Walking on Water

Not us - too risky.
This morning we decided that by the time we had de-iced the car (by the time C had de-iced the car) we could be almost at the library if we walked. So we walked...it took about half an hour with photo stops, plus waiting for a train to go through the level crossing. Not bad, given that C walks more slowly  than I do.
To my astonishment and amazement, he was still up for another walk along the canal in the afternoon, having seen in the morning how lovely it looked all frozen.
These pictures are all from the afternoon walk: we saw an awful lot of bird and animal tracks on the ice. My guess, from the size, is that this was a moorhen. What the little mammal tracks we saw are I am not sure - some could have been rabbits, fox, maybe even an otter: some of them were quite large.

The angles of some of the photos are a bit off. Well, I certainly didn't want to risk falling 6 or 7 feet down into that icy water by getting any closer to the bank!

View from the bridge - therefore with proper perspective, as the only hazard was cars passing by. More tracks, as you can see in the bottom left corner.

Can you believe these next two are the same spot! One was taken in the sunshine about ten to four, and the second was taken about half an hour later, when it was already starting to turn dark, and was snowing again.
I wouldn't even have spotted that they were the same, except that in rotating the sunshine one, I had to crop it a bit, and cropped out the funny object lying on the ice.

And one last one...

 I haven't done a big supermarket shop since before Christmas, so we've been having store-cupboard meals supplemented by the local butcher and green-grocer. C is not at all a fan of pasta, but on my account he will put up with it from time to time. This macaroni cheese is one that he actually likes.

Macaroni Cheese - to serve 4
1/2 lb suitable pasta - penne, quills, elbows
1 sliced onion
at least a dozen cherry tomatoes - more for us!
4 hard-boiled eggs, cut in quarters
3 tblsp breadcrumbs
2 tblsp finely grated Red Leicester or similar sharp red cheese
Sauce:
1 1/2 oz butter (3 tblsp)
1 1/2 oz flour  (3 tblsp)
1 pint(   2 1/2 US cups) milk
5 oz grated Red Leicester
pinch of cayenne and salt for seasoning.
Cook the macaroni and onion in a large pan of boiling, lightly salted water. Cook as long as your pasta requires. Drain well and put in a heatproof dish.
While cooking the pasta, make the cheese sauce by melting butter, adding flour, then milk and simmering for a couple of minutes when it comes to the boil. Add the grated cheese and season to taste. Pour the sauce over the pasta, gently sir in the hard-boiled eggs. Arrange the tomatoes, cut in half, over the top. Sprinkle with the breadcrumbs and cheese and grill for about 5 minutes under a pre-heated grill till the top is golden brown.

Iced Berries for Dessert

Had to work this afternoon, met C afterwards for a meal. We eat downmarket when we eat out; it's hard to pay €70 or €80 for a nice meal with wine when I know that most of the time I could cook a better meal at home for half the price, with even better wine. So we had kebabs, and then came home.
Took quite a lot of photos in the morning around here, and in the afternoon in town, but for now I'm just going to share this thrush that I spotted this morning. There was a pair of them trying to eat (I guess) the frozen berries - they were certainly tugging and pecking at them. Makes me think the bird on the patio that C identified as a dark thrush is a hen blackbird, which was my suggestion in the first place...

It's Still Cold Here

I had a little photo shoot with the robin this morning. I was glad to see him, after not having seen him at all yesterday. It must be tough on the birds in this weather; we are getting a lot of pigeons and some magpies scavenging for what they can find.

















Then I stamped the snow off my boots when I went in to get a bowl of water to put out for the birds (not that it stayed as water for too long), and was amused by the pattern the snow made. It reminded me of a jumper I once knit my half-brother, which had a border of mice and fish skeletons - the snow made me think fish.

And in the afternoon I had to go out to get milk, and put some letters in the post in case there would be a collection. We have a sort of freezing fog today, so instead of the crystal clear visibility of yesterday, today was quite a different atmosphere. I loved the splash of blue from this mother and child skipping down the path.

This time, frost on the bus shelter instead of snow on my skylight.

