Entries from April 2009 ↓

The Mister just found on one of his geeky film sites that Patricia Cornwell’s Kay Scarpetta series is being made into films. I’ve often had conversations with other fans about who’d play the various characters in the books, and nation, it’s Angelina Jolie! I am NOT pleased about that one! Not that I was certain in my mind who would play that role and I know these things are left open to interpretation but Kay Scarpetta is older, with a grown niece and a very grown up job. I had other older characters in mind for Benton Wesley and Pete Mario as well … being Tommy Lee Jones and whatshisname from NYPD Blue … Dennis Franz. As far as I know, no other characters have been cast yet … will have to get the Mister to keep an eye out for me.

Might be going to visit Scooby next week – his human’s will be out of town and he needs to be fed. Have now seen him on video – he’s huge! And he seems to like drinking water.

The Lambton Quay store. The little screw that holds the glasses arm on fell out of the glasses I bought in New York last year – took them into that store and the lady fixed them on the spot, no charge, and said I could call in any time if they got loose again! Excellent service!

Still boycotting Wellington cafes on Sundays since the closing of Nikau in December last year, we’ve progressed through our own date scones, homemade hot cross (& variations) buns and after trying the Awakeri neighbour’s homemade bread last weekend we thought we’d try making a loaf ourselves this weekend.

It rose as it should

It looked like a crusty oval loaf when baked

It looked like real bread when it was sliced

And it tasted pretty good too! Because we weren’t varying the recipe at all (except for omitting the salt) there was a bit of wholemeal flour in it so it tasted a bit wholemealy for me, and perhaps a bit sweet because of the lack of salt. The texture was not as fluffy as the Vienna loaves from New World or Aro Bake’s ploughman loaf – it was more like the Marlborough half-bake loaves.

Very successful effort and according to the recipe will make great toast the next day.

V. exciting – there’s an actual loaf of actual real bread (minus salt) baking in the oven. The Mister kneaded for 20 mins. Can’t wait to see how it’ll turn out.

Yikes – had to take the camera in for repair, it’s started to have a pink tinge and pink border on all the photos. Not sure I can cope without it for 2 weeks but hey, who knew after all these years it might be fixed for free as a known fault!

Well it’s done. ER. I’ve just watched the final of the show. I was in tears by the end of the opening credits!  Several years ago they swapped the original green credits with theme music and montage of actors for much quicker blue credits which only had a couple of bars of the theme and no pictures – for the final they brought back the original theme music and used a mix of old and new actors to reproduce the original credits. For die hard fans this was such an amazing trip. The final show was great. People all saying goodbye in ways befitting the story, a few things left unfinished but you were left imagining nothing but a good outcome and the lights went down on a huge trauma involving everyone running about and loads of ambulances, business as usual which is how it had to be. And a nice reversal of Dr Carter and ‘Dr’ Greene. I thought the last scene that faded to black was perfect – I don’t think in the entire series we’ve ever seen the hospital in location – the ambulance bay, entrance, hospital sign, L running around the front and Chicago buildings behind. God I can’t believe I’ve been hooked on the show for 15 years.

At last! I think we’ve had general success, although the second lot minus the crosses are still number one. We didn’t bring the bread maker up to Awakeri so we used a different recipe in Mother’s kitchen whiz and kneaded it by hand.

This recipe didn’t require wholemeal flour so are the whitest looking ones we’ve had but they had great crosses on them and were gobbled up by the family yesterday morning.

If I could figure out how to post you some Basel Lisa I would!

A lovely few days in the Awakeri sun is almost over – heading home soon but here’s what we’ve been up to:

So, V3 of the hot cross buns have come out rather flat! Other aspects are working though – this week we have mixed peel, this week we got the fruit and sugar into the bread maker in enough time for it to be well mixed and LOOK! real crosses on the tops.

However, something didn’t go right, the bread maker didn’t seem so warm when the cycle was finished and the dough had barely risen. I put it away in the hot water cupboard for a further hour but that didn’t help it either. We’ve eaten a couple of them – they’re a bit like hot cross bagels – kind of dense and chewy but still a great flavour and still a lunch without salt or baking powder!

We’re thinking of taking the bread maker up to Awakeri over Easter weekend but I was hoping for at least one total success before we did that. Hmmm, undecided.