coffee walnut tray bake

Originally uploaded by nodwah

April 29th!!!

Can’t believe it!!

Where does the time go eh?

Anyhoo… this is a very tasty traybake from the Asda magazine:

225g dates, chopped

125g butter

200g golden caster sugar

3 eggs, beaten

225g self raising flour

 1/2tsp vanilla extract

1 tsp bicarb

2 tblsp instant coffee

100g chopped walnuts + some whole ones for decoration

soak the dates in 225ml of boiling water and the bicarb for about 15 ( longer doesn’t matter), add the coffee and the vanilla extract.

Beat the butter and sugar together and then add the beaten egg then add the date/ coffee mixture. Gradually combine the flour into the mix. It makes quite a sloppy batter.

Pour into a prepared deep baking tray and bake at 180 C for 45 minutes to an hour.

When done and cooled, decorate with walnut halves, make some icing using more dissolved coffee and icing sugar and  drizzle over the cake. This is a very nice sticky cake – yum

glass beads I made

Originally uploaded by nodwah

OOh eck where have I been all this time? I just had to nip back with this..

Isn’t this just gorgeous? if I were I silicon based life form I could just pop it in my mouth like a pomegranate seed!

I was at a “bead party” and bought glass earrings, the bead maker didn’t have a pendant to match so she offered to show me how to make some beads myself.

It was tremendously exciting!

All you need is a propane/oxygen burner ( just a wee bit hot). There are metal sticks called mandrils which you hold in the flame, turning them slowly all the time and with your other hand, melt a stick of glass ( also turning constantly) and let it blob onto the mandril. Keep turning and turning ’til you get a good round shape – it’s the sign of expertise if the bead is perfect. Then you can layer another colour on top or use small sticks of another colour to make patterns – easy! Once you’re done the bead goes into a kiln that gradually cools over a few hours so there’s no cracking, I’m not sure how you get the bead off the mandril cause I wasn’t there for that bit!

The one in the picture is white glass with purple layered on top and I only did one of them as I was running out of time but I would love to do some more sometime. 

I also found myself shaking all time which was quite embarrassing ( I don’t know why I have developed a bit of a tremor from time to time, I guess I should find out about it) but despite that she said I did very well for a first timer, especially with doing two different things with each of my hands, which isn’t that easy.

I’m just poping back to moan about British Summer Time!

Why do we have to change the clocks?

I like the apparent extra hour of daylight in the evening and it does make me think it’s truly Spring.. (but it didn’t get above 8 degrees today!)… but I hate it!!

It mucks about with my body clock something terrible, I know it’ll be Wednesday before I feel quite right again … and it’s only an hour!

It mucks about with my kids too – they are creatures of time and don’t want to be messed with – ie they still get up when their bodies tell them to and have no love of lie- ins (lies-in I suppose)

If the farmers or whoever want to get up early them let em and leave us alone!

When you wake up in the morning and it seems strangely quiet

designer kitchen

hello hello

I’m back

I’ve been affected by total apathy concerning this blog lately, but now I’m back.. or maybe not… we’ll see

WordPress have made a few changes which are actually a big improvement. The dashboard is a lot simpler looking and easier, for a dunce like me, to use. Which is nice.

I had a go at setting up a blog for my school’s Parent group using wordpress and jolly nice it was too.. but the headteacher was totally against the idea. She wanted complete editorial control and thought that it would reflect badly on the school anyway so in fact she wouldn’t allow it The school’s IT teacher was brought in to help bludgeon the idea to death – the main opposition to it was the fact that it’s easy to set up – huh? I’m severly pissed off about the whole thing, this parent group is a pointless talking shop and I don’t want to talk about it any more.

Right sooo anyway look at how lovely my kitchen is what a feature that tongue and groove pine ceiling is eh?

It’s looking a lot less lovely with every day that passes as I’m chipping off the wall tiles and enjoying the destruction of the units. We’re trying to do it on the cheap you see after having had some breathtakingly high quotes from the kitchen companies. It’s only a wee kitchen, about 2.5 by 3.5 metre and we’ve had quotes of about £10 thousand for it… errr no thanks. So Ikea is the way to go.

Actually I like the Ikea kitchens better than anything else I’ve seen and they don’t push their own ideas on you. The so called “kitchen designers” who come round, generallly only have one way of looking at your kitchen and are desperate to push new appliances at you

“why don’t you want a new washing machine?”

