When Creme Brulee goes wrong...

...you get vanilla flavoured scrambled eggs! I never knew that.

I'm a first time creme brulee maker. I thought it looked lovely and simple.

Cream, sugar, vanilla, and some orange zest and Cointreau as this was going to be an orangey flavoured one.

Some whisking, and some bringing up to simmer heat. A bit of combining of ingredients, and in to the pots. Don't they look perfect?

The recipe I was using was an American one, and I quickly googled the phrase "convert 325 degrees f to celcius". If you click on my link, you'll see the results I got. The 1st link returned contained the snippet of a phrase "325 F to Celsius 169 C."

Aha, 170 degrees I thought.

In went the lovely creamy creme brulee pots. With Cointreau. And expensive Madagascan vanilla.

We set the timer for 20 minutes. The recipe said 40 but it's always good to go and have a look after a bit.

At 20 minutes, we could see the tops getting quite brown.

Well, I know they're supposed to go brown after the sugar gets caramelised on the top - but brown before leaving the oven? I wasn't so sure.

I had another check on the website for the recipe. I googled the temperature conversion again. This time I used 'Centigrade' instead of 'Celsius'. The results came back looking like this.

Nealy 10 degrees cooler.

Ooops.

By the time I realised the oven was way too hot, and had whipped the brulees out of there, it was too late.

We had Cointreau and Vanilla flavoured scrambled egg.

Note, in the pictures, the lovely gathering of Madagascan vanilla seeds in the bottom of the concoction. Imagine how nice it should have tasted. Weep for the cream, sugar and Cointreau which will now go in the bin.

Christmas Food

We've been cooking and eating all day.

No surprise there!

Obviously we've been documenting it with photographs - the picasa web album is here.

Culinary highlights have been

1. The home made cranberry sauce
2. The Kelly Bronze Turkey

We're stuffed. A bit like the turkey!!!

Comments working now!

Thanks to a fab post over at Webupd8, I've managed to fix the broken comments XML. It was a bit fiddly though - I had to use the rather marvelous Notepad++ tool (which colours your code in for you!) to get it right as Blogger kept telling me I'd missed a tag out!!!

I've also managed to sort out something else which was annoying me - in theory, when you're logged in to blogger, if you have 'quick editing' set on in your blog template, you're supposed to see a little pencil next to each blog post to allow you to go straight into edit mode on that entry.

This had never worked.

I was happy to live with it because I really liked the blog layout though. So for the last few days I've used 3 clicks (edit, edit posts, select post) to get into editing a post entry from the blog itself. Hey ho, I thought.

However, as I have now got a bit braver with fixing my broken comment XML, I thought, 'why not' and have got stuck in to fixing the 'quick edit'.

Again the internet came up trumps with a great post over on 'Free Blogger Help' entitled 'How to add Quick Edit Pencil' which showed me that it was just the image of the pencil itself missing from this template. How fab.

OK, now I'm getting really flash - I've been playing around with the text in the area of the comments and the labels at the bottom of each post. I can now make it display different text based on whether I have no comments or some comments!!!

Check this out...

Labels: techie Comments: I've got 0 comments why don't you leave one?

Cool huh???
 
 

Xmas cooking

Well we've both been quite hectic over the past few months so there's not been too much chance to prepare or even think about Xmas food. We did start a 'google document' about the menu for Xmas day but actually, rather than having complicated food on Christmas day, we were both up for quite a simple, traditional meal.

So, when I arrived home tonight at 5pm, there wasn't much we had to do in advance - a roast dinner for 2 is well within our capabilities to do on the one day (we've done it for 6 and 8 on Christmases past without prepping the day before!)

But tonight, in order to get into the Christmas spirit, we decided to get cracking with a couple of the elements of tomorrow's dinner.

1) The home made cranberry sauce...
2) The creme brulee for pudding

Yum. It's going to be a cracking Christmas!

 

Even more snow!

