Me on Monday

What's the worst way to start a half term holiday?  With a 9.15am dentist appointment.  What was I thinking?  I don't like dentists and that dislike goes back a long way.  In fact the first time I ever remember really getting told off related to the dentist. 

When I was little, the local dentist operated out of an old house near to where we lived.  The ground floor was a surgery and he lived upstairs.  It was old and it was cold and it was creepy.  He had an assistant called 'Miss Lawrence'.  She wore a long white lab coat and had crepe soled sensible shoes that squeaked on the linoleum as she walked down the hallway to take you from the waiting room to the surgery.  You sat there in the silent waiting room and you heard the squeak, squeak, squeak of her approaching.  The door would open and you would hear 'Deborah ...'  She was Scottish and she pronounced it 'Dee Bore Ah' it still gives me the creeps!  The dentist, Mr Holdsworth, was (in a small girl's eyes) ancient and scary.  He didn't really speak to you and just called things out to Miss Lawrence as he poked around in your mouth with a very sharp instrument.  His policy towards teeth was 'if in doubt - fill it' and therefore all the local children ended up with a lot of fillings!  It wasn't until I got married and moved out of town that I discovered that most other dentists gave injections to numb your mouth when they did treatments - we had to 'grin and bear it' at our surgery.  
So how did I get into trouble?  Well, my mum used to have a small wallhanging in the kitchen that you could write on and then wipe off and she used to use it as a memo board/shopping list.  I can still see it, there was a Mabel Lucy Attwell picture and a short poem:

When you're going shopping

You really should insist

That when you're running short of things

They're put down on this list.

'Twill save a lot of time in town

If everything is jotted down.
Well, one day I saw something awful written on that board.  Can't remember the date but it was something like 3 April - Dentist.  Now I knew that I would NOT want to spend the 3rd of April at the dentist so I changed it.  I added a '1' to the front so it said 13 April - Dentist.  So when Miss Lawrence rang Mum on the 4th of April to find out why we hadn't turned up, my little freckled face glowed bright red as I had to admit what I'd done.  Oh boy was I in trouble! REAL trouble because not only had I embarrassed my mum, she said I would have to apologise in person to Mr Holdsworth myself.  Talk to that scary man?  That big man with the deep scary voice and the pointy sharp things?  I was so scared.  Fortunately Miss Lawrence saw the funny side of it but I learnt a valuable lesson that day, no matter how scared you are of the dentist, you do HAVE to go! Anyhow, I've escaped unscathed from my appointment and don't have to go through that stress for another 6 months so all is good.  But talking of scary things ...

It's halloween this week and the lady who runs my Fitsteps class has decided we should dress up for a spooky exercise class - so I've been thinking about what I'm going to wear and my Me on Monday photo looks like this  
 

 

Not sure how long the hat will stay on but it's a start!

We managed to extend our weekend again by starting on Friday night with a family gathering with my sister and brother in law so it was a homemade curry night, sorting out who's going where for Christmas, quilt sewing, Strictly Come Dancing watching, extra hour in bed as we left British Summer Time for Greenwich Mean Time, delicious Sunday lunch at a friend's house, sorting out problems with the TV and saying goodbye to our neighbours opposite as they prepared to move out today. 

Me on Monday - a brilliant idea from Sian



Me on Monday

It was a homes and gardens projects weekend here. A plan to cut the lawn for the last time this year was scuppered when the lawn mower decided that it had had enough, fizzled and died. A plan to redecorate the downstairs toilet (2 years after the first 'shall we redo the loo' thought was voiced) ended up with a couple of trips to the local Homebase store. It was a wallpaper ordering, paint purchasing,  lawnmower buying, wallpaper stripping, tile removing, patchwork quilt squares cutting, dog walking, slow roast shoulder of pork cooking, panettone bread and butter pudding baking kind of weekend. 

So I've done my half day at work, and have to go back again later for 'safeguarding' training (which always upsets me when we have to discuss true case studies of at risk children) and just to make this Monday even less enjoyable, I have an afternoon with this ...

Because I cannot put off the evil task of clearing the ironing pile any longer. Unless I look to see if there's a puppy that's in need of a walk ... 

How's your Monday shaping up? I think that instead of just waving to Sian who organised the Me on Monday idea, I'm going to pop round and visit to see if any of her secret recipe fudge/tablet is left.

Bake off memories and a recipe

I'm already missing the Great British Bake Off (for those outside the UK, it's a cookery programme with 12 amateur cooks being challenged to bake cakes, breads and pastries with one person being sent home at the end of each week).  My English teacher at school always told us to never use 'nice' in a story.  We always had to find another word, but 'nice' exactly sums up the ethos of the programme.  There's no back-biting, no one saying anything unpleasant about the other contestants and the worst controversy was somone removing an icecream out of a freezer or using someone else's custard!