“because there’s nothing wrong with this one”

” but you could have a NEW one“ 

“But I don’t NEED a new one”

“?“

Our minds do not meet shall we say?

So back to good ole Ikea it is then

This is a photo of my bathwater the other day folks.

Yes, after a fortnight of freezing weather my boiler packed in and not only that, it packed in on the day I went back to work. Luckily my DH was at home that day, so he could stay in for the repair man – most dischuffed he was too – a waste of his precious annual leave. I say it’s Karma for taking time off when the rest of us were back at work/school*. So anyway, there was I, my head stuck in the boiler cupboard, hitting the thing while he was lying in bed and then I was hanging on the phone because my call is important to them I was *ahem* signing to him that he should be out of bed and doing his manly duty by fixing things and the kids were nearly late for school and I went to work with greasy hair**.

So well, many times since we’ve had this house have I told the gas repair men that there’s a leak in the cupboard because I can smell foostiness – and what do they say? – “Aw naw Hen, there isnae.”

Told husband to tell the man that and what happened – he found a leak and fixed it!

What is it?

Male bonding or something?

Reminds me of the time I took the car to the garage and told them I was concerned about the brakes “Why do you think there’s something wrong with the brakes then” (sneering) – “erm, because the car doesn’t stop when I depress the pedal”

Or the time I took the car in because I though the pump that works the window skooshie was broken – on the phone to  the garage ” well you know it’s frosty today it could be frozen” -”It’s not frozen, it’s broken”  when I got to the garage a different person -” well you know it’s frosty today it could be frozen” -”It’s not frozen, it’s broken”, the taxi driver on the way home -” well you know it’s frosty today it could be frozen” -”It’s not frozen, it’s broken”

Know what – IT WAS BROKEN

* Thing is – he always used to take the first few days off in January to go skiing- many times we’ve been at the top of Aonach Mor on New Years Day- but there’s been no snow at this time of year for, well, years.

** you’d think by my time of life I wouldn’t still have greasiness capability

our new year firworks

Originally uploaded by nodwah

frost 031

Originally uploaded by nodwah

I do despair of us Brits, we’re just rubbish at winter.

Take today: Rain overnight which then froze, result – utter chaos!

My little Cul-de-sac didn’t (indeed never does) get any grit spread last night so this morning we found glassy sheet of ice covering the whole of the pavement and road. As we walked round to school, it started off quite fun, sliding down the slight slope but it quickly became a pain, trying not to fall and trying to get to school on time. Now we quite literally live two minutes walk from school, but it took about twenty for me and child B to inch our way round there (child A had skidded off ahead, apparently enjoying crashing to the ground), meaning we were late. Wee Katie next door came out to go to school too and slipped and slid on her back most of the way down the street!

At School it was no better, the path and playground were an ice rink and so child B who had by then had enough, refused to move any further and started to cry, so I had to drag him into school by the front entrance where they’re not usually allowed.

Note – it was no better at hometime, the playground hadn’t been gritted even then.

I tried to get to work and was late because of the horrendous traffic and lack of gritting on the roads.

This is a right old moan but every year it snows and gets icy and every year the country is in chaos. I feel the authorities ought to be a bit more prepared for this!!

My Dear Husband won a satin handbag filled with M&S smelly stuff at the cub scouts family evening raffle – though it was an insult to his masculinity to have to go up and collect it.

I won a hamper filled with M&S food at the school Christmas fair ( I refuse to call it “Fayre” ). We’ve scoffed the choccies ( when I say “we” I mean mostly ‘im), we had the carrot and coriander soup for lunch ( didn’t like it actually), the salmon has gone to the Mother In Law and the other things are hidden from marauders in the cupboard for Christmas. There is someone in this house who will scoff any food within seconds of it entering so I’m fighting a battle to maintain a full fridge and biscuit tin.

I also won a copy of James A- Sinclair’s book 101 bold and beatiful flowers, for my lovely poem about cats. I didn’t realise there was a real prize, if I had I might’ve put a bit more effort in (actually I wouldn’t). It’s a BAD BAD book, I already have too many plants in my wee garden and these lovely photos just make me want to go out and indulge my garden centre-ohloic side. Also JAS’s individual prose style is evident and makes it different from your usual po-faced, stuffed shirtiness in garden writing. (Now this book arrived weeks ago but I was just too shambolic to remember to write about it then.)

ps thanks “Megan”!