Sunday 27 December 2009

I just can't stop...

...BAKING

Since my new cooker finally arrived I have been on a baking binge.I have baked every day and generally several times a day. Everyone must have baked goods...not because I am good generous sort, but because otherwise I will put on a stone in weight at a rate never known to man.

I gave up "real" baking long ago in the old cooker, it was just too discouraging. I would follow the recipe but more often than not it would not come out right, the result usually more charcol than golden brown. With the new cooker there have been no horrors AND I am trying new recipes with success first time around.If there is a baking heaven I am in it. I am thrilled with this new cooker and it has made me realise that the problem before was definately not me but my old and ancient cooker.

To make life even more rosy I have invested in a new utensil which is making pastry a breeze...a pastry cutter! For years I thought they were a gimmick...well to anyone that has not used one they most certainly are not.No more pastry under the fingernails, no more aching hands if the fat was too hard when you were trying to rub it it. What you have is a cleaner and lightning quick way of making pastry. I have started making 2 batches at a time.

I plan to start putting some of the recipes I am enjoying online. Most homely folk will have baked the same things over and over I am sure, but you never know there maybe someone out there just starting out. :o)

Tuesday 8 December 2009

Even newbies can be useful

This week we had something that I have been both dreading and looking forward to in equal measure...Quiz night at the Photographic Group. Dreading because most of the people that go are professionals or retired professionals and I was envisaging not being able to answer a single question. I was however looking forward to it in the hope we were bound to learn something...Oh for silver linings!

We split ourselves into teams of 4. By fluke, the way it happened our team was made up of the youngest members ( gee how good it feels to include myself in that description LOL ).We had the pleasure of joining up with 2 others we had not yet had the chance to mix with so it turned out to be fun from the start. Thinking of a name was easy... how could we resist "The Nippers"?

Most of the questions seemed very obscure EVEN the general knowledge ones that were supposed to act as a warm up at the start. With the threat of loosing out to a team of more senior folk we were tempted to use some pocket electronic technology but we refrained and used our brains instead.

After 2 hours of scratching of heads, working out sums and scribbling diagrams on paper the torture was over ( almost ) and it was time for scoring. Much to the delight of the room it came to a play off between The Nippers and The Oldies (a team to our left)... we both had a grand total of 31 points. Then came my biggest moment in the history of Doxie Quiz nights...Thank goodness for being a newbie and a beginner as this means some of the basic techno stuff is still lingering in my brain from the last manual I've read. The deciding question...

" What does AEB stand for?"

The most confident I had been all night I answered "Autoexposure Bracketing" and "hurrah!" Team Nippers won the night!

It was my lucky night...We not only won a team prize we could split but I also won a raffle prize. To top it off, a lovely gent K had printed off some pics from a private portrait session we'd done with him. All in all a jolly good evening. :o)

Doxie the satisfied!

Wednesday 2 December 2009

Angry Doxie

I am a thoroughly fed up Doxie. I have had no cooker since Saturday morning. A new one was delivered and the old one taken away but they delivered the wrong cooker, grrrrr! All the paperwork refers to the one we choose, a black one, but they delivered a graphite one which has a different code so goodness knows how they managed that. The delivery men said they'd leave the graphite one just incase they had trouble getting hold of the other one ( I think they knew something about the company we didn't!). They suggested that we ask permission to open this one and use it if we had to wait for the black one.

This will be our 4th night without a means of cooking hot food and they will not give us permission to open it. I have had to throw food away because it had gone out of date and that really hurts.

I have stayed in for two re-deliveries and they just did not turn up even though they had CONFIRMED by text and voicemail. You wouldn't think we were in such a deep recession would you with the lack of customer care these places have.

I wait to see if they can actually get their act together and deliver it tomorrow as that is the latest delivery date. I am considering asking for my money back seeing as they have not delivered the goods I ordered, have caused me to be out of pocket and going to one of their competitors instead.

Watch this space. I am angry...infact DS said when he heard my telephone call to the so called customer services he had never in his life heard me so angry.


Doxie Grrrrrrrr !!!!!

EDITED TO SAY IT HAS FINALLY ARRIVED AFTER WE STAYED IN 6 TIMES FOR DELIVERY!!!!!!

bye bye birdie

My pet birdie passed away during last Monday night. The saddest thing is that when I put him to bed that night I said to him

"I haven't got any pictures of you, I must take some tomorrow."

Tomorrow never came for birdie but I guess if I did have pictures I would just be looking at them now making myself more sad. He had a good 15 1/2 years so I guess I mustn't really be sad. He never had a day's sickness either so that is a blessing.

Bye bye birdie aka Screecher Creature, I shall miss our little chats and your cheery songs.

Doxie x