Bad Habits.

I know I have been rather lax at posting, (again) and catching up in blogland.
I couldnt even tell you what I have been doing instead, just the regular stuff grocery shopping, laundry visiting 1000 stores to find the right shade of shower curtain, that sort of thing.

Nothing of interest to report, Oh one thing WP made me a grilled cheese sandwich the other night here it is :


I had to take photographic evidence so the next time he says I burn everything I have
something to throw back.

Anyway I have spent the weekend posting a load of stuff on craigslist to sell, just the usual junk people accumulate, CD's DVD's etc.
I like to have a quick peek into the Rants & Raves section this is where I found the following open letter, LOL.

To my boyfriend

I know you think just because we moved in together you can disregard all manners, social graces, and common decency that you seemed to have for the past two years. Those boxers your mom got you for Christmas; I can see your balls hanging out of them. This is not attractive, and no I do not think it's funny. I'm going to throw them away very soon. Maybe you think because you're good looking and funny you can get away with scratching yourself constantly, farting in bed, and hacking up god knows what from the back of your throat every morning. Well I have news for you buddy, when you do those things it makes me never want to have sex with you again. EVER.

I have lived with a boyfriend before, for much longer than we have. I never heard any of his bodily functions EVER. Would you like me to call HIM next time I think about having sex?????

No? Well then you better figure out a way to stop acting like you live in a frat house. I'm a nice girl, not some skanky bar wench who is accustomed to getting farted on in bed. Work it out. Now.

Thanks

XOXO,

Me

**************

Randomness

Ok, its Monday, feels like Tuesday.

Just a few randomnesses:

WP's work shift is now Sat thru Wed 10am- 7pm, crap, I know. Its good not to have to get up dead early though but having to work the weekends is bad. Of course he is probably glad to get away from me. ;)

I cooked some pork chops on the griddle last night for dinner and filled the house with so much smoke I had to open the front door....That is until the smoke set off the smoke alarm out there.....Oop's

Wp's brother asked me to order something off ebay for one of his co-workers (Rams jacket size 3XL, wow), this is the second time I have ordered something for him, set him up an account and left his feedback and all that crap for him.
The jacket came and he took it to work, the next day he flashed a $20 note that the guy had given him for taking the time to order the jacket for him.....*Cough, who ordered it, I said ( in a joking way) that I wanted half, he looked a bit downcast but agreed.
Still waiting, although he did buy me a salad from Macdonald's, perhaps he thinks thats enough.
He's on his own next time people.

Finally I came across this :Dirty Little Mermaid

LOL

I got my cake and ate it...

And it was soooooo good. Of course I had to share it with WP. he said it tasted good too. Imagine, he liked something British, perhaps there is hope for him yet.

Because he likes it I will take on the task. I have left it too late this year (many people make them 2-3 months in advance to make sure that they are well and truly soaked in Brandy)
Maybe I will make one next year- That should be fun, me making something as complicated as a Christmas cake.
I have no doubt it will turn out brick like enough to use as a door stop. The fruit will have all sunk to the bottom too.

Inspired I thought I would look into it, and found a few facts out.:

• The Christmas Cake as we know it today comes from two customs which became one around 1870 in Victorian England. Originally there was a porridge, the origins of which go back to the beginnings of Christianity. Then there was a fine cake made with the finest milled wheatflour, this was baked only in the Great Houses, as not many people had ovens back in the 14th century.


• PLUM PORRIDGE :Originally people used to eat a sort of porridge on Christmas Eve. It was a dish to line the stomach after a day's fasting, which people used to observe for Christmas Eve, or the 'Vigil' as it was called long ago. Gradually, they began to put spices, dried fruits, honey etc in the porridge to make it a special dish for Christmas. Much later it was turned into a pudding, because it got to be so stiff with all the fruits and things, that they would tie it in a cloth, and dunk it into a large cauldron of boiling water and boil it for many hours. This turned into Christmas Pudding.

yuk I hate Christmas pudding, which is often served as a dessert after dinner on Christmas day. Its usually set alight and brought to the table dancing with blue flames from all the brandy. Its then served with some kind of sweet white sauce, either Rum, Brandy or plain.

• PLUMCAKE : Later, around the 16th century, it became popular to add butter, replace the oatmeal with wheatflour, add eggs to hold it together better. This became boiled plumcake. So boiled plum pudding and boiled fruitcake existed side by side depending on which ingredients the housewife used. Only big houses had proper ovens to bake in. In the castles and fine homes, people would make a special cake for Easter, which was a rich fruitcake recipe with a topping of what we now call marzipan or almond paste. A similar cake was baked for the Christmas festivities, but whereas the Easter one was a plain cake with almonds, the Christmas one had dried fruits in season and spices. These represented the exotic spices of the East, and the gifts of the Wise Men . Such things were first brought to Europe and Britain particularly, by the Crusaders coming back from the wars in the Holy Land in the 12th century.

