B is for Beautiful

I often like to pretend that no one I know actually reads this blog thing and that it is more of anonymous bit of whinging and reminiscing. Though more and more I'm realizing that most everyone who knows me in the real world has tracked this blog down (though you never comment! eh hem!) and I thought it was time I actually acknowledged that you're probably interested in what I've really been up to. Not all this making this and baking that mumbo jumbo.

So here's a photo my sister sent me recently that has knocked my socks off. How gorgeous are they?! Does anyone else find it a little strange that Zoe looks more like me than my sister does?

What else can I tell you? I'm leaving tomorrow for Tucson - Woo Hoo! I'll be there through the 1st and then head off to Seattle to catch up in a long overdue trip to my old stomping grounds. There's an old school BBQ revival planned, so if anyone got missed in the e-vites, please contact me and get yerself over there on Friday night!!

My surgery went well, I'm recuperating for the most part though a bit achy breaky here and there and, quite frankly, amazed by the amount of sunshine poo one girl can produce. That's right, I'm talking about my bowel movements online. AGAIN. Geesh. Sunshine poo, I mean it, it's bright yellow. It's amazing. I guess that's where all the bile goes without a gallbladder to store it in anymore....? I'm finding that I can eat foods that I haven't been able to eat in years. Tomatoes? Oh yeah! Cheese? Yum. Carrots, peas, pineapple and grapes? So far so good! It's a liberation of sorts. Can't wait to hit the mexicana cucinas in Tucson and have salsa and guacamole for the first time in years! Yee Haw!

Bisbee is also making a strong recovery. Crazy Legs has begun joining us in bed at night again and is stretching out in front of the fire in the evenings instead of hiding under beds or refusing to leave the safety his cage. We hope to let him back out to freedom when we return from our trip. A big thanks to Zoe next door for looking out for him while we're gone.

Things will probably be quiet on the blog for a couple of weeks, though I will try to post a postcard or two. And I'm afraid I've sort of fallen behind with project 52. The week in the hospital and the last week of house-arrest have kept me away from our dear oak tree. Now that I'll be abroad for the next couple of weeks I'm afraid I'll completely miss out the spring time exuberance of the oilseed rape fields in the background. But I'll make an effort to get a photo at least once a month from here on out......

So long. xx Bee

The Road To Recovery

After spending a week in the hospital, an emergency gallbladder surgery and an 'interesting' national health service experience, I cannot begin to tell you how grateful I am to be laying prone on my sofa in my own sunny living room with a whole day of George Clooney to look forward to on Film4 this afternoon. Wow, what a week! I had a 4 mm stone blocking my bile duct and causing all manner of chaos in my body. They say gallstones are as painful as child birth - I appreciate you mamas out there all the more now. It's absolutely astonishing how something so small, merely 4 mm, not even a 1/4 inch, not even a garden pea, maybe a lentil? can cause so much trouble! I really appreciate the way my body works in harmony with itself most of the time, it really doesn't take much to throw it off track. Geno said this morning that seeing me in hospital has made him vow to himself to get his body back into tip top shape, so at least there's a positive out of all this suffering.

My road to recovery is paved with Arizona red rock. We've been planning a trip to see my family in Tucson next week and it's been most worrysome that this little stone might have put our holiday in jeopardy. But, I think if I can manage the flight - thankfully it's direct! - I'll recover poolside in the Arizona sunshine and leave the miserable English April showers behind! See ya later, alligators!

'My Baby's Gonna Make A Mint' Chocolate Chip Cupcakes

He did it! He passed his final exam! For the past three years, the G has spent all manner of spare time studying for his accountancy exams. CIMA to be exact, which is international management accounting which is different, er... somehow. I'm no expert, but my baby's got letters after his name now! Woo Hoo!

To celebrate, what else but cupcakes!

'My Baby's Gonna Make A Mint' Chocolate Chip Cupcakes

for the cupcakes
2 cups / 225 g cake/self-raising flour
4 tbsp cocoa powder
1 tsp baking powder
2 cups / 225 g sugar
1 cup / 225 g butter
4 eggs
3 1/2 oz (100g) chocolate chips

for the icing
1/2 cup / 115 g butter
2 cups/ 225 g confectioners/icing sugar
1/2 tsp peppermint essence
green food coloring
3 1/2 oz chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 325 F/ 160 C. Place paper baking cases in muffin tins. In a medium bowl sieve the flour, cocoa, and baking powder. Set aside. Beat the sugar and butter together in a large bowl until smooth. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition until the mixture light and glossy. Add the flour mixture gradually, stirring until well combined. Stir in the chocolate chips. Spoon the mixture into the cases and fill about 3/4 of the way. Bake for 20 minutes or until a poker comes out clean. Allow the cupcakes to cool in the tin for about 5 minutes before removing to a rack.

Meanwhile, get started on the icing. Mmmm, icing. Beat the butter and icing sugar in a small bowl until smooth and the sugar is no longer lumpy. Stir in the peppermint and just enough food coloring to turn the icing a mint green. Decorate with chocolate chips or other implements of chocolate destruction.

Store without icing in an airtight container for up to 3 days, or freeze for up to 3 months!

For variations try these....

For Superbad Super Minty cupcakes, try using crumbled chocolate mints in the cake batter, like After Eights or Andes, those hotel pillow mints.

For something really crazy, how about chocolate orange minty cupcakes? Break a chocolate orange and crumble it into the cake batter or on top of the icing.

