I started the bank holiday weekend a little early by taking the afternoon off work on Friday. I used the time to cook the ‘no knead bread’ I had started the night before and to go for a photowalk in Top Wood with Dave and the dogs. Gracie was in fine posing form and Maya was just having a brilliant time.

Later, for dinner, I made omelette with a goose egg and hen eggs I had got from my Mum. I added chard and thyme from the garden and we ate it with the bread I had just cooked. For pudding we had vanilla ice cream with stewed rhubarb that our neighbour gave us.

Saturday was spent knitting, walking the dogs, playing Frisbee with Dave and Gracie, tidying the house and eating tasty food. We had scrambled eggs (from Mum) and bacon (from Hillstown Farm Shop) for lunch. For dinner we had sausage and bean bake with a pile of buttered ‘no knead bread’.

On Sunday we went walking – a fine stroll, into the wind, along Portstewart Strand. Back at home we dozed, then we ate pasta with aubergine (cooked by Dave), then back to sleep.

Monday we took easy – I made oatcakes for lunch, which we ate with melted cheese and more of our bacon. It was a rainy day so we just went walking to Waterfoot Beach – nothing too strenuous. Then I visited my Granny. Later we had lightly smoked salmon, béarnaise sauce, mashed potatoes and puy lentils for dinner. All cooked by Dave and a marvellous job it was! I ate until I thought I would burst.

Last night I dreamt that there was something wrong with daylight – it was broken – and everything was the colour of a film negative but 3-dimensional.

So, that is what I have been up to. What is coming up is a week away in France, happy me! We leave on Saturday for a week in a wooden cabin in the Dordogne. Sadly, the dogs aren’t able to join us on this trip and will have to spend a week in the Leighinmohr Dog Hotel. On our return we will stop over in London for a night and maybe take in a few sights. I can’t wait!

· Examining my face up close
· Checking my diary for possible medical appointment dates
· Making an appointment to go see my dentist
· Looking at a world standard times map
· Staring into space – deep in thought

I’m sure there are better things I could have been doing – like working. I often complain that I do not have enough time to do all the things I want to do, but surely if I spent less time arsing around I would have all the time I need.

I decided that over the weekend I would make up for my time wasting by doing some stuff that I had been putting off for ages. I did the following -

· Repaired the worn out denim in one of my favourite denim jackets. I wouldn’t say that the result is in any way subtle, but I am happy.

· Finished a pair of Jaywalker socks that according to my Ravelry project stats were started in July 2007!!!

· Photographed various knitted items to update my Ravelry project details.

· Took photos of Dave for possible use on his new website.
· Made roast chicken with all the trimmings.

I am happy that I made good use of my time.

So, I have just had a week off work and it has been great. I could do with another month off just to get properly caught up with everything, but the week will have to do for now. There is so much that I had hoped to get done that I didn’t get around to (sorry I didn’t get to visit my Granny – I blame the ice!)

While I have been off work, Dave has been away scuba diving in the Red Sea. I think he will get a bit of a shock when he gets home to the big freeze. I am off now to make a big batch of buns for his welcome home. We missed him terribly.

Also on the menu is pizza, which I must now assemble.

Update:

Both pizza and cake were yummy.

I’m finding it increasingly difficult to wake up in the morning. Especially Mondays. I like to wait until I’m sure that the sun is up, too, and that he’s got his hat on.

I made the chocolate whiskey ice cream and it is delicious. Cousin S didn’t want to offend me by telling me that it tasted just like Murphy’s ice cream, then I told her that is was the Murphy’s ice cream recipe.

D didn’t mean to offend Cousin S on Saturday night when he asked her if she had a man in her life and asked her her height and weight, but a paranoid person could have thought that he was calling her a fat, lesbian dwarf.

I think it is marvellous that they share some of their recipes. People can be so precious about these things.

Well, I hope the recipes keep my ice cream maker (a Christmas gift) very busy. So far I have made plain vanilla ice cream and last night I made Malteser ice cream for Hannah.

The malteser ice cream is as follows -

250ml milk
250ml cream (I used double)
5 egg yolks
105g caster sugar
2 tablespoons Horlicks
2 small packets of Maltesers, crushed

Put milk and cream in a pan and heat until nearly boiling.

Beat egg yolks, sugar and horlicks together in a bowl.

Add half the milk and cream to the egg mixture and beat together, add this to the remaining milk and cream in the pan and cook over a low heat until the custard has thickened.

