Where in the World is Rebecca Today?

Recipe: Sugar Free Fairy Cakes (Diabetic safe!)

Rebecca — Fri, 18 May 2012 18:01:48 +0000

WOWEE am I ever excited. We’re having a garden party steam-up on Sunday and we are serving food. Lunch of course, includes a few sweet treats and with my new diagnosis, I knew I’d be out of the running for eating cakes….and there’s nothing worse than making something you aren’t allowed to eat. So, I decided I was going to figure out a cake recipe I COULD eat, and then decided since I needed it to be taste-tested (by my husband and mom who’s visiting from the US and by my friend H who also has diabetes), I would do fairy cakes (cupcakes). This recipe is in US measurements. I wouldn’t try converting it down to grams due to Splenda being lighter than regular sugar weight-wise, but you can use a regular mug for measuring as long as you use the same one for everything. This recipe uses the low-carb baking mix, Carbquik, which can be purchased online from several retailers in the US and UK (I buy mine from AvidLite). You can use regular flour, but there will be more carbs (and sugar if you use white flour) in it. Carbquik has 2g of carbs per serving (one serving is 1/3 cup, which is approximately what is in one fairycake).

You Will Need:

2 Cups Carbquik
2 tsp Baking powder
1 1/3 Cup Splenda (regular Splenda, not the baking blend sold in the US)
1/2 Cup butter (or margarine/Stork/suitable substitute for baking)
1 Cup Milk (skim or semi-skim is best)
2 tsp Vanilla
2 medium-sized eggs

-Preheat oven to 175C (350F).
-Sift Carbquik, baking powder, and Splenda together.
-Add butter and beat until fluffy.
-Add eggs one at a time and beat after each addition.
-Slowly pour in the milk while mixing and add vanilla.
-Fill cupcake cases 2/3 full and bake for 20-25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
-Should make 18 regular-sized cupcakes.

Cool on a wire rack.

For the Chocolate Buttercream:

1/2 Cup Butter
3 Cups Powdered Splenda (recipe to follow)
1/3 Cup Unsweetened Cocoa
1/3 Cup Milk
1 tsp Vanilla

-Sift together powdered Splenda and cocoa and set aside.
-Beat butter until fluffy.
-Add milk.
-Slowly add Splenda/Cocoa mixture and beat well. Add vanilla.

Your icing should be nice and creamy. If it’s too runny, add more powdered Splenda or cocoa. If it’s too thick, add more milk a teaspoonful at a time.

To make Splenda Powdered Sugar:

Combine 3/4 Cup Splenda and 2TBS corn flour (cornstarch) in a blender and mix until it is a fine powder. You can use this in any recipe that calls for powdered sugar/X-10/confectioners/icing sugar.

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The contents of this post, including images are © Rebecca J Lockley and Tim Lockley unless otherwise stated and should not be reproduced without permission. If you are not reading this on http://blog.beccajanestclair.com, my facebook page, Networked Blogs, the RSS feed(s), or through an e-mail subscription, please notify me.

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19 Trains in 39 Hours

Rebecca — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 16:31:04 +0000

Last Sunday, Tim and I were lounging in bed having a lie-in and reading. I was in the middle of the first Hunger Games book, and without giving too much away I’ll say that the protagonist was on a train. This prompted me to say to Tim that I “wanted to ride on some trains”. Since we were in the middle of Tim’s long weekend and he didn’t have to be back at work until Wednesday AND since when we write a date on our priv passes it’s good as a 48-hour pass, AND since we had a few passes to burn before the end of June….we decided to do it.

Loads of ideas were flowing – what direction did we want to go in? Did we want to do something new or visit an old favourite? Did we want to ride steam trains, too? Did we want to pre-book accommodations? What about a sleeper train* or an International destination**? We finally pulled out an RPG 4-sider and tossed it giving each number a compass position (North-South-East-West). Our roll turned up South, but we had already agreed London was out (yes, I know there’s a lot of South that’s not London, but for a lot of it we’d have had to travel through London) and so Tim rolled it again and I think we wound up with “East” that time, but we kept tossing the ideas back and forth and finally Tim had a list of 8 different places for us to consider so we pulled out an 8-sider and it spit out the number we assigned Norfolk (which also happens to be South and East of here).

As it turned out, in order to make the most of our days, we needed to be on the 0520 train out of Lincoln on Monday morning. Ouch. Considering that I didn’t get to bed until past 2AM and Tim had to shake me awake at 4:30 with “We have to leave in 10 minutes”, I was not a happy camper. But the night before I had packed us both Breakfast and Lunch, so all I had to do was organize the cold stuff into a cooler bag and add an ice pack. I also had showered around midnight, so I didn’t need a morning shower. By the time we reached Norfolk, I was exhausted, but the weather was glorious and we were enjoying our time hopping around on various trains and riding up and down the same lines multiple times to get in multiple routes.

Tim booked us a B&B at in Sheringham. He found the place on a website called Direct Rooms. We’ve had great results every time we’ve used that site, so I highly recommend it! Our B&B host texted Tim to ask what time we were arriving, and when Tim wrote back that we were travelling by rail, he offered to come get us at the station! The room was gorgeous — all decked out in purple and mauve (they knew I was coming!) and they really went the extra mile for being just a spare room in someone’s home (seriously!). There was a carafe of water on the bedside table, all manner of hot drink options next to the kettle, packets of biscuits and chocolates, and even shampoo, conditioner, bodywash, and soap — things that I don’t usually expect from a Bed and Breakfast place! The following morning, our host cooked us made-to-order breakfasts, and then offered to drive us back into town for the train! This place gets 5 stars in my book, and we WILL be booking in again next time we go!

After we settled in on Monday evening, we walked back down into town and had dinner at a pub called the Robin Hood Inn. The food was good, and the décor wasn’t bad. We decided to walk around the town and I window shopped in some of the small shops. We made it down to the sea and stood less than a foot away from the water, trying to skip stones until I could no longer feel my fingers. We got back to our B&B at around 10PM and I had every intentions on having a cup of tea, relaxing, and then showering but I wound up dropping my Kindle and was fast asleep by 11.

for Tuesday, we decided to take in a little bit of steam railing and after a quick trip around the gift shops of Sheringham, we boarded the North Norfolk Railway. The trip up and down was lovely with lots of sea views and we even had our own compartment. When we got back to Sheringham, we headed on the regular train down a few stops to ride on the Bure Valley Railway, a 10-inch gauge line. 10-inches is about as small as I am willing to go on (even though you can ride 7-inch and 5-inch, I just don’t like them and find those a bit too small for my taste). And really, get your minds out of the gutter as I was talking about RAIL GAUGES!

