Pizza Thief!

So like many people over Christmas I over-indulged and so since then I have been on a mission to be a bit more careful with what I eat.  My new year’s resolution was not to add salt to my food either in cooking or as seasoning afterwards (apart from on chips because, let’s face it, they’re chips), so far so good.  I've also been trying to watch how much sugar I eat which, considering how many boxes of chocolates I got for my birthday and Christmas, hasn't been easy…

…plus I’m not helping my own cause as I baked flapjacks today. They are basically heart disease and tooth decay in cake form.  455 Calories per slice! But boy are they GOOOD.   They are still sitting on the cooling rack waiting, begging me to eat them…but I will resist as I have already had four jaffa cakes today and a hot chocolate, and yesterday I ate a whole packet of strawberry laces and hid the evidence down the side of the sofa.

I've also been in the habit of eating half a pizza. Well the hubby and I share a whole pizza it seems silly to leave a random slice especially as the husband doesn't like cold pizza and I’m forgetful and would inevitably find the slice buried at the back of my fridge weeks later so furry I’d have to consider naming it.

But I thought I’d be good tonight, so I saved my third slice with every intention of taking it for lunch tomorrow. I left it unattended in the kitchen and thought “there is no need to tell hubby not to eat it because he doesn't like cold pizza”.  Wrong. I return half an hour later to find a giant bite mark in my good intentioned work pizza.  How infuriating.  So I ate the rest in anger.

And I've just been and eaten a flapjack in anger too.

Considering the small insignificant pizza eating crime that had been committed against me I was dis-proportionally angry…it’s no surprise that the bible talks a lot about anger, especially when we are all prone, myself included, to become angry very quickly over the slightest of issues.  The bible describes God as slow to anger and I am so grateful that he is!  Mine and my husband’s transgressions against him are so much more significant than pizza stealing or angry flapjack eating and yet God is so patient with us.  I may not be a pizza stealer today but every day I am a glory stealer.  In my actions, thoughts and words more often than not I am seeking to rob God of the glory he deserves as my Lord and King and give it all to myself.  And yet every day God is waiting for me to see the folly in my actions and remember his mercy, steadfast love and faithfulness towards wretched pizza stealers and angry flapjack eaters let alone a glory stealer like me.

All that… from pizza…!? Sorry.

Proverbs 14:29

Whoever is slow to anger has great understanding, but he who has a hasty temper exalts folly.

Psalm 86:15

But you, O Lord, are a God merciful and gracious; slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness

Choc full of chocolate

Well you may have noticed that I’ve not written a blog in nearly two months.  Beyond the excuse of Christmas and a round of various illnesses including the dreaded Noro Virus (and an evening where I had too many chips and dips) and a crazy time at work I am sad to have had such a hiatus.  So much has happened in the last couple of months I wouldn’t know where to start. I really should have kept up the blogging in the first place… I need to trawl through tones of photos and finish tidying up then maybe I’ll have my head around the fact that it’s 2013 already!

Anywho before I get round to that I thought I’d share a little recipe with you all.  Some of you may still be on your festive holidays and I bet you’ve got lots of Christmas chocolate lying around. I got a tin of Roses, a box from Thorntons, a box from Hotel Chocolat and two boxes of Lindt.  You know if you eat too many carrots you can turn orange?  Well I'm sure I'm looking a bit tanned after all the chocolate I've eaten…Anyway wondering what to do with all that chocolate…? My lovely hubby made me a chocolate cake for my birthday last week and it was incredible so I thought I’d share the recipe with you all.

I know many people will have started New Year diets but this cake contains a whole orange…literally a whole orange- peel and everything- so if you eat the whole thing in one go at least you’ll have had one of your five a day!

Ingredients:

1 Orange

3 Eggs

10 oz caster sugar

8.5 floz sunflower oil

4 oz dark or milk chocolate, broken into bits and melted

1 oz cocoa powder

9 oz plain flour

1.5 tsp baking powder

How to bake:

·         Stick a skewer all the way through the unsuspecting orange and boil in a pan for half an hour.  Blitz orange whole in a food processor or with a stick blender (I’d be lost without mine…it got me through weaning not to mention many litres of soup!) make sure you get rid of any pips!

·         Preheat the oven 180/Gas 4/160 fan oven.  Butter and line a 9inch tin.

·         Beat the eggs, sugar and oil and gradually beat in the cooled orange and cooled chocolate.

·         Add all the other ingredients I haven’t mentioned yet.

·         Shove the mixture in the tin and bake for about an hour or until a skewer comes clean.

·         Cool for a bit and the turn out on to a cooling rack.

Now the exciting bit

Ingredients for the ganache:

8 oz dark chocolate

8 floz double cream

What to do:

·         Melt the chocolate in a bowl I prefer to microwave my chocolate but keep a close eye so it doesn’t burn.

·         Boil the cream, pour in the chocolate and blend till smooth…which you can only truly tell by tasting some…

·         Cool in the fridge for a hour until it’s matte in finish and smooth.

Spread the ganache all over your cake and eat the rest!