• TWELFTH NIGHT CAKE : But it was not a Christmas cake, but a Twelfth Night Cake. Twelfth night is on the 5th January, and has been for centuries the traditional last day of the Christmas season.. It was a time for having a great feast, and the cake was an essential part of the festivities. This was slightly different in different countries, and also at different social levels.But after the Reformation, these customs of the Church were banned by the Puritans, and fell into disuse. Without its religious overtones, Twelfth Night became a time of mischief and over indulgence. By 1870, Britains Queen Victoria announced that she felt it was inappropriate to hold such an unchristian festival, and Twelfth Night was banned as a feastday.

See even back then religion was dictating how people lived and celebrated.

• THE ARRIVAL OF THE CHRISTMAS CAKE : The confectioners who made the cakes were left with boxes full of figurines and models for Twelfth Cakes, and also had lost revenue by the banning of the feast. So they began to bake a fruitcake and decorate it with snowy scenes, or even flower gardens and Italian romantic ruins. These they sold not for the 5th January, but for December Christmas parties. And it was thus that we developed the Christmas cake.

I am ashamed to say I didn't know any of the above facts. so at least I learnt something today...

Now in case any of you out there want to try to make it too I will include the recipe. the ingredients are subject to a bit of open interpretation, some people don't like to add the brandy, some people don't add the nuts and so on.

Ingredients
For the cake:
500g/1lb 2oz sultanas
255g/9oz lexia raisins
200g/7oz glace cherries, halved
110g/4oz currants
110g/4oz cut mixed peel
110g/4oz ready-to-eat dried figs, roughly chopped
110g/4oz ready-to-eat dried apricots, roughly chopped
110g/4oz ready to-eat dried pitted prunes, roughly chopped
150ml/5fl oz brandy
1 small orange, grated zest and juice
255g/9oz unsalted butter, at room temperature
200g/7oz dark muscovado sugar
5 medium eggs
300g/10.5oz plain flour
200g/7oz macadamia nuts, roughly chopped
For the decoration:
3 tbsp apricot jam
500g/1lb 2oz white marzipan
140g/5oz ready-to-roll white icing
packet royal icing mix
silver balls, to decorate
icing sugar, to dust

Method
1. Put the sultanas, raisins, glace cherries, currants, peel, figs, apricots and prunes in a large bowl and pour over the brandy, orange zest and juice. Mix well, cover and leave to stand overnight.

2. Line the base of a 23cm/9in cake tin with a double thickness of parchment paper. Line the sides of the tin with a double thickness of parchment paper, so that it comes 4-5cm/1.5-2in above the edge of the tin. Wrap a sheet of folded newspaper around the outside of the tin and secure with string. Stand the prepared tin on a folded sheet of newspaper on a baking sheet. Preheat the oven to 150C/300F/Gas 2.

3. In a large bowl, beat the butter and sugar together until pale and fluffy. Gradually beat in the eggs, adding a little of the flour if the mixture starts to curdle. Add the fruit, its soaking liquid and the nuts and mix well. Stir in the flour, taking care not to over mix it. Spoon the mixture into the prepared tin and level the surface with the back of a spoon. Bake for 3-4 hours or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. If the top of the cake starts to get too brown, cover with a sheet of baking parchment.

4. When the cake is cooked, remove it from the oven and leave to cool completely in the tin. Store the cake in an airtight tin, wrapped in greaseproof paper and foil for between two and three months. Feed the cake with brandy every 2-3 weeks until you are ready to decorate it.

5. Pass the jam through a sieve and warm it in a pan with 1 tbsp of water. Invert the cake onto a serving plate or board. Use a little of the marzipan to fill any gaps between the cake and the plate. Brush the jam all over the cake. Roll out the remaining marzipan and lift carefully onto the cake, easing it around the sides. Trim off any excess with a sharp knife.

6. Roll out the ready-to-roll icing to a 0.5cm/ 1/4 in thickness and cut out as many star shapes as you can, re-rolling the trimmings. Set aside on parchment paper to harden. Meanwhile, make up the royal icing according to the instructions on the packet. Spread the icing over the cake to cover it, then roughly peak it using a spatula. Arrange the stars on top and scatter over the silver balls. Leave the icing to harden, then dust the cake with icing sugar.

No title came to mind....

Yesterday I managed to update my webpage, a job I hate doing, not that it's hard it's just boring. I am thinking about a new look for there, the current one has begun to bore me.
Now I just have to come up with something better.Have no ispiration at the moment.



That will have to wait though, I have one day to finish my library book before its due back and I don't want to have to re-new it, I am a little over half way through it so I should manage it.





This getting up at 6.45am is begining to catch up on me, we have been going to bed at like 9pm! Hooray its saturday tomorrow, a lie in. We have plans to go out around 9am which is still early in my book but its an extra hour in bed.
He has another week of 8-5's and then I think its onto the afternoon shift, which has its downsides too, yes you can get up later but he gets home later and then after an hour or so its bed time.Boring Huh ?
He has to wear slacks for work now, and my ironing is almost as bad as my cooking, I can never get the bloody creases right down the front of the legs!
I have decided that we need to purchase an ironing board, I cannot iron on the table or on the floor I need a board. This idea met with a cool reaction, but I will persevere. :)

Thats about it, what a full life I lead Hee.

