... had a large bag of peanuts

On Friday, it was my S-I-L's birthday. My attempt to make her some fudge went very, very wrong, and ended up being very hard toffee. It did however bring to mind a Nigella Lawson recipe for nut brittle(from Nigella's Chrsitmas Bites, I can't find the link).

Off to the supermarket the husband and I went to buy some peanuts. When we got there, they had the normal snack-pack size, which is not enough, or a MASSIVE bag. Rather than be deprived of the nutty, sugar goodness, I bought the big pack. The result is the jar of goodness below.



Peanut Brittle

200g sugar
170ml water
75g nuts (Nigella suggests Macedamia and Cashews, I used peanuts), chopped roughly

• Put water and sugar in a pot
• Stir, and bring to the boil
• Boil until mixture thickens and goes golden brown
• Stir in nuts whilst still on hob
• Pour onto greased baking sheet/paper
• Leave to cool, and break/cut into shards

If you add more than 75g of nuts, it will be slightly chunkier. If so, place another piece of greased paper over, and roll with a rolling pin to even out. Once cooled, it can be coated in chocolate for some extra goodness.


So, that done, I still had a rather large bag of salted peanuts. This weeks jar of peanut butter ran out a few days ago, so I decided to have a peanut butter making adventure. It is really easy!!

Peanut Butter

225g peanuts(the recipe said unsalted, but salted is what I had)
30ml Sunflower/peanut oil
(I added a dessert spoon of sugar to take a way a little of the saltiness)
Pinch of salt if required(obviously not for me)

• blend peanuts in blender till fine - mine began to look a bit like peanut butter then.
• add oil (I used vegetable), and blend again
• add sugar if you have used salted peanuts

This made about 3/4 of a normal sized jam jar.


We still have over half the bag. I wonder what I shall make next?

... has green fingers! Sort of.

Last year, Dave's parents gave us some tomato plants. Lets just say that no tomatoes were had, unless they were from the supermarket. This year, for Easter, the gave us two strawberry plants. It pleased me no end that they still think we can keep things alive.

One of the plants fell out of the pot on the way home, but I managed to save it, and thought it has produced no fruit so far, it is leafy and green. Jobs a good'un I say.

Miraculously, the other plant is actually producing fruit! I have photographic proof!




Yes, it's still green, and yes, it looks a bit deformed (we'll call that natural, shall we?), but it is DEFINITELY a strawberry! And it has two wee strawberry friends on the same branchy bit, and there's another cluster of three! I have not only kept a plant alive, but I've managed to grow stuff to eat on it!

p.s. Can you tell I love red? This is in my kitchen, it is the home of the strawberry plant.

... has has a week of the funs!

Since Wednesday this week I have

• Made ALOT of waffles with our new (£12!!) waffle maker( from Lidl, I heart Lidl)
  
• Been to the Classics of Love gigs in Glasgow AND Newcastle
• Had a very quick road trip with the husband for said Newcastle gig
• Managed to see the brother-in-law who lives there(yay for family time)
• Been to work twice
• Written my slides for tomorrow's presentation
• Had some fun times with friends who stayed over
• Made pancakes whilst a tiny bit drunk

It's been a fun week. Classics of Love are awesome. Sometimes, when someone from a really good band starts a new one, it's bad. Not true in this case!!! Also, they are all lovely! I got to see ONSIND, who are great; original, talented, honest, and lovely people to boot. The dedicated a song to my husband. They officially rock!

At the moment, I am watching tv, and catching up on whats going on in blogland!

Tomorrow is (dun dun dunnnn) my second presentation of the term. This one is really important - If I pass it, I get my BA!

...is one presentation away from a BA !

Yesterday, I had the first of the two presentations that my marks for this term will be based on.

If you are me, Presentations are terrifying. They reduce me to a nauseous, babbling, shaking mess. Clearly Uni are just trying to kill me slowly. Their reasoning is that ' a presentation is much the same as teaching a class full of children'. No Uni, no it is not! Children can not tell if I don't know what I'm talking about! Children are not assessing me!

Anyway, I babbled my way through my presentation, all the while thinking ' this is drivel' and ' why did I just say that?!'. For some unknown reason, I passed! Yay me!

Next Monday is the last day of my current Uni career. It is, of course, another presentation. 'Oh noes' sums up how I feel about it!

Until then though, I have a week that includes 4 days off!