Counterclockwise

xkcd

I love the UK's charity shops.  They have the best range of second hand books for the most reasonable prices ever 1 - 2.50 pounds - awesome.  I found Austerlitz on the shelf - love that.  The range of books I find is really cool - it's like people read them once and then give them away - I am so not that kinda girl.  I often read my books once, twice - sometimes three times.  Sometimes more if I am in love with the book.  Go figure.

S.

Ipad me baby!

If it had a camera so I could use it to Skype, it would be sex on legs.  I think I still want one.

Rocky Road Muffins

Rocky Road Slice

Have been tinkering in the kitchen again.  I was envisioning a rocky road inspired muffin and so i whipped up some chocolate muffins with a few additions and from what I'm told they're really yummy.  Sitting here at the moment the recipe with a few tweaks will be perfect - as is would make a nice brownie mixture.  I havent included nuts in this recipe.

Tweaked Rocky Road Muffins

60gms unsalted butter
2 cups of plain flour
1 egg
3/4 cup of milk
1/2 cup of white sugar

4 Tblspns of best cocoa you can find (im generous with my cocoa more is better than less in my book)

2 tspns baking powder
100gms dark chocolate bits
100gms white chocolate bits
handful of small marshmallows
cup of frozen raspberries

Cream sugar and butter.  Add the egg and mix well.  Sift flour, cocoa and baking powder.  Add to egg/butter mixture, alternating with milk until all mixed well.  Fold in the chocolate bits, marshmallows and raspberries.  Spoon out into muffin cases - makes 10 - 12 muffins.  Preheat oven to 190C cook for 20 mins or until risen.

Original recipe - tasted awesome but didnt rise that well (which might have been temp 180C and the baking soda) and may be more suited to a brownie:

1 cup of plain flour
1 tspn of baking powder
1 egg
1 tspn of baking soda
1/2 cup of milk
50gms of butter
1/2 cup of sugar
4 tblspns of cocoa
100gms of white chocolate
100gms of dark chocolate
handful of marshmallows
1/2 a cup of raspberries

Same directions as before.  Baked for 30 mins at 180C.

Very moist recipe - yummy according to B - king of the sweet muffin.

I was thinking that a dark chocolate ganache and marshmallow topping might be nice - if you were going for a once in a while treat.  No photos I forgot to take any, will next time.

S.

The Tooth Files

I have to admit having a sore (and when I say sore think excruciating pain) tooth can put you off doing pretty much everything else.  So I haven't blogged, nor read any books to blog on lately.  Then the pain stopped, cue abscess with fever and accompanying unbelievably fast swelling, making me look like I had a golf ball in the side of my cheek.  Literally pain stopped early Monday morning and by Tuesday afternoon when I saw the Dentist the swelling had gone from little or none to this large swollen gum and gland.  The lovely Polish dentist shot me full of drugs, drained it and prescribed me heavy duty antibiotics.   God Bless that woman - the swelling has gone down a lot - I don't look like a chipmunk.

Unreal.   I think it was the combination of me taking Nurofen and Panadol (a lot of it as my tooth hurt unbelievably) - downside to this is they also counteracted my immune systems own way of dealing with the cavity.  So when I ran out of Nurofen on Sunday and stopped taking the Panadol (cause I was concerned about the level my liver was processing) my immune system went a bit nuts and attacked the infection.

So feeling better this weekend - swelling hasn't fully gone away yet but haven't finished the course of antibiotics yet.    Off to the dentist again next week to get the tooth sorted out.

Am reading Shattered by Mavis March - is interesting as the autobiographical story of how their family coped when their son suffered a serious head injury and was deemed to be a vegetable by the medical fraternity.

S.

Jealousy will get you no where

Tom Gauld

My hard drive lives again - well that's not technically true.  It died a bad, bad, clicky death - but I have a new one now so my Mac Baby will start producing more blog entries now.  This is Tom Gauld's work - he's great.  He publishes for the Guardian.  Before my hd died I had started compiling a list of all the books I have ever read - that I could remember - scarily there were a large number of SciFi books in there and I hadn't really thought about all the books I had ever read.  Sigh I need to go and feed my habit now.

S.

The Trains are Terrible

The trains were hideous on Friday - but... I finished reading The Interpretation of Murder by Jeb Rubenfeld - awesome book I liked it a lot.  Will review it later.  I went to Oxford and loved the wonderful number of really good bookshops - it was like a test from God and I failed.  I caved and bought Wedlock (which is on the list) and If this is man/truce by Primo Levi (which is not on the list).  Am enjoying Primo Levi - but it's a bitsa book where you have to read it in bits as it's a bit intense and I need a bit of time to do justice to the author's words.  I felt the same about Crash, although the book content is worlds apart.

Hard drive is really, really dead.  Need a new one.

S.

Arrrggghhhh!

Stoopid hard drive died - the mac whisperer said it's probably fatal.  The hard drive is currently in the icu (otherwise known as the freezer).  The entries may be a little slower than I first anticipated.

Stupid hard drive.

S.