After Bure Valley it was back on the train to Norwich, Norwich to Peterborough, Peterborough to Newark, and Newark to Lincoln. We arrived back at 2000.

What a lovely way to spend a few days!

Photos coming later!

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*If we had wanted to, we could have ridden a sleeper train to Cornwall, provided we were ready to leave the house about 2 hours after this discovery (on Sunday night)…which we couldn’t do. It also would have cost us £70 extra to take a sleeper in addition to staying Monday night in a B&B.

**We also discovered it was quite possible to travel all the way to Köln and back in the two days time, but it wouldn’t have given us much time in Köln and we would have been paying full-price for European travel since we hadn’t pre-applied for European travel coupons (yes, I love my husband’s job and it’s perks!).

Recipe: Bill’s Rum Cake

Rebecca — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 10:18:54 +0000

Yesterday was my Father-in-Law’s birthday. Each year since I’ve been part of this family, I’ve made my FIL a rum cake for his birthday, so even though I’m not allowed to have it, it doesn’t mean I stopped baking.

My aunt makes a fantastic rum cake called the “Bacardi Rum Cake” that uses a cake mix and a packet of Jell-o pudding, neither of which is available in the UK, so I had to create this recipe on my own several years ago. It’s withstood plenty of testing, so I’m ready to share it with you all!

You will need:

For the cake:
2 cups (250g) plus 2 teaspoon self-rising flour
1 cup (200g) caster sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 c (113g) room-temperature butter
3 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
1/3 c. (80ml) rum (I used dark/navy rum)

Preheat oven to 175C. Grease/spray a bundt pan or an 8″ square.

-combine flour, salt, and baking powder in one bowl and set aside.
-cream together butter and sugar. add eggs one at a time. Slowly add in flour mixture.
-add vanilla and rum. Spread mixture into preferred cake pan and bake 20-25 minutes, until golden brown. Optional – Top with crushed pecans before putting in the oven.

While the cake is baking, make the following glaze:
1/4 cup (60g) butter
1/2 cup (100g) brown sugar
1/2 cup (120ml) rum
2 teaspoon vanilla

-Melt butter and sugar in a thick pan on the stove. Add rum and bring to a boil. Remove from heat and stir in vanilla.

When the cake is done, cool on a wire rack in the pan for about 10 minutes, then gently flip over onto a serving plate. Using a skewer, poke holes in the top of the still-warm cake and pour on the glaze. This cake doesn’t need any icing, but if you want you can sift some icing sugar over the top.

This is always a hit with everyone I make it for, though I will caution that it is in fact possible to get tipsy off of a few slices of this!

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Sharing a Secret – The Resuts of my Blood Tests

Rebecca — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 12:39:50 +0000

There’s been something weighing on my mind for the past several weeks and at fist I didn’t want to tell anyone — not even my family — but then Tim convinced me that I should tell my mom and his parents and then I branched out and told a few local friends who I thought could help me, I told one of my cousins, and I told a close friend who knows what it’s like to deal with this. I haven’t told any of my other close/best friends, for which I apologize. I should have come and told some of you sooner than now, but I just didn’t know how to word things and I didn’t want pity, and even with just the small group who know I’m already being given loads of (often conflicting!) advice.

When I went to the GP a few weeks back for the results of a blood test (done for unrelated reasons), my glucose level came back high. Dr Howard wanted me to do another Glucose tolerance test (the last one had been done in August 2010), so I had that the following Monday, and my results appointment with Dr Howard the following Friday.

My glucose level was 11.4. Under UK guidelines, I have diabetes (Type 2) (the cut off is above 11.1).

I had to wait over a week before I could see the diabetic nurse, and it was an AWFUL week. I didn’t know what to do and I spent the week cutting out as much junk from my diet as possible, and switching a lot of my habits around. I eliminated all white flour from my kitchen (my MIL got a huge bag of things), most of the white sugar (I left a little for guests who need sugar in their tea!), and anything else I knew was now on my “nono” list. I researched and picked up a few diabetic cookbooks and talked to my friends. A plan started to form.

On Monday, I saw the diabetic nurse. She confirmed that I was “barely” diabetic, with my Hb1ac level at just below 50 (which I understand is about 6.7%). If it was above 50, I would need medication, but as it’s just under, I’ve been advised to work on controlling my diet for the next two months when I’ll go back in again for another review. While it’s not possible to reverse diabetes or never have it again, it IS possible to eliminate actively having it provided I change my diet and stick to it.

I have decided to go low-carb and have eliminated bread from my diet. I now have lots of wholewheat wraps for my sandwiches and no longer have toast in the morning. I do my best to have breakfast every day – Weetabix, yoghurt with fruit, or an Atkins bar.

Baking is going to be the toughest thing to handle, but I’ve found low-carb flour (Carbalose and Carbquik) and I’ve also replaced my white self-rising flour with whole wheat self-rising flour.

I’ve also had to eliminate potatoes from my diet, which has been really rough!

So that’s where I’m at right now. My primary GP would like me to lose 2 stone (28lbs) in the next 6 months, but then he mentioned August to me, so who knows? I have managed to lose about 5 pounds so far in the two weeks since being diagnosed, so at least I’m on a good start.

Advice, products to get, and recipes are more than welcome, but if I start getting conflicting advice, whatever the GP and nurse say will always win.

The above will be cross-posted to my blog, facebook, and LJ. Anything appearing below this paragraph is specific to that page.

Recipe: Low-Fat/Low GI Vegetarian Lasagne

Rebecca — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 10:37:03 +0000

One of my favourite foods has always been Lasagne, but our family recipe uses three types of cheese, meat, and of course, white noodles. I’ve re-created the dish using foods that are a little more waist-friendly.

