What Procrastination Looks Like

Bloke and I went out on a drive yesterday and got thoroughly lost.

It was lots of fun actually.

I'm a little obsessed with instagram, can you tell? (yeah late to the party, I've got an Android.)

I've still got no idea where we went. Alas no time to dwell on it. I have a ton of studying to do. I promise I'll post a nice comprehensive novel of an update after my exam. Take care, Minnie xoxo

Procrastonation

Still gets me, even when I'm really interested in what I'm writing about. Who knew?

I do how ever have all the caffeine and I promise to put a proper, move filled post once this essay is handed in. Promise. The weather is of course gorgeous, so I'm missing the huge garden parasol we put into storage while I'm doing my first semester back. I burn too easily, even with sun cream. Sigh.

i know its a super short one, after weeks of silence, sorry. I've been super busy!

Hope every one is having a more exciting Saturday than I am!

Minnie xoxo

My family are awesome.

Have I told you guys that? They drive me mental, but they are awesome. They are the lovely people enabling my upping sticks and moving.

I swear these posts will get longer, and less pointless. But packing is so over whelming. In theory all I have to do is box up the stuff for the charity shop first then divide my worldly possessions into two piles. One pile is coming with me to my room till may and the other, much larger pile, is going to be stored.

What actually happens is, I hop into a room full of hope armed with my note book, pens and boxes, then slump and start doing something really random, usually cleaning. Which does help, but I'm no further forward with my packing. At all.

I am now at least the proud owner of some proper jamas, they have flowers on. Shut up, they are fluffy and from primark. The flat I'm moving into is known for its Open Sofa policy, flashing some poor, hungover random while I stoat about in a massive teeshirt and pants of unknown origin simply wouldn't do. I will however still insist on offering them mashed banana on toast.

Now just to make the fear that uni will turn round and say "Ha! No sorry we've change our mind!" go away...

And pack.

Packing.

Its starts today. The lists, the boxes, the colour codes.

I've vowed to be really hard on myself when packing. I don't need so much "stuff", I am not a stash crafter at all. Sock yarn doesn't count but the rest needs to be used up promptly or go. Which I nice, I can have a few bit to make my new room feel homely, even if it is only till the end of May.

I will miss this house, as falling downy as it is. I'll miss my plants and my little garden. The oven than burns every thing on any setting.

Here's hoping I make it to the other side of all these lists.

New starts

2011 was a weird and busy year.


And so on so 2012!

In a month's time I'll be back in Scotland and back at university. So on to my resolutions, they aren't much my main one being actually passing my classes this time around.

• Learn to crochet. It is not a dark magic, if I can knit I can damn well learn to crochet.
• Not drop out of university. This is not a difficult one in theory at any rate. 
• Have some adventures.

Not much, huh? Oh well lets how we go...

Minnie xoxo

The Cake Bandit.

Whenever I'm homesick for feeling listless I bake, this process usually involves something sweet from my childhood or scones. If its scones they're all we'll eat for about two days and then we're back to lovely things like vegetables and other non scone items. We emerge from a crab haze no worse the wear for it.

But if I'm in a sweet making mood then the Cake Bandit comes out to play, otherwise we wouldn't actually be able to, you know, fit through the door to leave the house. So after we've had our fill with a cuppa, the offending sweets get wrapped up and deposited in the arms of friends and workmates. I am the cake bandit.

Today I donned the cake bandit cape. I made Millionaire's Shortbread, which to the rest of the world is Caramel slice. It takes me back to primary school, the dinner ladies used to offer it as a pudding option.

It take a bit of time, so pick a day when you've got time to float about and procrastinate, or cheat. More on the cheating later. The Recipe consists of three parts, the chocolate top, the dulce de leche middle and the shortbread base.And its all easier than you think.

Millionaire's Shortbread


300g chocolate (or if you're afraid of tempering chocolate, a bar of cake topping does fairly well)
50g caster sugar
100g plain flour
100g ground rice (but 200g of flour will still result in a perfectly serviceable short bread if you've no ground rice)
100g butter and a little extra
A pinch of salt
A dust of cocoa powder
A small (379g) can of condensed milk

Peirce the lid of the condensed milk, put the tin in a pot or slow cooker, fill with hot water till it reaches 3/4 of the way up the can and leave to simmer for three hours or so.

Dump the flour, rice flour, salt and flour into a bowl, cut or rub in the butter. press the mix into a lined tray with your hands or the side of a glass to get a nice and even surface, jab a few times with a fork then pop into a medium hot oven till it just takes on a golden suggestion of colour at the edges. Set aside to cool. Given that the dulche de leche takes forever to cook, this shouldn't be an issue.

Once the condensed milk has reached its lovely golden toffee colour (it bubbles through the hole in the can, if you didn't make a hole then the can would explode) its time to spread that lovely stuff all over the short bread, this doesn't need to be neat or pretty. Melt the chocolate with a tiny teeny amount of butter in a bain marie or in the microwave in 15 second bursts. Pour over the lot, sprinkle with cocoa powder before the chocolate sets and pop it gently into the fridge.

If you don't have time to sit about and wait for the condensed milk to do its thing you can pop it in a pan with some butter, a little brown sugar and a pinch of salt and simmer the mix gently till it thickens. This will give a more complete flavour but its a tricky one to gauge, if you boil it you'll end up with a talky sugar crumble. Which is nice, but not what we're looking for here.

Look at all that squidgy goodness. MMMMmm. Squidgy.

O hai life!

So life has been really busy, nothing particularly interesting, just busy.

So given that I've been meaning to do loads this past twelve months and achieved squat its not surprising. Sigh.

Time to make time right? Should be fun, I'm up for some adventuring if you are!

Cryptically yours, Minnie xoxo