I miss pancakes.

Being unable to eat wheat is such a pain. What? I feel like pancakes? Google a wheat free pancake recipe, read comments praising said recipe, cook it up myself, watch it flop. Miserably. Add more egg. Flop. Add more almond flour. Flop. Throw it in a mug, add cocoa and more sugar, put it in the microwave and enjoy an adequate mug cake. Sigh.

The adequate mug cake.

Well, Francois ate the flops and mug cake alike, so there's that, at least! And because of that, there are no flop pictures, which I'm only mildly sorry about.

Anyway, something that I feel like writing about is my imminent wedding. For those of you who are still in the dark, we're planning to tie the knot on the 8th of January, which is our next anniversary. That way, we won't have any extra dates to remember. :P Francois and I are not hugely fond of extravagant celebrations and crowded gatherings, so we'll only be inviting the immediate family, for the most part. If you don't get an invitation, don't be offended... It's nothing personal. Well. Probably not, anyway. We just feel like keeping things small.

By the way, it feels very funny planning a wedding, when all I can think about is all of the "wedding things" that I don't want... Like fancy cutlery, and white tablecloths. But I'm sure we'll figure it all out in the nick of time. (And if anybody knows of a small area in a forest in Wilderness that would fit about twenty people, please tell me about it! A forest would be nice.)

This mug cake is very rich. (I've been slowly making my way through it while writing this.) Note to self: Almond flour in cookies gooood. Almond flour in pancakes baaaaad. Almond flour in mug cakes? Okay, but use less and mix with banana, next time.

Okay, bye for now! Sorry for the haphazard post. :P

Daisy, Daisy, why do you cook weird food?

Well I certainly have been quiet for a very long time. And the best way to break the silence is with a lot of noise, right? With that in mind...

We're engaged!
(Cue hysterical high-pitched giggly voices, courtesy of my sister, mostly.)

Yup, Francois and I have decided to get married. We've been together for a long time (over three years) and don't plan on changing anything. So there's a (small, please, very small) wedding on the horizon!

Hey look, there's my fiancé in the background!

Soon, this finger will have a ring on it. As soon as we can afford to go and buy one, that is. Which should be fairly soon, because Francois is making a decent amount of money over the next few days. Good timing!

It looks REALLY weird.
But it's surprisingly tasty, I promise!

By the way, this is the food that I'm eating while typing this post. As Francois likes to say, [I] make weird food. It's the guts of four tomatoes (left over from this stuff that I made this morning... Well, I made something similar, anyway - there was cheese involved!), fried in some garlic, with soy sauce, mustard and pepper. Then I fried/poached/something'd two eggs in it and threw a bunch of cheese over the top and let it all cook and melt and stuff. It's very nice. But it sure is strange.

Anyway, I'm hoping to end this silence for a while. I'm going to be very busy soon, visiting family, hiking up the Drakensberg, studying two short courses that Grammy bought for me (which I'll finally be able to download!) and all sorts of things like that, but I'm going to make the time to write posts, because it's important and fun and it feels good.

Right, have a lovely Tuesday, everybody! I'm going to finish eating my weird food and then do the dishes before going to work.

How To Make a Toasted Sandwich

I know that most people think that they know how to make toasted sandwiches, but there are often very important steps that get left out, and today I plan to set things right, for the sake of toasted sandwiches everywhere.

So without further ado, here's how to make the bestest toasted sarmie everrrr!


Step One: Get Yourself a Beverage 

Thanks for the cool drinks, Janine!

This step is the first and most important step. It's useful for psychological reasons, moral support, something like that... Especially when the refreshment of your choice contains a small amount of alcohol. Mine contains gin and dry lemon.


Step Two: Quickly Tidy Up

Squeaky clean, like it always is.

This is another vitally important step. Especially if you plan to take pictures of the process of making toasted sammiches, and then upload them onto the internet, where everybody can then see what your stove looks like. Lots of Handy Andy was involved.


Step Three: Equip Thine Self

Pan, check. Cheese, check. Eggs, check. Bacon, CHECK!

To make excellent toasted sandwiches, you need certain tools. These include a pan with a wobbly handle, a spatula, and your ingredients.


Step Four: Heat Things Up

There it is, getting hot and steamy in the microwave.

I like to heat a bowl up so the bacon stays warm while the eggs fry. So I put a tiny bit of water in a bowl in the microwave for about two minutes on high.


Step Five: Makin' Bacon! 

BACON!