 

So because I am missing it, I've been baking myself.  Let me share what I've been making - my version of Mary Berry's cherry cake.  I can't use her recipe because her cake tin is way bigger than mine and if you do try it, you will end up with an overflowing tin and enough mixture to make a dozen cupcakes too.  Mine involves a 21cm ring tin and it ends up looking like this:

 

Are you ready?  Then rifle through your cupboards and get your ingredients out:

 

200g glace cherries

180g self raising flour

100g Stork margarine or similar (Mary will, of course be using butter!)

100g caster sugar

25g ground almonds

2 large eggs

1 lemon

120g icing sugar

 

Pre-heat your oven to 180C and prepare your tin.  You need to grease the inside of your tin.  As I'm on Slimming World at the moment (yes you are still allowed cake!) I have cans of Fry Light for cooking and they are fab to grease cake tins as you can get a good light spray all over. Just be careful to use the sunflower one or the olive oil one.  BBQ or garlic flavour will not enhance your cake!

 

Rinse your cherries under water and dry.  Put about 4 aside for decoration and cut the others into quarters.  Put them in a bowl with a tablespoon of flour and make sure they are all coated.  Mary would tell you that this stops them sinking through the cake mixture and all ending up in one end of the cake.

 

Cream the margarine and sugar together until the mixture is soft, then add the eggs, almonds, flour and grated rind of the lemon.  It will be quite a firm mixture but don't worry, that's how it should be.  Stir in the chopped cherries.  Spoon the mixture into the tin, spread it evenly and put in oven for about 30 mins.  Check it at 25 mins just in case your oven cooks hotter than mine.  At this point you can crouch on the floor, peering into the oven door, watching it gently brown, just like they do in the programme.  If it's golden brown all over, firm to touch and a skewer poked into the centre comes out clean, it's done. 

 

Don't be too keen to remove it from the tin.  Ring cakes need to be treated with respect, or they will refuse to come out in one piece and you're left with a cake of two halves.  (What makes you think this is the voice of experience talking?) So let it cool down for about 5 - 10 mins, gently run a knife around the outer and the inner edge, then cross your fingers, hold your breath and turn it out onto a cooling tray.  And breathe.  It's out and ready to cool down to decorate.

 

Have you waited until the cake is quite cool?  OK, you're ready to go.  Mix the juice of the lemon into the icing sugar and gently pour the icing over the cooled cake, letting it drip down the sides.  Remember where you put those reserved cherries?  Go and get them, cut them in half and add around the top. 

 

Stand back and admire your finished work of art.  Can you wait until the icing is properly set?  No, me neither, let's put the kettle on and while the tea's brewing we'll have a slice.  Thank goodness Paul Hollywood can't see the state of my kitchen, he'd be giving me the glare.  You know the one. 

 

 

Me on Monday - Take Two

Don't you just love blogger? You start a post, you save a post, you edit a post, you save the edits, you open the post again and it's gone.  So, with gritted teeth and a determined smile I bring you Me on Monday - again.

Monday sees two of the family with clean, freshly styled fur. There's me

And there's you know who 

It's really horrible here today, rain, rain and oh look, it's still raining.  How was your weekend? Ours was relaxed. We were out Friday night until 1am and I'm far too old for late nights/early mornings, it took ages to get my act together on Saturday. But then there were hair cuts, shopping trips, Strictly Come Dancing watching, debates about whether or not Donny Osmond has had Botox (probably) and if he either dyes his hair or wears a wig (definitely one, possibly the other), lazy Sunday lunches with prosecco, choosing a design for the next friendship quilt block, making it, realising it was slightly too small and having to make another, and finishing my book. (Until you're mine by Samantha Hayes. Wow! What a page turner!)

Giving a big wave to Sian who had the great idea to share Me on Monday posts. Are you doing one too? Why not? Pah! That's no excuse. Stop what you're doing, take a quick photo, share it on your blog and join in. In the famous words of Take That 'it only takes a minute ...'

One photo and twenty words

Me wearing trainers and joggers on a Thursday night means I've run out of excuses not to go to Fitsteps.

 

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Giving a wave to Abi who organised this monthly meme, along with my apologies for being a day late!

 

Topless in a car park

Also known as Me on Monday, the brain child of Sian.

It's Monday:

Yes I was topless in a car park.

Yes it was chilly.

Yes it was for a good reason.

I don't know if it's the same where you live but in this area women are called for breast screening every 3 years once you get to 50.  There is a specialist hospital north of here that sends mobile units out to local hospitals. They park in the car park and inside it's a fully functioning x ray department.  We did have a light hearted discussion at work where I said that as they have building works going on there at the moment, I hoped I wouldn't accidentally wander into a workman's porta cabin to strip off! Do you see the notice on the side of the door asking gentlemen to stay outside? That's a clue that I was in the right place!

Did you have a good weekend? Autumn arrived here for sure this weekend. Saturday was cold, wet and miserable but yesterday was bright and sunny although certainly there was a chill in the air. For us it was a Turn the central heating on, crack on with the sewing of the new quilt, buy some spring flowering bulbs to plant, discover evidence of a mouse in the garage, Strictly Come Dancing watching, son discovering a puncture in his car tyre, too much football on the tv kind of weekend.

Pop over to Sian and see what she has been up to. Better still - share a Me on Monday post too!