You Will Need:

Packet of wholewheat lasagne noodles
500g pack of Quorn mince (or other vegetarian mince or turkey mince)
300-500g cottage cheese (can use more or less, depending on size of dish and how cheesy you want it)
1 carton tomato passata (sauce.)
Herbs – basil, oregano, thyme
Cinnamon
Pepper
Parmesean cheese (optional)
Weight Watcher’s grated cheese (optional)

1 – preheat oven to 200C
2 – cook noodles according to package (optional if you are using the “no cook” style of noodle, but I like to pre-cook those too*). Before I cooked the noodles, I layered them out in the bottom of my dish to figure out how many I would need.
3 – Place Quorn in a microwave safe container and cook for 5 minutes or until no longer frozen. Add passata,herbs (to taste – about a tablespoon of each), cinnamon (just a sprinkle), and pepper (a few turns of a grinder) and combine well. Microwave for a further 5 minutes (you can cook this on the stove too). Adjust your herb and spice level to your individual taste. For a spicier lasagne, you might consider adding chilli powder or red pepper flakes.
4 – Spray your lasagne dish with cooking spray and arrange a layer of noodles. Top noodles with spoonfuls of Quorn, and in between spoonfuls of Quorn add spoonfuls of cottage cheese. Lightly sprinkle the entire layer with parmesean and add another layer of noodles. This time, try to put the cottage cheese where you had the Quorn in the previous layer and the Quorn where you had the cottage cheese. Add another layer of noodles (or make some whole wheat penne if you’ve run out of noodles like I did!) and cover the noodles with alternating spoonfuls of sauce and cottage cheese. If there is any noodle still showing, you can toss on some WW grated cheese. If you leave any of the noodle uncovered, they will get crispy.
5 – bake for 25-30 minutes until bubbly. The cheese should be melted and the no cook noodles should be soft.

Serve with a side salad and veg. This makes enough to feed 4-6 people, or just two people with plenty to freeze for another 2 meals! The nice thing about this recipe is you can adjust the measurements to fit your crowd and sized container. If I was having more people over, I would have used my large 9×13″ pan for this, but since it was just for Tim and I, I used a smaller casserole dish that is only about 4×10″. Since I used a smaller dish, I had some of the “meat” mixture leftover and I just froze it to have over pasta at some point in the future. I’m allergic to onions and garlic, so none of my recipes contain either, but as this is an Italian recipe, it probably wouldn’t hurt it if you added some of either or both!

This meal is appropriate for ovo-lacto vegetarians as well as diabetics and those on a low-carb or low GI diet, though please make sure to check the individual nutritional information on the ingredients you purchase first if you have specific dietary needs. The specific products I used not previously mentioned:

Tesco Organic Wholewheat Lasagne sheets** (Not available on website)
Tesco Light Choices Natural Cottage Cheese
Tesco Organic Passata*** (not available on website. This comes in a glass jar and I used half the jar)
Napolina Grated Parmesean (not available on website)

*I dislike the no-cook noodles because I feel they are very chewy, even when pre-cooked, but sometimes it’s the only option available! You also could substitute in any wholegrain pasta and make this into a pasta bake.
**100g contains 63.2g of carbs, of which sugars 2.1. So a bit on the high side for carbs, however, one noodle weighs in at 20g and a single serving would only contain 1 – 1 1/2 noodles.
**There will be sugar in this, however it is all naturally occurring sugar from the tomatoes.

LJ Idol: Follow the Butterflies…..

Rebecca — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 11:53:10 +0000

[This is a re-post of an entry written for LJ Idol week 15 - preoccupied.]

My husband says I have butterflies in my head. It’s not meant as an insult, it’s said with fondness in his voice and is a reference to my ability, or rather, my lack of an ability to pay attention.

It’s not ADD or ADHD, and in fact I always did well in school and paid attention to most of my classes as I was generally interested in most of them. It’s more that I seem to have too many interesting things to look at, read, listen to, and do.

I’m a housewife, but my house is usually an organized mess of chaos. Tim and I know where things are…for the most part. Every once in a while I’ll get this grand idea to organize something and I’ll start on it and feel the excitement blooming as I come up with a plan….and then I’ll spy a cookbook I haven’t looked through yet, or I’ll decide to check my email. Email leads to Facebook, Livejournal, Twitter, Google Reader, Pinterest, and Sink into Your Eyes. If the story is good on SIYE, there’s an entire afternoon GONE.

And let’s not forget my Kindle. Last week, one of my favoured chick-lit authors released her latest spy/suspense novel and I immediately downloaded it and spent most of the afternoon reading it. I’m also in the process of re-reading the entire Pratchett library, and sometimes I’ll stop just until the kettle boils to read a bit and wind up spending hours and retuning to a cold kettle!

My brain doesn’t stop. I used to use some Guster lyrics on the front page of my LJ years ago and I never knew how perfect they fit me until recently — I’m the center of attention in the walls inside my head / and no one will ever know it if I keep my mouth shut tight — Boy, does that ring true. Even while I’m doing the washing up, my brain is thinking, thinking, thinking. Dreaming up ideas for stories (that never get written), imagining what I would do if I had a bigger kitchen, planning out the redecoration of the upstairs, dreaming about having children, creating new designs for felt crafts….anything and everything goes on in my head.

You know what the say about the best laid plans and all, right? Every week, on Monday morning (sometimes afternoon) I say to myself “this week will be different”. I tell myself that I will get on top of the laundry, including putting it away, I will keep the kitchen clean and do the dishes daily, I will tackle the big pile of mending that’s been waiting for “a few spare minutes”, and I might even get a head start on preparing the spare room for my guests, the first of which arrives in April.

Each week I fail. I spend so much time thinking about what I planned on doing with my week, that I wind up not doing any of it.

So here I sit, Monday afternoon. It’s a new week. What am I going to do with it?

LJ Idol: Puppy Love

Rebecca — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 23:52:54 +0000

[this is a re-post of an entry previously posted to my LJ for LJ Idol Week 14's prompt was "twitterpaited".]

I’ve always disliked dogs. Dislike feels like it’s too weak of a word, but hate is too strong, so let’s say I strongly disliked dogs. Maybe a large dog tried to jump on me when I was little, maybe a dog bit me, maybe it was just their loud bark or being growled at, but I have never liked dogs and have always been scared of large dogs.

