I wanted to blog about something, but with one thing and another over the last few days nothing has eventuated.
And now, the heat has left me kind of flat, I can't think. It's far too hot to think.

QI with Stephen Fry tonight, I'm looking forward to it, I hope Alan Davies is back again this week, he has been on every episode so far and he is a bit easy on the eye.

Something that caught my eye in a recent catalog from a kitchen store was a Christmas apron which bore the phrase, "I'm dreaming of a White Christmas...and when all the white is gone I will drink all the red."

Which has completely tickled my fancy, and prompted me to think. I've done a lot of thinking about a lot of things lately. I noticed being a bit mad about these things, that in our Australian magazines these past few Christmases we've been going a bit white mad, everything is very white. Although Chrstmas last year and this year seem to still be very white, but with the added in cranberries and pistachios. So white, red and green.
And every year we get cards with pictures of snow scenes and we sing carols about snow. And for some baffling reason despite our climate some of us still cling to the Hot Traditional Lunch, roast beast and baked vegetable. Followed by a hot pudding.

I look longingly at magazine spreads that picture tables spread with seafood (oysters! prawns!) and salads, the "non-traditional" lunch as they like to refer to them. However I am yet to see what I would define as my ultimate Christmas lunch, green Thai chicken curry with coconut rice washed down with lashings of ginger beer (or perhaps Nigella's Mistletoe? Ginger beer with lime cordial and lime juice???) and to follow? I'm torn between a really good choc mousse made with dark chocolate or a really good ice cream, possibly home made?

Of course for this scene to be fully set, I'd need Matt Hardy fanning me with one of those of really big fans or possibly giving me a foot massage I'm undecided as to the final details yet.

Things I Love

Yep as the title suggests today's post is just going to be about the things I love and maybe what I haven't been doing?

Things I Love! (a la David Letterman and his various Top 10's)
Coffee Chillas
Uninvited by Alanis Morissette
Corsets
Hoods
Hooded Corset? (See Damsel in this Dress)
I Can't Dance by Phil Collins
Thai green curry
Castle (No it doesn't bring anything new to the crime genre but it's funny.)
Purple lipstick
Lolcats (Always a good laugh to be had there.)
QI with Stephen Fry

Alright so it was 11, but how can you not include Stephen Fry? And now for what I have been doing or not, there has been no real cooking, baking or knitting. Mostly I've been psyching myself up for school it's reached that critical point. Blerh! Is all I can say about it.
However I did make a batch of Nigella's Cranberry and Apple Chutney, very very nice. I can not recommend it highly enough.

After next week I hope to return to normal programming!

Grand Designs Revisited

Was intrigued by tonight's episode of Grand Designs on ABC, I guess it made me think due to all the press coverage at the moment about the lack of public housing or just affordable housing generally.

Tonight's episode was about the Hedgehog Co-op, basically a bunch of people looking for secure rentals. And through an agreement with a housing association land was purchased and they built their own very basic houses to live in. They don't own the houses but rent them from the housing association. But at the end of the day they get a secure reasonable rental and somewhat of a slightly improved lifestyle.

But this wasn't an isolated projects there had been other similar projects to create housing for people in this vein. Which is what intrigues me, not everybody would have the capability or the inclination to to build a house to live in, especially at the end of the day if all you get is the right to rent it and not own it outright.

Maybe instead of people jumping up and down and pointing at the government saying you should build more houses their are people without homes who want one. We are to an extent a very lucky country, there is government benefits, their are welfare organizations, in a time of trouble there should be no reason why anybody who wants help can't get it.
It's perhaps time to look outside the box and consider projects like this, there are people who would be willing and able to surely construct a basic home like the ones on tonight's episode of GD, in a way it would still be government funded but the labour could come from those going to live in them.

Reading back there is a word I want to describe what this all sounds like to me, but I can't think of it, I think what I want is certian political schools of thought? Europe keeps popping into my head but I think that has more to do with a vague thought I have on a story I saw of factories in some European countries being turned over to worker ownership and something to do with productivity ratios.

It will no doubt come to me.

Delivered as promised!

Here are the Best Ever Cafe Scones...
This was the Gingerbread Apricot Pudding from Slow Cooker by Sally Wise, which she stipulated be done only in a 4.5L slow cooker. Well I had the choice of a 3.5L or a 5.5L, so I went with the 3.5L after the specified cooking time the batter was still uncooked in the very center of the pudding. I wil try it again as the bits that were cooked where delicious but I will either add cooking time to it in the 3.5L or test it in the 5.5L.

