Why does the camera battery always run out when I manage to bake something elaborate AND visually attractive? Now the world will never see my blueberry & mascarpone merengue roulade. It was awesome, and gone in about 7 minutes.
Ok, if you really really want to know what it looked like, it was exactly like this but with blueberries. Yes, just like that one. Except that mine probably tasted nicer, because that one has dessicated coconut, the ingredient of evil.
We're going to Finland this Sunday, so there might be some kind of change in the posting frequency - not that I'm expecting all my 3 followers to hold their breath between my posts.
Hopefully it will be sunny and I won't have to resort to my emergency plan of watching the 2nd season of Chuck which I'm bringing with me, just in case.
Also hopefully I won't wake up with mastitis tomorrow, but that seems very unlikely at this stage. However, if I do wake up in the middle of the night, shivering under two blankets despite the heat and with a depression the size of Ronaldo's ego, there's very little I can do about it. I just hope that it passes by Sunday, before I have to make the Camino de Ryanair pilgrimage walk to the furthermost terminal at Dublin airport with two kids and all that goes with it.
*No, I didn't get a haircut before my holidays. (God knows I wanted to. I have grey hairs and I had a near-death experience when I discovered them.) The title is a reference to the blogging term, of which this particular post is a prime example of. My sincere apologies.
Along with cupcakes, scones have always been one of the great weaknesses in my baking repertoire. I will never forget the drunken scone appraisal speech I got from a Swedish former colleague of mine. According to her, the ingredients are so basic you will always find them in your store cupboard, and making them is so simple you can whip up a batch of them in no time, even when you crawl home in a horrific state of drunkenness after a night of mayhem.
The first time I even tried to make scones, I had her speech resonating in my head. I was not drunk (perhaps slightly hanging though) and did not have all the ingredients in the cupboard but had to go to the shop for butter, cream and self-raising flour.
In fact, the entire concept of self-raising flour was completely new to me as they don't sell it in Finland, and it still puzzles me. Any recipe I've ever seen that has self-raising flour, still contains baking powder. Why not just add some extra baking powder and use plain flour?
Anyhow, the first batch of scones didn't rise properly. Boo hoo. Since I'm not a big fan of scones anyway, I wasn't in a hurry to repeat this embarrassing experience. However, encouraged by my recent success in making cupcakes, I decided I'd give it another go. I had also discovered the savoury scones they do in Avoca, and thought they'd be handy for picnics and quick lunches.
I took the two recipes, for both the savoury semi-sundried tomato and cheese scones as well as the plain scones (traditionally served with jam and clotted cream) from the Avoca cook books.
I used my self-raising flour where indicated, followed the instructions carefully, and whaddaya know! They came out just fine. Funnily enough, the savoury scones (which use 450g plain flour and 1.5 tsp of baking powder) seemed to raise better than the plain ones (with 450g self-raising flour and 1 tsp of baking powder). No need to race to the shop the next time I'm out of self-raising, so!
The Swedish girl was right: making them really is easy, in the sense that you don't need to knead or whisk the dough for ages. All you do is mix all the ingredients together in a bowl. However, the consistency of the dough seems to be crucial. If the dough is too wet, the scones won't rise; if it's too dry, the dough won't hold together and instead of a scones you'll have very tasty crumbles.
I found that the Avoca recipe tells you to put in way too much milk. It says 200 ml in the recipe, but I only ended up using less than 100 ml. They do state that the dough should be "not too moist" or "relatively dry", but how are you supposed to know what that means, if you've never seen anyone make scones before? Or even better, if you've never eaten a ready one?
I the more I cook and bake, the more I have come to realise that this is just something you have to accept if you're cooking something entirely new to yourself. The first attempt might fail, and you might have to scoop it all in the bin and start over. I have also come to appreciate the kind of recipe writers that try and pre-empt those easy-to-make mistakes; Nigella, Rachel Allen and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall are my favourite examples of considerate food writers. They hold nothing back and share their knowledge generously.