Until the day I met my in-laws dog, Ebony. Ebby was a large, black Alsatian who weighed more than me and was taller than me if she was up on her hind legs and by all means I should have been afraid of her…but she was soft as butter. I was nervous the day Tim took me over to meet his parents and their dog because I knew I didn’t like dogs, and I was worried that this would come out, or that Ebby would somehow be able to sense my fear and do something. Ebby was a beauty. She softly nudged my hand with her nose and wanted me to pet her between her ears, and then she laid down on the floor next to the chair I was sitting in as if to say “right, you’ll do”.

I spent many afternoons walking Ebby with my mother-in-law. Sometimes with Tim or my sister-in-law, but often it was just the two of us walking around the farmer’s fields in the village with Ebby. My mother-in-law didn’t use a lead with Ebby, as Ebby would always respond to commands and never acted up. She even permitted the school children who called her a “wolf” to fuss her and would always sniff the dogs we walked past, but rarely barked at them, even if they barked at her first!

A few months after I moved, my in-laws went away on a holiday and didn’t take the dog with them. My sister-in-law was staying behind, but she would be at work during the day and they didn’t want to leave Ebby alone all day, so I was asked if I could take care of her. I would need to go over to their house mid-morning to let Ebby out, bring her back to our house, take her on her afternoon walk, and then bring her back home. I was nervous. What if the dog didn’t respond to my commands? What if she ran away from me? What if she snapped at another dog, a child, or me?

I didn’t have to worry. Ebby and I walked down to the end of our street and all I had to say to her was “wait” and she stopped before going into the street. I told her “sit”, and her bottom went to the ground. “Go on, girl” was her signal that it was okay to cross the street, and “are you a thirsty dog?” gave her permission to jump into the beck (US: stream) and have a drink and a swim if the water was deep enough. We would go around the fields and the village church and Ebby was always by my side as soon as I called her to me. She followed me around he house all day, trying to squeeze herself into the small rooms until it was time for her afternoon walk, and her return home. Once we got home, she would flop herself onto the living room rug and be content until my sister-in-law came home to feed her dinner.

Many days my mother-in-law’s visit would be announced by Ebby nudging the front door open if it was ajar. I would turn around from washing my dishes and there she was a full five minutes ahead of my mother-in-law because all you had to say to her was “go to Tim’s” and she would start walking over to our house.

I fell in love with the big black dog and would often offer to take Ebby on her walks to give my mother-in-law a break. Evenings spent with my in-laws always included the dog. She would walk around from person-to-person getting petted and fussed over before settling herself in a corner.

Sadly, Ebby is no longer with us. A few months ago the vet found lumps in her leg that turned out to be cancerous and Ebby was put down a few days after Christmas. We were all saddened by the news and I sobbed into Tim because we had just seen Ebby two days before at the family Christmas celebration and we all thought she was okay.

My in-laws have a new dog. She also is a German Shepherd, but her colouring is different and her manner is different to that of Ebby. Bonny (the new dog) is two-years-old and hasn’t had much training from her old owners, so she sometimes scares me when she tries to jump at me or bark, but I am willing to try to get to know Bonny for Ebby’s sake. If I could fall in love with Ebby, surely I can give Bonny a chance.

Recipe: Italian Meatball Soup

Rebecca — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 11:30:55 +0000

I posted a teaser pic on facebook a week ago, and have since been asked for the recipe, so here we go…

I first discovered the idea on one of the food blogs I regularly read. It was either Serious Eats or The Kitchn and was called “Italian wedding soup”. I’ve previously also seen recipes for “meatball soup”. As my recipe wound up being completely different from either recipe previously posted, I decided to call mine Italian Meatball Soup.

You will need:
-a pack of ground turkey (usually sold as 500g or sometimes 630g)
-3 teaspoons fresh or dried thyme
-1 egg
-50g breadcrumbs
-50g parmesean cheese

-2 TBS olive oil
-3 carrots, chopped/diced
-3 stalks of celery, chopped
-1L chicken broth/stock
-200g fresh or frozen peas
-200g fresh or frozen corn
-100g baby spinach
-100g small pasta
-a handful of fresh thyme, or a few TBS dried
-1 TBS dried basil
-juice of half a lemon
-bunch of fresh parsley, chopped

To make meatballs:
-combine turkey mince, egg, thyme, breadcrumbs, and parmesean cheese and form into small meatballs. Flatten the meatballs slightly (they should be about the size of a 50p). Place the meatballs in the bottom of a frying pan or griddle pan and brown meat on both sides. It doesn’t matter if they are cooked through, as they will finish cooking in the soup. This is just to keep them together. You also don’t need to flatten them first, I just found it easier to work with in the pan this way! Another option would be to start with frozen meatballs or even leftover meatballs as that would cut down the amount of time this takes to make.

To make soup:
-heat olive oil in the bottom of your soup pot and add carrots and celery. Cook until vegetables are soft, about 10-15 minutes. (this is an optional step. You can start by bringing chicken broth to a boil and adding both fresh and frozen veg at the same time, but by cooking the carrots and celery first, they get very tender.)
-add chicken broth/stock, thyme, peas, and carrots. Bring to the boil, add basil, then simmer about 10 minutes.
-add meatballs, cook for 10 additional minutes.
-add spinach and small pasta, bringing soup back to the boil and cook just until pasta is tender (the pack of pasta I used said 5-7 minutes). Squeeze in half a lemon (optional).
-test a meatball to make sure it’s cooked through before serving. Sprinkle with parsley just before serving.

Tim loved it, and he’s not a big fan of soup as a main meal, but this soup was hearty enough to satisfy him. It made enough for us to have this as our Dinner plus enough leftovers for Tim to take the following day. I had to add some more chicken broth to the leftovers.

Testing Facebook Album Plug-in

Rebecca — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 12:05:11 +0000

If this works, you should see the Facebook Album “Profile Pictures”. If this doesn’t work, I have no idea what you’ll see!

