Maurice

Why did I knit a penguin? Because he was there. Or at least the cute pattern was. I named him Maurice because that "March of the Penguins" movie is French.

My inner child...surprise, surprise

Not sure how accurate I think this is, but....

Your Inner Child Is Surprised

You see many things through the eyes of a child. Meaning, you're rarely cynical or jaded. You cherish all of the details in life. Easily fascinated, you enjoy experiencing new things.

How Is Your Inner Child?

Honeycomb Toffee.....drool....drool

I'm not a huge candy fan, you won't find me buying candy bars that often and I'm not that crazy about chocolate. But..... you knew there had to be a "but"..... I have a weakness for caramel and toffee. In England I fell in love with Honeycomb toffee. You find it in the more old fashioned sweet shops and sold at country fairs. I got in the habit of buying bags and bags of it to stuff in my suitcases to bring home. One day I returned to find my host's 200 lb newfoundland dog lying in a sugar induced stupor after he'd rummaged through my shopping bags and eaten all the toffee. I kind of thought it was a good thing that I couldn't find it over here because then I wasn't tempted to eat my weight in it. But never being one to leave well enough alone, I found a recipe and discovered it's a snap to make! Here's the recipe, knock yourselves out.

A few tips:
A 9"x9" pan will work fine as a substitute for the lamington pan
Yes, it's supposed to be a bit burned, that's why it's other name is "Cinder toffee" and is what gives it it's golden brown color. The trick is learning the balance between that good burned taste and the burned beyond any chance of consumption burned taste.

Honeycomb
6 tbs white sugar
2 tbs golden syrup
2 tsp water
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

Place sugar, golden syrup and water in a heavy saucepan and stir over a
gentle heat until the sugar is dissolved
Bring to the boil and boil for seven minutes
Remove from the heat and quickly add the bicarbonate of soda
At this point the mixture will froth
Stir quickly and pour into a greased 28x18cm lamington tin
As the mixture starts to cool, mark into pieces
When cold, break into pieces and wrap in cellophane ready for sale
If making a few days in advance, make sure you store in an air tight
jar

Cute Cute Cute

Is this a cutie or what? This is Josh, my friend Beth's little boy. We were trying to get him to try on a hat I'd knitted so I could see how much smaller a size he'd need. Being a typical male it took a tv remote to catch his interest and keep him from pulling the hat off.

Woot-hoo!

Hey, I got 3rd prize in this week's woot.com contest! To be honest, I think I'm more chuffed by getting good feedback from the wooties than the $20 prize (not that I'll turn it down, $20 is $20), they're a hard crowd. My Beatles/SpongeBob won, although I flooded the contest with a handful of other entries too. THe caption for the Mick Jagger one was "Mick finally dating someone his own age". No one seemed to recognize the band in the dogs playing poker pic, so the joke was lost there...

Another weekend another batch of movies!

As much as I'd love to say I spend my weekend's doing really productive things at home, I have to admit I love nothing better than curling up with a few good movies. This past weekend a few friends got together to watch DVD's (and eat lots of food we shouldn't have eaten, but it sure was good). We watched "Monster-in-law" which I surprisingly like quite a bit, surprisingly because I'm not a Jane Fonda or J-lo fan and had really low expectations for it, but it is funny. We also watched "Pushing Tin", a movie from a few years back that I don't remember ever noticing out in the theaters at the time. It stars Billy Bob Thornton (which may have been why I blocked it out at the time, am not a BBT fan), Angelina Jolie in what may have been her first role, and John Cusack. I love John Cusack. Oh, and Cate Blanchett. It was a very funny movie about air traffic controllers and the trouble you get into when you get into contests of one upsmanship with other people. I also got the two New Zealand films I'd bought online. I'd seen the first one before, "Once Were Warriors", one of the best films I've seen, but very hard to watch in places because of it's extremely gritty and realistic portrayal of domestic violence. I hadn't realized a sequel had been made until an Aussie friend mentioned "What Becomes of the Broken Hearted", so was excited to see the next bit of the family saga.

Food note from the movie party - got won ton wrappers and filled them with a spoonful of chive/onion cream cheese and a dab of red pepper spread, fried them and then lightly sprinkled them with freshly grated parmesan while they were still hot ... yummy. Fattening, but yummy. Also made a box of brownie mix, then took a shortcut and mixed up a couple boxes of the caramel coating you find this time of year by the apples in the produce section. (Wasn't really much of a shortcut as you have to add milk and sugar anyway and cook it. Would have been just as easy to make the caramel from scratch I think.) Spread half the caramel over the brownies, then sprinkled on one can of salted mixed nuts, and then spooned the remaining caramel over the nuts. Even more fattening and yummy.