I was certainly glad that I'd gone back into the house to get my camera. Not that climbing the ladder to the attic in wellingtons is something I would like to do every day! And - I managed to find my missing memory card. I wasn't worried about losing photos, because I knew they were all uploaded. But I like having two in my camera - then if I've taken one out to put in the card reader, there's still another one there.

 I have to work tomorrow afternoon, to make up for today being cancelled. So  C & I might meet up in town and go out for a meal - now there's a rare treat!

Snowy, Snowy Day...

Paint your palette white and grey,
Look out on a winter's day
With eyes that see the coldness in the air...
I got to work with no problems, as did C who was lamenting not having taken the motorbike today.
But by the time I was in town for work, there was light snow.
And by the time I went  in to the city centre after work to get some wool, there was heavy snow...it took me a lot longer than usual to get home. All the roads that had been pretty much clear in the morning were now blanketed with white.
This was taken through a very dirty bus window, at one of the entrances to Phoenix Park, as we crawled by in slow, heavy traffic.

This was when I got off the bus stop -

And this is an edited abstract of the snow on my skylight :D

And I have to face getting in to work tomorrow in whatever has happened overnight. I was meant to be off, but someone else is stuck in Berlin, and Dublin Airport is closed till at least eight this evening - so his chances of making it back to Dublin, let alone work, are slim.

Ayesha's Coat of Many Colours

We must have loved the song from Joseph about his coat of many colours when we were little. We first heard it on BBC Radio's Listen with Mother, and mum must have written in to ask what it was, because she got the reply that it was from the musical, and we then got the LP - which I still have, although I've supplemented it with a CD for ease of playing and lack of scratches.
Don't you love making something from nothing. Creating is always satisfying, but creating from scraps is even more so. Over the years C has had three or more jumpers knit either totally or almost totally from scraps, and I have at least one. With the result that many of the scraps left are not what I would use in knitting for us. So - this is for the 2-year old daughter of one of the girls in work. She wanted to pay me for it, but the wool cost nothing, and I even managed to find 6 buttons the right size in my button box. And much of it was knit in work, where my time is paid for anyway. It's a Kaffe Fassett design, with different colours and slightly modified to suit my wool

Here's an old photo of C modelling a jumper I knit for a friend back in 2003. Again, the star design is one of Kaffe Fassett's. But because this was going to a friend in Georgia, I had to knit it in as fine a wool as possible  if he was to get much chance of wearing it, so I had to work out the jumper pattern myself.  I used 2-ply pure wool from the Shetlands, so even with three colours in many rows, the overall jumper is not too heavy . It furnished me with many leftovers, but I think now they are pretty much all used up.

It continues with below freezing temperatures here. C was all set to take the train this morning - but a train had broken down and no south-bound trains were running. So he came back and waited for a while - as if the ice was going to melt much!! - but then ventured in with great care on the motorbike. He reckons he'll give the train another chance tomorrow, though :D - especially with more snow forecast. And I am guessing that even with the schools still off, I will stick with my early bus and not risk the later one when I head in to work tomorrow.

New Year's Day in the Snow

Just a few of the best photos from New Year's Day. C wanted to drive to the park in the snow, but I persuaded him that walking down to the next train station beyond ours, and then along the canal, would be just as scenic.




 C dressed for the cold and singing Sweet Caroline under the bridge.















Highway engineering - we'll be glad when they are finished - some of the junctions are quite tricky to navigate just now - even without snow and ice.











Down at the marina - so called. One somehow doesn't think of a rather decaying canal as having something as up-market sounding as a marina!

 You can see a photo of more of the houseboats here:
http://mymiscellany-cook22.blogspot.com/2009/08/three-more-bs.html

 On the green

Mini Me -this cute little snowman can't have been much more than eight inches high.

Bird Spotting to Start the Year

It snowed last night - maybe over the weekend I'll get a few photos edited. It's brought the birds out in force - I've seen the most lovely male blackbird on the patio several times, and a chaffinch, not to mention plenty of pigeons and magpies too.
The thrush is an occasional visitor - we've sometimes seen it on the lawn foraging for whatever it finds there, but recently it's been around the patio a bit too.

