February Favourites

 I do have several cards I like for February, I think the longer evenings are helping. I'm going to attempt updating my header photo with one from the Botanic Gardens last March, but it may have to wait till I'm at the PC later in the week. 

I should have stopped on the way home today, 

but I thought that by the time I stopped, put my bike on its stand, took my gloves off and got my phone or, they would probably have flown away, so I didn't bother.  We've had a fair amount of wind recently, and there are a lot of small branches on the ground. As I was coming though the park I saw a pair of crows who were stripping the soft bark if the branches, and they had their breaks full of strands of bark. Nesting time, for sure ...

The first card was for a challenge to use three, the card with the fern background was to use two. The Beetles card was to commemorate the first appearance of the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show. That was wide open to interpretation and I'm always happy to make something with a yellow submarine or an octopuses garden, but I thought I'd use a couple of the stamps from a series by Pink Ink Designs. I treated myself to them after Christmas because the singer, used here, the guitar player and the sax player will all work for cards for C. Without a lot of spare time, two was as many as I could easily fit on one card. 

Recipe time

 It's been a long time since I posted a recipe. 

I have several bread books which C has a habit of occasionally browsing through, and then he pins a note to the noticeboard in the kitchen with a few recipes he would like to try - eating, that is. Not baking himself. Anyway, oliebollen, Dutch in origin,  have been on the list for quite some time, and last weekend I decided the time had come to make them while I had fresh oil in the deep fat fryer.

In fact the recipe he had come across was for a firmer dough which you could shape into proper neat balls. It will be worth trying some time, it called for both orange and lemon zest and cinnamon in the dough, which sounds pretty good to me. However, I went for the recipe my mother used to use, which comes from the 1978 Golden Anniversary recipe collection produced by the Chatelaine Institute. I think this must have come from her two aunts in Canada. Even now after all these years I can remember their ZIP code from writing thank you notes each Christmas and birthday, although I no longer remember the house number. 

I halved the amount, and we managed to eat them all by Sunday evening. I worked on the assumption that there was no instant yeast around back then so the yeast would be active dry yeast, and I used one teaspoon. 

So for a half batch I used 1 tsp active dry yeast in 1/4 cup (60 ml) warm water and a pinch of sugar. 

To make the dough/batter I also used 

2 cups (500ml) flour

3/4 cup (190 ml) lukewarm milk

1 egg

1 tblsp  sugar

1/2 tsp vanilla, 1/2 tsp salt

and 1 cup golden raisin and a medium size Bramley cooking apple chopped to about the same size as the raisins.

Mix everything together, cover and allow to rise for 1 1/2 hours. Fry in bathces hot oil (350F, 175C), dropping in a spoonful at a time. I think mine were rather bigger than the heaping teaspoon suggested, more like a soup spoon, and they took a little over 2 minutes each side to fry. 

Fried, and dusted with cinnamon sugar and enjoyed. 

January favourites

 Are not many - work continues to be busy. How did it get to be February already? I won't get to the PC till tomorrow so I can't update my header photo till then, but I thought I might as well  get this posted. 

As I suspected, the header photo has to come from February 21, I have nothing from last year. I actually edited two photos from Farmleigh in Feb 21 - having done the squirrel header I thought I might have used it last year (no, it was snowdrops), so I also edited a tufted duck, which I'll add as a footer to this post.