This was the Fruity Bread and Butter Custard which was a raging success! It was absolutely delicious but my mother refused to eat it because it was a "baked custard" but it wasn't, to eat it it was like a really luscious soft spongy fruit pudding. Divine!


Here's some dished up....It may look quite brown on top because right near the end of cooking time you sprinkle a mix of brown sugar and cinnamon on top of it.

I made a list of everything we have tried from Sally Wise's Slow Cooker book and the thoughts on the various things we've made.

Tilly's Indian Sweet Curry Beef - It was sweet, and no one liked it at all.

Goulash with Herb Dumplings - So far this has been the most popular dish we've tried, not surprising it's absolutely delish with a bit of a bite!

Hedgehogs - Lovely, even if most of the rice worked it's way out into the sauce and some of the balls fell apart. Still good to eat.

Meatballs with Spicy Barbecue Sauce - YUM! YUM!

Satay Chicken - Lovely, I do like a good satay sauce and this was wonderful.

Citrus Chicken - Everybody including my mother ate this but Miss Stash said after she hadn't liked it. It was lemon and orange, we are talking of trying it again bit with a lemon-lime combo instead.

Bedevilled Chicken - Once again something everyone ate but Miss Stash apparently dosen't like this either.

Black Forest Self-Saucing Pudding - The first pudding we attempted in the slow cooker, I think of Dylan Moran talking about a cake from a French bakery and how you want to get a room and be alone with your cake because it's that good. That was this pudding! I bought pitted cherries but one of them turned out to have a stone in it, next time I might give them all a prod with a fork just to check them.

Savoury Beef - I didn't like this, it didn't actually taste of anything. I'd certainly add more of something to it. But everyone else seemed to like it.

And of course the above photoed Apricot Gingerbread Pudding and Fruity Bread and Butter Custard!
We also have the Year in a Bottle by Sally Wise, not yet made anything from it, but I am very excited to try a number of things. My preserving these days seems to be limited to a large batch of apricot jam once a year.
When I was much younger and my grandparents were also much younger they had a huge garden and I can reall my fave times being when we went to visit on holidays when everything was ready to be picked and helping to make jams and bottle the fruit.
Although there was also freezing of vegetables, but the best job you could get here was if you were put in charge of sucking the air out of the bags with the vacumn pump, it did seem a bit like magic.

Somewhere over a rainbow..

...there are pictures! I promise, I need to go and get the camera and download them.

I have photos of the Fruity Bread and Butter Custard I made in the slow cooker last night, and photos of the Apricot Gingerbread Pudding I made in it today.

There is also some of the Best-Ever Cafe Scones I baked this afternoon and some less than successful biscuits I tried for the first time, didn't realise quite how much they would spread on baking! Oh well live and learn.

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Slow Cooker to Somewhere

I have a picture of the Meatballs in Barbecue Sauce I took of the leftovers on toast, and will try to post it later.

Slow Cooker by Sally Wise has been pawed through numerous times, drooled over, discussed and pawed through some more.

So far we've made Satay Chicken, delish! Meatballs in Barbecue Sauce (will post the picture later), also yummy. And the last thing made out of the book was Hedgehogs last night, we're eating the leftovers for tea so I will get a photo of those as well. Most of the rice seemed to make it's way into the sauce, but it was still yummy.
And I must say so far everything has been very mild, which means it officially passes the test of being safe to serve to my mother and grandparents, who can only eat very plain things.

On the complete flip side we had Curry in a Hurry for lunch today, we changed the green veg up a bit this time and added spinach and broad beans in with the peas and green beans. The spinach is ayes for next time, the only one who liked the broad beans was my Dad. Which means there out.

Hopefully photos....

Miss Stash and I while out shopping the other week spied the book Slow Cooker by Sally Wise (the woman who wrote A Year In A Bottle and also appears on local radio doing a cooking segment), we'd seen it in the paper so pounced upon it in the shop with glee.

We made the Satay Chicken of which alas I have no photos, should have taken some before it all got eaten. But today were trying the Meatballs in Barbecue Sauce, they smell fantastic so I can't wait for them to be done to try them.
Although so far the sauce is rather limited, I don't know how it'll go in the cooker, as there seemed to be enough to just coat the meatballs.

I will try to get photos of the meatballs when there ready tonight!