I’ve added my wife to my blog, so she can post about stuff too ) Maybe it’ll be more interesting than the rubbish I write P

Last night I went all cheffy again (even though I wasn’t really feeling like it) having decided last week I was going to buy some tuna steaks and do something cheffy.

We had a bunch of tomatoes going off in the fridge from when Daisy’s Mum was down to visit (about 3 weeks ago now) and so I decided to use these to make a tomato-based sauce to cover the tuna.

The sauce consisted of:

• 6 small tomatoes chopped and softened in the microwave (going off is not a necessity)
• 2 green chillis deseeded and finely chopped (fresh from our chilli plant) – use only 1 if you’re not good with hotter food
• 1/2 an onion finely chopped
• 1/2 a red pepper finely chopped
• 1 large clove of garlic crushed
• 1/2 tablespoon of Chives (I used dried)
• 1 tablespoon of Thyme (again dried)
• 1 tablespoon of Basil (again dried)

Bung all the ingredients for the sauce into a masher of some sort and blend until its not too smooth.

I fried the tuna (for slightly too long in fact – but then I’m not really a chef, so I live and learn!) and then cooked the tuna in the sauce in the pan for 10-15 minutes.

I then served it up with some boiled baby new potatoes, and some garden peas (tinned unfortunately, but there you go!)

I don’t know where the time is going recently. Days are flying by in flits of er things… Blogs are getting unattended to!

On Monday we went up my parent’s place to grab some of the plums they have on a tree in their garden. Daisy’s going to make a plum pie apparantly, although its still yet to arrive ) The tree is quite tall:

…so I ended up using a rake to “grab” the plums with the prongs and pull them off. Worked quite effectively. I think we stripped the tree of all the decent plums that the wasps hadn’t already got.

Then when we left my folks we trundled up a country lane near by, parked up and began our bounty hunt. It’s wonderful to think all this free food is out there. We will get some blackberries, but this time we were hunting hazelnuts. In fact, in the 30 minutes we were there, we managed to get a goodly amount:

They still need stripping of their outer shells and cups, so they’ll be a bit smaller but it’s probably saved us a few quid buying shop packaged ones. They might even taste nicer, and will be perfect for all those yummy cakes!

Ok, Yesterday I took a brave plunge to do some recipe mixing and I wanted to make a wheat-free version of the Chocolate and Hazelnut Cake. I’d already made a couple of wheat-free Chocolate Orange Cakes, so I figured why can’t I just do a bit of simple ingredient substitution and all will be well. So instead of using wholewheat flour, as the recipe stated, I used the “flour-substitute” from the chocolate orange cake, which was ground almonds and cocoa. Both of the original cakes were from Esurientes Blog.

I tried it and it worked! I made a cake! A super yummy chocolatey cake! It was a bit brittle and when I tried to move it from the cake tin base to the cake box it cracked in half, but it still worked.

Ingredients

250g Margarine
125g Light Brown Soft Sugar
125g Caster Sugar
4 Eggs
120ml of strong black coffee
200g ground almonds
50g Cocoa, seived
2 heaped teaspoons of baking powder
200g Hazelnuts coasely ground
250g plain chocolate

Method

1. Line springform cake tin with greaseproof
2. Preheat oven to 180^oC
3. Beat margarine, brown and caster sugar together
4. Add eggs one at a time beating after each is added
5. Add in the coffee (the mixture always curdles for me here, but that’s ok)
6. Fold in the almonds, baking powder and three quarters of the chopped hazelnuts and chocolate (i.e. keep some back for the top)
7. Mix it all up until it looks like a cake mixture
8. Spoon into cake tin
9. Add remaining quarter of chopped hazelnuts and chocolate to the top
10. Cook for about 1 hour 30 minutes or until the top is springy and a skewer comes out cleanish
11. Leave to cool, but even then it is brittle and need to take care removing the paper.

It really is a yummy recipe, and we went around my folks to pick more plums off the tree today, and it was nearly all gone! It’s much moister than the original hazelnut cake, and more chocolateier (because of the cocoa). Yum!

Sorry about the dull title, but I couldn’t think of anything more encompassing.