Just come back from a 9:45pm dash around Sainsbury's to find the last few obscure items for the Xmas repast.

Vanilla pods and chicken livers.

Came out to find it was snowing like mad outside.

Lovely!

On the way home Dan's car skidded twice but something magic in the breaks made us not actually skid. Clever!

The Gardner's Arms seemed to call to us on the way home. 2 pints of Guinness later we're now tucked up safe and warm at home.

 The pic doesn't really show how lovely it is, but it's very Christmassy out there!

Update! Some pics of the back garden in the morning after more snow had fallen!

 

Comments aren't working :(

Thanks to Simes over at Simes' Ultimate Blog I've been alerted to the fact that this lovely new blog template I'm using doesn't seem to allow comments. Ooops! Call myself a tester? I have to admit, I never tried to post a comment before 'going live'!

Anyway, I'm going to have a tinker with the xml and see if I can fix it first, rather than backing out the whole thing - mainly because I really like this template.

Yah boo sucks to it all!

It's c..c..c..cold out there!

I've just been out in the lean-to to get a bottle of wine. We use it as an enormous fridge in the winter as it's not heated and so tends to be close to the outside temperature.

The bottle was really really cold.

Because it's the sort of thing I do, I wondered how cold the wine actually was.

So, I measured the temperature of the wine in the bottle using my milk thermometer (the gadget that I use for making sure the milk doesn't boil when making my morning cappuccino). It's an American model so counts in Fahrenheit, (see photo) but nevertheless I was quite impressed to see the gauge read at 38 degrees F. That's about 3.3 degrees C. (Note, photo taken after the wine, thermometer and I had been sitting in the superheated lounge for about an hour!)

3.3 degrees is pretty cold on any scale, especially given that the wine was kept (a) indoors and (b) not in the fridge!

I then thought I'd check out what water kept at room temperature in the kitchen measured. (Nothing scientific here, it was just because I spotted a glass of water on the side which had been there all day!)

It measured 50 degrees F which is 10 degrees C. Brrrr. That's cold for room temp in our kitchen isn't it? My excuse is that we'd only just come in from work and the heating hadn't been on long!

Finally I thought, I wonder what the temperature is of the wine in the fridge? This is where the experiment was *really* headed.

I watched the needle go down, down, down, and then stop at 41 degrees F which is 5 degrees C.
 
1.3 degrees warmer than the wine out in the lean-to!

Amazing!

 

Christmas Shopping

I remember back to when I was a Saturday girl at our deli - I worked mornings and Janey did afternoons - and around Christmas time, we used to marvel at just how much food people used to order. We'd know, for example, that their weekly bread order was a vienna loaf and 6 white batch [1] and then on Christmas Eve, the order would be 15 vienna and 30 batch - or something equally ridiculous. Similarly, people used to order pizzas like they were going out of fashion. Why pizzas at Christmas? We didn't know! 10, 15 large pizzas - each different. Hundreds and hundreds of them on Christmas Eve. Mum would have to get extra 'pizza girls' in just to keep the production line going in Christmas week, with grated cheese, chopped ham, and all the trimmings!

Still, I've never really got it.

We have had 2 'at home' Christmases these past 2 years. One with Dan's family, and one with mine. It's been really lovely. But, although I know we had a few extra bits we wouldn't normally buy (eg extra puddings for the Aldridges, or extra wine for the Rossis) it wasn't an order of magnitude bigger than our normal shop for that week - maybe an extra 50 quid. On one shop. The one before they came.

So, I was rather dismayed to pitch up to Sainsblobs one night after work over a month ago - it was the 2nd week in November - to find that I couldn't get a parking space. The cars were actually parked all over on the pavement in spots not normally allocated to parking.

"What's going on?" I thought to myself. Was it a special event on at the White Rose shopping centre? Then I realised - it was a Thursday 'late night'. The first in the run up to Christmas. I couldn't believe it. 6 weeks before Xmas and already the shops were overflowing. Aren't we supposed to be in a recession?