Unfortunately, the Avoca books are one of the worst examples of assuming that people already know the methods. They give only very general instructions even for challenging recipes, where a more detailed explainations would be more appropriate. Maybe they are not meant for beginners, but with the rate they have been selling, I'd say there are a few novices cooking out of them too.
The really unfortunate thing about this is, that some beginners might be disheartened by their initial failures and never try again. This could be easily avoided with a little bit more thought, and there could be a lot more accomplished, happy foodies in this world.
As I hinted in my Twitter/Facebook updates, I recently pimped up our balcony with some new furniture and potted plants. I'll be adding pictures to the post soon!
The balcony makeover was actually my father's day surprise to Ronan. He is more of a sitting-out-in-the-garden -kind of person than me; I have just been thankful that I don't have any grass to cut or flower beds to weed. To be perfectly honest, I'm struggling even with keeping the indoor spaces! I have nothing against gardening in theory, but I just don't think I'm there yet with my life.
So, as a kind of compromise, I thought I'd turn our south-facing balcony into something of a gardenesque extension of the living room with some new garden furniture and plants.
After discovering two lovely, good quality wooden fold-up chairs in TK Maxx, I spent hours online trying to source a good value garden bench. I even looked into making one ourselves with these great instructions from Lowes Creative Ideas. Unfortunately, it turns out that none of our local DIY stores sell hardwood or polyurethane foam, so that plan had to be abandoned.
Just as I was ready to resign to the fact that there just isn't such thing as good value garden furniture (unless you're willing to wait till the end-of-season sales), I wandered into B&Q on a particularly rainy day, and spotted a lovely wooden garden bench for €42.
I also picked up some cushions that were not particularly inexpensive, but lovely all the same. I just was not willing to look for another bargain, only to find one after the summer was already over. (I'm pretty sure this is why garden stuff is so pricey in the first place. Time is money when it comes to enjoying the odd sunny day in this country.)
I bought some summer flowers and a couple of small trees (half price or less from the local Tesco's flower cemetery!), got some pots off a friend and bought a few more. We also made a trip to the local garden centre and got a few fancier things that had taken my fancy - like the bronze-coloured firecracker thingy and the silvery lavenders that are my favourites.
I tried to keep the colour scheme purple and white, with some pink and bronze splashed in, and I'm quite happy with the result. It looks nice and sophisticated - I just hope it lasts!
I combined the summer flowers into a few different mix & match pots without any kind of knowledge or sense about what plants require similar conditions to grow well - I was only concerned with the aesthetic aspect of things.
After one week, where we had a couple of unusually sunny days, and a night of the torrential rain that is more typical to Ireland, the garden seems to be doing fine. On the hottest days I watered all the pots generously every day, but once the hot spell was over it seems that once every two days is enough. I bought a little box of plant food that I use a couple of times a week, and a separate fertilizer for the tomatoes to get them to bear fruit.
I also took a few cuttings from the communal gardens, which I planted in small pots and hoped them to start rooting, but unfortunately the heat seems to have killed even the strongest ones. I did think that it was a little bit advanced for a beginner gardener like myself, but since plants are ridiculously expensive, I thought I'd give it a go. I might try again after the summer, do some more reading on the subject and possibly even boost the experiment with some rooting hormone. Any experiences and tips are welcome, especially advice on which plants are easy to start with!
The balcony is nearly complete, now that we finally got a barbeque there as well! Now all we need is a bigger table, and we're all set for a summer of sunbathing, al fresco brunches and lazy afternoon barbeques! Just as I'm about to head over to Finland for a month.
After visiting the Look & Taste website, I spent the week typing up a little meme in an attemp to come up with an innovative viral promo as my entry for their Le Creuset competition. I am completely and utterly impressed with the concept they have going, so my earlier plans of writing an introductory post about the site had to be cancelled - the draft I had been working on took a slight overenthusiastic turn. Instead, I thought I'd create a meme and incorporate them in somehow. And yes, I am aware that memes are so 2005, but that's just where I am at the moment with this blogging stuff.