Put butter in the pan. Make bacon. Be sad that it always shrinks as it cooks. But be happy that it will stay warm in your bowl, because you thought ahead. What a clever girl you are! Ahem. I mean, yes, thank me for that tip in the comments, if you like.




Step Six: Get the Eggs Going 

I didn't break any yolks! I deserve a medal for that.

I only eat one egg on each of my sandwiches, but Francois likes two on each one. (He's a growing boy, you know.) I do them sunny side up with soft yolks, letting them cook slowly while I move onto other preparations. I grated the cheese earlier, but there's still other stuff to do...


Step Seven: Do the Other Stuff 

Other stuff like spreading the bestest jam everrr onto the bestest sandwiches everrrr. Grammy and I made this apricot jam together. I'd never made jam before, and Grammy showed me how it's done.

I put a little bit of mayonnaise on the other side, because mayonnaise.

The next step is so important, that if you ignore it, the world just may come to an end. (I'm kidding. I just wanted to fill up the space before the next picture, because huge blank spaces make me feel weird.)



Step Eight: Other Stuff Like Salt and Pepper

Tardis shakers!

Kathryn (my little sister) gave me these shakers for Christmas, and I felt the need to include a picture of them here.

Anyway, put salt and pepper on your sandwich, to your preference. But not too much salt... Because bacon.


Step Nine: Pile it On 

Pile on the cheese.
Pile on the bacon.
Don't be shy.
Use aaaaall of the bacon!
Mmmmmmm. Bacon.


Step Ten: Egg Time 

Four for Francois, two for me!

I broke a yolk a little bit while sectioning them up... :(

But I didn't overcook any of them. They were all perfectly gooey.

These get piled onto the sandwiches as well, in the next exciting step...


Step Eleven: Pile On the Rest 

As mentioned in step ten, pile the eggs onto the sandwiches.

Then pile on more cheese... And maybe some more.

And then close up the sarmies by adding the other slice to the tower.


Step Twelve: More Butter! 

Hey, look, here's a picture of that heat in the form of a flame.

Because butter makes everything better.

Carefully place your sandwich tower into the buttery pan, and then turn the heat way up for toasty goodness.

Add butter to the other side before flipping them.


Step Thirteen: Make Francois a Happy Man 

This is easy to do. Just don't burn the sandwiches. And be me serving them to him.
And don't take random pictures of him while he cuts his sandwiches in half.

He's happy, really! The knife in my face is a friendly gesture of love and affection. No, really. In all seriousness though, he's super pleased about his supper. :P


Step Fourteen: Make Some for Me 

Oh my goodness. LOOK AT IT. I get rye bread 'cause I'm special.

In this final step, I made the sandwiches that I would be eating. When you do this step, you'll need to call me afterwards, so that I can come and fetch the yummy goodness that you make for me. It's only fair, since I gave you all this useful information about how to make these tasty toasties.


Well, there you have it. A very long, wonderfully descriptive, instructional post.
Do I get to go viral now? That's how it works, right? Right?

Being Bugged by Bothersome Balderdash

It's funny how things that don't even matter can really bug me. I start my current post like this, because I've been trying to edit my previous (very girly) post about the flowers in my garden.

Irritating thing #1:

Every time that I edit the post, none of the pictures can remember where they're supposed to be. Most of the photos aligned to the right have jumped to the middle, and therefore skipped down to the next line. So, every time that I want to edit something about the post, I have to realign about a third of the pictures in the post. It's so tedious.

Irritating thing #2:

The text won't line up with a bunch of the pictures. It just won't. It automatically sits below the line that I want it to sit at, and it can't be brought up higher, because in the post editor, it's all perfectly in line. It's so irritating, and it doesn't matter at all in the grand scheme of things, and it bugs the hell out of me.

To wrap this up:

I keep telling myself that I will give up trying to fix it... But I keep on coming back to it over and over again. I gave up on it last night, but today Ben pointed out a spelling error in the post...

So I opened up the editor, realigned all of the pictures, corrected the typo, and updated the post. And checked the online version to make sure that everything looked right. (Oh no! That text looks horrible the way it's NOT lined up with that picture!) And tried about three times to fix the placement of the text again... Realigning those pictures each time. Sigh...

So, I'm making myself not look at it anymore. I'm sorry it's not perfect. But neither am I, okay? :P

NEXT TOPIC!

