Cook from a Cookbook - Scotch Eggs

The second thing we cooked on Sunday that we'd never made before was Scotch Eggs. Now, I'm cheating a little on the challenge here, as I don't have a recipe from my cookbook shelf for this, so we sort of looked up several online to get the basic idea, then made up our own!

I swear that gin is doing its best to be in all my Cookbook challenge photos!

We only boiled our eggs for 4 minutes, as we prefer them soft boiled, and figured they'd cook a bit in the fryer too, so we didn't want to overdo it. Most of the recipes we'd looked up involved adding all sorts of exciting extras to the sausage meat; we stayed simple, and seasoned it with salt, black pepper and dried mixed herbs.

I am amazed that I managed to keep the flour away from my clothes this time

Sausagemeat is far worse to handle than minced meat, so making up the Scotch Eggs was less entertaining than forming burger patties.

There's that gin bottle again...

I love coating stuff with breadcrumbs

But you don't half get messy doing it.

We had no idea what temperature to set the fryer to, since we had no recipe, so we hedged our bets and set it to about 130°C.

We cooked two at a time, for ten minutes, turning halfway through

Oh my God they were delicious. I love Scotch Eggs, but to have them fresh out of the fryer, still warm, with slightly runny yolks still inside.. it was amazing. We will definitely be making these again!

Cook from a Cookbook - Cinnamon Whirls

My final day of repose before starting my new job involved a lot of cooking. Two of the three recipes were new to me, so I'm including them here as part of Nat's Cookbook Challenge.

First up, it's the cinnamon whirls. I've wanted to make these for ages, as they are one of our favourite sweet treats. Luckily, my Good Housekeeping Baking Book had a very simple method for them.

So few ingredients!

It took us a little while to get our heads around the badly-worded instructions for how to fold and layer the pastry, but when we were done we had two really cute little sausages to cut up.

The best part of this recipe was using sugar
instead of flour to stop the pastry sticking

They smelled so good in the oven, and we couldn't resist tucking in as soon as they were cool enough to handle.

The recipe claimed it would make 34, but we only got 28 out of it. But they are tiny, so we didn't feel too guilty about eating lots of them while we cooked the rest of our lunch!

Year of Projects Update - 4th December

Can you believe it's December already? I know a lot of my fellow Year of Projects bloggers have scaled back their efforts in completing projects on their lists to focus on the dreaded Christmas knitting, but as I only have one present to make (Rosie's Rosie) I've been able to keep up with my list quite comfortably.

I've been making steady progress on my other WIPs, but I've been so busy this week doing fun holiday things I've not actually had all that much time for knitting. And now my Christmas tree is up, it neatly hides and partially blocks access to my stash and WIP shelves, so I've not had anything to hand!

Yesterday afternoon I found myself sitting down to watch the rugby with nothing to fiddle with, so I braved the tree and rescued my Rapunzel hat.

It's finished! I'm so excited by this hat. It's amazing. The yarn is so soft and warm, the cables are beautiful and the braids are just the right amount of silly. I decided against adding the pompom to the top, mainly because I already have a hat with a pompom and I know just how ridiculous I look when I wear it. So we made an executive decision to omit that from the pattern.

Here's the details then:

Pattern: Free Rapunzel! by Tiny Owl Knits

Yarn: Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Chunky in chocolate brown. I used less than two balls.

Needles: 9mm circular and dpns

Mods: other than omitting the pompom, I didn't really modify the pattern in any way. I could have made the braids looser by going up a needle size or two, but as my 9mms are the biggest I've got, I couldn't do that. I quite like them as they are. I also used elastic hair ties to tie off the braids, rather than a thread of yarn as the pattern suggested. I think they'll be more secure this way. The purple ribbon I had lying around in my LRP kit, and was too short to be of any use to me there, so I happily donated it to this hat.

It all turned out rather well. I have a new hat that I love, one more project to cross off the list and I've developed my knitting skills to the point where I am no longer afraid of cables or knitting on DPNs. So unafraid, in fact, that I've already got another hat on the needles!

I have just over two balls of this lovely yarn left over, so I think once I'm done with the other hat, I will cast on some mittens to match Rapunzel's hat. After all, I'm sure she'd need to protect her delicate princess hands while she's doing all that hard work pulling the prince up into her tower!

Oxford

To round off my fabulous week of holiday, Jamie and I went to Oxford yesterday. Our main purpose was to check out the Christmas market and see what we could manage in terms of starting our Christmas shopping, but we realised there was plenty more we could do while we were there.

Oxford has many gorgeous old buildings, but this one was my favourite

Upon the advice of my friend, who got all excited when we mentioned we were going to Oxford and insisted we go to see the dinosaurs, we took in the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. 

There were indeed dinosaurs

There are many awesome things in the museum. So much crammed into such a small space! The rather menacingly posed T-rex skeleton was particularly cool.

These dodos were pretty dead

It's quite tricky to take photos of a lot of the exhibits because they are either behind glass cases or, in the case of all the big mammal skeletons, were crammed so close together and against such a busy backdrop that it was impossible to frame a good shot. Most irritating!

These are the claws of the aye-aye skeleton. Aye-ayes are cool

I didn't really take any photos of the Christmas market, but we did pick up a few things for my Secret Santa swap partner, some mulling syrup to make mulled cider with and an enormous joint of ham for next weekend's Christmas buffet.