Did you notice our new kitchen fish? Introducing Moby Snoop Fish!! He's got his mind on his money and his money on his mind.

Sorry he's so blurry, but he's really fast. Really.

Ice Ice Baby

(He has snow on his head) We woke up at 4 am. I had a tummy ache, but couldn't get back to sleep because there was 6 inches on snow on the ground! Exciting! We went for an early morning walk when everything is still so quiet and the snow has dampened all sound. We wrote secret messages in the snow, we threw snowballs and trees, road signs and each other, we followed animal tracks and imagined ourselves antarctic explorers. We got back to the house by 7:30, G watched match of the day and we promptly fell asleep in front of the tv until noon. Afterall, that's what Sundays are made for.

Project 52 (13 of 52)

What's all this about April showers then? What's with the snow?

Notes from a kitty prison and a recipe for cheeky monkey banana bread

Bisbee's always been a little bit rock n roll. He lives fast and he lives large, climbing trees, walking narrow fencelines, hunting mice and birds, opening doors and cupboards around the house and helping himself to the fridge any chance he gets to sneak in under the radar, and racing up and down the stairs like he's the fastest cat in the world. So it was not unexpected that kitty cat lock down would bring with it a little bit of depression.

Week 2 from kitty prison and Bisbee's lost nearly a kilo! That's 10% if his body weight! We expected a little bit of weight loss with the not being as active and losing some muscle tone, but he's really becoming a bag of bones and turning his kitty nose up at everything we offer. So the two of us are trying all manner of temptation to get the little bugger to eat. We sing songs, we get him to purr and purr with brushing and stroking his golden locks, we give him a room with a view and keep the bird feeder topped up so he has lots to see, we play with string and feathers toys, we offer cheese and butter and tuna juice and chicken broth. We heat food in the microwave, we give him the dregs from our cereal bowl (a former favorite), we boil chicken, we bake salmon, we make a pate' of a/d and catlax (because, oddly, he loves cat lax) and that, so far, seems to be the only thing that works, but one can't survive on catlax alone. Do you have any kitty cat temptation ideas? Recipes?

Vets and vet nurses on the other hand are a bit easier to please. And as a token of appreciation and thanksgiving, I whipped up a bit banana bread on behalf of our cheeky monkey, Bisbee. The vets were especially great considering that we weren't registered with them and we came in at 5:30 as they were closing with a cat with a broken leg. They didn't even bat an eye, got us in at the first opportunity and treated us with kindness. It makes all the difference in the world to be treated kindly and openly when you experience a stressful event like a kitty cat emergency.

This recipe is a favorite since we're constantly running up a glut of bananas that need eating. It takes one weekend away (or attack of choleangitis and the accompanying inappetence) and you have more browning bananas than you can shake a stick at. This recipe is so easy, you don't even need a mixer for it, it's a one bowl wonder!

Cheeky Monkey Banana Bread

3 or 4 over-ripe bananas - smashed
1/3 cup melted butter
1 cup sugar (can easily reduce to 3/4 cup)
1 egg, beaten
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp baking soda
1 tbsp cinnamon
1 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp mixed spice
pinch of salt
1 1/2 cup all-purpose/plain flour

Preheat the oven to 350F (175 C), butter a 4 x8 inch loaf pan.

In a large mixing bowl, add the melted butter to the mashed bananas and mix well with a wooden spoon. Mix in the sugar, egg, and vanilla. Sprinkle the baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg and mixed spice over the mixture and stir in. Add the flour last, a spoonful at a time, and mix in. Pour batter into a loaf pan and bake for 45 minutes to an hour or until a wooden toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. Cool on a rack and enjoy with a steaming cup of morning coffee.

Want to see other recipes from the Queen Bee? Click here, or here, and here, or here and even here.

K is for Karma

Something my dad said once has always stuck. I was having a particularly unlucky day and called him up with tales of radiator leaks and of locking myself out of the house in my bathrobe. He said that whenever you feel a bit of bad karma coming on it was time to pull the covers up over your head and lay low for a couple of days until things blow over. Man, I should've listened.

First, Bisbee had a mishap and ended up with a broken pelvis. We're not sure if he was hit by a car or fell from a tree or rooftop or what. He didn't have as much as a scratch on him, other than a small puncture wound on his left hip. The x-rays showed he has a fracture on the right side of his pelvis, so maybe he fell and got hung up on a nail or a branch on the way down. So that means 8 weeks of cage rest for the Bisbee.The very next day, I ended up in hospital with....wait for it..... gall stones. Can you believe it? I thought that was only for the elderly or somebody other than me. It's a bit miserable, truth be told. I'm not sick enough to have an emergency operation, but I'm sick enough to be off work for a week. People say it's as painful as labor pains, I wouldn't know for sure but I can't say that it's pleasant to wake up at 3am with a woodpecker boring out your liver. On the bright side, it means I may finally have an answer to why I've had so many digestive problems over the past year. And I've had some time to work on this new doodle and get my hands dirty in the garden.

Project 52 (12 of 52)

Can you see that first glimpse of spring in the background? There's just a blaze of yellow starting up in the rapeseed field in the distance. Disgusting name, but pretty flowers. The whole county will be overflowing with golden rolling hills in a week or two and it always makes me want to dress up in a bumblebee costume and sing Blind Melon songs.

P.S. Did you know that's where canola oil comes from? Rapeseed oil was first marketed in the States from Canada - Can-ola, get it?