Cool the custard completely, then freeze according to ice cream maker instructions, adding crushed Maltesers to the bowl along with the custard.

I hope Hannah likes it!

I am typing one-handed as a small dog is lying, softly snoring, on my lap with her head resting on my left wrist. She can quite often be found on my lap when I am at the computer. She is also very fond of lap lying while I am knitting.

This week I won the top prize in our local community group’s Christmas raffle, a food hamper. It has been ages since I’d won anything in a raffle. I recall winning a pie dish and a packet of biscuits in a raffle in the Protestant Hall when I was a wee girl, the pie dish became our official Shepherds Pie dish. I loved Shepherds Pie.

We always enter the community group’s raffles but have never won anything. Then there was that raffle I entered in the pub near Auntie T’s last summer, where everybody in the pub walked out with a prize (or 2!) and I got nothing. I think what I am trying to say is that I am not normally blessed with any luck in raffles.

So, I’m pretty chuffed!

D had a birthday this week; we went out for dinner at the Blackstone (starters were a bit dodgy, but mains were delish), then home for pudding – Chocolate Guinness Cupcakes. They were every bit as good as the full sized cake but in a handy paper case.

Only thing is, if there are only two people in the house don’t make the full quantity of cake. I wound up with 24 buns!

Serves 2

Based on Mushroom Risotto from How to Eat by Nigella Lawson

30g Butter
1 tbsp olive oil
1/2 onion, finely chopped
1/2 jar dried wild mushrooms (about 15-20g), rehydrated in hot water for about 20 mins
180g arborio risotto rice
60ml white wine or marsala (optional)
750ml hot stock, including mushroom soaking liquid
3 tbsp parmesan

Cook the onion in half the butter and all the oil for a few minutes. Add the drained and chopped mushrooms and stir for another minute. Stir in the rice. Add the alcohol and cook until the wine has reduced by half, then pour in a ladleful of stock.

Let the risotto simmer gently, adding another ladleful or two each time the liquid is absorbed into the rice. Continue to add stock in this manner for about 20 minutes or until the rice is cooked (when the rice is tender but retains some bite). Add the remaining butter and the parmesan.

On our first day we went to the Camera Obscura, St Gile’s Cathedral and then Lupe Pintos Deli. We took our time and took plenty of photographs. Later we ate in the Bombay Bicycle Club, which was good, but not super scrummy. D has been farting ever since and it is not pleasant. Afterwards, we went to the Cameo cinema, where we watched Control. It was a very good film, very moving. I doubt there was a dry eye in the room at the end.

Yesterday we ate eggs for breakfast and then headed to Holyrood Park in order to climb Arthur’s Seat. The views were, as expected, wonderful. We got a good clear day. From there we walked down to Duddingston Village, where we hopped on a bus and went to Portobello beach. We ate lunch in the Dalriada Pub on the promenade; D had Cullen Skink and I had hummus. Further down the beach I lost my Canonet lens cap and had to run around looking for it, fortunately it turned up.

We went to the amusement arcade as I fancied a go on the slots – damn things get you hooked and make it very difficult to leave. I was trying very hard to get myself a lollipop, but a wee boy next to me gave me a packet of Haribo chews as I was having no luck. Outside the amusements I discovered that I had lost the lens cap of my DSLR. A quick retrace of our steps and it turned up.

Next we jumped on a bus to get to Calton Hill. We had a quick detour in John Lewis so I could ogle some yarn. Up on Calton Hill I took some photos, my last being of D with the columns behind him. Then I walked a short distance to take some more shots, only to find that I had lost my lens cap again. I retraced my steps, but in the couple of minutes since losing it and realising it was gone someone must have picked it up. I felt pretty stupid having lost a lens cap three times in one day. So my photographs suffered from an inattentive photographer.

We raced to Jessops to buy a new lens cap.

For dinner we ate in Viva Mexico. It was very nice. I didn’t have time to finish my choc chili cheescake as we had booked ourselves on the Mercat Tours Ghosthunter Trail. It started at 10 pm and took us into the Edinburgh Vaults and then to Canongate Cemetery. It is Halloween after all! The Vaults themselves were interesting, our guide, Black Agnes, was very good and put on a good show. Fortunately, I am not a believer in ghosts so I had no reason to feel spooked. The cemetery was lovely; the moon was out and the night was mild. One of the best things was getting to see all the people out in the city in their Halloween costumes.

It wasn’t until I went to bed that I started to think about all the ghost stories and get a bit scared. I pulled the duvet over my head so that nothing could get me.