Cooking x Drawing

So as I have stated before, I have been cooking a lot lately, and so that has spilled over into my blog quite a bit. But in a recent development, they have combined! What I mean is, I usually find my recipes online and then print them out and then I am left with the recipes lying about everywhere, which if you know my husband, is not a good thing. However, on my day off I made some more cornbread muffins, because they are awesome, and because I have a mountain of too hot chilli I need to eat, and with some cornbread I will hopefully not burn my mouth off! So I have started my own wee cookbook!

Its nothing too polished or anything, just a bit of fun, and then all my recipes will be in the same place. So its pretty cool! I will hopefully keep adding more recipes as I find and like them. So more might just appear on here!

Also another teaser for Counting at the Zoo.

So lots of painting fun for you guys!

Neverwhere

So this week will be an interesting week, the manager at my work is off for nine days, so I am in every single one of those days. It won't be that bad, I am just not used to not having a regular day off. I used to work 30 days straight, mostly at two jobs so I know I can do it. Can you tell I am psyching myself up for this?

Anyway, something excellent that is happening is the BBC have been making a radio show of Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, and so  far it is excellent. It couldn't not be really, with the cast, the script, everyone who is working on it is excellent and we are only 3 episodes in. It will be all over by the end of the week so I suggest you tune in! I have listened to the first few episodes repeatedly already, so here is a link to the first episode. Neverwhere. This should work everywhere, as long as it is on a PC, but for mobiles and stuff you need to be in Britian for iPlayer to work. Some sort of radio app will get you to it though!

Or as it turns out you can get it on YouTube,

Way more cool things all about it can be found here, BBC Radio 4

More Counting

So it's been a while once I've had any posts about painting or drawing or anything like that. It seems my blog has turned into more of a food blog with dodgy photos at best. It's fun baking and cooking but this mostly started as a place for my art and things I do. Ah well, the thing I have been doing is cooking. But yesterday I got another page of Baby Dykstra's book done!

I was thinking of going out and taking some more photos with my Halina or possibly my Holga (it's been a bit neglected), but the weather isn't cooperating. We will see if I can build up the will to head out into the cold.

Edinburgh In Instagram

This week has been very interesting weather-wise, to say the least. We have had sunshine, snow, hail, sleet, all in one day, but the mornings, the mornings have been gorgeous. So I have been taking loads of pictures as I am on my way to work. So that has been a lot of fun, I have filled up a roll on my Halina camera, but I do not have the money just now to get it developed, so we will just have to wait on that one.

We are looking at moving house, which is pretty exciting. We only looked at the house yesterday, but it looks pretty excellent. It does need quite a bit of work but it will definitely be worth it to have our own flat with a private garden and everything. I don't want to get too excited, so I probably shouldn't even be blogging about it, but I will know soon enough whether or not we get it. So if I post later on this month saying, yay! Then I probably have got it, if I don't mention it ever again, it is pretty safe to assume we are staying put!

Anyway, here are some photos of our changeable weather, 

I have walked past St Giles Cathedral a fair amount of times and, I don't know that I have ever noticed this massive plaque with a skull on it. How do you keep missing it? 

Its also been an excellent cooking week, well technically cooking day, yesterday I made, Homemade Lemonade, Cornbread Muffins, and Chilli. It was quite an evening! The Chilli came out super hot, I think it is because I have never really used fresh chillis before, and so I didn't really know how many to use. I even deseeded it! But in the end I added another can of beans and it seemed to calm it down loads, so we are going to have that for dinner tonight with rice and the Cornbread Muffins.

Again I found the recipe for the chilli at The Minimalist Baker, the Cornbread on the BBC Good Food Website. But I can't remember where I found the Lemonade recipe from, though its pretty easy, you just make a simple syrup with equal parts sugar and water (or 2/3 or the sugar if you want it less sweet) and warm in a sauce pan til melted, then squeeze 4-6 lemons until you have about a cup of lemon juice mix with simple syrup. Then add 3-4 cups of water and chill for 30-40 minutes. Easy-peasy!

Ninja Baker

So we had our pal over last night for some drinks and pizza and movies. For some reason lately I have been super tired really early, I fell asleep on the couch the night before, and tonight I went to bed at like half nine. So this morning, I was up at the regular time of half six in the morning! I don't even need to get up that early for my work!! So what do you do with yourself when everyone else is asleep at 6:30, well you bake of course.

So I have wanted to make these cookies since I made my candied ginger a couple days ago. They are candied ginger and chocolate chuck cookies. They totally didn't come out as sweet as I imagined and now I wish I put more candied ginger in them but, you know, hindsight. But it was a lot of fun, I probably haven't made cookies in at least two years so I'm happy they are edible.

Recipe by the Minimalist Baker

Falafel

In the last post I was talking about how we have been making new things, and it continued. Which for me I think is a bit of a shock, as usually by the next blogpost, I have stopped what I was doing not even a couple days later. So I am proud of myself, I said I would do something and I have. I should be making some more stuff through the week, soup and cookies mostly, we will see if I get on to anything else.

So yesterday, I made falafel, from scratch! It turns out it is pretty easy, though it would be much easier with a food processor. I had soaked the dried chickpeas the night before so they were ready and Dixon boiled them for the hour required while I was on the bus home. So all they needed was combining the remaining ingredients and deep frying. It took some serious muscle to mash, but we threw them in our smoothy blender and though it didn't appear to work it definitely did. you wouldn't think a chickpea would pack too much moisture but it did come out as a thick paste as described! So success! They are much better than the ones you would find premade, though maybe about as good as the dried packs you buy, but I think that was down to seasoning, I could have used some more spices! Other than that delicious!

I would have taken more photos, but I was really hungry! And it smelled amazing.

This is where I found the recipe.