So I went away and forgot to say adios for a few weeks. You mightn’t be able to tell, but it’s Summer in the UK. I’m Up North and the minute I left the sun shone proudly on London. It rained up here. It always rains up here. Still, it’s nice, and I got a haircut (it only took a year), and I get to see family and do holiday things like eat mum’s stash of Cookie Dough Haagen Daz (sp??). Nomm. Off camping, too. Please, Mr Sunshine, be kind.
See you after hols!
An advert taken from the back pages of “Home Notes” Complete Cookery
Is it a bit sad to love foam sheets? They come in such beautifully saturated colours and a pile of them is very happy-making indeed.
I dug into my foam sheet stash to make the kiddy mask I mentioned before for a masked party. It was a fun little craft with my girly who is too young to wield scissors and glue, but not too young to luuuuurve stickers, or “stickies” as they are now known in our pad.
Want to make one too? Click the pic to see it without your magnifying glass!
See? Easy! All you need:
1 red foam sheet
1 black foam sheet
Double sided sticky tape or craft glue – my fave is the tape (it’s not messy, it’s just like sticking a proper sticker down which my toddler loves with all her heart and it’s nice and secure without all that annoying waiting around to dry)
1 wooden or plastic spoon (by all means use a lollipop stick/drinking straw/ stick from the garden etc)
2 eyes (buttons or felt shapes would do)
2 pieces of matching ribbon (optional)
Cut out the shapes beforehand (I hope the photos help). For this I sketched my shape (using her face dimensions for the main face piece which is the big black shape) and went from there. I suppose an older child could manage cutting out their own shapes if pre-drawn onto the foam.
Staple or stick the ribbons (if using) to the either side of the black face shape.
Stick the shapes down in this order: large black face shape- 2 red wing shapes- black dots.
Using a craft knife, cut out eye holes. Don’t do this from the front as I did: it makes for a very untidy cutout. Whoops.
Stick the eyes on and the handle to the back and you’re done!
Can you imagine inventing a bakery item which then takes off in a big way? I’d like to introduce you to Bakerella who actually invented the Cake Pop. You’ve seen them, right? They’re all over the place these days, including Starbucks counters. They’re rather the phenomenon, much like Bakerella’s special blog.
image from Bakerella.com
Bakerella puts so much effort into creating her tiny treats and possibly more into photographing them- it takes such a lot of patience and skill to produce pictures that make you wish you had a Wonka television. Just reach out your hand and grab one of those wonderful creations…
So very worth a quiet half hour of browsing- you’ll be hooked!
I love the Harry Potter-ish sound to Borwick’s Baking Powder. Can’t you imagine Molly Weasley using it in her baking?
We went camping on our usual second bank holiday weekend in May and opted for a closer- than-usual site to avoid holiday traffic. A great find! Town Farm is a sheep farm (they have over a thousand sheep!) which the family have owned since the 1930′s. The farmer is so friendly and efficient- it’s a new site but it was run like clockwork and not hard to stay there at all. Lovely views of the Ashridge Estate and of the valley on either side and not too crammed in- he makes sure everyone gets a view! There’s a nice little walk to the local pub too which is always welcome (especially when it’s as windy as it was… brrr!) Not many pics, sadly- we were concentrating on keeping warm, looking after kiddies and drinking red wine around the fire of an evening!
Toasting marshmallows round the fire- we made ours! It’s a lot of fun to make marshmallows (if you’re that way inclined). Our recipe is from the River Cottage Family Cookbook- you can view it on their site here.
I like ginger. I like fudge- well, tablet. I likey ginger fudge a lot. This recipe is slightly adapted from the Honey Fudge Recipe in the River Cottage Family Cookbook (if I go about that one a lot, it’s only because it’s so wicked). Basically it’s any tablet (or Scottish tablet) recipe with some ginger powder added (mine was added at the end during the stirring stage, to taste) and chopped preserved ginger sprinkled over the top. Made this for my handsome “little” ginger brother for his birthday, because gingers need to top their powers up now and again.
I mentioned yesterday that I’ve been enjoying reading the Cooking with My Kid blog. This was a direct inspiration for a little series I’d like to post up occasionally about cooking with my own cutie. Such a good idea to be able to catalogue things you’ve done with the kids before- the projects always seem to get forgotten somehow- so I’m hoping that this’ll help to jog the old memory on rainy days!
We had bananas and we needed muffins, so I found this Nigella Lawson Chocolate Banana Muffins recipe on her website. A mixed response: cutie and I loved making and eating these, Mr Enthusiast not so much. More for me then! Okay, they’re not going to win Richest Cake Prize, but they are comforting and they rose beautifully. And any recipe where a child gets to mash and mix is a good one in my view (which I’ll admit is limited to six months of her prodding ingredients and stuffing uncooked foodstuffs into her mouth at regular intervals- so not a lot of experience so far).
I always but always wanted to do a lot of cooking with my rugrats. Now I have one and we do plenty of baking and cooking together (although mostly at her age it’s feeling and poking ingredients, unless it’s chocolate in which case it goes straight in le mouth) in the hopes that she’ll be happy to try nearly anything without getting the heeby-jeebies. I was doing a bit of poking round the interwebs with this in view and found a wonderful blog, Cooking with my Kid. There are nice touches like the Savory Sitter series (which utterly grabbed me with the Dessert Sushi idea. You have to check it out) for babysitter friendly food and Meatless Mondays for, well, family friendly veggie meals.
I’d like to start a new little series called “Old Timey”. I have a few bits and pieces knocking about that are old and cool and I’d like to share. See you here Tuesday’s for old stuff!
Welcome to A Bit Of An Enthusiast, my home on the web. I get really rather enthusiastic and caught up in things which is how we came to this point. Some of what I've tried out lands here so feel free to have a nose around, try projects, click linkies and comment. I mainly post about food and crafty projects.
