It's a New Year

HAPPY NEW YEAR to everyone - ok so I'm a day late, but I spent the day reading yesterday and didn't go near technology.

I'm quite disappointed I didn't reach my intended target of 100 posts by the end of 2010 but as I was running out of time, I didn't really have an awful lot to say and I didn't really want to write any more drivel than was necessary :-)

Ok so everyone talks about resolutions for the coming year but first I'm going to dig out and see what my resolutions were for 2010 and see if I managed to accomplish any of them:

1) Do more writing - well I did do a fair few assignments and definitely did more writing than the previous year so I will credit myself with this one I think :-)
2)Save more money - I also managed to do this - to some extent as I have made a few purchases also
3)Get more active - unfortunately I dramatically failed at this one. However, I do have an excuse...I mean reason - the chronic sinusitis caused me to become very lethargic and this time last year I wasn't really expecting it to last as long as it has (which unfotunately is still a problem?)
4) Eat less indulgently and cut back on the crap - I had ups and downs with this one, I was very good at times and terrible at others, something to work on harder!

There were a couple of personal ones too which I will say that I did have success with one but it didn't work out as planned, as for the other, I failed :-(

So new resolutions for the forthcoming year? To be honest I'm going to keep most of them the same:

1) Again, get more writing done - I've now switched to the fiction part of the course so I should be able to feel more focused and I'd like to dedicate some time per week to getting out the house to write where there are less distractions.
2) I know it's a long way off but I'd like to prepare for this year's NaNoWriMo and give it a bigger shot than I did last year.
3) Save more money - again I want to keep up with this and look around for the best deals with savings accounts
4) Get more active and lose weight - not something I can start immediately, need to wait until my foot is better but as for the losing weight bit, I can start with that - eat more fruit and veg, eat more healthily and stop eating for the sake of eating - get out of the habit of boredom eating.
5) Try and do as well as I can with the new cake decorating course I'm starting next week. I'm hoping to make my new baby niece's Christening cake (it'll be a few months, she's not due until March! But at least I can get some practice in!).
6) Try new things and take more chances
7) Keep baking and attempt proper food cooking also

Ok, I think that's well enough to be getting on with for now - ok one more to add - keep blogging! :-)

Let em know if you have any resolutions and maybe we can help each other to stick to them
Good luck and I wish you all the very best in reaching your dreams in 2011
xx

Spelling error

I came across another spelling error today - and once again on a menu! This time it was on an online menu for What's Cooking at the Albert Dock. This spelling mistake was only made once, that I noticed, and it wasn't a food item. Unfortunately I am unable to copy and paste the sentence in but it reads 'Children's Meals are suitalbe for children up to 11 years.' As you can see, the word 'suitable' has been misspelled, or there has been a mis-type. A simple mistake yes but one I wanted to mention (especially as I haven't noticed anything else out there for a while lol).

Restaurant Review - Viva Brazil, Castle Street, Liverpool

My friends and I went to the new Brazilian Restaurant that opened in Liverpool City Centre, Viva Brazil, for our annual Christmas meal.

The restaurant looks like it once used to be a bank, which is Liverpool is highly likely. The decor is simple and elegant and it was a lovely atmosphere to walk into.

This restaurant is a meat eaters heaven - waiters actually walk around with meat on sticks - ok so it's a little more elegant than that but in it's most simple form... :-) You pay a set price and this allows you to eat as much as you like from the salad bar, the traditional dishes and the meat - it is quite expensive but worth it in my eyes.

You initially go up to the salad bar to get your plate and get yourself something to go with the meat. They had plenty on offer - bread, cheesy bread, rice with onions and garlic (heavenly), vegetable lasagna, lettuce tomato, cucumber, pasta salad, amazing deep fried rice balls, a variety of dressings and many more options that I can't think of right now. At your table you have a circular disc (which resembles a coaster) that is red on one side, with the message 'no thanks' and green on the other, with the message 'yes please', indicating to the meat waiters that you do not/do want meat to be brought to you.

The waiter then proceeds to slice the meat at your table, while you use a metal pincher thing to transfer the meat to your plate. On this night we had plenty coming around to keep us from starving including chicken legs, chicken wrapped in bacon, gammon, caramelised pineapple, homemade sausages, beef and garlic beef - though even more is available (approx 15 meats per evening).

