August 28, 2008

Don't Put Off Until Tomorrow...

Following on from my rather easy target of thirty something things to do in the next year (it's a vague number as I keep adding things as I think of them) I thought there was a touch of irony in the fact that Dave Freeman the man who co wrote the original '100 Things To Do Before You Die' Book has died at just 47.

Even though the success of his book and the birth of the whole 'things to do/see/visit/kill etc genre gave him the means and the freedom to do what he wanted he only managed to get about halfway through his list before he died, thus proving the old adage to be correct...

Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today



... cos you never know, tomorrow may never come.

August 20, 2008

It's Not Mom's It's Mine!

We have a huge apple tree in out garden which produces many many more apples than we can ever eat/cook with/reach to pick. Most of them went to waste last year as we can't reach to pick any higher than the bottom few branches. The birds and the wasps also make short work of a lot of them while they're still on the tree, so we've never managed to get to too many of them.

We've done better this year than we did the last though and there's a litre of Apple and Sultana Vodka waiting in a cool dark cupboard, which should be ready to taste in about three weeks and one very nice apple cake has been cooked and eaten.



The Perfect Apple Cake Recipe.

8oz of cooking apples (although eating apples from your very own tree work just as well),8oz of sultanas,1/4 pint of milk,6oz of soft brown sugar,12oz of self raising flour,2tsp mixed spice (or just cinnamon is nice),6oz butter,1 medium egg,1oz demerara sugar.

Peel, core and chop the apples into bite sized chunks.

Mix the apples, sultanas and milk together and put to one side.

Cream the butter and the soft brown sugar together, mix in the egg.

Sieve the flour and the spice together into the butter and sugar mixture and mix well.

Add the apples, sultanas and milk to the butter and flour mixture and give it a good stir.

Sprinkle the demerara sugar over the top before cooking.

Put it in an 8" cake tin and cook in the oven (electric 160) for about 2 hours until cooked through. It may take a bit longer so towards the end of the cooking time out a knife or skewer in the centre and if it comes out clean it's cooked.

Cool and enjoy.

August 08, 2008

A Waste of 87 Minutes Of My Life!

Crank!

Possibly the worst movie I've ever sat through.

August 01, 2008

Days When I Shouldn't Have Got Out Of Bed #1

So - Today!

I bought a new lens for my camera. It arrived Wednesday. Despite the fact that I work from home I've been really good and resisted the urge to play with it instead of working until today. At around 3pm it got the better of me and the raindrops on the window looked to be the ideal opportunity to try out the macro function. So I stuck the lens on the camera and the camera on the tripod. Then I realised it wasn't quite high enough and picked the tripod up to extend the legs. Holding it high in the air above a concrete driveway I pulled the leg to it's full stretch and at the same time I watched the lens and camera fall from the top of the tripod and hit the ground with a resounding smash!!!

Hopefully our insurance will cover it but I'm still really pi*@$d off that I never even got to test the lens before I broke it. the glass is still intact but the mount is hanging off and as for the camera!! Suffice to say that Canon's (or any other brand for that matter) don't play well with concrete!

Then....

Luckily I have some very nice friends, one of which (Thanks Gillian) was willing to lend me her camera so I could take pics at the 'Balloons over Basingstoke' event tonight. So off I go to pick her camera up en route to Basingstoke and then I reverse out of a parking place into another car!!!!

Luckily it was (really) as much her fault as mine and as no damage was done to either car we just chalked it up to a bad day.

Then...

We got to Basingstoke and the wind got up and they decided not to fly the balloons tonight!

I need a drink.