From Profile Pictures, posted by Rebecca Jane Lockley on 9/02/2010 (40 items)

Generated by Facebook Photo Fetcher

Another Old Vlog

Rebecca — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 12:19:18 +0000

From a visit to the NRM in July 2011:

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The contents of this post, including images are © Rebecca J Lockley and Tim Lockley unless otherwise stated and should not be reproduced without permission. If you are not reading this on http://blog.beccajanestclair.com, my facebook page, the RSS feed(s), or through an e-mail subscription, please notify me.

Edinburgh, November 2011

Rebecca — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 12:18:54 +0000

I finally cleared off the video camera this morning and discovered videos taken LAST March. Oh my.

Here’s a vlog I made while we were visiting Edinburgh in November 2011.

As it turns out, I never actually blogged about the trip, either. Probably because I was waiting to edit the vlog! Whoopsie. So, let’s get back in our TARDIS and go to November 2011 when Tim and I travelled (finally!) to Edinburgh for a few days. I booked us into the Travelodge near Haymarket station for £20/night thanks to a room sale and we decided to go for two days over Tim’s autumn break, which also happened to be a few days after our wedding anniversary.

The train ride was long, and we didn’t arrive in Edinburgh until the early evening. After checking into the hotel, we decided to go on a wander to take some photos and wound up near the castle. We trudged back to the hotel and went to bed, for we had lots of plans for the following day!

We got up bright and early and after breakfast headed out to re-trace our steps from the previous night to visit the castle. After we toured all the buildings there, we headed towards the Royal Mile and walked down it as far as the St Giles Cathedral, which just happens to be the church of John Knox, the man who founded Presbyterianism, my family’s religion. I spent loads of time walking around the church and we were given permission to take photos, so I took plenty for my family back in PA.

The light was fading, so we made our way back to the hotel,had some dinner, and went to bed. The following morning we headed back to Haymarket station and the long trip back to Lincoln.

We had a fantastic time, and I look forward to spending more time in Edinburgh!

[Please click on the images to view them larger]

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The contents of this post, including images are © Rebecca J Lockley and Tim Lockley unless otherwise stated and should not be reproduced without permission. If you are not reading this on http://blog.beccajanestclair.com, my facebook page, the RSS feed(s), or through an e-mail subscription, please notify me.

Recipe: Beer Bread

Rebecca — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 02:24:30 +0000

By far, the easiest bread in the world to make. It goes great with soups and stews!

I first made Beer Bread in 2009 out of a box mix that cost over $5.00. We loved the bread, and I knew there had to be an easy way of making this without buying a pre-made mix, so off to the search engines I went. There are loads of recipes out there for beer bread and some of them can get quite involved. This recipe is so simple, anyone can make it. You can even mix the dry ingredients together ahead of time, pop it into a jar and give to a friend with a bottle of beer for an instant gift.

Beer Bread

You Will Need:
375g self-rising flour
3 tbs caster sugar
330ml beer (lagers work best – I used Stella)

1. Pre-heat oven to 180C. Butter the sides and bottom of a loaf tin.
2. Mix together dry ingredients. Slowly add beer (it will foam) and use a wooden spoon to mix until sticky.
3. Pour into loaf tin and bake 50-60 minutes or until the top is crunchy. Cool tin on it’s side on a wire rack for 10-15 minutes before removing bread.

This doesn’t even need any butter, it’s tasty without it!

I might be posting a lot of recipes in the next few days as I seem to have a lot of recipes I haven’t yet posted!

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The contents of this post, including images are © Rebecca J Lockley and Tim Lockley unless otherwise stated and should not be reproduced without permission. If you are not reading this on http://blog.beccajanestclair.com, my facebook page, the RSS feed(s), or through an e-mail subscription, please notify me.

Leap Year

Rebecca — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 02:39:22 +0000

I remember saying to Tim back when we were dating that if we weren’t married by the next leap year I would ask him to marry me.

Funny, how things work out.

Happy once-every-four-years day!

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The contents of this post, including images are © Rebecca J Lockley and Tim Lockley unless otherwise stated and should not be reproduced without permission. If you are not reading this on http://blog.beccajanestclair.com, my facebook page, the RSS feed(s), or through an e-mail subscription, please notify me.

LJ Idol Re-Post: Building Trains

Rebecca — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 02:22:00 +0000

[I got a lot of good feedback on this post both from people reading it through therealljidol and my friends in the garden railway world. I thought it was worth a re-post.]

For Christmas last year, my husband gave his little brother a thin, narrow length of steel (it looked like a ruler), a sheet of brass, a steel cylinder, some rods of assorted length, width, and shape, and a set of plastic couplings (“choppers”). He would have given me the same, but I joined the party a little later on. We gave the same gift to a friend of ours, and my husband had some for himself. We are going to make steam trains for the garden railway*.

Now, I’m a crafty person. I love beading, sewing, and scrapbooking. I used to have a (pink) toolbox and I could fix basic things around the home. I think the most complicated thing I did on my own was fixing the toilet at my mom’s house. But stepping into my husband’s workshop put me in a whole new world.

In 2009, my husband finished renovating the small brick building to the side of our house that had formerly seen life as a washing house and an outdoor loo. I helped him install two long workbenches down either side and hang a wall of shelves in the alcove that once held a toilet. Entering the workshop, your nose was assaulted with smells – the pine of the shelving, the white paint from the walls, the dampness of the building, the metallic smell of butane mixing in with the sharp bite of methylated spirit. A small heater hummed in the corner, and the room was punctuated with bursts of lighting from the three clip-on lights scattered around the room.

The workshop had a narrow aisle between the two work benches, but somehow we managed to fit three people into it. In front of me was the bench that was used for putting things together and Tim had screwed down a large, heavy clamp. The bench behind me held all of the workshop appliances – an angle grinder, a tall drill, and the lathe. Under both benches were shelves holding all sorts of delights – smaller clamps, delicate pliers, oil to grease the machines to keep it going, and various bits and lumps of metal waiting to be made into something.

I was given a set of safety instructions for using the workshop that included the following: Always wear boots and goggles, take off your rings, take off your necklace, and tie your hair back and tuck it into your collar. My eyes grew wide with fear as Tim began to tell me stories he had heard of people getting hair stuck in the turning lathe, or getting a necklace snagged and it strangling them. This was a piece of machinery to be feared. I wasn’t looking forward to using it.

