Love is in the air!

~Love is in the air~
The 'Winterwood' tree is now covered with cut out love hearts made my me!

The shopping centre is once again full of hearts and flowers and choccies for lovers to enjoy. Valentines Day is just around the corner, but sadly MY heart is heavy, cos today I stepped on the scales and again I have put on weight.

I had slimmed down a little a while back, and then when we went away on our short trip, I accidently let myself have a few treats, and it was obviously all downhill after that! SO, what I'm trying to say is no choccies for me please MR. Winterwood this Valentines Day!

The long table

I have a love of papers especially ones for scrapbooking, although not much of that gets ever done, but I love the papers and collect many! ( too many) Then at Christmas my friend gave me this calendar and its packed full of scrappy papers, now I wish someone would give me some creative ideas so that I could use them! Still not much art happening around here! :(

On my recent trip, I found this letter opener at a craft shop, and love the tiny blue wren. Those birds are everywhere down south, but none around here in the city further north! These birds are very cute!!

Another gift - the calendar. My friends all know my passion for lighthouses and this calendar is just perfect!
The tiny piece of black rock is from a beach down south. The whole beach is black rock and its called 'Black Beach' as the rocks are all basalt. I took a piece to remind me of the wonderful times. Later I'm going to put the rock into my shell jar. Do you collect things while away and then later look at them and remember the nice had you had? What do you collect?

The weather is slowly turning, and although there is no sign of summer going away just yet, the heat of the sun has softened a bit now and the heat less intense.

Last but not least, a book that I'm loving browsing through and getting ideas. I'll share some excerpts from the book another time. The author lives in an idyllic setting where all her vintage table ware looks stunning all set out under the tree ready for guests. Do you ever eat like outside with friends or guests?
I've decided to put the blue wren to work as a bookmark, that way it will get more use than a letter opener these days!

As promised - Quiche Recipes

Recipe for a Quiche

Line a 20cm pie dish lightly greased to prevent the pastry from sticking, with shortcrust pastry ( I cheat and use the frozen type) works just as well!

chop up the ingredients you want to use in the quiche. I find that onion ( I use lots as we love the flavour it imparts) you can use mushrooms (must be sautéed lightly first) leeks, also have to be lightly sautéed, bacon, lightly fried, tinned sweet corn, cheese, ham, tomatoes, asparagus, – I use tinned, and so on .. . . I use diiferent ingredients in each quiche or just differing combinations of the above.

After lining the dish with the pastry, put the oven on – gas 4 or 190C fan forced.

Pour half a tub – about 150ml of cream I use the type you put into a soup, and add 3 or 4 eggs or more depending on the size of the pie dish you are using.

Beat the eggs lightly with the cream and add some pepper.

Pour the mixture over the pastry with the chopped up ingredients in it. I like to randomly layer cheese, onions, tomatoes and whatever so that each bite is a surprise.

bake in the oven for 25 mins, keeping an eye so that the top doesn’t burn. Depending on your oven, it may need another 5 – 10 mins more, but do this with a sharp look every few mins to see if the tp is scorching. The egg mix will rise and fall when its taken out of the oven to cool. When ready to eat the top of the quiche should be a golden brown.

And hey presto – that’s it!! I like to make two quiches in one hit, and have one more meal for another day, although I never freeze the quiches. I’m not even sure if it would freeze well or go mushy after defrosting?

I also never bother with pre baking my pastry as in baking it blind, lined with beans. I just use the pastry straight out of the packet and bake it when all is ready to go.

Happy cooking!

Vintage art and Fat Quaters

Playing around with one of my old photos - here I am on a beach circa 1960-something, and then when I found the film frame decided to see what would happen if I put the two together as an experiment, and here we are!

It was supposed to rain last night . . . but didn't, and I think we are up to about day 84 of NO rain here, a record has been set.

It IS supposed to rain today, and I think we're all waiting with bated breath. It would be so nice to go to bed tonight all cosy with the sound of rain pattering away on the tin roof!

Further weather updates coming here soon.

ps. For all those who like Quiches, and honestly they are so simple and fool proof that is the only reason I make them . . . . We ate half of the quiches last night and there is still plenty enough for another big meal of them tonight, AND the bonus point, is that today I don't even have to think about what to make for tea tonight! yay!!! Recipe tomorrow. Watch this space.

Green Tip of the day

I just saw this on the net and thought I must share.

get some fat quaters the sort you use for quilting and crafting and as they are already precut to size, just run sewing machine on outer edge to neaten the edges and stop fraying, and there you have a no cut, easy no fuss ready made napkins for the table . . . use quaters to match your table or mix and match depending on the ocassion! I love this tip and what a great way to use up those spare fat quaters from left over projects!

Leeks and quiches ( a food meditation)

While colouring my hair - and you have to sit here for 30 mins while its 'taking' I thought I'd pop in and post another short post. Mr. Winterwood has been beavering away in the garden all day, doing a post summer tidy up, and gathering up the last of the summer veg. The leeks didnt do so well this year, and came out looking more like large spring onions, even though they made my eyes tear up when I was cutting them, their scent so powerful!

I decided to sautee them and put them into one of my famous quiches, and being in that sort of mood made two of them. One leek and cheese, one tomato and ham. Both are yummy off course with an immidiate post oven tasting session!

Roll on supper time!

Weekend Meditation

~Do one thing at a time~

I tend to make myself a cup of tea then rush around doing chores here and there gulping down the tea inbetween running through each room. Sometimes I've even been known to lose my cup with the tea still in it as I've put it down somehwere and run off to do something else. So this weekend, each time I make myself a cup, I'm going to sit down and drink it slowly and enjoy each sip.

I love reading all the names of the different teas on my teaholder jar, and some I've never heard of . . like gunpowder tea. I wonder if that puts a pep in your step? If so I must get some!

As you can see

. . .I've been playing around here, giving the blog a bit of a shake-up, and much to my horror, the whole template got so distorted that I had to just about scrap the whole blog and start all over again. I'm sitting here thinking . . .that I wish I'd left it as it was oh, the clarity of hindsight!

A lot of the pics and links have been deleted, and so the rebuild begins *Sigh*.