Not so domestic goddess

I thought I'd make my own mince pies this year. My mother always made it look so easy.

All the ingredients were in place - so no excuse there.

But once again, when faced with a choice of activities, I choose the one I'd like to do instead of the one that I should be doing.

So today I tidied out my sewing room - sorted stash, put projects into boxes - the whole shebang!

But that has mean that I've just finished the mince pies - and the Christmas cake has only just been marzipaned!!!!

EEEEK.

No chance at all that it will get iced by tomorrow - last year (there seems to be a pattern here) I iced it on Christmas morning at about 6am.

It was

a

DISASTER

The icing was still soft (of course) - but luckily the assembled guests were so full of Christmas lunch that they didn't want the cake anyway.

So here are my mince pies - somehow they really don't look like the ones in the recipe books

especially this rather strange one...

and heres my cake so so far.......

No work again - hurrah!!

Once again, a Wednesday with no work. Last week it was Sports Day (which I'm still feeling the effects of..) and today it was a training day for First Aid. It breaks up the week, although I do feel a tad guilty at being out and about instead of at a desk.

Stopped at the supermarket on the way home to pick up some ingredients for a cake bake tomorrow - I'm planning on making the chocolate orange cake from one of Nigella Lawson's books, as we're going away for the weekend and I want to take a present for my friend - I know he likes cake - and you can't go wrong with chocolate cake!!

This however isn't chocolate cake, although it does look like a yummy chocolate chip one. We bought it in France.........

.........it's snail cake.

Yes, that's right. The little black bits are chopped up snail.

I didn't try it, as I'm a coward, but I gather it tasted like garlic bread....

Pass the jam, Jim

Well, not literally.

Here is the product of 2 hours of blood sweat and tears, as I conjured up my very first jam - EVER!!!!


Okay, I know that I'm suppoed to be writing about quilting / needlepoint / embroidery - but as usual, my attention span is somewhat limited, and so rather than complete a UFO, I thought I'd deal with the gooseberries my mother gave me when I went to admire the puppy ten days or so ago.

But why, if this is gooseberry jam, is is red instead of green?

And why did I not put the elastic band on properly, I hear you ask? It wouldn't go on, that's why. They kept pinging about the kitchen until I was well and truly sick and tired of them - and so I ended up just jamming (lol) them on any old how.

Of course, if I were a truly diligent housewife / homemaker, I would now make some lovely jam pot covers, but as usual, I now want to move onto something else....

Jim has so far refused to sample it (but he will soon......). Meanwhile the garden continues to grow - and grow - and grow...

Happy Birthday!!!

On Tuesday, Jim had a birthday:


Note the JB scribbled onto the terracotta pot.

I saw this when I got home from work, and was all ready to take it back to the garden centre, when he confessed that he had written it on himself.

It stands for 'Jim's birthday' (just so that he knows it's his, I think)- perhaps he thinks there will some sort of unseemly squabble about terracotta pots and patio roses?

I baked a cake, which is in the picture - it's a carrot and walnut one - but it came out of the oven too early, sank, and rapidly became soggy.

He still ate it though.