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Got a hankering to do some cooking this afternoon, so cook I did.

250 g butter, equal granulated sugar - blend until approaching fluffy.

2 large eggs - blend into the sugar/butter mix one at a time until well mixed (no separation).

Some amount of flour - I did this purely by feel and texture.  Self raising.

A good dollop of Lyle’s golden syrup, mixed in thoroughly.

A teaspoon or so of salt.

A whack of grated, dessicated coconut.  No idea how much, again by feel / experience.

Oven cranked to 170 C or so, a large heaped spoon of mixture into each mold on the tray.

Baked for about 12 minutes.

Yummy.

This time with onion, garlic, potato and broccoli.  Pure vegetable stock instead of the hybrid used last time, and it tastes so much better.  Lunch for the next few days is sorted!

Today, I decided to make courgette soup. I’ll skip the whole step by step thing - 3 large courgettes, 1 litre of chicken & vegetable stock, several cloves of garlic, extra virgin olive oil, single cream, salt, pepper, frying pan, stock pot. Chop the courgettes, soften over low heat in an oiled pan with the garlic. Add to hot stock, blend with a stick mixer. Salt and pepper to taste, cream to thicken and add richness. Soup!

Mum muttered that I didn’t have enough green in my last dinner. Therefore, I present exhibit 42, last nights dinner:

Noodles, bean sprouts, red pepper, peas, red onion, turkey, sweet chili sauce.

I’ve been poking Zooomr.com recently - it’s pretty much Flickr, but on steroids in some areas.  Geo-tagging is really nifty - the site uses Google Maps to allow you to find other pictures from other posters who have tagged the photo as being ‘near‘ you.  Near is a relative term I think, as tags for the UK show someone in London (200 miles or so) as being near.

The peas have been producing quite well, despite the onslaught from slugs and snails.  I refuse to use modern chemical methods for getting rid of slugs and snails - they’re quite handy in other parts of my garden.  I just don’t want them near my peas, onions and carrots!

Dinner last night consisted of cold roast beef, fragrant thai rice and fresh peas - very tasty.

The oven is working out quite nicely - this weekend saw two treacle tarts (Gran style, [no lemon and ginger] but with a bit too much syrup unfortunately),  and some homemade bread.  Pity I messed up the yeast amount for the bread - the flavour was a bit off.  Still good bread though.  This weekend might see a Texas Sheet Cake - a recipe I picked up in the US that uses sour cream to make a cake.  It’s a bit odd, but it tastes sooo good.

It’s truly amazing how much work I can get done when there are no phones ringing with support calls, no salesmen punching speakerphone (for reasons I cannot fathom), no people asking me to look at this or that or the other. Went in to work on Saturday, sat down and in 6 hours, cranked out the foundation of one of the bespoke projects we have on the go right now - server OS, application software, configuration and custom web interface. Had I tried to do the same work during this week coming, it’d have taken all week.

Dad dropped by today on his way up to Leeds - I had repaired part of his lamp with some epoxy during the week. He remarked that I seem happy in the kitchen, and I’m not surprised. I love the new kitchen, and I love cooking. As with most people I dislike the washing up, but there’s got to be some downside to cooking I suppose. Lunch was a nice slab of roast beef, perfectly pink in the center, fresh picked peas from my garden, sliced carrots, yorkshire puddings and gravy - traditional English roast lunch. Next on the list of things to cook will be a stir fry tomorrow night - noodles, bean sprouts, carrot, fresh peas, pork, satay sauce. Then perhaps a treacle tart…

Went to B&Q to find a plate for mounting and sealing the bathroom vent, but had no luck, so Mum will check around for me. Ended up buying a set of 10 solar powered lights though, so they’re now installed in the garden. Should see in about 15 or 20 minutes how well they light up. Also spent yesterday afternoon dozing in my garden - pleasantly warm afternoon, warm breeze, birds and bees bouncing around. Nice and pleasant way to relax. Then shot about 80 photos of birds in the garden that evening - I need to offload that card and see if there are any good ones.

Today was the day of the Grand Inspection by my paternal grandparents of the new kitchen. I am pleased to report that the work has been approved of!

Need to get the channels filled in, and the wall re-skimmed where the tiles left holes. After that, I’ll have to decide on the splashback, and the kitchen will be pretty much done. It looks like it could use another lick of paint, but there’s no so much surface to cover now, so that’s something I can handle.

The garden also met with approval from Gran - she saw it a few months ago, and it’s come a long way since then. The peas are growing quite well now that I’ve got cocoa shells around them (slugs can’t stand the shells apparently), and I’ve moved most of the onions to the top bed under the flowering cherry. Apparently peas and onions don’t get on very well, so I’ve evicted the onions.

Put the new oven to the test the other night, and prepared a wonderfully moist roast chicken. I’ll be taking a knife and a long simmer to the carcass, and creating a nice chicken stock / soup tomorrow. Also made a batch of chocolate chip cookies from the Tollhouse recipe that I have - they went down a storm at work. I fear for my waistline now that I have an oven!