Sadly, I couldn't come up with a quiz that would actually keep a link to their page as it travels through the cyberspace, so it stopped being only about the competition, really. I'm going to enter it into their draw anyway, but I'm also looking forward to people's answers for my own personal kitchen inspiration! I've also posted it into my Facebook and tagged my foodie friends that probably don't read the blog.
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The Foodie Confessions Meme
IN THE KITCHEN
1. My trademark recipe: Cambodian beef stew
2. Kitchen gadget or accessory I couldn't live without: Electrical mixer/food processor
3. Biggest kitchen handicap: I’ve never made a Sunday roast.
4. Dish/technique that I want to learn: I would love to be better a cutting meats and preparing fish.
5. My top cooking tip: You can grate garlic with the peel still on the clove; the peel will not go through the grater. Rachel Allen told me this last week, in person! This is particularly handy if you don't like chopping garlic, or if you don't own a garlic press.
INSPIRATION
6. Favourite cuisine/food style: Mediterranean
7. Favourite cook book: At the moment, Falling Cloudberries by Tessa Kiros and Flavour by Vicky Bhogal
20. Self-invented (or adapted): The oatmeal banoffee pie (see picture)
I hereby tag the newly-wed Katherine (congrats!), Made Marian (even if she didn't post it in her crafty blog), Aoife of icanhascook, whenever she's recovered from her big trip, the Italian Foodies (that I have been stalking since Maz first brought them to my attention) and Look & Taste, of course!
Of course, anyone is welcome to complete and repost this! If you do, please leave a message in the comments so I can come an check you out. And if you don't have your own blog, just post your answers in full as a comment.
With Father's Day just around the corner, I know this comes a bit late for ordering anything online, but I thought I'd share my gift ideas with you anyway.
Fathers are notoriously difficult creatures to buy presents for, although the summery timing of Father's Day around here does make it a lot easier to come up with reasonably thoughtful presents.
For some reason, it seems that there aren't many wintery things to do that are dad-specific, so most dads probably end up getting warm woolly socks, after shaves and sports biographies for Christmas.
In the summer, however, there are lots of things that grown-up men like to do. They are out cutting the grass, barbequeing, road-tripping, flying kites, having cold beers al fresco, kicking the ball or throwing a frisbee (and calling it "ultimate"), going to the beach and carrying a surf board around - you catch my drift.
So here are a few suggestion for all budgets:
Under €5
King's Choice Mug from dotcomgiftshop - A lovely (if a slightly British) design for the head of the house, and affordable even for the kids.
Skrub's potato gloves from Lakeland - I don't know who washes (or peels) potatoes in your family, but someone has to. And someone will definitely appreciate this fantastic innovation.
Boiling potatoes with skins on preserves the vitamins, but if you must peel, you should do it with proper tools, such as the OXO Good Grips® Potato Peeler, also under from Lakeland.
Around €10
Continuing the Lakeland/kitchen theme for a bit, here's another innovation men could possibly find interesting this summer: Quarter-Pounder Burger Press will make your home-made burgers look as good as they taste. (Watch this space for my perfect burger recipe!)
A summer read is always appreciated, and Eason are doing some good paperback offers at the moment. After glancing over a few reviews, I wouldn't recommend the Ian Rush bio for a dad who appreciates good writing - not even if he was a Liverpool fan. For a reader with more acquired taste, the best your tenner will get you is Carlos Ruiz Zafon's Shadow of the Wind, also available at Eason's.
Also, New Look have a good selection of reasonably-priced, reasonably attractive men's shorts for dads of all ages. Just make sure you double-check their size before shopping.
Around €20
A game of cricket might be a bore to watch, but a cricket set (from Next Directory) could be a brilliant idea for something fun to do together with the kids - or a great excuse to get the lads together in the park on a sunny afternoon, possibly with some cold refreshments.