Today, Francois and I went on a VERY short cycle. We haven't gone in quite a while, first because of weather, then because of work, then because of... I can't remember the other excuses. Anyway. Francois went cycling yesterday and the day before, but this was my first ride in quite a while.

It was exhausting. We didn't go far. But tomorrow we plan to do that Saasveld trail that I mentioned wanting to try ages ago... So hopefully the weather holds! Otherwise I may have a valid excuse to be lazy tomorrow.

And another topic change.

After the cycle, while recovering on the couch in our nice, cool house (which will be horribly cold in winter, I just know it), Mommy asked if I was available for some face time. So, I hopped through the shower and headed over to the Hoekwil Café for a Hangout with the family. We chatted about blogging, and the ability to be honest with one's writing (which Ben is much better at than we are, or so it seems), and pulled very strange faces at each other. It was great! I like my strange, wonderful family.

Moving onto a bit of yummy goodness:

Once I used up all of my free data for the day at the Café, and cut into some of our monthly data as well, Francois and I headed on home. While he ventured into the forest to chop some trees down (he does that sometimes, it's his inner lumberjack shining through), I got to work preparing a yummy treat.

It wasn't much work. I basically made a variation of the wheat-free chocolate mug cake that I blogged about a few days ago. (There was some peanut butter and other random stuff in it this time. Yum!)

But that isn't where things ended.

Francois' mom, Janine, was here for a bit of a holiday with her Fiancé and his daughter. Before they headed back up to Pretoria, they popped by with a bunch of food that they didn't finish while they were here. We certainly didn't complain. (That means thank you very much!) Nestled in one of the bags of food was some yummy creamy pudding stuff.

So naturally, that went on top of the mug cakes.

The resulting puddings were creamy, chocolatey deliciousness!

I've only just finished mine now. It was remarkably filling, especially thanks to the added richness of the topping.


On that scrummy-licious note:

I've just made another one of these for Francois, and am now leaving my tablet for the computer, to watch some more of the silly series that I was watching the other night. It's called Shameless, and it's fairly funny. (It's a show about a huge family, but is not recommended for family viewing - so don't watch it with your eight year old.)

So, goodnight folks!

My Gluten-Free Chocolate Mug Cakes

My body hates wheat, and wheat hates my body. They have a bit of a war going on, they do. Quite a while ago, I realised that the reason for my constant discomfort and bloating was that particularly common grain. So for the most part, I've avoided the soft powdery embrace of any goodie or savoury treat that contains flour.

Since my denouncing of the substance, I've been tempted to eat wheaty things a few times, but each time have regretted it thoroughly. As a result, I've started experimenting with flour-free baking alternatives. (Gluten free flours are expensive!!)

Here's the recipe that I use to create two flour-free chocolate and banana mug cakes:

I was late with the camera. Sorry!

Ingredients:

• Bananas - 2
• Egg - 1
• Cocoa - 2 heaped teaspoons
• Sugar - 4 teaspoons
• Salt - 1/4 teaspoon
• Baking Powder - 1/2 teaspoon

Method:

1. If you have a blender, break the bananas up a bit and pop them into the jug. If not, pop them into a small mixing bowl, and proceed to mash them up as well as you can with a fork. I say 'as well as you can,' but actually, don't worry about making it too smooth. A few lumpy banana bits in the cake are not bad at all.
2. Add all of the dry ingredients, and then the egg. (If you add the dry ingredients after the egg, they cause quite a bit of powder to puff up into your face when you start mixing things up.)
3. Mix things up. If you're using a blender, this should take no time at all. You want the texture to be smooth, and the dry ingredients thoroughly and evenly combined with the wet. Obviously. That's what mixing is for. If you're mixing by hand, just use that fork again to mash things in nicely with the banana. 
4. Pour the batter into two mugs. There's no need to line the mugs with butter or anything, because banana isn't as sticky as flour. The mugs are usually pretty easy to wash if you rinse them straight after eating the cake, or if you leave it to soak for a short while. 
5. Microwave each cake separately for about one minute and twenty seconds. You can experiment with the perfect time for your microwave, just remember that less time will make a more gooey, moist cake, and more time will just allow the cake to dry out a bit more. You don't need to worry too much about overcooking it, because the banana stays very moist regardless. 
6. Eat the resulting deliciousness as soon as it's ready. Hot gooey mug cakes are the best puddings, in my opinion. 

Well, enjoy the yummy gluten- and flour-free pudding! Say thank you for the recipe and share it with other people, if you like. ;) Bye!