The only real downsides of the trip were that Oxford was very cold indeed, and we didn't stay in town long enough to meet up with the lovely Mooncalf for a post work coffee and cake!

It's Christmas!!!!

Happy 1st December everyone! I am very excited about Christmas this year, because I don't have exams to sit any more, so can start thinking about it right from the start of December.

As it's the 1st, and my Facebook and Twitter feeds are filled up with people talking about what was in their advent calendar this morning, I thought I'd share some pics of my homemade advent calendar up on the wall.

It looks a bit bare at the moment, but imagine how it will look in a week or two!

I still haven't made the final three ornaments, but will get that done this weekend. I need to make the final decision on which shape to use! Thanks to you guys and your fabulous suggestions, I now have lots of choice.

Today we drew the yellow star

This afternoon is dedicated to tidying the house in preparation for putting up the Christmas tree. As we're out roleplaying tonight, we may not have enough time to get the tree up today. so I thought I'd share a video I made last year, when we put up the tree.

We made it for our vlogging group on Facebook, so feel free to skip over the first couple of minutes, in which I waah about other stuff. I also apologise for some of the editorial musical choices, as we were quite drunk by the time we came to put the video together! The video may also be blocked in some countries due to copyright issues with the music we used, so apologies if you are in one of those countries and the video doesn't work for you.

London Calling

As part of my plan to fully enjoy the week off I have between my old job and my new job, I went to London today. I get very, very excited about going to London. I can count the number of times I've been there on both hands, which means I still enjoy doing things like riding the underground trains, and gawping at all the touristy spots. Jamie, and most of my friends, have spent a lot more time in London than I have (cos, you know, they live there, or work there, or have done in the past). So nobody else really shared my enthusiasm for the day I had planned!

Buckingham Palace, where the Queen lives.

My side trip to Buckingham Palace wasn't originally part of the plan, but when I discovered its proximity to where I was meeting my friend for lunch, I knew I had to wander over and take a peek. Then I realised how close I was to Westminster, where I needed to be, and decided to abandon my original plan of tubing over to Waterloo in favour of walking through St James Park. I am glad I did, because I had the most amazing experience ever while I was there.

Squirrels are everywhere in the park, and they are not at all afraid of people.

The squirrels were bouncing about the place, digging up food. I was enjoying myself, laughing at their antics and trying to take photos, when I spotted one little fella perched on the railings watching me rather intently. As I approached, he jumped from the fence into a deep pile of autumn leaves, which then flew everywhere as he bounded out of them and came to a stop right at my feet. I bent over to say hello, and he climbed up my leg! I was very sorry not to have any food to give him, because he soon gave up on me and ran off. But there was a squirrel! Climbing up my leg!

Obligatory shot of the Palace of Westminster, complete with the clock tower

One of these days I am going to arrange to go on another tour of the Houses of Parliament. I did it once when I was on a school trip and it was really interesting. We even did the climb up the clock tower, and stood at the top, close enough to touch Big Ben, when it chimed 11am. I'd love to do that again.

London Aquarium. Target one on my "fun things to do" list for the day

The aquarium was great. The main issue I have with them, is that all the Sea Life centres kind of look the same. Once you've been to one, you've pretty much been to them all. London's main attraction is now apparently the penguins, although I have to say of all the displays that was the most disappointing. Far more exciting was the huge tank full of sharks (which moved too fast to photograph!) and the huge tank full of rays and turtles, complete with underwater walkthrough tunnel. I took a video of that tank (which you can view here), because again, everything was moving too quickly to photograph properly. 

The London Eye. Target two on the list

I've wanted to go on the London Eye ever since it was first built. Twice, I have stood beneath it and not bee able to go on. The first time was not long after it opened; I'd gone to London with my Mum, and she refused to pay the extortionate ticket price for us to go on (I think she'd been too shocked by the £7 cinema tickets when we went to the Odeon on Leicester Square). The second time was a couple of years ago, when Jamie and I were in London to visit the Imperial War Museum. Then, we simply couldn't afford the exorbitant ticket prices, and didn't really have the time either.

Not so this time, for I was armed with a two-for-one voucher, which made it rather more affordable.

The view across the Thames towards Embankment station

It was a very odd experience. You don't really notice the wheel move, and then all of a sudden you realise you are extremely high up. It had started to rain, so our views of the entire city were clouded by the weather somewhat, but it was still fantastic to see the city all lit up. You can see so many landmarks. Buckingham Palace looked tiny from the top, especially compared to the (much closer) Palace of Westminster. St Pauls Cathedral looked particularly cool. And as we descended, Battersea Power Station rose out of the darkness, but as it's not lit it doesn't show up in any of the photos!

Proof that I was on the Eye, in case you thought I was making it up

Full set of photos on Flickr.

In which I went for a walk

Nothing like going for a tromp around the countryside on a crisp November morning.

The old Mill House at Pangbourne

The mill wheels still in place underneath the house

The lich gate at the church in Whitchurch-on-Thames

Mushrooms growing in the village green

A Red Kite soaring majestically over the downs

Gorgeous views

Sheep!

Alpacas!

An awesome human sundial, which was correct
(but set to BST, so the dial said it was 2.30)

Quotations in the bricks outlining the Thyme Maze surrounding said human sundial

The full set of photos can be found in this Flickr set.