Soda Bread & Birthday Cake

Recently I've been really wanting to re-create the amazing soda bread that I had at The Gurnards Head near St Ives in Cornwall where we took Grandma for a birthday supper. They served it warm with butter and it was delicious. Such a simple thing but so tasty!
I'd looked on the Internet for recipes a few times but lots seemed to contain complicated combinations of fancy flour so I'd shied away from trying it. But then I found a simple recipe by Monty Don in the October 11-17 issue of The Big Issue* with accompanying lovely picture and non-daunting ingredients, it's on the second page of this pdf.
Here it is!

 

It was lovely! So very tasty with butter or without. We were spurred on in eating it by the suggestion that it doesn't keep well... I stored it in a plastic food bag overnight and it was still moist & squidgy in the morning, but I can't vouch for its keeping any longer as it didn't last twenty-four hours!

Being a horrible cheapskate I didn't want to buy buttermilk (and I might screw it up anyway) so I substituted plain natural yoghurt plus a drop of milk (it was a 500g pot and I didn't bother finding its volume! So much lazy...). Since I haven't tried it with actual buttermilk I don't know how it'd come out, possibly richer? I also made & ate it with I Can't Believe It's Not Butter Light but it only has a little butter in it and it's up to you what you put on top!
The recipe calls for molasses sugar, I have no idea what that is (apart from a special type of sugar) so I used my flatmate's dark brown sugar. I also accidentally put baking powder in before realising it wanted bicarb, but I just added that as well and it came out fine.
So there you go, it's idiot-proof!

This below is the extremely tasty chocolate cake made for my flatmate K's birthday by my other two flatmates. It's from Nigella's old fashioned chocolate cake recipe and the fudge squares on top are from Sainsbury's I believe. Of course the edible glitter and my fabulous Paperchase cake stand make it even better.

 

*Which I only ever buy from the amazingly cheery fun guy on the Clifton Triangle (Bristol), he's friendly and will sing to you but won't make you feel intimidated or annoyed :)

Pattern Lusting & Purchasing

The rather talented Tilly of Tilly And The Buttons is having a fabric giveaway from Fancy Moon which has lead me to discover their site, and they do all sorts of amazing patterns; Eiffel Towers, letters & stamps, cute animals, kitschy flowers & cute polka dots!
My favourites were Poppies by Alexander Henry and Gardenia Blue by Henry Glass.

The Poppies remind me of my blog background at dichohecho.blogspot.com and would be pretty flattering for clothes as it's on a black background, and Gardenia Blue reminds me of my Grandmother's amazing wallpaper. I need to take a photo or two next time I visit since some of it is truly amazing.I seem to have a bit of a yearning for retro patterns at the moment. I've always loved classic chintzy florals but more modern things are catching my eye too.

This cardigan and it's similarly patterned shirt & vest relatives caught my eye in H&M the other day.

Visit hm.com

As well as an extremely cute cardigan with birds flying about on it (white on blue or black on pale pink) which sadly wasn't quite right in a 14 and isn't available in a 16 (because it's in the "Divided" range, and everyone knows that young people aren't size 16 or above...)

I did however buy this:

Visit hm.com

As I'm forever finding that plain t-shirts are too plain or add an unwanted extra colour to an outfit. Being neutral but slightly interesting, this should fit in pretty well. I'm still a bit unsure about the colour though, so I haven't worn it yet.
This on the other hand is a definite winner, even if it is a bit thinner than it looks here. It fits in nicely with the general navyness of my wardrobe & I do like a 3/4 length sleeve!

Visit hm.com 

I very much liked this scarf in Zara (bunnies!*) but I restrained myself since it's still £7.99 and I own loads of scarves already!

Oh dear, I'm a terrible materialist. Must. Stop. Buying.

*clearly not hares

*Valentine*: I love you, Honey Bunny

*Valentine*: I love you, Honey Bunny: "Qui a vu Pulp Fiction, et son intro complètement déjantée, fera le lien avec le titre de mon article... ;) Quand au 'bunny' dont il sera suj..."

Clicked the "Blog This" button & this happened. Found this blog post via DearBeatrice & loved her dress.

Winter Sunshine

SO Christmas has happened, there's been lots of snow & coldness... Have some sunshine!






I seem to have a habit of photographing plants when in Bristol. You'd think I was from the countryside or something...