A Rushed Post Before Work

This is me trying to write a quick, short blog entry, before going to work. While I'm writing this very sentence, I have an hour before I have to leave home. That hour is also meant for getting ready and stuff, so I'd better not get too carried away here.

We still have so MUCH.

First of all, I made even more pumpkiny food last night. We have so much pumpkin, I'm getting kind of sick of it... And yet, the food was still really tasty (pumpkin, chicken, saucy goodness and rice). And it was tasty again for lunch today, because I made enough to have leftovers. (Whyyyyy? Too. Much. Pumpkin.)

Next. Francois is being totally awesome and creating a header for this here blog of mine. He's doing a silhouette of me on my bike and EVERYTHING. I love him. He works so hard, and I repay him with tea and leftovers and back rubs and never doing enough dishes. I'm a lucky girl, to get so much for so darn little. (If Francois didn't do any of this for me, I'd have to pay a lot of money to get it done. Or I'd have to do it myself, and everything would look horrible, and that would be terribly disappointing.)

Next. I'm trying to type up an educational spot of information for the end of my children's poem, but it's proving to be much trickier than writing the poem itself. I know what I want to say, I've typed it up, and I think it's way too long. I think I need to sit down and sum up what I want to get across in a few short points, and make those points fun to read. Too much content there will just decrease interest, and that won't do at all. So that may take a little while to get right, but that's okay... I've got time.

I'd also appreciate some ideas for causes of chronic pain in children, particularly joint pain, but other kinds too. I want to include some examples, my brain isn't working, and google is proving difficult. I will look again tomorrow when I have more time, but any excellent ideas are always welcome. Hint. Hint.

In between writing this, Francois has been calling me over to give him my opinions on the progress of my header. I've been posing for him, and contributing my point of view, and all of those clienty things. Eep! :D

Well, I now have forty five minutes left to get ready for work. It may not be a spectacular post, but it sure was written quickly! It isn't very short, though. Oops! Well done, me... And sorry to all of you if it was horrible to read.

Time to go make money!

Ranting Over Breakfast

It constantly amazes me that so many strangers find it necessary to tell me what I should do with my life. There are loads of people out there who seem to think that it's their life's mission to give their opinions and advice to people who have by no means asked for it. I'm all for friendly, helpful advice when I need it... But then I'll ask for it, thank you very much.

(Note: Certain close friends and family are welcome to give me advice at all times, whether asked for or not. I'm specifically ranting about complete strangers, here.)

A recent example of this rude advice-giving (and this is a recurring event - same advice, different stranger) took place while I was at work a few days ago. A middle-aged couple sat at a table that I was serving, and when I arrived to get their drinks order, they recognised me. Their faces did seem familiar, so I wasn't surprised when they asked if I'd started studying yet, and commented that I was still waitressing at the same place. Obviously, they'd had a chat with me quite a few months ago, and for some reason I'd made a good enough impression for them to remember details about me. Impressive memories, I must say.

Well, when I replied that I still wasn't studying, because I hadn't quite gotten around to it and still wasn't terribly sure about what I wanted to study, they proceeded to give me a lecture. Rather than allowing me to fetch their drinks and send their food order to the kitchen, they preferred to go on (and on) about how important studying is, especially for women. According to them, as a woman, you need at least two or three pieces of paper to your name for anybody to take you seriously. They made it very clear that I MUST study, that I HAVE TO study, and that I MUST do it very soon.

While I agree that studying is important, I don't think that it's a very good idea to study something that you're not too sure about. (I've made this mistake once. It was a very expensive mistake, and not one that I'd like to repeat.) I'm also not convinced that every career path requires a degree or diploma... And while I'd like to do a short course of some kind to do with writing in some form or another (because that's what I'm pursuing at the moment), I don't want to throw my money at something unnecessarily expensive, just so that I can say that I have a degree.

What strange people... Anyway, I managed to escape and get back to work, but I suppose my interaction with them has been on my mind more than I realised. Hence the rant. Aaaaand... Rant over. Sorry about that.

Fun Fact: We go through about
four dozen eggs in a week.
We like eggs. A lot.

On a lighter note, I had a very tasty breakfast this morning. It's something that I make fairly often these days, but I'm pretty sure it'll get quite a few confused reactions: Pap and fried eggs, with salt, pepper and balsamic vinegar. Yum! (My Grammy and Puka taught this one to me.)

Now to have a shower out in the rain (more like drizzle by now, so it's time to just grit my teeth and get out there...) and then visit my Dad for a long-overdue cup of tea. Ciao!