So, we've not been anywhere near a supermarket since then. We've shopped for milk/bread/eggs at the local convenience market - they even do a line in fresh salad items and wine too. We've done one delivery order from the aforementioned supermarket chain (loads of fizzy water, bottles and tins, poor guy) but mostly we've been eating what's been stored in the freezer. I refuse to jump on the consumer bandwagon!


[1] That's "bap" for the southerners and "breadcake" for the Yorkshire folk

 

Athlete - again!

We've been to see Athlete a couple of times before - originally here Thoughts on Stuff: Athlete back in 2007, and then another concert more recently in July - the night before going to Venice (which, I'm ashamed to say, I've not actually blogged about) but we went to see them AGAIN, at the beginning of December, in Manchester.

They've just released a new album - Black Swan - which is album no 4.

As I said in the original post, I quite like their music when listening to the albums, but when they play live - they're really fantastic!

Can't wait until we go and see them again - I know we'll definitely be going to see them again.

What's on top of the tree?

Grace and Harry spotted this lovely pengy just as we walked in to Tong Garden Centre yesterday to get our tree. They know about my pengy passion and so they headed straight for the little scene of polar creatures set up just by the entrance - there were fluffy polar bears, penguins, and various other creatures placed unnaturally together in the same environment, but in the name of Christmas festivities, we'll forgive their Zoological faux pas!

Anyway, when it came to putting the star or angel on the top of the tree - Harry suggested that we put the pengy on top of the tree.

I loved the idea!

In fact - I remember that there's a type of penguin called a 'Fairy Penguin' so it seemed very appropriate to be the fairy on top of the Christmas tree! 

OK so I know *this* one isn't a Fairy Penguin - looks like a King or Emperor - but hey ho with the semantics. 


I've got a fairy penguin on top of the tree!!

There's been a bit of snow.

It's been a little festive around the country. I think it's been more snowy down south (how very dare it!) but it's still been a little bit white up here! Here are a few pics showing the nice white road at night and 1st thing in the morning.

It looked really pretty.

The Christmas Tree is UP!

We've just spent a lovely afternoon with Grace & Harry who have for about the 5th year running, helped us put up our Christmas Tree. It's so late on in the Xmas season though, that I thought we'd never manage it. I've been feeling rather ill these last few days, particularly yesterday; very groggy, headachey and exhausted so I was quite glad that the guys were around to help us. 

The pictures are here on picasa.

We've got the whole thing off to a fine art - in and out of Tong garden Centre in a matter of about 20 minutes and the tree was put up in record time. Pizzas were consumed and the baubles went on. The whole event in about 3 hours!

Thanks again guys! Couldn't have done it without you!

Labels - what are they?

I've started trying to categorise the blog posts we write by adding labels. I started doing it initially, when we first wrote the blog back in 2007, but there didn't seem much point back then as I only had one post per category - I'd not written enough entries really to warrant categorising them.

However, now, looking back at the posts as a 'body of work', I'd actually like to bring up related posts together to be able to present them retrospectively to new readers, as opposed to those of you who have been following them in real time.

See what you think - I've added a labels widget below left. It shows all the lables in order of how many posts have been tagged with that label.

If you click on one, it should bring up all the posts I have tagged with that label.

Interestingly the top few are 'Holidays' 'Travel' and 'Food'!!! I wonder why that is????

This is what they look like at the time of posting this blog entry - but I'm nowhere near through getting all my posts retrospectively tagged, so this may change a little over time.

Labels

holidays (35) travel (35) food (17) internet-finds (13) Aus (12) techie (12) Raleigh (10) blogging (10) NZ (9) friends (9) sewing (8) work (7) concert (6) family (5) camping (4) moblog (4) break-in (3) countdown (3) fun (3) pain (3) rant (3) Fallas (2) London (2) Rome (2) Valencia (2) drinking (2) house (2) nice (2) panic (2) yorkshire (2) Italy (1) beginning (1) comment (1) gear (1) vodafone (1) zoo (1)

Messing with the templates again.