We each have our own plastic box labelled with the name of our eventual loco and where we can keep all our bits and pieces separate. I have named my loco “Orion”, as a dedication to my father. The boxes contained the Christmas present pieces and were just waiting to be cut, drilled, soldered, and bent into shape.

The first thing we had to do was make the base for the engine, called the frames. The frame makes a box that everything will sit on top of or be attached to. Making the frames involved taking the bits of steel that looked like a ruler and sawing them down to size. Then came the painstaking task of filing down the rough edges to make both sides even….but don’t file down too far or you will have to start at the beginning again. It took me a half hour to saw through the metal, and just as long to file the cut side, and I had to do it for four sides. There also are some holes you need to drill in the pieces, as well as filing away a notch, but I hadn’t gotten that far yet before I wound up in the hospital and had surgery on my arm, which left me out of the workshop for a while. My husband and his brother have completed their frames, and moved on to the next part.

My husband and his brother were attempting to cut the wheel blanks one day over the Summer and had agreed to cut everyone’s since it was taking them ages just to saw one. They admitted defeat after two hours and only three wheels to show for it, so Tim rang a friend of his who offered to cut them for us in his workshop.

Of course, having the wheel blanks doesn’t mean we have wheels. They need to be turned on the lathe to be shaped into a train wheel. Unfortunately, our lathe broke while my brother-in-law was working on his own, so we have had to stop production while we search for a new fuse for it.

Even after we have the wheels done, we will all be a long way away from having a finished product. We have to make all the fiddly bits that go into a model steam train. Loads of terms that I don’t understand now, but I’m sure I’ll become familiar with them as we build our engines. Things like a boiler, lubricator, and regulator are all foreign words to me. The only piece of our engines we will be buying pre-made are the pressure gauges. Everything else will be handmade.

We still have a pile of tin, brass, and steel in the workshop, but I’ve got my eye on the end result. Here’s the instructions we will be following just to give you an idea of everything that needs to be done: http://trains.de.jardin.free.fr/minidampf/brazil_uk/contents.html

We all started work on our engines in early 2011. Maybe one of us will get one finished in 2012!

–
*Just in case you were wondering, yes, we have a railway in our garden. We model in 16mm to the foot and have models of narrow gauge trains, so our track is 32mm wide. We have small steam trains that usually run off Butane or meths, with a few adventurous souls making tiny coal-fired engines. If you’re interested in finding out more, you can check out the Association of 16mm Narrow Gauge Modellers here: http://www.16mm.org.uk

[This has been an entry for therealljidol Week 12 - Some Assembly Required]

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The contents of this post, including images are © Rebecca J Lockley and Tim Lockley unless otherwise stated and should not be reproduced without permission. If you are not reading this on http://blog.beccajanestclair.com, my facebook page, the RSS feed(s), or through an e-mail subscription, please notify me.

Recipe: 500g of Butter (Butterscotch Cake)

Rebecca — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 15:35:01 +0000

[It was so good, there wasn't any left!]

To make a long story short, I offered to bake my friend Brian a cake and gave it to him when we saw him on Sunday. Brian decided to donate his cake to the group we were with, so everyone got to have a taste and everyone who had some complimented me on it! So, here you go. How to use 500g of butter in one go….

Butterscotch Cake

For the cake:
225g Butter (softened. I used real butter not Stork like I usually do)
125g Muscavado sugar (brown sugar)
100g Caster sugar
225g self-raising flour
4 eggs
2 tsp vanilla

For the syrup:
50g Butter
75g Muscavado sugar (brown)
50g Caster sugar
1 tsp vanillia

For the icing:
200g Caster sugar (or icing sugar if you have it!)
25g Cornflour (cornstarch)
225g Butter cut into cubes
6 Egg yolks
Butterscotch syrup (from above recipe)

1. Pre-heat the oven to 190C and line your cake tins with some parchment paper.
2. You’ll be making the sauce first so it has time to cool. Melt the butter and two sugars together over low heat for 15-20 minutes until sugars are dissolved. If it doesn’t look like syrup, add a tablespoon of butter (I used olive spread) to make it a little runnier. Remove from heat and add vanilla.
3. While that’s cooling, start on the cake. Use a wooden spoon and beat the softened butter. Add the two sugars and continue to use a wooden spoon to mix it together until it becomes fluffy and golden in colour.
4. You can switch to an electric hand beater for the rest. Add in each egg, one at a time, with a Tablespoon of the flour each time and beat thoroughly before adding the next egg.
5. Beat in the vanilla, and add the remaining flour. The mixture should be thick enough to reluctantly drop off a spoon. If it’s too thick, add a tablespoon of milk.
6. Divide between your two pans and bake for 15-20 minutes. Remove from the oven and cool in the pans for 10 minutes, then turn into a wire rack to finish cooling.
7. Time to make the buttercream icing. You will want to clean off your electric beaters for this. Beat together the cornflour, sugar, and eggs until blended and bright yellow in colour.
8. Add butter one cube at a time, mixing constantly.
9. Pour in the butterscotch sauce and mix together.
10. To put the cake together, just sandwich the two layers with a small bit of the icing, and ice as usual.

Yum!!

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The contents of this post, including images are © Rebecca J Lockley and Tim Lockley unless otherwise stated and should not be reproduced without permission. If you are not reading this on http://blog.beccajanestclair.com, my facebook page, the RSS feed(s), or through an e-mail subscription, please notify me.

Menu Plan Monday – Trying to eat Healthier!

Rebecca — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 01:26:51 +0000

I think I re-did the menu about five times, and have edited the Tesco order at least 10. Good thing I can edit the order until 4AM!

Schedule-wise, Tim’s on the early shift all week until Friday when he rolls into a long weekend off, so I didn’t have to find fast meals to cook. We’re aiming to eat healthier, but I’m not sure how well Tim will cope with a week that has 3 vegetarian meals (four if you count the tacos on Sunday), 3 fish meals, and only one meat-y meal, but…we’ll see. hopefully he’ll tell me if he’s not happy with the meals.

