La Vie En Rose

At the end of my last post, I mentioned that I was going to see what else I could make from the French themed kit I was using. I ran out of Eiffel Tower die cuts, but have used the negatives from them as stencils so I could still have Eiffel towers! I made four more cards from the kit, and probably have enough bits and pieces left for four more.

So the spring clean goes on! I've got a three-pronged  plan for attacking my stash.

1. go through the kits and make at least 4 cards from each. This should finish off some of my oldest kits.
2. go through the mountain of craft magazines that I've hoarded and use the ideas I've been meaning to get around to, then throw each magazine away when I've taken my inspiration from it.
3. tackle my Pinterest boards. I have two craft boards - one for ideas I am planning to use, and the other for ideas I've already used or cards  I have made myself. At the moment, the first has 663 pins and the second only 144. I aim to reverse that balance by the end of the year.

OK, this sounds like an awful lot of cards to be made - but then, I have an awful lot of stash! And hand made cards are never wasted  - as well as those I use for friends and family throughout the year, I support several charities by sending them batches of cards, cello-bagged and ready to sell, so really, the more cards i can produce for them the better!

Spring Cleaning the Kits

As part of my "Too Much Stuff" challenge, I've decided to devote some time to going through all the kits I have bought over the years and use as much as I can from each. Why do I buy kits? Goodness only knows. They look so attractive and exciting at the time, when I switch on the TV or am wandering round a craft store. I see the samples and am blown away by them - and every single time I completely forget that when I'm back home with my kit, I'll only be able to think of those few samples I saw and have no idea what else I can make with the kit. Every molecule of creativity in my body evaporates the moment I open the box!

I tell myself I'll break the kit down into its elements and use them with other things from my stash - but the pink, green or even black is always *exactly* the wrong shade to go with anything else I own so it all goes back into the kit box to gather dust until I decide to try again with it.

I must gave getting on for a dozen part used kits at the moment, so  I'm working my way through them with the aim of making at least four cards from each kit. I'll give myself bonus "brownie points" if I manage to combine any of the elements with something else from my stash, even, or maybe especially,   something from another kit.

And please, if any of you catches me eyeing up another kit, stop me at once! Steal my credit card, clap me in irons, distract me with gin or fluffy kitties,  just don't let me buy any more kits!

The first kit I picked up to challenge myself with is a Kanban one I bought from QVC, just before they moved over to Create and Craft. The luxurious, ornate foiled and embossed card seems TOO luxurious, TOO ornate and  TOO foiled and embossed now, and even the samples on the enclosed leaflet look over elaborate and contrived. I'm really not impressed with my own efforts to use the contents.

Having, for the time being, exhausted the possibilities of that, I turned to a black, white and hot pink "Paris" themed kit from Craftwork Cards. I've had this kit for some time and used many of the elements, but it's a much more versatile kit that allows for far more creativity than the first one, and my first make from the kit is a Thank You card that I am much happier with.

This week the challenge at Less is More #101  is Black and White with a touch of colour and at CAS-ual Fridays #84 it is Thank You,  and before I head back to the other room to see what else I can produce from the kit, I'm submitting this card to both challenges.

New Year's Resolutions

It's that time of year again! Time to start thinking about New Year's Resolutions.  And since this is a dual purpose blog, about my cooking and my crafting, I'd better make resolutions for both aspects of it.

If you have been with me since the early days of this blog, early in the summer, you will know about my personal Too Much Stuff challenge.  I kept that up all year, apart from a few treats to myself in the last couple of weeks (and one of those was a CD of designs to help me replace one of my Mum's favourite pictures, which she has lost, so I was buying that for HER really wasn't I?).

I've also take part in lots of bcraft challenges on various blogs, but many of them I've only joined in once or twice. I go back every week to look at the new challeges and admire the entries, but somehow I never quite finish my own entry in time.

So my 2013 craft resloutions are two:

• keep up with the Too Much Stuff challenge
• without buying lots of extra Stuff, join in more challenges and take part regularly

Now on to the food side of things. I have to confess that I tend to only blog about food when my husband is around because he is so much better at the photography side of things than I will ever be, so one of my resolutions is.... no, not to improve my own photography skills, but to remember to ask him to take photos for me, instead of doing my usual trick of looking down at my empty plate and saying "I was  going to ask you to take a photo of that.....".

More seriously, I plan to cut down on the amount of meat we eat yet improve the quality of it. We love meat, and will never give it up. There is an excellent butcher at the end of your road - and yet it is just too easy to buy a few special offer packs while in the supermarket and stick them in the freezer for later. Proper planning should mean I can get what we need at the butchers, and if the lack of special offers means I am paying more per portion, eating a couple of meat free meals a week will balance that out.

At the moment.  we probably eat an average of one meat free meal a week,  but it isn't a conscious decision to make it a weekly event, just a case of occasionally fancying something made with beans, or a mushroom risotto, an omelette or a stuffed marrow. Maybe we'll eat meat five days in a row - maybe we'll go without it for five days.