Some TK Maxx stores stock products from Built NY. We managed to grab one of their Six-pack tote can/bottler cooler bags last year for less than a tenner, actually. They might have gone up so filing this closer to the €20 mark, but they would still be worth the money. So cool - quite literally too. Haha.
Actually, I'd like to recommend their VIP Very Intelligent Pockets for anyone and everyone, but I'm just not sure if dads would appreciate these. Would men even know what they are meant to be useful for? Hm, this might be one for Mothers' Day instead.
For a teenager's dad and/or a foodie dad, we recommend a delightful Applecrumble and Fish tee (available in various colours) from Meatandcheese. They are going for £18 but the final price is probably closer t0 €30 with p&p. For unbearably cool dads (do such things exist??), see what Threadless has to offer.
TK Maxx is also an old favourite for men's clothing. We ventured to their Blanchardstown shop this week and one of the best & coolest items we found there this time were Ed Hardy's tattoo-style boxer shorts for 25 euro.
Around €50
Who wouldn't have a soft spot for lovely, yet manly retro radios? The fierce Philips AE 2730 Portable Radio from pixmania.ie comes with a handy handle and is all yours for €51 plus p&p.
The idea of relaxing in the garden on a sunny Sunday with a newspaper might be an optimistic one, but for all those idealists out there I present a surprisingly good value hardwood garden recliner from Woodies - only €49.90! There must be an IKEA opening soon somewhere nearby...
If you have more than €50 to invest in your present I'm sure that you won't have problem finding a cool gift for your dad, so I'll almost stop here. The last suggestion, and my personal favourite is a canvas print of a moment that is memorable and important to the dad in question.
Canvas prints are always impressive and can be a very thoughtful gift to anyone. The trick here, however, is not to pick your own favourite shot, but one that the recipient loves. Thecanvasworks.ie offer a straightforward enough service, and their prices seem to be competitive, if not the best going.
Needless to say, I now have to come up with something to get for the resident daddy-of-two - something that is NOT on the list, so that the surprise is not spoiled. Although I think he wouldn't mind knowing what he was getting, as long as it was that retro radio...
Since writing stuff has proved a lot more time-consuming than I remembered (and mostly because I'm using all my spare time for tweaking the new layout), here's a little something to keep you entertained. I love them so much!
I'm off to have some tea (and hopefully cakes!) with the ladies. We're heading out to Dublin tomorrow for the Taste of Dublin. I've been looking forward to this since I missed the one last year, and Ronan managed to get us some fancy-ass VIP tickets through work, so I'm hoping it will be awesome. (Not as awesome as Niall & Aoife's Oz trip though!)
After slowly getting back to twittering, I've finally decided to give blogging another go. Wohoo!
Before you all get too excited now, I have to say that the constant updates of the antics of the Small People will no resume - at least not as they used to be. A lot of water has flowed under the bridge since I first started sharing things online, and I no longer have the need to share as much as I used to - mainly because I recognise that a lot more people read blogs than in 2005. I'm still planning to write about our family life and other personal stuff, but I'd love to write about stuff that would be useful and interesting to people who don't know us, too.
I've re-organised the categories in the blog, which should give you some indication on the subjects I'll be writing about. I'll be concentrating on life with kids in our local Kildare, cooking and stuff I come across online. (I really wish I could also add a craft element to this blog, but since all the crafts I'm doing at the moment are with Lukas, they probably won't need a category of their own!)
I'm also working on a new template for the blog, but you'll have to wait for that for a while yet. Also, the blog roll will have to be updated... Oh the things that are involved in getting back to blogging! Who would've thought? But I'm willing to do it all, just for you - and possibly a little bit for me too.
Why does the camera battery always run out when I manage to bake something elaborate AND visually attractive? Now the world will never see my blueberry & mascarpone merengue roulade. It was awesome, and gone in about 7 minutes.
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