Well I've been at it again - faffing with the blog template. It's a little bit of a departure for me as up until now I've been very safe and used the templates provided by Blogger. Unfortunately, they weren't quite giving me what I wanted so I've learned how to import and save and edit a blog template - XML - and I think I'm happy! It certainly works. I like the 3 column layout as well. Gives a bit of extra interest on the upper part of the blog. I'd like to be able to get some of our photos in as faded backgrounds too. Oh well, that'll be the next lesson.

Hot Toddy

Because I've got a cold...

...we thought we'd break out the mulled wine from the delicious Cairn O'Mohr brewery in Scotland!



Look at that steam coming out of the mug!!!!

Made fish and chips!

...for tea the other night. Yes, real fish in batter. It was GORGE!

Lovely Flowers

These came to the door on Friday! It's been a tough few weeks and they cheered me up no end!

Just testing something for Emma

Here's a nice button I made for Emma's blog

Cut and paste the following html into your blog to add this button to your blog.

<a href="http://mimiandtilly.blogspot.com//"><

img src="http://www.soundwordsministries.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/mothers-day-flowers.jpg" /></a>

The Christmas Episode!

Hello & Welcome if you've come to the blog via the little Christmas message we sent out in our cards this year!

How quickly time flies! It hardly seems like a year since we waved goodbye to Mum, Dad and Janey after our lovely Christmas here last year!

So, what's been going on in 2009?

For those of you who follow the blog, you probably already know, as most of it is documented! For those of you who don't, then here is a guide to our 2009...


Food

• We bought a PIG (yes really!)
• yo!
• Lovely tea last night
• best hot and sour soup ever!

Trips/Hols

• We had a holiday in a weird little cottage in Cumbria
• Trip to Portsmouth
• New York & Vegas
• Venice Pics

Work & Geekery

• Liza went to Raleigh, again
• Dan on the night shift
• Lots of machines
• Norbert
  

Newsworthy Events

• Dan's Car blew up on the M62 -(1) A scary Phone call (2) Part 1 (3) Part 2
• Oscar
• Archie
  

Everyday Things

• A new project (Li's needlework)

Check out our Photo Albums

• Album 1 - this one has the older pics - going back to about 2007
  
• Album 2 - this one has 2 of the NY and LV albums on only
• Album 3 - most recent - including Archie, Oscar, Venice.
  

Of course, there's LOADS more in the blog - feel free to bookmark it and have a pootle around at your leisure.

So thank you if you've been part of our year this year, and we're sorry if we've not got round to seeing you in 2009. Lets get together in 2010 and you can be part of our special year next year!

Love, Li & Dan

 

Thank you nice lady

Coming back from London on Sunday, I decided to eschew Janey's offer of her company all the way to Euston in favour of her offer of a lift to Ealing Broadway. It was completely tipping it down and I was worried about getting soaked at the beginning of the 3 hour journey and then having to sit on the train in wet jeans - yeuck.

It was 9:50, Sunday morning, and there was noone parked outside Ealing Broadway station at all - and all the spaces (private) were empty.

Janey was going to just drop me off but as there was nothing going on outside, she pulled up in a parking space, grabbed her keys and said "I'll just walk you to the train".

She was parked just about where this little white van is parked on the Google StreetView pic.
View Larger Map

As we got out of the car, and started walking to the front of the station, a lady who was standing just at the top of the station steps came over and warned us that they'd been busy clamping that morning.

We'd not even reached the far kerb and as we turned round, the guy was walking towards Jane's car with the clamp in his hand! If you pan to the right, the clamper geezer was parked more or less opposite Starbucks.

She ran the 10 steps back to the car and zoomed out of the space. The guy calmly walked back to his car and put the clamp away, and got in.