It’s was an absolutely beautiful day down here in Dorset yesterday (looks like it again today!). The sun was shining, and the sky a deep blue without a cloud in sight. I got up pretty late, but my wife and I eventually set off on a 6 mile cycle ride down to a country house near Poole, called Upton Country House, owned by the local council.

Like alot of the big country houses around here on a bank holiday, they were holding a craft fair. As we’d been to the one held at Kingston Lacy House last year, we decided to look at the Upton one. However, I think everyone else, including the exhibitors, were at the Kingston Lacy one. It took us barely 3 minutes to go around the exhibits, which weren’t really all that interesting, to be honest. At least it only cost 50p each to get in.

We wandered around the grounds for a bit, which really are lovely, then we had some lunch at the Peacock Tea Rooms. It was a bit expensive, but it had a unique selling point wandering around.

After having an ice cream, we headed back home and arrived about 3′oclock. I could’ve sat down in front of the ‘puter and did some work on my various websites, but decided I wanted to do something more productive, so I headed into the kitchen and put some more beetroot on to cook.

While they were cooking, I boiled some eggs and made some pickled eggs:

I then went all cheffy and made a wheat-free cake, but a wheat-free cake I didn’t have a recipe for. In fact, I combined two recipes. I decided that after yet another day fixing my car, my Dad required another treat. The beetroot that were cooking were going to be his (as we’ve already got some), but I thought a cake would also go down well.

So, I took the recipes from Esurientes Chocolate and Hazelnute Cake and flourless chocolate cake and made a new cake. I’ll post the recipe in another post, to avoid making this post go on forever.

My wife made us a nice broccoli and cheese gratin for tea from the Weightwatchers book ‘Time to Eat’ (except we used nice cheese!).

We then rushed up Mum and Dads to give them their goodies and have a bit of the cake for afters!!!

We were all ready to go to bed when I was doing a bit of commenting on photo blogs and ended up helping to fix some bits and bobs on Tobias Reynolds photoblog. I’d never used PixelPost before, but it seems quite good (although the layout of the code needs alot to be desired!).

So I got to bed about 1:15am.. a late one for me. Don’t think I’ve been up that late in about 8 years!

34 % Nerd, 34% Geek, 47% Dork

For The Record:

• A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia.
• A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one.
• A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations/interactions.

You scored less than half in all three, earning you the title of: Joe Normal.

Take the test – What are you?

This is the first time I’ve experienced the summer glut (although I always seem to experience a summer gut).

We’ve now got a whole load of beetroot outside ready to some in, as well as 4 broccoli flowers that will make around 8 meals. Our runner beans are beginning to make enough for a few meals and we’ve got over 30 chillis on our chilli plant.

So, last night I harvested a few of our beetroot. I wasn’t sure really what to expect, but it turned out ok.

First I needed to steralise a jar, so I got an ex-Branston Pickle jar and washed it out thoroughly in warm soapy water and bunged it in the oven set to 120^oC for 5 minutes. In the meantime I went out and I picked some big looking beetroot:

Then I took them in, chopped off the stalks and the roots (leaving a small amount so they don’t bleed out) and gave them a wipe.

I then wrapped them in foil and baked them in the oven at 190^oC for 3 hours. Yes, 3 hours. My cooking timer only does 99 minutes, so I had to do 90 minutes, and restart it when it beeped!

When they came out, and had cooled down a little, the skin was easy to pull off. So that’s what I did:

When they were all red and naked, I chopped them up and put them into the jar I’d steralised. Some I sliced and others I diced. It gave me very pink fingertips!

I then poured in some Sarson’s pickling vinegar (don’t sniff this as it’ll blow your head off!) and made sure the jar was full but all the beets were covered. The vinegar instantly turned red. I then put the cap on and bung it in the fridge.

I guess I should’ve labelled them with a date and stuff, but we’re already eating them so I don’t think there’ll be a problem. Particularly as it’s the only jar we have at the moment.

We had some for lunch and they were really pretty nice. Not too dissimilar to the shop-bought stuff I’ve had before, mind.