This cake has been a winner in our house, the lady has in particular enjoyed several slices…I tried to take a photo but it was gone so quickly I barely had time to find the camera.  But here's a picture of how hubby decorated it before we mauled our way through it.

Happy Birthday to me, Happy Tummy to everyone else...let me know how they turn out...send me a picture...or you could send me a sample...!

Seriously.

Wait a minute Mr. Postman!

So the little lady is in the bath eating the plug cord and sinking her toy boat when there's a knock at the door...hmmm...  I consider not answering it but the car's in the drive and all the lights are on and so of course it may appear rude not to when I am clearly at home.  I open the door hearing a multitude of splashes plop themselves onto the bathroom floor to find my next door neighbour standing there with a package he's clearly been given because we were not at home when the postman came. 

I thank Colin for kindly taking the package in and shut the door returning to the bathroom to find the lady waving my razor around without the safety guard on. The content of the package is expected, I have ordered a birthday banner for the lady because Vistaprint tempted me with their too good to be true freebies where you only have to pay for postage but have to spend hours figuring out what you're actually entitled to...anywho, what is baffling me is why on earth the postman left my package next door when I have a lovely shiny new sticker saying:

Our lovely Royal Mail have now decided as a matter of course to automatically leave undelivered post and packages with neighbours...you can however opt out.  Which I did indeed do for three reasons.

1. the neighbours to our left are a bit weird if I'm honest, they send their children round to borrow paracetamol and occasionally old newspapers and one time an electrical pump for blowing up inflatables (which we did in fact have but that's another story) I'm not sure I want them left in charge of my post.  Not feeling too worried about what they'd do with birthday banners but with other slightly more valuable things we on occasion order.  On occassion.

2.  I don't want our elderly neighbour to the right being bothered with our packages and having to bring them round, mostly because I'm embarrassed by our unseemly untidy front garden and its permanent rubble feature...

3.  I don't want anyone else to know how much stuff I buy (and how many "freebies" I've recently been buying off Vistaprint...), whom I have to see on a regular basis! 

so a few weeks ago I went online to the Royal Mail website ordered my sticker, of which you only get one by the way, to say "please return undelivered mail to sorting office".  It clearly instructs you to stick it in a place visible to the postman so I thought "I know.  Where's more visible than on the letter slot in my door?" But no.  Apparently this is too subtle.  The postman would have knocked on the door and stood there for a good minute until deciding we weren't at home, clearly he did not look at the sticker   He then probably  lifted the flap with the sticker on to see if the package would fit.  He then would have decided to leave it with Colin...

...What is the world coming to!

Having contemplated this frustrating incident  I realise that the lady is chewing on the shampoo bottle after being repeatedly asked not to.  

It appears that no-one listens to me!

Mummy's little pumpkin!

I have a confession to make.

I love Halloween!

I have always loved Halloween.  When I was little my mum surprised me one year with a trip to the American Airbase near our home.  She’d bought a plain black witches hat and decorated it herself with “Witch” written in gold glitter glue and a plethora of stars.  It was the best night and it’s one of my fondest childhood memories.  People stood at their doors with bowls full of ‘candy’ and we could just walk right up and take handfuls!  Houses were dressed to the nines with spiders webs, gravestones and skeletons which turned out to be people in costumes waiting to scare trick or treaters. 

When I became a Christian I was automatically lead to assume that Christians don’t celebrate Halloween.  Several Christians I knew would basically turn all the lights out and pray for the morning!  When I was a student we went on prayer walks praying against Halloween and I remember telling my non-christian friends that I wouldn't celebrate Halloween because it was a celebration of evil. 

But I always felt a little bit sad and what’s worse is that I always felt a bit guilty for feeling sad that I couldn't celebrate it.

Then last year after 6 years of not celebrating Halloween I read an article called “Why God loves Halloween”.  It blew my mind and I was so excited because I felt free and easy for the first time about celebrating Halloween.  I have since become even more convinced that Halloween is not a celebration of evil (although I guess some make it into that) but at its roots is a Christian Festival and a great opportunity to celebrate the ultimate and eternal victory Jesus has over evil by his life, death and resurrection.

Please follow this link to read the article for yourself, as I could never explain it so well.

http://peterdray.wordpress.com/2011/10/28/why-god-loves-halloween-part-1/

After reading it I concluded that the little lady and I are free to have fun and dress up, poking fun at evil and demonstrating in our boldness our firm belief that the devil and evil have no power anymore because of Christ!

So here we are:

Look what I did...

I'm more interested in eating the crayons quite frankly

Can I have some Mum?

Two sparkly witches...that's my original hat by the way
it's now  16 years old!

Hurry up I can't wait all night

Of course some Christians choose not to celebrate it and that's fine, we are all free in Christ and Romans 14 tells us that we must each make up our own minds according to our conscience.  But as for me and my family we're gonna dec the halls with pumpkins literally till kingdom come!  This year we gave out balloons and sweets and little leaflets all about how Jesus is King over darkness and the victor over evil.  I'm glad I chose to open the door because I gave out 35 leaflets, 48 balloons and many many sweets to around 75 trick or treaters.  All I've got to do now is pray that the leaflets get read...

...oh and try to to eat all the left overs!