Thank-you nice lady! You saved us £60!!!!

Celia Imrie, eat your heart out...

Friday dawned bright and breezy - and so after a coffee to shake off the fog formed due to the lateness of my arrival, we were ready quite early to head out locally into town. With nothing specific on the agenda today, there was no pressure to do anything so we just wafted around Ealing looking at the shops and making a few small purchases.

We decided we needed something to eat and Janey's fave bar/pub is a nice spot on the corner of Ealing Common called 'The Grange'. It was fabby...and we had a couple of their shared starter plates and some glasses of wine.

As we'd been wandering round Ealing, we had been into a lovely cookware shop and bought some Christmas themed wine glass identifiers - silly shapes which stick to your glass so you can see which one is yours at a party. The (rather super) salesgirl in the shop came over as we were looking at them and said "See the Christmas Tree? His name is Norman" - it's true - see the picture.

How could we leave them in the shop after knowing that?

They were really cute! We got them out in the pub and put 6 on one glass and 6 on the other. They looked so funny we then decided to take a picture of them.


I held up my phone and looked thru the lens to get the picture right. Janey was sat behind. As soon as I saw what was framed in the viewer, I started to giggle. Memories of "Calendar Girls" and of Celia Imrie holding up her iced buns!!!

What do you think?

I could hardly hold the camera up for laughing!!! In fact, I think you *may* be able to detect a teeny bit of camera shake!

Janey didn't know why I was sitting there hyperventilating into the table, so I just said, take a picture of me - and handed her the camera.

Her shoulders started to shake in that 'laughing so hard you make no noise' kind of way.

I felt really sorry for the people sitting near us as we sat there for about 10 minutes squeaking and squealing, trying not to laugh, but because all we could see of each other was a view with wine glass boobs, every time we looked across, we cracked up again! And this was BEFORE the 1st sip!

Totally brilliant!

I think I may have needed another glass!!!!!!

A quiet weekend in London #1

I'm not too big on public transport but I hate even more the thought of driving down the M1 late in the evening. So, Thursday found me sat on the 19.40 from Leeds to Kings Cross hoping that the person booked into the seat next to me wasn't going to get on at Wakefield! (They didn't!)

As it was the 1^st week in December and I'd not had time yet to write my Xmas cards, I'd decided that the train journey was going to be the ideal opportunity to sit down for an enforced writing session, and I prepared my addresses (labels) and Xmas greeting (a set of mini cards from MOO telling folks to read the blog rather than using up half a forest by printing out the usual round robin) in advance.

I got started before the train set off – I was so engrossed I hardly was aware of setting off or even the time! I kind of looked around every time I completed a pack of cards – one of 10, one of 15, one of 16! The numbers went up quickly In the end I'd completed 66 by the time I thought I was ready to stop! The time FLEW!

The tube to Ealing was nice and simple – Victoria and then Circle – so even though it was a late-ish start (19.40) and late-ish into Kings X (22.10) I was walking along the platform at Ealing Broadway just before 11pm really not bad at all!

Dan fixes stuff

As you can see from the pictures, here is Dan in 'fixing stuff' mode. Mum & Dad's lappy had a 'spontaneous massive existence failure' just like the Starship Titanic (get with the Douglas Adams quotes please!!)

So, last week, when they were over for a few days, he set to, and tried to work out what was going wrong.

As you can see from the sequence of photos, he starts off looking laid back but inquisitive. "Hmmmm what is going wrong here?"

In the next pic, he's already moved to the floor position - hunched. "This thing will not beat me!"


The final pic is a closeup - proper concentration!


What you can't see is that off camera, he's already taken the back off and has pulled bits out!


The good news about this is that he did get it fixed.


The bad news is that by the time M&D drove home, it was dead again!


Being a man of determined focus - this necessitated a trip to Bromborough the following weekend to finally put it right!!!