But, led by the contents of the weekly veg box, I plan to make AT LEAST one meal a week meat free, and ideally two or more. And my mouth is watering at the prospect......

A savoury jelly

If you are a regular visitor to this blog, you will know that every year we have a roast ham joint on Boxing Day. I wrote about my plans here  and you can see this year's meal on my husband's blog, Mark's Veg Plot.

The day after Boxing Day, we had ham, egg and  chips  and there have been a few sandwich meals, but there was still plenty left. I'd also bought far more parsley than we needed for the parsley sauce, so I decided to make a rough and ready version of a classic jambon persillée - ham in a parsley jelly.

First I diced enough ham to fill a small bowl, then tipped it into a larger bowl and mixed it with chopped parsley before returning it to the small bowl. Then I estimated the amount of  liquid it would need to fill the bowl - it took around 350ml - and used bottled chicken stock concentrate to make a light stock, which I used to dissolve three sheets of leaf gelatine (the quantity you need varies according to brand - check the pack instructions). When it was cool and on the point of setting, I poured it over the ham and parsley and left it overnight to set.

A true jambon persillée would be made with a mixture of home made stock and wine, but when I have used ham stock in the past we have found it too salty, and my home made chicken stock tends to have so much flavour of its own it would swamp the taste of the ham. As for the wine...... well,  there was none "spare" (Hic!) but I don't think it really adds a lot to the dish in this case.

We've had this for lunch today with the remains of some salad,  home made pickled pears and some home made rye bread. And there's plenty left for tomorrow!

 

I'm submitting this to the No Waste Food Challenge at Turquoise Lemons -  where the challenge is Christmas leftovers.

 

 

Stamped on acetate

It's great to have a change from making Christmas cards at last, and I've been playing around with stamping on printed papers and on acetate. I've used a selection of K & Company papers, made into an easel card, and uses Stazon  inks to stamp both the backing paper and the acetate. I thought making a very raised dome was a good idea  - and it does look good, giving a lot of depth to the design - BUT I've just realised I intended to send this card by post, so now I'm going to need to make a matching box!

Pear Tarte Tatin

Are you bored with Christmas food yet? Have you got some pears left going soft in the fruit bowl? And a sheet of ready-rolled puff pastry in the freezer? What about a quick and easy pear tart to brighten up this miserable, wet, windy day?

You will need a small (18cm) frying pan that is oven safe - if you aren't 100% certain your pan handle won't scorch, wrap it in foil before you put it in the oven - and as well as the puff pastry and a couple of pears, about 30g of butter and a couple of tablespoonfuls of brown sugar, golden syrup. maple syrup - whatever you have to hand. In my case, I used Sweet Freedom syrup to make the dish less of a diabetic nightmare.

Heat the oven to 200 C (180 fan) - that's 375 F or gas mark 5. Cut the pastry into a circle, using the top of your pan as a template.  Peel and core the pears and cut them into wedges.  Heat the butter and sugar/syrup in the pan on the hob until bubbling and starting to caramelise, then remove from the heat, arrange the pears in the pan and place the pastry over the top making sure the caramel is all covered.

Bake for 20-25 minutes until the pastry is well risen and golden. Leave to cool in the pan for around 5 minutes then invert onto a serving plate. Best eaten warm but not piping hot.

What's in the basket?

Several times, when writing about cookbooks, I have mentioned the basket of recipe books I keep under the kitchen sink, and it always elicits comments or tweets asking me "What's in the basket?"

Well, the most-loved, oldest and most well thumbed members of my collection live there - the ones that are needed in the kitchen so frequently they never get chance to leave the room, but are no longer pretty enough to be on display.

First among the contents are the budget recipe books, dating back to when we were first juggling children and a mortgage, or even to student days. They include:

Frugal Food by Delia Smith (1976)
The Pauper's Cookbook by Jocasta Innes (this is a 1984 copy, but it is my third, the previous two having been worn out - I bought my first copy in 1975)
More for your Money by Shirley Goode and Erica Griffiths (1981)
The Shirley Goode Kitchen (1986)
Goode for One (1987)

 

Next a few Indian and Chinese recipe books. Not, apart from Madhur, for authentic dishes but for the kind of thing that brings back memories of cheap student meals out in the 1970s.

 

Quick and Easy Chinese Cooking by Kenneth Lo (1973)

Indian and Ceylon Cooking Made Easy by Anil de Silve-Vigier (1972) - this book is price marked 20p but being an impoverished student I waited until it was half price in the sales.

An Invitation to Indian Cooking by Madhur Jaffrey (1978)

An Indian Housewife's Recipe Book by Laxmi Khurana (1985)

The Curry Secret by Kris Dhillon (1991)

 

 

A selection of promotional baking booklets from Be-Ro, Allinson and McDougalls - these are not dated but the Be-Ro books are editions 38 and 40.

 

And finally, the instruction manuals/recipe books for my Actifry and slow cooker, along with, rather inexplicably, a packet of Dylon Colour Catcher sheets - I was wondering where those had got to!