Photosoc socials - best made of yummy tea, old cameras and warm laziness. The extreme contrastyness in this photo is down to a) the intense sunlight coming in through the glass front of the café and b) my cack-handed film skills. I shot a roll of 400 speed black and white film as though it was 1600 (on purpose) with the intention of "push" processing it (developing it for longer) to make it look more interesting and possibly contrasty. However I got it mixed up with another roll of the same film and accidentally developed it for the normal length of time only... So it came out *very* contrasty! I rather like the effect on some shots though, just a shame I wasn't expecting it.

All these photos were taken on my Pentax ME Super, click through to my Flickr for details/more :)

An Outfit, A Drink & Some Film

Click through on this link to see the photo I wanted to post. I'm not posting it because I don't want to be a bad person & nick a copyrighted photo. So it's more of my crap I'm afraid!
I just saw that outfit on The Sartorialist and liked it - lovely & bright but still smart. Less keen on the furry collar thing, but other people just don't conform well enough to what I like!
I'm brewing up a post on clothes you love to death, but decent sunlight and time are evading me. I've got two coursework deadlines next week, one of which I am yet to start. Gah.

On the plus side I've just bought Sainsbury's Light Hot Chocolate so I have something warm and indulgent to drink that doesn't require me to remember to buy milk!
So here I am looking cosy... two years ago!



Oh! This morning as I was walking down some steps on my way in to university I found a Polaroid picture nestled in a hole in this wall


So I picked it up, and it looked like this

Mysterious... so I turned it over

Aha! Impossible CR.
A little light googling confirmed my suspicions: it was no ordinary polaroid, oh no! It was one from The Impossible Project!
Exciting stuff, it is. It sounds like some of the Impossible Project film hasn't worked brilliantly but it's a really nice project. Some ex Polaroid employees have got together & acquired a factory in the Netherlands where they're trying to invent and manufacture new types of Polaroid film.
Yes, there's still Fuji Instax, but there are a lot of Polaroid cameras about! 300,000,000 of them according to the Project's homepage. The page does strike me as a little overdramatic - it claims that they're saving analogue instant photography, neatly ignoring Instax. But oh well!

Tiredness, betterness and pretty leaves

Feeling a significant bit on the rubbish side this evening. My back is achey from carrying my laptop around all day, it's cold (but I get too hot with coat & backpack on), it's wet, my house is cold, and I'm TIRED. Bah!

Wish I had some amazing cupcake bath bombs and a decent supply of hot water to go with them. Our boiler's fixed now (it'd been dead for a few days), but the bathroom is still not a terribly attractive prospect. For one thing it's always several degrees C colder than the rest of the house, and for another there's no extractor so we have to have the window open while we're in the bath/shower to prevent too much steam/damp.

Since I wrote the above the boy has arrived bearing chocolate, we've eaten pizza, been to a Photosoc talk and come home again. I feel much better now. Hurrah!
I've also found out that one of my friends from home is currently in Bristol, so I may get to have coffee with her tomorrow morning. I'm heading home for the weekend, mainly for a friend's 21st birthday but also to pick up post, see my family and watch the new Harry Potter film with them! I still have the problem of finding a good present for the person who almost literally has everything, but it should be a nice weekend :)

Enough wittering from me, bedtime! And a pretty photo.
It's pretty leaves time! I recently went on a Photosoc trip to Westonbirt Arboretum (more of which on my other blog at a later date)




Pretty leafiness :)

Much Needed Post

It's been just over a month since I last posted on here! Predictably I'm going to say that I've been really busy; mostly with University work and Photosoc stuff.

I'm not doing too badly at keeping up with it all, but I'm aware that there's a lot of time I'm not using to its full potential (like now, I've been reading RSS feeds for three hours). Gah. Add to this the fact that my current workload will double next semester and you'll see the problem... I may be heading for a fail.

Anyway, rather than witter on about how hopeless I am, I shall leave you with a few nice/interesting things I've found on the internets recently:

• Amazing hats made by Frolline Von Sofa (this is probably not her real name...)
• An awesome video from Chopsy (which I've only viewed muted, so beware the music) featuring a load of vinyl records
• Apparently some people are getting married? Quick, bury the bad news!
• Politicians have been not keeping promises
• 'nuff politics, I've found the antidote to Postsecret-induced misery
• How to pet a kitty
• And, of course, my lovely boy's photoblog 

Some of my photos to finish with - I've been playing around with double exposure & cheap film. Yay!