Oranges Again

I wasn't working yesterday, so I took the afternoon to make marmalade. Just as I was starting, I was thinking how much the light was flickering, and thought it would be good to have a spare bulb on hand - it's not a standard one. A few minutes later it started flashing on and off, so I had to turn it off, and work by a little desk-lamp while the WD40 worked to loosen the shade enough for me to switch the bulb with the one from the hall. How lovely it was having an electric juicer - made life that much easier. I now have 12 lovely jars of marmalade - had to raid the collection set out for taking to the recycling centre to come up with enough jars.

 C bought me some Global knives about fifteen years ago or more - well before they became trendy. There was one shop in Ireland that sold them at the time, over in Galway. So for special occasions, he would add to my collection if he'd been over there on business. Apart from trying to keep them sharp  - I am not the best with a steel - I love them, and would certainly be happy to grow my collection with a couple more.

My best attempts could only rummage up seven lids (that includes raiding the one from the jar of bay-leaves by the cooker) - but luckily I knew I had some cellophane jam-jar covers - and where to find them. Which is more than could be said for the muslin to tie the pips in when I was simmering the peel and pulp. Instead of in with the teatowels, or even the overflow teatowels, it was in with my dress-making fabrics. Why?

I also made some cookies with a couple more Seville oranges this afternoon.  They have a lovely tang from the bitter oranges, but I'll certainly try them again with ordinary oranges another time. C managed 2 with his coffee before dinner, and another two for dessert afterwards.



Orange and chocolate chip cookies - makes approx 28
4 oz butter
5 oz caster sugar
finely grated zest from 2 Seville oranges
8 oz flour, sifted with 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla
3 oz good chocolate chips.
Cream butter, sugar and zest till light and fluffy. Beat the egg and vanilla together and add gradually to butter mix. Stir in the flour with a spoon, or the mixer on low. Add 1 tblsp cold water. Stir in the chocolate chips.
Form into small walnut-sized balls and place on trays lined with greaseproof paper. Press down with a fork - dip the fork in water if it's sticking to the dough too much. Bake for 12-15 minutes in a moderate oven - I think mine was set to about 150C.

Snow Flowers

I've just been tidying, editing and deleting a lot of photos.
Here's a quick pick of some of the plants in the snow.

 

 

As my bulbs are mostly in tubs and troughs, I knew they had quite possibly frozen solid in the cold weather. I mean, my goodness, even the water still in the condenser unit of the tumble-dryer froze - and that was in the shed! So it was lovely this afternoon to see a little green shoot peeking up. I'd gone to inspect them as C saw a grey squirrel digging in one of them, and I was afraid he might have been digging up the bulbs to eat!

Angels in the Castle

These are a couple of photos from Friday 8th, when I met C in town after work. After having helped  a couple of Italian tourists I encountered near the cathedral to find their way to Dublin Castle, I headed there myself. I don't know if they knew about this exhibition or were just seeing the castle as part of their Dublin sight-seeing - I certainly hadn't heard anything about it. The angels are part of an exhibition called Beacons of Hope, which will be travelling round Ireland. I think I was lucky to see them - their scheduled departure was delayed by the snow.

  From a single mould, sculpted in fibreglass, we are producing a limited number of beautifully crafted, 2.4m/8 foot tall, specially designed Angels, created as a blank canvas.
We have invited some of Ireland's finest artists, musicians, sports people and celebrities along with a number of international guests to participate and support this fun initiative by painting and decorating one of our angels using their own designs to show the nation their interpretation of Hope.
Following the launch of the initiative in November. The Angels will be displayed in Dublin until the end of December. In January and February the Angels tour selected counties in the North and South of Ireland. At the end of the tour, the Angels will return to Dublin and will be auctioned in aid of three vital charities: Gaisce – The President's Awards, First Step Georgia and Right to Sight. 

 

Winter Warmer - Bottled Sunshine

The last two places we lived, there were great independent greengrocers, who would get anything you asked for if they could get it themselves at the market the next morning.
Where we live now, we are lucky enough to still have a small  greengrocer. However, he doesn't go to market,  he just gets everything delivered, and you just have to hope that he has what you need, improvise, or try elsewhere. A couple of years ago when I made enquiries about marmalade oranges, he said there was no interest in them. In view of the fact that he stocks Chinese Leaves, I found that rather a surprising statement, but as he didn't offer to get any for me, I left it at that.
Yesterday I was so pleased to find them in the supermarket. I think it's a shame they have such a short season, because there are so many things you can do with them apart from just making marmalade.
Today, as we are flat out of Grand Marnier and almost out of Cointreau, I put some of them towards making some Seville Orange Liqueur.
This is the zest and juice from 8 Seville oranges, just under a pound of sugar, a little cinnamon and coriander, and then a bottle of brandy to finish it off. It should be ready to filter and bottle in about a month - then it will go into orange sauces, chocolate mousse and whatever.

Five Green Bottles

More photos from last weekend. I loved the tiny little bits of colour in mostly monochromatic scenes.
For some reason the one with people walking through the little wooded passage reminds me a bit of Lowry paintings.

Five Green Bottles...

Walking through the woods...

Late Friday Evening...

Just a selection of pictures from Friday evening in town. It was really getting a bit too dark for shooting without a tripod by the time I'd walked in from work. All these were taken in the grounds of Dublin Castle - the peacock weather vane is on the Chester Beatty Library, which is the museum for Oriental Art. It's also where one of my favourite restaurants is - the Silk Road Café. I just wish they opened in the evenings.

 

In the wake of the snow, we had no water yesterday. For some reason, even though today there are water tankers in two locations very near us, we are alright again. Perhaps the council were trying to restore water today to people who had to do without yesterday.

Sunday in the Park

When I measured the snow in the back garden this morning, it was six inches deep. Yesterday I'd bought a new feeder, to try to stop big birds eating all the fat balls up too quickly, so this morning it was lovely to see two coal tits pecking away at it.
After breakfast we went to the park for a walk...Next time I re-read the Laura Ingalls Wilder books I will have a much better understanding of how hard work it must have been breaking trails in the snow - it wasn't long before my calves were aching when we walked cross country. We saw lots of birds, including a tiny little wren foraging away on a tree. We also saw some dedicated bikers, a couple of whom were having trouble getting enough traction in the snow going uphill, and one guy who had one of those surfing kites, and presumably was aiming to snowboard along. It was snowing heavily just then - too cold for us to stand and wait to see did he achieve lift-off. We saw the kite up once, but he didn't have whatever he was going to use - skis or snowboard or whatever it was, so he just let it fall again.

Her owner said that they had always thought Dotty was whiter, till they saw her in the snow!

Ducks on one of the lakes

The other lake, a lot more frozen than it was on Christmas Day. All we saw on it today was one hooded crow.

Although we were in an area where the deer normally congregate, this pair racing through the snow were the only two we saw all morning. A photo can't capture the magic of seeing them springing along.

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.