The moorhen was spotted when we went for a walk along the canal. On our way down, we'd seen it walking on the ice the far side of the bridge, but on our way back it was enjoying the sunshine as it preened.


Finally a half-decent picture of the little coal-tit, with a sunflower seed. I am starting to wonder if he is looking towards me, then perhaps the sound of the camera is less alarming to him than if his back is turned and all he hears is the noise.

I'd just filled the peanut side of the feeder up, so the bluetit was happy. I've written to the company that made the feeder about the fact the wire has been pulled out by the birds, and I've tried to mend it - but they just pull it again.

The crow was also seen while we were out walking, just along the roadside. Hope the roads aren't too bad tonight, we are meant to be going out.

Travel Europe

The technique challenge on SCS yesterday was the Van Gogh technique. There were quite a lot of sunflowers out - and they reminded me of this photo from France, 1995 or 96. We took the car over, stayed with friends, camped, and then went back and picked F up to bring her back home with more luggage than she could normally carry when she flew. It was a lovely holiday...this was from the camping part, down in the Loire Valley, somewhere near Angers.

I know it's Christmas, but for lunch today we had Flaounes, which are Easter Cheese Breads from Cyprus. My original recipe called for mozarella, the ones I checked out today called for halloumi, which is much more authentic. But I've tried both, and don't see a significant difference. I can get good mozarella locally, so that's what I go with:
FLAOUNES    makes approximately 12, I halve the amounts.
Ingredients
1 1/2 lb strong white floer
1 sachet yeast (unless you're lucky enough to be able to get fresh easily - I wish!)
1 tsp salt, 2 tsp sugar, 2 tblsp olive oil, lukewarm water to mix.
Make a dough and leave to rise in a warm place till doubled.
Prepare a filling with:
8 oz coarsely grated cheddar cheese
4 oz coarsely grated halloumi or mozarella
1 tblsp plain flour, 1 tblsp or more dried mint, 1 tsp baking powder
4 eggs, lightly beaten.

Mix the cheeses in a bowl, add the eggs and then stir in the flour, baking powder and mint.
Divide the dough into twelve to fourteen pieces, and roll out into 4" circles. Put a generous heaping spoon of the filling into the centre, spread out slightly. You can either gather up the 3 points of the triangle or 4 corners of a square to pinch together at the top, to hold the filling in. I like 4 - it keeps the filling in better for me. Leave to rise again for at least half an hour. Brush with beaten egg, sprinkle with sesame seeds and bake in a hot oven (Gas 8, 220C, 425F) for about 12-15 minutes till golden. I like them warm, and I have to admit I like to have butter on the bready bits. But I wouldn't in Greece - their butter isn't so good, and their flour is different and makes lovely bread.

Never been to Cyprus, but here's a little Corfiot house to go with the Greek theme. When we learned Greek, our teacher was from Cyprus; although he'd been in Ireland most of his life, he was still a proud ambassador of all good things Greek.

MMTPT74

This is the teapot I chose to use for the MMTPT74 challenge, which I am privilege to be hosting on SCS today while Cindy takes her well-deserved break - but we all hope she's back soon. I can't remember what I was looking for when I found this image on eBay, but I loved it as soon as I saw it, and nearly bought the teapot. Even with international shipping it would have been cheaper than some of the teapots I looked at here, but I just couldn't decide whether it would dribble when it poured, and I left it too long to decide. I still think it looks as if it would probably dribble, though, and one dribbling teapot is enough.

This is my card based on the pot:


A frosty spider's web, a sparrow (I think, hard to tell at that angle - it's quite a finchy beak, but lets say I'm 98% sure it's a sparrow, and what a surprise - our little robin.

Winter Photos

Sneak Peek for the MMTPT74 challenge:



C says the photo of the heron is my reward for going for a walk in the park with him this morning when I didn't really want to...

The deer picture was taken on Christmas morning.

In a way the park was disappointing then - our local green was much more of a winter wonderland.

But it was fun to see the lake frozen over, and after we heard a bit of clashing of antlers going on, we saw that buck in the photo above give chase to another one - at quite some speed.