Recipes

I read a post on Claire's lovely blog the other day about making food and following recipes and laughed - I rarely follow a recipe exactly. Mostly because I don't plan ahead enough and so have to make do with what's in my cupboard. I have cooked enough and made enough mistakes over the years to be able to make a guess at what will work in terms of substitutions and to trust that even if I follow a recipe to the letter it may be a little drier or wetter than intended and so need a bit more liquid or flour or what-have-you. I may follow a recipe more or less exactly the first time but if it becomes a favourite it usually evolves into something different by several degrees from the original. People seem to eat my food so I guess I do it ok.

I was asked by a friend how I manage to blog and be on forums and do other computer stuff - err well yes I do feed my kids a lot and spend most of that time at the computer and we don't have a tv at the moment so my entertainment comes from being online mostly but a lot of the time I spend on the computer I can only use one hand so writing anything more than a couple of words can be hard work (especially left handed). Also my head is often not together enough to write anything more than a brief response of support for someone on a forum or a joke or a quick hello. Anything that requires both hands and also brain power usually has to wait until both children are in bed and then sometimes I'm too tired to have the brain power - hence posts like this sit in draft form for several days until I can write words to go with the pictures (yep that's why I often just have pictures on my posts).

Anyway onto the recipes - or at least the ones I based the cooking on.

Cheese Scones

these are seriously good and making a double batch is usually required. I tend to put some feta in and some herbs and maybe some cheddar if I haven't got much parmesan in. Parmesan is better than cheddar though as they're not as greasy. This is a great recipe if I know the kids are going to be busy and just want a snack as both of them love them and I know they've got a meal in a scone. They're not so good for me though as I tend to eat most of them myself.

No Bake Bars

These got more amendments as I didn't have much peanut butter in so used some almond butter instead. I used mixed berries and a broken up bar of chocolate instead of chips - obvious stuff really.

A lot of American recipes use cups and tablespoons or sticks of butter (7 tbsp is about 100g by the way). There are plenty of online conversion charts if you get stuck but I do have a set of cups and have used it enough to be able to make things like this by eye instead of in exact quantities so I didn't measure anything when I made these and just added the oats until it looked right. It's one of those things that doesn't need to be exact so go with what you have to hand.

Isabel is loving the camera at the moment and spent a lot of time walking around pointing it at her babies and things so I helped her to find the button to press and she took a few shots and then demanded to see them on the viewer. It's really interesting watching her interacting with the world - she has a lovely imagination and will play with her dolls with long story-lines of 'baby crying', 'shhh, there, there' and then making them food or taking them for a walk. She quite often has one baby nursing whilst she's talking to another. Isaac was always interested in dolls and we had a few that have now become Isabel's but he didn't interact with them in the same way as she does. They were passengers in his vehicles or some passive part of his game not something he interacted with.