Cocoa is very comforting at midnight when you are glazed over with strategy jumbling in your head, two throws keeping your knees warm and just 4 days till deadline. I wish I didn't get hyperactive about everything EXCEPT homework on the week's when my assignments are due: it's so tacky!
At least tomorrow I have a nice catch up day at work - our server has a scheduled all day outage which means I can actually all the stuff I'm usually too busy munging to get to! Thrillment! Hopefully that will be therapy for the brain and the soul and tomorrow evening will be even more productive for writing up!
Thursday 8 January 2009
Sunday 4 January 2009
Craft Pride
Hmm... It seems my sewing and machine embroidery based pressies this year looked just slightly too professional so that some folk didn't realise they were handmade for them. So, the question, to label or not to label handmade gifts?!
It seems like an ego trip to label but then it seems a shame to spend hours or days or weeks hand-making unique things and not have that careful thought and time element of the present known about.
What do you think?
It seems like an ego trip to label but then it seems a shame to spend hours or days or weeks hand-making unique things and not have that careful thought and time element of the present known about.
What do you think?
Chocolate Marquisse Cake!
The last piece of this yummy chocolate cake is awaiting me after dinner. All I need to do is stop procrastinating over my e-Learning Strategy & Policy assignment and I can have one of the last two bits of this dense gooey yumminess (from the Green & Black's cookbook btw)...
Now... to attempt to do some exciting stratergising!
Now... to attempt to do some exciting stratergising!
Friday 2 January 2009
Mmmm... Moroccan Food
This is the most scrummy of dishs: chicken with honey and baby onions from Claudia Roden's excellent book Arabesque. We brought mum a copy for Christmas and got so excited looking for ingrediants to add to her present that we decided to do a Moroccan feast for Heather's birthday. Alongside the chicken dish we did some little lamb pastries with yoguht sauce (utterly delicous), a warm sweet potato salad (awesomely unexpectedly good) and a tomato and aubergine dish (nice but I executed it poorly so it ended up too garlicy). Really yummy stuff indeed especially when also served with the Chocolate Marquisse from the Green & Black's Cookbook (alarmingly good but featuring 10 eggs!!) and a big bottle of vintage champagne. To follow our leftovers we also have some leftover pastries (again from Arabesque) that we made just before we left Cardiff - little fragrant almond cigar type things baked in filo and dripping with yumminess. They went very well with the Oranges in Orange Syrup. Num. Despite Heather getting 3 recipe books for her birthday I think we'll be off to get our own copy of Arabesque very soon indeed.
Sari Silk Scarf
I've been doing lots of crafty stuff for christmas pressies this year but this latest creation was actually for me. It's a scarf made of Jeager fushia fake fur (lovely stuff but awefully tangly) and a handspun silk sari yarn made from little scraps and waste pieces of indian fabrics. I picked the sari yarn up in a yarn store in Potlatch in Washington when we were day tripping from Seattle last spring. It took me ages to find the best use for it but it is quite heavy and dense to work with so I have a beautiful but very compact scarf now. Two balls of yarn in a very lazy knit (no, not even a stockinette) and maybe 2 ft of scarf. But both feet of it are very very pretty!
Thursday 1 January 2009
Merry Christmas!
Nummy Christmas pudding seems like a good shot to sum up a glutonous and fun festive season at home. Although come to think of it I actually didn't eat more than two bowls of puddin' which is a shame as there was lots left but there were too many other temptations. I did learn how to make my own brandy butter. Actually Ameretto Butter: 3oz unsalted softened (to room temperature) butter, 3oz sugar and at least 3 and probably rather more Ameretto. Whipped up (a lot) it makes a yummy melty alternative to those naff Tesco Brandy Creams...
Anyway the christmasy week of my fortnight off was spent at home in Cardiff with mum and Heather and (for a few days) Anna mostly sleeping, drinking lemsips and eating turkey. If we hadn't all had colds it would have been super relaxing I think. Sniffles makes everything that bit more claustrophobic and tiring though so it's good that the colds are finally receding at last. Which means a rush to do my next MSc assignment, my CIGS Web2.0 presentation (book now to see me!) and then use my big chrimbo pressie: a new shiny podcasting mic to make suchprettyeyes on film so much sexier :)
Anyway the christmasy week of my fortnight off was spent at home in Cardiff with mum and Heather and (for a few days) Anna mostly sleeping, drinking lemsips and eating turkey. If we hadn't all had colds it would have been super relaxing I think. Sniffles makes everything that bit more claustrophobic and tiring though so it's good that the colds are finally receding at last. Which means a rush to do my next MSc assignment, my CIGS Web2.0 presentation (book now to see me!) and then use my big chrimbo pressie: a new shiny podcasting mic to make suchprettyeyes on film so much sexier :)
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