I don't even think I burnt anything this week either.

Cooking disaster #542658

Yesterday WP requested pancakes. We had a box of the add water powder mix in the cupboard, so what could possibly go wrong right?
Off I trot to the kitchen, I gauge the measurements by eye ( despite buying all the measuring jugs and spoons listed in my previous post).
Anyway it looks just dandy, I start to cook them two at a time, they get a bit blackish/brownish but I can cover it with lots of syrup.
I make him four and take them to him, he takes one bite and there in the middle is uncooked batter!.
Bloody Hell, I either burn them or undercook them or in this case both at the same time!

I removed the plate and tipped its contents into the disposal.
I am not getting beat by this, so I get out flour, milk and egg and make my own proper (thin) pancake batter.
The beauty of thin pancakes is that you don't get the opportunity to undercook them.

Of course by the time I had remade the pancakes and poured more syrup on them I forgot that he likes his to be filled, so I had to make even more so that I could fill them.

I did cook today but nothing went wrong, although I did notice that the pasta sauce is still on the kitchen ceiling....


On another note my brain is like mush, yesterday and today I have had four templates/websites to contend with (some for myself) and none of them want to make it easy.
Nearly every step there has been some problem or other, either it doesn't represent correctly in Internet Explorer or the template is just a full on pain in the butt. I try to walk away really I do but sometimes its hard, and the more you sit and stare at the code the more you miss silly little things.
I keep meaning to explore some of this CCS layout software but then I think it would proably be just as much of a pain to sit and learn it!

oh well better luck tomorrow...

Hamburger Shambles

Tonights dinner...nuff said. =)

The crispy pile at the back is where the other 3 hamburgers were before I served then to WP for dinner....

Much a blog about nothing

Boring Post Warning:


Well today(Tuesday) I cooked spaghetti and meat sauce for dinner and realised how much of a dull life I lead when I remembered that I cooked it last Tuesday too ! This time none ended up on the ceiling though ( well apart from the splatters that are still there from last week*Wink )

The I had a chocoholic moment at around 9 pm ( missed Sex & the City incidentally due to WP's bro watching some crap ) Oh well.. Maybe one day I will be able to buy the bloody box set then I can watch at my leisure. Anyway back to the chocolate craving. All we had in the house was a box of brownie mix well anything will do in an emergency right. So I made it , didn't forget about it tested it but it was still a little soggy in the middle so I left it in the oven and turned it off.

I didn't think they turned out too bad on the whole, sure they are very crispy around the edges but that's how I like em, give me the crispy edge over the soft middle anyday!



Other news, have been really busy of late trying to get my website updated and redesigned, as well as doing a few blogs for various people.
I did have something else to blog about but my mind has now gone blank ???


I will leave you with this little gem:

Gender difference

At the college, male and female students were told to individually write a sentence using the words 'sex' and 'love.'

Females wrote : When two mature people are passionately and deeply in love with one another to a high degree and that they respect each other very much, then, it is spiritually and morally acceptable to the society that they both engage themselves in the act of physical sex with one another.

Men wrote : 'I love sex.'

and a little warning...

Some like it hot

Disclaimer : I am British look it up, we all moan about the weather.



Well for the last two days I have been too hot inside the apartment. Which isn't like me at all , it's been too hot to sleep too hot to cook too hot to clean. The AC has been on. We have the fan on at night but it was blowing that hard I kept waking up thinking things were crawling over me( It was the fan blowing my hair onto my face). Last night I went to bed with my hair tied back but still hair escaped during the night. Today its discovered that the AC wasn't working properly, it is now "ahhh cool air at last" Of course now I need to go and put a sweater on when I stand at the sink its that cold.


I made chilli for dinner, cooked all the meat in one pan and heaped a load of beans , tomatoes etc in the large pot. Added the cooked meat and more spices etc....Then did what I do best forgot about it. I wandered into the bedroom , checked my emails etc, after a while I remember the chilli. I go to the kitchen to stir it, "Yikes" as I am stirring there is a burnt smell wafting through the air. I can feel burnt bits on the bottom of the pan, I look down and the heat is on high. I cover my tracks by turning it down to simmer, but not before the smell has been noticed by WP. Of course I lied and said it had been on low all along and its the pan that's cheap and thin.
Of course I know he will read this but what can I say, I have an honest streak.



Today WP made this tasty concoction in the blender, I think it had Ice, Lemon juice, orange juice and brandy all blended up into a slushy. It had a bit too much of a kick so we added sugar and crushed pineapple. Yum.
Trouble is its too cold inside now to eat them. (jk)


Oh and one last thing, WP today demonstrated that he knew how to use the vacuum cleaner, and that he could use it whilst wearing only boxer shorts.

Have a great weekend everyone ;)