Stats

5 foot 7, 13.5 stone, gingery-blonde hair, green eyes..........


No, not my stats! My blogs stats. Yesterday I had 1250 page views, an absolute record! It just shows where peoples interests mainly lie, when it is a baking/cooking/crafting day I seem to get more page views and comments than at any other times. The least come when I am having a rant about something - well I can't blame you for that, hahaha.

It got me thinking about you, my readers.  I am thrilled that so many of you enjoy what I write and I wonder what you are all like, what drives you to blog or read blogs. I have begun to form a mental picture of many of you, the ones that comment regularly anyway and sometimes when I write, I know that something might appeal to a particular reader, even just a particular sentence. I can't claim to know you, but I feel like I know an aspect of you based on your reactions to things I say - and of course reading your blogs, which I keep up with regularly (even if I don't always comment, blogger is SO difficult with me leaving comments, sometimes it takes me ages and in the end I give up).

The interesting thing I notice is that by far the largest percentage of you are women, both my followers, those that leave comments and those that blog themselves. We men are definitely in a minority in blogland (certainly on the subject matter that interests me at least). Maybe if I was following blogs on car maintenance or Samantha Fox (there's a blast from the past) there might be more fellow men bloggers. Is it perhaps because women are naturally better with money, or at least more inclined to show an interest in the household finances? More interested in sharing cooking and recipes (this is very likely) or just more interested in blogging. Women, I am told, are much more inclined to share feelings and all our blog territories dip into feeling sharing now and again.

Oh well, this humble man is thrilled by all of you who read, share and take time to enjoy this blog: men and women, students, nurses, bio chemists, dry cleaners, school teachers, retired, grumpy, happy, ex-lorry drivers, Brits, Aussies, Texans, Irish and everyone else. Leave me a comment, it thrills me every time.

Christmas Baking and crafting

Today has been a lovely day. You will all be pleased to know that I very slowly got my car back into my driveway. I did wonder about the folly of this halfway up the hill as the wheels began to spin and then along the ridge where there were cars parked on both sides and my car was sliding a bit. But I went about 1 mile an hour and once it was in the driveway I was content to be snowed in for the weekend. Snow is still here, even though a mile down the road there is nothing.
So what did I do while I was snowed in? baked of course.

The star of the show had to be the simplest. My mincemeat ice cream!
To say that this is absolutely gorgeous is an understatement and I kid you not, it took 10 minutes to make (plus three hours in the freezer of course.)
Separate 4 eggs and whisk the whites, add 100g caster sugar. Whip 300ml of double cream and then fold together the cream, eggwhite and egg yolks. Add your flavour, which in this case was just 100ml of my home made mincemeat. It is a no-churn recipe so that really is it. In the freezer and it is beautiful. It will become a staple in my freezer now, I know and way cheaper to make than even a mid priced ice cream. I reckon less than £2 for a large tub in the end. I will experiment with all sorts of flavours.

Next was my mince pie marathon. I think I have got the knack of pastry a bit more thanks to all your helpful hints. It was good, rolled out fine, no tearing and tastes good with a good texture.

I made 35 mince pies, some with proper lids and some with stars. I actually prefer the stars because they are prettier and actually taste better.

3 batches later and they are all done.

I've popped the majority in the freezer for Christmas, tasted 2 (very very nice, great home made mincemeat) and kept 4 out.

My final bit of baking, as the oven was on, was 12 bread rolls.

A feast fit for a king, even if I do say so myself. Eat your heart out Enid Blyton.

I wanted to dry some orange slices to hang as Christmas decorations, but no way was I going to put the oven on for 3 hours to do it! So I spread them out on grease proof paper and tin foil on top of one of the radiators. Days later, they are nearly dry.

Now that they are nearly dry I have just popped them direct onto the radiator to finish them off. These will get some ribbon or rafia threaded through them and will be hung on the tree, or on a present or somewhere.

Happy days.

Snow, snow snow

Thank you all for your kind words yesterday after my little mishap. I spent the morning shoveling snow out of my driveway and spreading some sand. I am hoping to be able to get my car back into my drive later, if I feel confident, and then I can leave it there until the thaw.

I woke up to a very pretty scene this morning though.

What animal do you think left these very odd, long marks, they go all the way along under the window and across the deck. 

As the sun rose over the hill

Early morning visitor, looking guilty.

I do love how breathtakingly beautiful the snow is, but it is a pain in the arse at the same time!

Snowed in and a nasty experience.

