Home alone...

Today Ben, the cats and I have had a lovely time at home together.  D is at Silverstone so we have had the house to ourselves which is such an unusual treat for me.  In the week I'm at work, and at the weekend we're either out and about, or I'm out or shopping etc etc etc so today has been a really nice change.  I got most of the shopping yesterday with just a brief trip to the 24 hour Tesco very early today.  Then after D had gone I got the boring stuff out of the way and cleaned the kitchen.  After stopping for this...

...I chopped up some carrot, swede, potato, and leek, cooked them for a few minutes in the frying pan then threw them with some vegetable stock into this...

...which is my tiny, new slow cooker, ideal for one or two servings, and which I got for the bargain price of £3.99.  The result was that after I'd liquidised it, I ended up with the most delicious Winter Vegetable Soup for lunch.

Then in between watching a few episodes of StarTrek: Voyager (with the Borg in them), I made some cupcakes and then put a bramley apple filled with sultanas, spices and some sugar into the slow cooker as an experiment.

As well as making some of the tried and trusted Gingerbread Cupcakes, I became adventurous and tried these, which are Chocolate Orange Cupcakes. I then became very ambitious and put Orange Buttercream Frosting on top.

If D gets back in time tonight, and if I haven't had a glass of wine or two by then and fallen asleep... we're thinking of going to see The Secret in Their Eyes at Warwick Arts Centre.  It's a Spanish film and won this year's Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.

Oh yes, and Pod has Cat of the Week this week for her exemplary behaviour at the vets yesterday.  She had a sore ear and also had to go for her thyroid check (she's fine and has put on weight as well so the tablets must be the right dose).  She's also got tablets for a skin irritation which should hopefully clear up in a week of two.  Of course the day after she went to the vets is when she started limping on the leg that the cyst is on.  Apparently the tablets for her skin should help with this... so we shall see.  At the moment she couldn't care less and is fast asleep on the basket, the now rather flat basket, that the cat toys are kept in.

Another piece of news that has please me is that the BBC have filmed Patrick Stewart in the Macbeth we saw him in at Chichester.  It was a wonderful production and I can't wait to see it again.  Perhaps they'll show it as Christmas like they did with the RSC's Hamlet last year?  Something to look forward to anyway...

Bank Holiday Monday

As D reminded me this morning, it's the last Bank Holiday before Christmas.  Ho ho ho.  Something of a lazy day really, we went to the World Peace Cafe at the Meditation Centre for lunch and were yet again ignored by the resident cat.  Lunch was very nice anyway, and to make up for the fact that I not only ate D's chocolate that came with our coffee, but also his olives, I made him some more gingerbread cupcakes when we got home.  Photo-wise I only managed a couple of flower photos in our tiny front garden, as well as one or two in the grounds at Kelmarsh.  Oh well, back to work tomorrow it is...

Cupcakes!

There seems to be a cupcake obsession going on at the moment so I decided to join in.  D bought me this:

There is nothing to not like about this book...

As I hadn't tried any recipes from it yet, this week I was determined to make something.  I read how nice the Gingerbread Cupcakes were on Scottish Vegan Homemaker's old blog so decided to have a go.  I omitted the topping as this was a trial run but the cakes were delicious anyway, as verified by D.  The two main things I learned from baking these are that it is hard to measure golden syrup (apparently an ice-cream scoop helps), and that the remnants of raw cake mixture left in the bowl taste very nice.  I'm taking some of the cakes to work for our coffee break but won't mention the word v*gan until they've been eaten! 

Result!

Better late than never...

Seems ages since I posted anything, mainly because it is ages since I posted anything! We've still been keeping up with the walking - Cath and I now do cross county at Bradgate Park on a Sunday.  The first time we did it my glutes and quads were so stiff the next day I felt as if I'd repelled the north face of K2.  Thankfully it's got better since then. 

Finally got to go to Ironbridge - lovely place and didn't realise it wasn't that far from where we live

Crochet-wise, I made a pom-pom cushion and started on a shrug and a capelet

And I finally finished the throw for the sofa in the study...

I even cooked something!! Made some chilli jam which is a relish with a bit of a kick...

...and some ginger cookies.  D was so amazed he took a photo of them.  They were all meant to be stars but I got bored so also turned out a couple of pumpkins and a bat...