Monday – Quorn Quesadillias with the leftover Quorn taco filling from tonight
Tuesday – Home made/home baked fish and chips with mushy peas and salad
Wednesday – veggie stir-fry
Thursday – Egg fried rice (Wednesday’s leftovers, just add an egg.)
Friday – Grilled salmon, green beans, and pesto packets with a salad
Saturday – Fish pie – This is still my go-to recipe.
Sunday – Hawaiian Chicken in the crock pot, brown rice, salad, broccoli

Tim’s lunches this week will be either Chocolate Cream Cheese spread (his request!) or the rest of the Chicken Tikka sandwich filler from last week (he also takes a banana, an apple, and an actimel).
My lunches will either be a bagel with cream cheese & smoked salmon or a small jacket spud with cottage cheese on top (and grapes, oranges, and an actimel)

Tesco order total for this week: £43, including delivery and a few household items. MUCH better than the previous weeks where we were spending upwards of £50, but this week also doesn’t have much meat in it and several meals are coming straight from the freezer.

Hoping the weather holds out so we can get out with the nordic poles this week!

Off to bed for me. 1:30AM and I have to get up when Tim does at 5 to make his Lunch since I’m too tired to trust myself with a knife right now!

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The contents of this post, including images are © Rebecca J Lockley and Tim Lockley unless otherwise stated and should not be reproduced without permission. If you are not reading this on http://blog.beccajanestclair.com, my facebook page, the RSS feed(s), or through an e-mail subscription, please notify me.

Recipe: The Hairy Bikers Sausage and Bean Breakfast Pie

Rebecca — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 15:05:11 +0000

This past Christmas, I was sent a copy of the Hairy Biker’s Perfect Pies by my Secret Santa from an Ex-pat group. I’m not a pie person, and as you know, I’m quite loyal to Jamie Oliver, but I paged through the book and marked a bunch of the pies that looked like Tim and I would like them. Last week when I was meal planning, I read out the pies to Tim, and he picked this one. I had planned to serve it with poached eggs, but I forgot to poach the eggs in the end! Oops. As always, my recipe has been slightly modified due to my own dietary restrictions, and based on what I thought would work better.

You will need:
750g Maris Piper potatoes
3 TBS cooking oil
8 sausages (I used Tesco half-fat)
2 x 415g tins of baked beans

1. Pre-heat the oven to 200C. Quarter the potatoes and put in a pan of boiling water. Bring to the boil and simmer for 10 minutes or until soft.
2. Meanwhile, fry the sausages in 1 TBS oil until browned. (or grill them)
3. Put the sausage in the bottom of a shallow casserole dish and cover with beans. Set aside.
4. Drain and roughly cut the potatoes into chunks. Don’t worry about the skins. Some of the skins will fall off after boiling, some won’t.
5 – Fry the potato chunks in the remaining oil for 2-3 minutes. Pour potatoes on top of sausage and beans
6 – Bake at 200C 15-20 minutes until potatoes are crisp on top and the beans are hot.

I think this would have been tasty with a poached egg on top, but Tim thought it was okay on it’s own!

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The contents of this post, including images are © Rebecca J Lockley and Tim Lockley unless otherwise stated and should not be reproduced without permission. If you are not reading this on http://blog.beccajanestclair.com, my facebook page, the RSS feed(s), or through an e-mail subscription, please notify me.

Mollie Makes: Dingly Dangly Flower (Issue 2)

Rebecca — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 15:32:21 +0000

[picture from Mollie Makes]

In late Spring 2011, I discovered my first issue of Mollie Makes magazine. Unfortunately, it was issue 2, and I never managed to track down issue 1.

Mollie Makes was a new craft magazine and it drew me in because it looked like it was all of my favourite blogs and projects I looked at on US blogs/websites being made in the UK. I was so excited to finally find a magazine I could identify with after being disappointed with scrapbooking/card making magazines on offer here. I tore out the insert and took it into the Spar shop and asked if they could please add the magazine to our order (Tim gets loads of railway and garden railway magazines and I already received Jamie magazine). It took him a few months and a few trips running around Lincoln trying to find copies, but I finally now regularly pick up my issue at the corner shop each month.

Every month, Mollie Makes comes with something attached to the magazine. Usually a kit, but it’s also been ribbon and in January it was a calendar. I always devour the magazine and look at all the amazing projects…and never do them. I wind up putting the magazine in my magazine file “to do later”.

Last night, I pulled out the first issue of Mollie Makes I have. Attached to the front was a cute little felt flower kit – the kit that first drew my attention when I saw the magazine on display in WH Smith. Directions for the flower can be found inside the issue, including the pattern at half-size. In order to make the flower, you need to enlarge the pattern by 200%. Now, this can be tricky for people who don’t know how to us a copy machine, so Mollie Makes kindly puts all their patterns on their website, one pdf file per issue.

I printed the flower pattern out on regular paper, but soon wished I had used vellum or tracing paper as the printer paper was too stiff for pinning to the felt and I wound up with some misshapen petals as a result. The magazine also didn’t give much in the way of sewing instructions, so I had to make things up as I went along. The flower stayed together, so that’s all that matters.

My flower next to the the kit

See? Not bad.

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The contents of this post, including images are © Rebecca J Lockley and Tim Lockley unless otherwise stated and should not be reproduced without permission. If you are not reading this on http://blog.beccajanestclair.com, my facebook page, the RSS feed(s), or through an e-mail subscription, please notify me.

Product Review: Giant Cupcake Silicone Mold

Rebecca — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 13:09:40 +0000

A few years ago, my sister-in-law gave me one of those cupcake cake tins made out of silicone and joked that she gave it to me so I would make her a giant cupcake. The pans sat in the box in the kitchen until one day I finally opened the box, gave the kit a wash, and stuck it in a cabinet. I kept thinking about using the cake pan, but ultimately would make something else, or not be in the mood to play around with it, so it just sat there. My sister-in-law loves peanut butter, and when I was in PA in December, I was reminded of Peanut Butter Icing…which of course, needed to go on a cake for my SIL. Since her birthday was this past Friday, I decided to break out the big cupcake. My sister-in-law also likes white chocolate better than milk, so I had decided on making her a white chocolate cake with peanut butter icing.

For the white chocolate cake, I just took a regular chocolate cake recipe and where it called for melted plain chocolate, I subbed in 200g of melted white chocolate, and I used some white hot chocolate mix in place of the 4 tablespoons of unsweetened cocoa. I also removed a few tablespoons of sugar from the recipe to compensate for the extra sugar in the white chocolate.