P.S. I'm getting very excited about Carrie the Limping Lion. I've updated things with the help of a few trusted friends and family members, so feel free to swing by and take a peek at the latest version!

Pumpkin, Pumpkin, Pumpkin

They taste kinda like popcorn.

Lookie here! I roasted the pumpkin seeds, just like I said I would. And contrary to my initial prediction, I did take a picture of the finished product, EVEN THOUGH they were fairly darn tasty. (I did them in coconut oil, cinnamon, nutmeg and sugar, if you're interested in that sort of information. I roughly followed this lady's method.)

Also, they're really filling, so we still have some left. Knowing Francois though, they'll be finished by the end of the day. He seems to enjoy them a lot more than I do. I think they're a little too tricky to chew, which puts me off a tad. I'd like to try doing this with seeds from a sugar pumpkin or something similar - apparently it works a bit better.

While nibbling on the seeds, I decided to whip something up that I thought about making last night: A pumpkin smoothie. After defrosting a segment of pumpkin and microwaving it to cook it through nicely, I scooped up (and accidentally shredded) the fleshy contents and plopped them into my smoothie jug-thing. I wouldn't be able to tell you how much pumpkin I used, but I can say that it was a LOT. I added a banana, some cinnamon and nutmeg, honey to sweeten it a little more, and yoghurt and milk to dilute the flavour and thin things out a bit. Here's a picture of the result:

Oh yes, that prediction about not taking
a picture of the yummy seeds in time?
That happened with the smoothies instead.

Sorry, Francois decided that he needed to get all of you with that hand-sign thing. Also, you've now all lost the game. Sorry. Again.

I'd suggest using cold pumpkin and a frozen banana if you decide to try this out. We had ours luke-warm and it was rather tasty, but I get the feeling it would be ten times better if it was icy-cold. Crushed ice is also a good idea if your blender can handle it... Mine can't. :(



The segment of pumpkin that I defrosted and cooked for the smoothie still has loads of flesh stuck to it, so there's definitely more pumpkin on the menu in the very near future. Maybe pumpkin crumpets, or pumpkin mug cakes, or some more pumpkin soup... I'd definitely like to try pumpkin mug cakes. That could be very interesting.

Darn it, the power has gone off. Hoorah for load shedding! I'd better stop typing now and upload this article before my battery goes flat. If I'm lucky, though, my tablet will stay on long enough to write up a short story. Time to get cracking!

A Quick, Slightly Boring Update

Francois and I were planning to do a proper cycling trail in Saasveld yesterday, but we decided against it for now. I'm still not able to stand and cycle at the same time, and that would make the extra-bumpy trail particularly painful to experience.

Cycling along the driveway, just so Francois can take
a picture of me... Proof that I really can ride my bike!

Instead, we went for a ride around Wilderness. It was really relaxed, and gave me the opportunity to learn how to start cycling from a standing position (as opposed to starting with my bum on the seat). I enjoyed navigating the sidewalks, dodging people and dogs, trying not to scratch parked cars and narrowly missing various poles (most of the time).

Me again! Still in the driveway. But cycling!

Well... I enjoyed it after the initial extreme nervousness, anyway.

Unfortunately, after the cycle, I was so kaput that I couldn't bring myself to write anything for my blog. So I skipped a day. :(



What I did do was make really yummy pumpkin and spinach soup. We bought a HUGE crown pumpkin for R30 from Fruit and Veg City, which Francois massacred artfully using his manly muscles. I wouldn't have been able to tackle that pumpkin... It was ridiculously hard. So we had fresh pumpkin (I used less than a quarter of it), and spinach that I bought for R15 from the local veggie-selling hippie in Wilderness (which I used about a third of). Woo! Cheap, ridiculously tasty soup!

It looks weird because spinach makes things
look weird. But I promise it's delicious!

I'm going to roast the seeds that were scooped out of the pumpkin to make a crunchy snack. I might post a picture of them here when I do... But that may not happen, for two reasons:

1: If I fail miserably and burn them or something, I won't post a picture out of sheer embarrassment and depression. (I'm kidding. I probably will, because it'll be funny.)

2: If they're amazingly delicious, we'll probably eat them all before I can grab my camera. (I'm not kidding about this one.)

Okay, I think I'm done with this post. Hopefully I'll think of something more interesting to write about tomorrow... Any brilliant topic ideas are always welcome, by the way. :P