By the end of the night, I felt as though I wouldn't be able to move without bursting and that I would never eat again. I would highly recommend this restaurant to anyone and hope everyone gives it a try, it was amazing. I would give this restaurant a 9 out of 10, losing that last star because it is highly priced and the waiting staff could have been a little more attentive with drinks etc.

To go to the restaurant website click here

Christmas

Hello everyone

How has your Christmas been? Mine has been good but not quite what I was expecting. Originally my oldest brother and sister-in-law were supposed to be coming to visit from Sunday 19th December to Thursday 23rd but then pretty much everyone in our family got sick and they didn't want to catch anything which is fair enough. At the same time, my other sister-in-law Kirsten was taken into hospital with stomach pains, which they eventually learned was due to the new baby's head being stuck under Kirsten's ribs, causing some internal damage and infection. So not a very good time all around, not helped at all by the weather conditions.

My original plans of doing a 'baking present' for everyone ended up flying out the window, which is a shame cos I've bought loads of stuff and was really looking forward to doing it :-( but we were told that Stephen and Mandy might be coming up to visit on Boxing Day (today) but we got a lovely Christmas surprise when they rung and said they were coming up on Christmas Day, so our intended very quiet day turned into something a bit more jovial which was nice. Though it is a shame they will probably miss seeing Mike and Kirsten as they have gone to visit Kirsten's dad and will be travelling home the same day Stephen and Mandy will be leaving :-(

Unfortunately last night, things got worse...we were all rudely awakened about 4am to a cascade of water leaking through the bedroom light in the little room, spilling mostly all over Stephen and Mandy's clothes! Because it had jolted us out of sleep everyone was a bit groggy and kind of stared at the water for a minute then it became action stations and Stephen ran downstairs to get a bucket or something and ended up going flying in the kitchen as the water had all started leaking through the bedroom floor into the kitchen! Not something you need at 4am. We all chipped in and managed to get buckets in all the right places and towels to mop things up as best we could but we had to leave the clothes until this morning - and they have so far been spending the day in the tumble dryer.

I don't think 2010 will go down as the best Chrismtas ever but I suppose you can't say it was boring :-)

Writing update

Hello again

I've been having a think recently about my writing course and I think I'm going to abandon the non-fiction part of the course, for now at least, and move on to the fiction assignments. As I've said numerous times, I fnd non-fiction very difficult, especially when it comes to generating ideas, it just doesn't come naturally to me. There are a couple of assignments in non-fiction that I would be interested in doing - travel writing and photography but I am hoping to back and finish it all, if only to complete the whole course.

I think what made my decision was when I didn't really want to think about my assignment, because it was hard, I did have a couple of ideas but I couldn't get anything coherent onto the page. Plus, not being a magazine reader, I think, is a bit of a disadvantage as most magazines hold no interest for me and reading through them to find a market was a chore and also a drain on money!

I think this is the right decision for me and hopefully in 2011 I can be more creative :-)

Oh, by the way, I'm really hoping to reach 100 posts by the end of the month, for no other reason than it's a nice, large, round number to finish out the year with. Of course, this means more than one post a day to be able to reach my target, so apologies if any (more) drivel is churned out

Christmas cake - the taste test

So yesterday was my dad's birthday and I decided to use the Christmas cake as a birthday cake for him as he likes fruit cake and originially yesterday was supposed to be our first Christmas Day with Stephen and Mandy.
As it turned out we saw Michael, Kirsten and Ella yesterday as well as Kirsten was allowed out of hospital so they came to visit - more guinea pigs for the cake were my thoughts :-)

It seemed such a shame to cut into it and ruin how it looked, but it had to be done, so I cautiously cut into it and laid out slices for everyone, just waiting to hear the choking sounds from everyone. But everyone seemed to like the cake, myself included - especially as there was no candied peel to look out for! It was a little crumbly which my mum said can be prevented by baking it a couple of months in advance, so I may do that next year :-)

So all in all the cake was a success so I'm very pleased with that

Christmas Cake

As you all know, I have taken up baking cakes as a hobby this year which I am fully enjoying. So this year I decided to make my own Christmas cake and I finally put the finishing touches to it today. I initially made the cake at the beginning of December and I decided to wrap it up and leave the marzipan-ing, icing and decorating til nearer Christmas. I don't ordinarily like fruit cake much, mostly due to the glace cherries and candied peel (which is just disgusting) so making my own allowed me to improvise and remove items I disliked and include those I did - i.e. cranberries which I hope will make a nice addition and it remains very Christmassy.

