Gaby returns

At 3am on Tuesday morning I was woken up by Gaby, jumping on the bed and letting out a constant stream of meows. He was thinner, but uninjured by his expedition to who knows where. Since then he's been quite clingy, wanting to be around me lots and very, very vocal though that's now settling down a bit as he gets over his scare.

It's great having him back, this morning he was playing with his brothers who really seemed to miss him. Whilst he was gone Luce, the most unsociable one of my ginger boys had been looking for cuddles and spent much more time with me. Now I'm getting ignored as per (except when I have the bag of chicken and cheese cat treats in my hand) and all is right with the world :)

This weekend I'm off to see a friend's new home and we're going out for lunch, can't wait. I've been making lots of cards lately, I must post them up here sometime soon.

Only one more week to go before a fortnight's break. Only thing formally booked so far is a day trip to France with Caroline who will be staying for a couple of days. Excellent! Will also be doing some crafting with Michelle, who's a complete virgin so I'm hoping to turn her to the dark side. It would be great to have a local friend to scrap and cardmake with.

Happy Friday everyone.

Missing Kitten

My 7 month old kitten Gaby has now been absent since Thursday. For those who don't do the whole pet thing this probably won't seem like a big deal. For those who do see their furry friends as loved and cherished members of the family, you'll know how I'm feeling right now. Today I'm going to drive round again, and then I'm going to distribute some posters to my neighbors in the hope he's just gotten stuck in someone's garage or shed.

This is Gaby.

If you live in the Thurrock/Grays/Tilbury area, please keep an eye out for him?

Crafting and Cake

I bought this new mould from Ebay, not sure what inspired it but I think it was needing to perk myself up with a small but fun purchase. Knowing I had a crafting weekend coming up with two classes at Sugar and Spice that seemed like the best time to give the new mould an airing. The company who produce them, the originally named Silicone Moulds very helpfully provide recipes to fit so I gave their Spiced Apple Cake a go and I was really pleased with the result:

I swapped out the flour for Dove's Farm GF and it worked a treat, the cake was spicy without being over powering, and lovely and moist. Three people asked for the recipe, so I'm guessing they liked it! The mould performed excellently, and I'm now lusting after these two

Cathedral Mould

Castle Mould

I've also done some papercrafting, feeling creative again, and I'm really pleased about that too. Lots of annual leave coming up in which to do said crafting following the change in rules at work about carrying over holiday.

Happy crafting everyone. x

Review - My Gluten Free Christmas

I'm normally the only Christmas Fairy in the Village, the one carrying the flag for the festive season and all things jolly. But not this year. With work problems and uncertainty on my mind and some confusion with a close friend it was a very quiet Yuletide for me this year. Next year I will do better.

Anyway, I thought as an aide memoire to myself and perhaps of interest to others, I thought I'd sum up my experience of gluten free products this Christmas.

Once again my thanks go out to Marks and Spencers for making much of their Christmas stuff gluten free, including cocktail sausages, ALL their stuffings and also this year going that further step and using GF stuffing in things like their turkey crowns. Rock on. They also had Christmas cake and mince pies available, and have significantly extended their range of everyday GF products to include brownies, toffee pecan squares, rolls and bread.

Whilst this is all fabulous, the products themselves aren't exactly great. I don't mean the stuffings etc which aren't specifically aimed at use Coeliacs and wheat intolerants. I mean the specific niche products. The rolls are horribly crumbly and dry, the toffee pecan square use polenta as the base and it's gritty. The brownies are nice enough, but as most GF peeps will tell you it's very easy to make a wheat free brownie, hard to get wrong and usually our only offered option in cafes etc. The pastry on the mince pies is tough and not very tasty, there's not much filling and it feels like you get a couple of raisins/sultanas and very little else. It's a real shame because their stance on GF products is one to be applauded and encouraged. I hope they continue on and improve the recipes. My biggest disappointment - their slow cooked pork belly squares in the party range had wheat in them. My favourite item - the Gammon Stuffed Turkey Crown with a bacon lattice. Wow. Fabulous. Moist, easy to carve, and a joy to look at.

