On Sabbatical
Did you miss me? Life sometimes starts whirling around so fast that you just have to say “Stop the bus. I’m gonna puke!” When not a literal puke, but a metaphorical letting go of things.
But I’m here to reassure you that the Gnome at the Bottom of the Garden has returned.
Oh and the mud cake from the last post:
2kg of dark chocolate (plus some flour and eggs and some sugar……)
The angels on the top? Modelling chocolate! Yes chocolate that you can use like plasticine only it tastes better!!! Take 300g chocolate and melt in a bain marie or the nuker. When it’s all smooth and runny stir in 1/3 cup of glucose syrup (light corn syrup for those in the US). At first it will go gritty and grainy. When it is completely combined (it doesn’t matter if it’s still grainy). Cover with cling film (actually touching the chocolate, not just over the bowl). When it’s cool enough to touch, squish it in your hands (just like playdough) until it’s smooth. When you use white chocolate, you will get a lot of oil squeezing out. If it sets hard, just nuke small pieces for a few seconds. It sets quite firm after a while and you can use it to make all sorts of yummy decorations.
Donkey + Carrot
This is my Mud Cake in progress:
See how full of yummy choclatiness it is? And when it is ready to eat, it’s not one of those rich chocolate cakes that calls itself a mud cake like so many of them do. This one is gooey and smooth and is definitely more mud than cake. There are no crumbs on your plate when you eat my Mud Cake, because my cake doesn’t have crumbs, it has chunks that you can pick up with a fork.
Do ya want some???
The Birds
I went to Whyalla for a meeting yesterday. This means that I have to travel through Iron Knob. A once thriving community, but now little more than a ghost town. There are a few people still living there and there is a pub, but not much else. There is a sign in Iron Knob, warning people of Emus crossing the road. Never seen them. I thought it was a bit of a joke until yesterday, when I saw these guys on the side of the road.
They look pretty young. Altogether, there were 5 of them in the area. The best thing about Emus is that the female lays the eggs and then nicks off and leaves the babies to the males…
A bit further down the road there were some Wedge Tailed Eagles riding the thermals and then there were these two, just taking their time…
And then they were gone.
Only in America
I can’t believe how much the Democratic preselection is being shown on Australian television. It’s not like it’s the election!! They are just deciding who will contest the election. By the time the actual campaigning for the election comes around, Hillary and Obama are going to be sooooo tired, they won’t be able to campaign for president!
But if the seriousness of the pre-selection is getting you down, have a go at this:
In my world, Hillary nearly always wins.
