Entries from January 2007 ↓

I meant to post this about a month ago so hopefully they have all found homes now. These have to be the most character filled kittens I have ever seen. If you are interested in seeing if they still need homes please email me and I’ll pass on the details of the people trying to rehome them. Love the little grey tabby’s eyes, they are like Hamish Blake’s or Shirley Manson’s (from Garbage).

I made Chocolate Chip Biscuits/Cookies just before Christmas and felt super domestic goddessy when last week I grabbed some left overs frozen in a roll and had a tray of cookies ready in under 15 minutes. Unfortunately, I’m still addicted to them so I had to make them again. Cake Tuesday ended up being Cake Monday this week because I couldn’t wait. I used the simplest recipe I found on the internet (here), I was surprised how many bizarre chocolate chip biscuit/cookie recipes there are in the world (including one with peanut butter, wouldn’t that be a peanut butter chocolate chip cookie then? I’m just a purist). Anyway, enough rambling, here it is:

• 2-1/4 cups plain flour
• 1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
• 250 gm butter or margarine
• 1/2 cup sugar (I used brown caster sugar because that’s what I had)
• 3/4 cup brown sugar, firmly packed
• 1-2 teaspoons vanilla essence
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup chocolate bits

Preheat oven (190C). Mix the plain flour and bicarb in a bowl. In a separate bowl, cream butter, sugars and vanilla until fully mixed. Beat in the eggs one at a time and then gradually add the flour. Fold in chocolate bits. Drop blobs of cookie dough on greased trays and bake for 10-12 minutes. I tend to prefer them soft on the inside so I pull them out when they are golden rather than golden brown.

If you make too much, the dough freezes really well, it’s easiest if you freeze them in rolls wrapped in baking paper, you can then slice off pieces and bake until golden/golden brown.

Oh I almost forgot, here’s a picture of them with vanilla ice cream, a very tasty combination.

On Saturday, I had a very lovely morning. I went to the growers’ markets with a friend and had the tastiest mango and peach fresh fruit juice. We also got some yummy dense pumpernickel bread, gooseberry jam and goats curd and had a very nice breakfast indeed. After that, we went to visit a nearby community garden close to the harbour and it’s wonderful being in the middle of summer because everything is producing harvest everywhere. We picked tomatoes, zucchinis (with their flowers still attached), beans and lots of herbs. Later that evening, I had a very tasty dinner with the fruits of my not so intensive labour.

Oh, I also got finger limes from the markets, strange little things:

You can see the pulp comes out like caviar. It’s supposed to be interchangeable with lime but it does taste different. Almost beany. Wasn’t a big fan until I made a salad with it:


Chopped up tomatoes, beans, garlic, good olive oil and half the pulp of a finger lime. There was something in the beans and garlic that just went heavenly well with the finger limes, I’m embarrassed to say that I licked my plate totally clean after (it mixed in very nicely with the juices from the saltimbocca which I just had to make again).
Also in a fit of decadence, I stuffed the zucchini flowers with the goat’s curd and fried them up. Mmmmmmm…


Btw, listening to the Pax de deux from the Nutcracker as I’m writing this, this version is on Swooning, part of the ABC’s Swoon series. It’s just so damn passionate and romantic. Loves it! I just love that the whole Swoon series (esp vols 1-3).

I found this ad through my gmail: Yoga Booty Ballet.

Yoga Booty Ballet is a dynamic fusion of yoga, booty sculpting, and dance that will make you feel strong, confident, and beautiful! The workouts are so fun, you won’t believe you’re also losing weight and sculpting long, lean muscles.

Poor yoga, it’s the exercise equivalent of the even poorer poodle, bred with anything and everything because nothing sells like a prefix/suffix. So like the labradoodles and schnoodles, we have Yo-chi (yoga/tai chi) and Yolates (yoga/pilates). At least they didn’t call it Yollet.

Unfortunately, I’m not on holidays anymore, but if I were then I might be doing fun things like making charming papercraft structures like this Superaurus, this Wild Boar and this sweet thing called “Lucky cat (Beckoning for money)”. Or even this E-type Jag, once my favourite car in the world, or Japan’s Himeji castle. There is even a paper model of my cat, Simby (he’s a Abyssinian). All this is courtesy of Canon and their 3D PaperCraft site, I found the address in a PDF printer brochure trying to clean up my Desktop/Documents/computer/life. I imagine there will plenty more strange links in the next month as I spring clean my digital files and the scary scary pit that is my Firefox bookmarks. I might even get round to tagging the last twenty or so entries.