Tesco's had the usual Christmas cake, mince pies and christmas puddings in their range and from what I could see, not much else. They did have packs of two individual puddings, which is very handy. They did finally have some of their party range as wheat free recipes, which is great. Party food in supermarkets is historically heavy on the wheat so I feel like I miss out. I had some chinese chicken skewers and stuffed potato skins which were ok. I do have to seriously recommend their new, fresh bread and baps. They are amazing, moist, don't need toasting, don't crumble to bits when you cut into them. Consistent supply appears to be a bit of an issue.

Sainsburys had similar stock to Tesco's in the Christmas range but the quality of their mince pies is fantastic. A complete revelation and highly yummy. I knew in the back of my mind that Sainsbury's baked GF goods are the best around, somehow I just didn't manage to get there and thought M&S would have to be at least as good. Next time I'll know better.

So, there you go. My small window onto the Supermarket offerings for us gluten free'rs this year - Sainsburys for pastry, Tescos for bread and some party foods and M&S for meat products.

I'd love to hear if you've got any opinions on GF products you've tried over the festive season.

The best laid plans

So, I'm all ready. Family lunch on Sunday to celebrate Christmas, the menu's set, the shopping's done and been delivered. I took Friday off so I could cook and tidy at my leisure and today the heavens opened and it snowed. And it snowed. And then it snowed some more. The roads round me are treacherous but we've only had about 5 cm, where my brother lives they've had more like 18". So, lunch tomorrow is postponed and the freezer is now bulging with things intended for tomorrow. Never mind, worse things happen at sea!

The good news is a stay of execution on the job front. My department has been taken out of the general restructure and a decision on redundancies will be made in 30 days. Given that my post was marked to be 'disestablished' things can't get worse for me, better possibly though. At least now I can chill about it over Christmas. Yay.

Post musings

Well, the cards are in the post. This year I did two main designs. The first one is more complex, the second is much smaller and simpler.

I started off with this one, embossing some blue cardstock with a white core through the cuttlebug which I then exposed using a large emery board. The trees were cut using the cricut and decorated with globs of glossy accents and glamour dust, and Woodware's fluffy stuff. I stamped and punched the greeting - this one is all white but others I did mounted on a scalloped blue glitter disk for more emphasis. Then I put it all together with some silver ribbon and more glamour dust round the edges.

The second is a gorgeous Christmas tree stamp made up of ornaments, which I then embossed with silver. I finished them off with a stamped greeting and tied with a little stretchy silver cord. The overall design was inspired by card we made in one of Marion Emberson's Sugar and Spice classes. I'm hoping it gives a 'less is more' effect rather than a 'I'm too lazy to bother' one :)

I'm still waiting though for the delivery companies to catch up with the changing market. With people now ordering more and more from the web they still don't appear to have grasped that most people work, and aren't there during the day to accept delivery. Especially when you add in that normally people don't know what the date or time of delivery is for small value items. This either means the companies wasting resources (and therefore increasing the prices we pay) or compelling people to collect their parcels from depots.

Depots, I have found, don't tend to be located in easy to reach, central locations. So even with a car they're a pain to get to, and if you don't have one (which is a good reason for using the net to do your Christmas shopping) a real inconvenience.

When are they going to realise they have to focus on evening/weekend deliveries as standard? Minor rant over...

Holidays are coming

Afternoon all. Well last Sunday I put a big batch of braised red cabbage in the oven for a slow, 2 hour cook. This is my first bit of Christmas cooking. it's based on a recipe my friend Lynne shared with me after a dinner at her house. It was fabulous, and I've cooked it every Christmas since, as well as for a few general roasts. It's really good, and freezes brilliantly which makes it an ace side dish for your big celebrations. All you have to do for the day is get it out of the freezer and allow it to defrost, then either reheat in a pan for 10 mins or stick it in the microwave.

The recipe is here and it's easy to adjust to your taste, more sweetness, less, more spices etc.

Friday night was the office do, and it was fabulous. Huge laughs, and you always know if a night was good when you get to the end and wonder how that went so quickly. Saturday then was a bit of a right off - and was spent on the sofa with some comfort bolognese courtesy of some previous batch cooking. Today I've managed a little more oompf, and the stuffing for the stuffed pork loin is done and in the freezer, and a batch of brownies is just cooling on top of the hob. Plan is to wrap and freeze those too so I can bring them out one at a time for desserts etc.

Had meant to do lots more, the sponge for the trifle, some fudge for gifts but it seems that's going to have to wait :)