So today I dragged the cake out of its hidey hole and got to work. I must say at this point I did cheat slightly and buy ready rolled marzipan and icing - I figured making and decorating the cake for this year was challenging enough. One thing I should have read carefully on the boxes though was the size of the cake they covered - 20cm and my cake is a larger 23cm - but I made the best of it without having to trek up to the shops through the snow for more.

Marzipan'd

For the marzipan, it doesn't matter so much about presentation as it will be covered with the icing. So firstly I placed the cake on the marzipan and cut around it, thereby producing the top - easy done. The next bit was a little harder as the remaining shape was like a crescent moon, when it would have been more ideal to be a long rectangular shape which could then be rolled around the side of the cake -but no such luck :-( I did the best I could and even shmooshed some of the marzipan together and rolled it out and cut it to the shape I wanted (ish). I then took all the marzipan off so I could stick it down with apricot jam! Despite these challenges, I managed to cover the entire cake - thereby finishing step one.

Iced

Now the next step was to be a little harder as there's no way you can just stick random pieces of icing all over the cake to plug little holes. In a very ungainly fashion I picked up the circular piece of icing and plonked it on top of the cake. the icing only reached part of the way down the sides of the cake, but I thought I'll deal with that later and get on with smoothing it out. So I tried smoothing it down but didn't find a good way to do it without causing some pleating but I did the best I could to smooth these pleats out. I managed to smooth the icing a bit further down the sides of the cake, leaving only a small amount of icing free cake at the bottom but I decided this was acceptable as no-one would really be looking at it from that angle anyway :-) Plus it's a first attempt, it's not really meant to look spectacular - I didn't want to show off and look like a pro my first time out :-p

Glittering

Next came the fun part - decorating! I had purchased some white holographic edible glitter to play the part of snow - and it played its part very well indeed and sparkles every time you move you head slightly. I then decided to make a little bit more icing and craft a snowman - my very first modelling attempt (I even bought black food colouring for the occasion!). I managed to do the head and the body (although to be fair, I'm sure a small child could do this). It was a little more tricky doing the small intricate bits like the eyes, nose and buttons. I firstly used my newly purchased black colouring to create the eyes and buttons, which I used more apricot jam to afix to the snowman. Now unfortunately I couldn't find any orange colouring so I made do with a mix of yellow and red which came out red. The nose was the most difficult part of it and I'm still not really happy with it - from certain angles it looks like big red lips haha :-) but never mind, it'll do, I couldn't do any better with the materials I had (couldn't possibly be down to my crap modelling skills hehe).

So starts the decorating...

The next thing to do was to add a variety of the Christmas style toppers that I purchased, along with others I was given for my birthday. Firstly I used a template and red glitter to put a lovely red bow on. I then added my inedible purchases to the middle of the cake - A Merry Christmas sign and 2 pieces of holly, as well as a cute little robin which I placed next to the snowman. From there on it was a case of putting lots of different things on the cake, hopefully in a fashion that made it look nice and not overcrowded - I did use some restraint. Also, in an attempt to disguise the missing icing, I places little toppers all around the side of the cake, hopefully drawing people's eyes towards them rather than the bottom of the cake!

The finished cake!

The finished product is to the left and below. I enjoyed every step of making the cake and will be doing it again next year. This cake was supposed to be seen and enjoyed (hopefully) by all my family this year (barring the Americans) but fate has worked against us and Stephen and Mandy never made it up due to everyone in the family being unwell and the weather didn't help either. Michael and Kirsten are also unwell - Kirsten is in hospital with suspected shingles, but they're not really sure. The baby seems to be doing ok though so that was good news. So it will be just me, mum and dad eating it on Christmas Day (probably), although Stephen and Mandy are hoping to come and visit from Boxing Day instead.

Close up

The side toppers

I hope everyone else's Christmas baking has gone to plan :-)