I guess I am snowed in. It has not even been especially heavy, but when I drove back today I just made it up the hill and then as I approached my house, my car went into a slide. It was SO frightening. I lost complete control and my car slid down down down the hill and into the neighbours wall. Don't worry, nothing broken on either me or the car. By some complete miracle my car had no damage at all, simply because of the angle it came in at but I couldn't move it and it could have been so much worse. It wouldn't reverse back up the hill and in the end I had to go forward and let the car slowly slide to the left and back onto the road. It then went into freefall down the hill and, again, by some miracle there were no other cars parked on the road. At the bottom of the hill I managed to turn it around and slowly get it back to the top of the hill, roaring in first gear. I have dumped it now and daren't use it again until the snow is cleared. Sadly gritters never make it onto my road, so I will be busy with a shovel tomorrow morning. Luckily I don't really have to go anywhere - it's a good job!
The important part is that no-one was hurt and my car is fine. But I was a bit shaken up by the experience and had to have a glass of limoncello to calm my nerves, haha. The thing is that I probably need new tires. I was told on the last service that the tires would soon need replacing. It is somewhere that I need to find the money, because safety is worth way more than cash.

Bingo

What is it about Bingo adverts? Every time I turn on the TV at the moment there is yet another different online bingo advert on promising you huge winnings if you just invest your hard earned cash in their website. This is where the money must lie because there are so many of them and they are all spending  thousands on advertising. They make it look fun, exciting and social, where the reality is a bit sad and lonely with a sense of clutching at straws.


I think I'm going to start my own online bingo guide, it would go something like this:

88, two fat ladies. You can get nicely fat with good honest home cooked food, no nasty 'extra' unexpected or hidden ingredients. Eat like a king without it costing a kings ransom.

Legs 11 - save petrol and get a bit of free exercise using your legs. Go for a nice walk, it's free and a lot better than playing online bingo!

Heinz varieties, 57 - Not every meal has to be a gourmet feast, beans on toast will do just fine.

61 Bakers bun - Bread is going up and up in price. Invest in a bread machine and start making your own, it doesn't have to cost the earth if you get it on ebay and you will soon be reaping the rewards. A loaf of bread in my machine costs pence and is delicious. If you have more time on your hands, make bread from scratch with your hands. I have not bought a loaf of bread for years.

Bingo - Here's my way of gaining those winnings, stop shopping for needless rubbish, stop using money (or the promise of gaining more money) to entertain yourself. Find a low cost hobby or even better a free one. one that is more worthwhile than online gambling and then use that money you saved to free yourself from debt.

You think that would go down well as an advert in the Coronation Street advert break? What would your advert have?

Christmas present success.

Well I was successful in getting ALL of my Christmas shopping/presents done by the beginning of December, I got my last presents today so a day late, but who's counting and that included my mums birthday present for the 31st December - believe me, trying to get her a present between Christmas and New Year is even more of a nightmare than high street shopping on the 24th December!

So I will do some wrapping tonight. There are still a few home made food gifts to make, but I am not so worried about those as the ingredients can be gradually picked up along with my usual shops. I noticed when I popped into ASDA on Friday that the supermarkets are already beginning to be heaving and we have 23 days to go yet!

It is such a lovely feeling to get things sorted so early and I am definitely converted to early organising from now on. The gifts I need to send by post can be sorted in plenty of time with no mad rushing now and I can spend December feeling smug and doing enjoyable things like decorating the house and cooking nice things.

No debt was gained in my Christmas shopping but I still think I managed to get the right present for the right person, throughout, it is so enjoyable giving something when you know that the recipient is really going to enjoy it, even if it is just a bottle of home made Christmas pudding vodka and chutney which I will make this week.

Besides this, cake is made, mincemeat is made and cherry brandy is made. I still have a couple of bottles of elderflower champagne which I made back in June so I will just get some Christmas food shopping on about he 19th and that is me done.

Good stuff all around.

Christmas Pudding Vodka and mincemeat.

Hello Folks,

It's been an extraordinarily busy week, hence my lack of posts. I won't bore you with all the mundane stuff, but it has been a full but very good week.

So as a result I was a few days late bottling my Christmas pudding vodka. Oh well, a few extra days steeping can't hurt.

So the unpromising brown liquid, still has a rather unpromising look, but in actual fact it is absolutely delicious! Very Christmassy and very tasty indeed.

I have 2 bottles for presents and a small half bottle for ME.

I will decorate the bottles somehow before Christmas, to make it look as good as it tastes.

As promised, with the steeped fruit residue, I made Chirstmas Mincemeat, to use as filling for all my mince pies and anything else I can think of.

I made this in the slow cooker, because I didn't really fancy having the oven on for 3 hours just for that. It works perfectly in the slow cooker and really doesn't cost much to run.

All the steeped fruit went in, with some soft brown sugar, suet, orange and lemon juice (I had this frozen already from when I used the zest for the vodka), some almonds, spices and a chopped up bramley apple. I then had this on high in the slow cooker for an hour, then on low for 2 hours, stirring every half hour or so. When it was finished I left it to go cold in the slow cooker and then added a couple of tablespoons of rum. This went into 4 sterilised jars, 2 large and 2 regular.

It smells wonderful (OK, it tastes wonderful, couldn't resist a little taste). I now HAVE to perfect my pastry to make the most of this mincemeat in my mince pies. I have had some good tips from all of you, in your comments for the last few posts, so I will be making use of those, thank you all.