The directions said to spray the cupcake bottom, top, and insert with cooking spray, so I did that and followed the directions which said to fill the bottom part up to the line on the inside (about half way) and to fill the top part 3/4 of the way. The piece that makes a hollow hole in the bottom for filling is optional, so I snapped it in place thinking it’d make a nice little cave for some peanut butter icing.

Baked for 20 minutes, and it wasn’t done. Baked it for 15 more minutes (total 35) and it still wasn’t done, but in fact the bottom part of the cupcake had spilled out over the side of the mold and was baking itself into a little pile of cake on the baking tray I sat the molds on. The lid was still in place on the bottom though, so I assumed it would still have an indention. I set the timer for a further 15 minutes (total 50 mins) and both halves appeared to be done so I removed them from the oven….

The TOP piece developed an indention while it was cooling and appeared to be brown in colour on the sides. The BOTTOM piece did not have the indention for filling anymore, and when I removed it from the silicone mold, it appeared to SHRINK in size.

Since I had the indention in the top piece, I decided I would still put some icing in the middle and I attached the top piece. Due to the shrinking of the bottom piece, it looked like a mushroom instead of a cupcake, and I discovered the bottom piece started to buckle a little under the weight of the top piece and it appeared to have a hollow bit….ALL THE WAY IN THE MIDDLE OF THE CAKE. So I used a spoon and shoved in some peanut butter icing into the hole. Why not?

Since I wanted a cupcake and not a mushroom, I decided the best thing to do would be to make a cupcake “liner” out of card stock and arrange it to make the bottom look closer to the same size as the top. my SIL’s favourite colour is purple, so I used purple card stock. Then, to hold it together better, I took a bamboo skewer and stuck it through the middle of the cake. Since it would stick out the top, I made a sign on the computer with Tim’s nickname for my SIL in the shape of a star to tape to the skewer.

I made the Peanut Butter icing and piped it on using a Wilton 1M tip – the same size tip I would use on a normal-sized cupcake.

Peanut Butter Icing (recipe from my cousin, Jen)

1/2 cup butter, softened
1 cup creamy peanut butter
3 tablespoons milk, or as needed
2 cups confectioners’ sugar
Directions
1.Place the butter and peanut butter into a medium bowl, and beat with an electric mixer. Gradually mix in the sugar, and when it starts to get thick, incorporate milk one tablespoon at a time until all of the sugar is mixed in and the frosting is thick and spreadable. Beat for at least 3 minutes for it to get good and fluffy

I decided the icing wasn’t peanut buttery enough, so I added a few extra desert spoonfuls of peanut butter, a little more milk, and a little more sugar. Basically, make the icing to your own taste.

Hopefully, the cake tastes okay – I’m waiting for my SIL to text me!

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The contents of this post, including images are © Rebecca J Lockley and Tim Lockley unless otherwise stated and should not be reproduced without permission. If you are not reading this on http://blog.beccajanestclair.com, my facebook page, the RSS feed(s), or through an e-mail subscription, please notify me.

White…February?

Rebecca — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 08:12:32 +0000

We haven’t had any snow all Winter, despite the massive warnings in mid-October that it was going to be a “hard winter” with “snow as early as November”. Granted, it has snowed in other areas of the UK, particularly Scotland, but this weekend was the first time it snowed over pretty much the entire country. When I woke up on Saturday to see the light dusting of snow, I laughed as I thought that was all we were going to get. The hard frost on Saturday morning was thicker than the snow. However, we received more Saturday night into Sunday. As far as I can tell, it started around 8PM or so, it was still snowing when we went to bed, but it had stopped when I woke up around 4AM and looked outside. There wasn’t much by my standards – only about 5cm total in our garden – but it was enough to grind the county to a halt.

As a Northeastern US girl, I’m used to snow. It’s not Winter unless we’ve been dumped on with a foot or more of snow, so it always amuses me how badly most of the UK handles the slightest amount of snow. Busses get cancelled (good thing it was Sunday), local shops are shut, and people can’t seem to understand the idea of shovelling their driveway and clearing the snow off the roof before trying to move their cars. My first Winter here as a visitor, it snowed. It was November 2008 and it was something like the first time parts of the UK had seen snow in over 20 years. I decided to walk down to the Co-op in the next village over, and I was amazed at the state of some of the vehicles on the road. People had barely cleared off their windscreens of snow, let alone the rest of the car. Since then, it has snowed pretty regularly each Winter, with at least one snow “storm”. You would think people would have learned and remembered how to handle it from one year to the next.

If Tim has off work, snow for us is just a reason to get out the snow plow for the garden railway. Fortunately, this was Tim’s scheduled Sunday off. We invited our friends Helen and Mark over to help — well, Mark was outside with Tim, and Helen and I stayed warm inside and chatted over a cup of tea. Our snow plow seems to be allergic to the camera though, because every time I aimed a camera at it, it decided to derail, but I still managed to pull off one nice image:

It took Tim 4 tanks of gas to get the lower circuit done (one tank is good for a 20-30 minute run). Our upper circuit goes into a cutting about 4 inches deep, and the cutting was completely full of snow so we decided to only open the lower circuit. We might have gotten the plow around, but it would have made the cutting unstable and probably would have caused an “avalanche” (at 16mm to the foot that’s what it would have looked like). Plus, the upper circuit has two level crossings across our front walkway, and most of that snow had been compacted down by our boots so it would have been a struggle to move!

Mark used an end of train marker from Austria as a temporary stop sign to indicate that the line off to the left (what line?) was currently closed.

The platform at Horncastle. We actually have 5 tracks here, but only cleared the one for use.

Running the first train completely around the service.

While stating “England doesn’t get snow” might have been an accurate statement 5, 10 years ago, I think these photos prove that is no longer true*!

[This post has been cross-posted to my LJ as my entry for this week's The Real LJ Idol topic: Current Events.]

*Not something I say, but something a friend said she was told by a friend.

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The contents of this post, including images are © Rebecca J Lockley and Tim Lockley unless otherwise stated and should not be reproduced without permission. If you are not reading this on http://blog.beccajanestclair.com, my facebook page, the RSS feed(s), or through an e-mail subscription, please notify me.