I’ve officially launched my secondary business that is part of my plan for removing myself from the clutches of a really dull office job. It’s basically website design, with a selling point that the websites I design will be accessible (that is they’ll be easier to use by blind or visually impaired people and people with learning difficulties). So if you want, or know someone who wants a website, I’m your man. The launch involved getting the website online, and that was it. So feel free to visit Helpful Design today!

Ok, plug over.

Just to let you know I’ve currently got some beets in the oven cooking themselves as I’m making a beetroot pickle this afternoon. Look out for the post soon.

My Dad phoned me up to tell me my car is fixed, which is “great” as it means I can go back to work.

Everything was going swimmingly until I decided to come home this afternoon. In fact, it went rather swimmingly after that too:

The Meeting

I always dread my Monday morning meetings. My boss is rather a high flier in the world of academia and likes to ensure all his minions are doing as they should. These meetings tend to be a bit “we’re doing this” – “we need someone to go to that” – “What have you been upto X?”… fortunately Mr.Boss was away today (on holiday sailing around the English Channel I suspect), so we had a stand in. She’s an even higher flier in the world of academia, although fortunately we aren’t her minions so she was a little less bothered. However, unfortunately we still had the “What have you been upto X?” bit, which is generally the bit I hate. “I’ve been busy trying to setup businesses so I can get out of here” I hear my brain holding back.

The Car

Anyway, the rest of the day went ok. I actually did a fair amount of work even! On my way out of work I was given a lift around to the car park by a collegue in his wife’s extremely posh MGF. That was nice. I set off home. My route home is approximately 66% motorway, followed by 33% roundabouts interspersed with short stretches of dual carriageway. As I approached the 66% mark, and the first roundabout, my oil light popped on (well, the car’s oil light).

“That’s strange” I thought to myself. “I only checked that the other day before the trip to Wales”

On accelerating out of the roundabout the car didn’t feel quite right. It didn’t want to go. I looked in my mirror and was horrified at the enormous plume of black smoke I was covering the car behind in.

“Oh dear. This doesn’t look good.”

The car was getting less happy. The next roundabout came, and as I changed down a gear the rev-ometer dropped and the car stuttered. EEKS! I began my toe-heel extravaganza that I learnt when I was a much less sensible driver that still had ambitions of becoming a rally driver. It worked for about 10 yards, but the car wasn’t having it. Fortunately immediately after this roundabout there was a pull-in, and that’s where my car expired.

Because of Saturday’s videoing stuff I’d left my mobile in my bike bag — back at home. So I headed to a nearby pub and the owners were kind enough to let me use their phone. I phoned Dad who duly dropped everything he was doing to come a get me. When I got back to my stranded car, I noticed a big puddle of oil under the front. I looked inside. The whole engine bay was spattered in oil. Eek.

Dad arrived and towed me to his place. He said an oil pipe had snapped off and I’d have to get a new one ordered. Tsk.

The Garden

For tea, Daisy was making a lovely thai green curry with the remains of last night’s chicken while I went out and watered the veg and stuff. I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of it before, but tonight I found out where all the caterpillars that are eating my veg hide – in the broccoli flowers! There were piles of them in there. I had a massive squashing spree. I then got the hose all ready and as I started it up, it began spurting from the reel. Bugger. It was from the centre of the reel too. Double bugger. So I unwound the whole reel and found the pipe had come loose in the centre. I re-did the pipe and before I could get on with the actual watering tea was ready.

So after a superb dinner, I went back out. I watered our veg. As I was watering our Sunflowers I heard a noise. It started as a “psss”. A second later it was a “pshhh”, and before I had worked out what it was it became a “POOOOSHHHH”. The hose split and pushed its way out of where the gun attaches. Water went everywhere. Sprayed in our sunlounge. Sprayed into the air. Covered me from head to toe. Grrrrrreat.

I turned off the water, snipped the end of the split hose, screwed it back in and continued watering.

I’m back inside now. Stripped off out of my wet clothes and feeling much better.

What an evening, though.

Best thing is that I don’t have to go to work this week – legitimate reason too: no transport! 30 miles is a bit far to cycle.