy are those two in for a shock if everything goes to plan.

Any guesses?

 

Welcoming 2011

"We will open the book.

Its pages are blank.

We are going to put words on them ourselves.

The book is called Opportunity

and its first chapter is New Year's Day".

 (Edith Lovejoy Pierce)                                                                                                                                                        

A happy and healthy New Year to you all. 

And may your tub of catnip never empty.