Tuesday 29 September 2009

Pizza-a-go-go

Well it's been nearly a week since my last blog and I've lost track of where I am in the week really? Lots of things have been going on in all departments including the cooking and job ones (also a large amount of stressing over making my blog pretty!). Where to start? Well I guess I should start at the begining but thats far to normal. I'll start with the most exciting instead. After searching for aaaages, Callum (Brian's son) let us know yesterday that his best mates mum (who happens to be a dentist) has a Dental Nurse job going. It's only part time but it's better than nothing at the moment. I dropped my CV in today and got a call about an hour later offering me an interview tomorrow! It's great news but I've started panicing about it already, at least I haven't got ages to worry!

On to other news. In the cooking side of the blog this week me and Cal attempted our own pizza's at the weekend. We cheated a little bit by buying bread mix flour so it had the yeast in it already and we just had to add water but we still had to let it rise and mold it etc. Cal had the great idea of stuffed crust (my fav) so we put cheese round the edge and folded the dough over. I topped mine with tuna, red onion, mushrooms, basil and cheese and Cal went for Chicken tikka, pepper, onion, mushroom, cheese, basil and anything else edible in the kitchen :)
Here they are before cooking with mine on the left and Cal's on the right,
and here they are after cooking. They were yuuuuuummy!
Cal's was voted the best. I'm still waiting for a re-count (his was pretty good though). The afternoon before the pizza making me and Brian went out for a walk in the peaks and I managed to get a few pictures of my photo shy fiance. This is one of my fav's.I'm not so shy about having my picture taken. This is me showing off my amazing new raincoat (essential up north) with cool flowers all over :)
I still love going out in the peaks. There are so many amazing views. I'll leave you with one of them for now as I need to start making tea in time for Brian coming home from college. Bye xx

Thursday 24 September 2009

Back from the South

Well I just got home an hour ago after spending a few days downs south with the family as my Grandparents have flown over from New Zealand for my Great Granny's funeral. I haven't seen them for 6-7 years. We had a great day at the Spinnaker tower in Gunwharf on Monday after a really yummy meal at the Customs house pub. The picture below is of my sister displaying my parents and grandparents at the top of the tower. I'd forgotten how good it is up there and how amazing the views are. I think it's even cooler because I lived down there for a while so I recognise so much stuff.
My Grandparents left my parents house Wednesday morning but I stayed down to see Nikki that evening and we had a proper girly night watching a chic flick and eating a whole tub of Ben and Jerrys Cookie Dough ice cream, yummmmmmy!

Today Celene had a gap between lessons at college from 11.00am to 3pm so I went and picked her up and we decided to decorate my car with some decals I've had for ages. They look so cool!!! I'm really enjoying this blogging and keep taking photos for it so I stopped at the M6 services tonight and took pic's of my funky car.This is my favourite bit with the daises and bee. Think I'm going to get some more flowers.
After grooving up my car we had lunch. I had a random urge for french toast despite never having made or eaten it before. I also decided I knew how to make it even though I'd never read the recipe. 'How hard can it be?' I though (you know this is going to go horribly wrong don't you). So I cut myself a large chunk of hedgehog bread-my favourite (no hedgehogs were harmed in the making of it) and then whisk an egg in a bowl and then soak the bread in it. I did wonder if I should butter the bread but I thought the egg wouldn't stick. I also made sure all the egg was soaked up (this may be where I went wrong). I then fried it but very soon after placing it in the pan, I started to have suspicions that it was all going horribly wrong. What I ended up with can only really be described (in Celene's words) as an 'omlette bread' and, of course, here is a picture.
I then took a look at what Celene was making - a tuna and cheese toasted sarnie and decided to go for that instead.but mine obviously had to be a bit different so I tried a blob of sweet chilli sauce-
and it tasted amazing! I think it looks pretty good too :)
and here is jessie waiting for her share as usual. She really would win the most persistant dog award!Well I'm not sure anyone is really going to be interested in 'what I had for lunch' but never mind. I'm enjoying wrtting this blog a lot more than I ever have a diary so I'll just keep going for the moment. My journey home was pretty long (5 and a half hours) but uneventful. There was a lovely sunset for ages though which I got to watch. Nature is so cool and pictures never do it justice but I did try so I leave you with my attempt.Better get off to bed, night night x

Saturday 19 September 2009

My first ever blog!

Well here it is, my first blog! My master plan was to start this as I moved up to Manchester but after much procrastinating of 'how should it look?' and 'what should I write about?' here I am a month and a half after moving with no blogs! Today I have decided to bite the bullet and just start waffling really. My plan is really to have this blog so people back down south can see what I'm up to and also any family any where else in the world. Knowing me i'm probably going to be a sparadic blogger at best with some weirdly questionable content but you never know, I might amuse a person now and again.

I don't know how this blog will come out when I post it but I think there should always be a picture so I'm going to include a picture of my amazingly yummy (if I do say so myself) Hobgoblin and red onion toad in the hole-the beginnings of my cooking blog :)

I've started this blog as I start all my new projects, with multiple random ideas about where it will go. The current mix of ideas is somewhere between a diary/cooking blog/ranting post/craft page/fairy land so who knows where it will end up! I'm not going to do the 'who I am bit'. Partly because i can't be bothered and partly because the only people who will probably be reading this will know me any way. So, what should todays subject be? Hmmm...? There are quite a few things going on but I'll be here forever if I write about all of them so I guess I should pick one? I think I will pick telling you about mine (and Brian's) new hobby idea. As you may know my hobbies tend to change on a fairly regular basis. This isn't, as some people tend to think, because I get bored easily. It's normally because I think of something I want to do e.g. holistic therapies, I then do it and then move on to the next thing. (Ok, maybe I get bored easily too).

Anyway (I really can ramble can't I?) as you may or may not know, me an Brian tend to go to a lot of camps where they often have markets where people can sell their home made bits and bobs. Brian had the brilliant idea a little while ago of growing lots of herbs and plants to sell as seedlings as he's so green fingered. I've been thinking for a while about what I want to do. It was someone at a camp who gave me the idea. She said how she was looking forward to Autumn so she could start making preserves. After moving in with Brian I've been feeling quite domesticated what with all the cooking and cleaning (hence possible cooking blog) and I really fancy some good old fashioned homely crafts like making jams and chutneys. We also fancy making some mead and wine. All this also links in with our long distance future plans of running foraging courses at our B&B. I'm also considering soap making and anything else that feels quite W.I.-ish.

As with any plan we're making at all at the moment, it's going to have to wait until we have a bigger place. That really has turned into a very annoying motto at the moment-'when we get a house'. Everything is hinging on me getting a job at the moment (no pressure!) but as I keep saying, 'we'll appriciate it more when we get it'. I do think this blog will also follow my failing attempts at getting a job too.

Think thats it for now. I'm off to enjoy a nice cozy, lazy, rainy day in the house with everyone, chilli and wedges for tea, yum yum :) Bye for now!