SUNDAY'S BREAKFAST

Scones on a Sunday morning :)
I know they are meant for tea...
Here is my recipe.
For 12 scones you'll need:

• 2 cups of flour
• 50g of salted butter
• 1 cup of buttermilk
• 1 and a half teaspoons of baking powder
• 1 teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda
  

Preheat the oven at 200C. Sift the flour, the baking powder and the bicarbonate of soda. Cut the butter in little cubes and add it to the flour. Rub in lightly using your fingertips until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Make a well in the centre and pour in the buttermilk. Use a spatula to mix to a soft dough. Turn onto a floured surface and knead lightly. Handle the mixture with a very light hand. If you knead the dough too much your scones will turn out very tough. With a rolling pin (or even by hand) press the dough out to a thickness of approx. 2cm. Then with a sharp cutter cut out your scones. I use a heart-shaped one :)

Place on an oven tray and bake for 10/12 minutes. I don't usally grease my tray and they never stick. Cool them for 10min. and serve them with strawberry jam and clotted cream.

Success guaranteed!

MORE RAIN

It is raining so badly today! I ventured out to buy some strawberry jam and I came back soaked. It is rather windy, too. I curled up on the couch with my blanket and watched "The Witches", based on Roald Dahl's novel. I've seen it many times before, but I have never noticed that the first part of the film takes place in Bergen, Norway. The opening scene shows a very picturesque street, which looks exactly like the street my friend Eirik lives on!!! Could it be the same?

I decided to bake some scones to cheer myself up. I love my heart-shaped cutter.

Baking cakes isn't my favourite, but I don't mind making scones. They are easy and fast to prepare. All you need is some strawberry conserve and clotted cream to go with them.

I received a lovely present from Japan. It was from Koko, who recently went back to Osaka. It took a while to work out what the pandas were for... After a few wrong guesses on my behalf, Tommy read the back of the packet and found out that they were... chopstick rests!!! So cute!!! Thank you very much!!!

Lately Torakiki has been acting funny. Very naughty and noisy. I suspected that something was wrong with her. Last time she was like that she had a toothache. We decided to check her mouth just in case. We discovered that she's been eating her litter! Some grains were stuck between her teeth and her gum was all swallen and sore. I really hope she hasn't eaten a lot of it. It is a special one and absorbs a large amount of liquids. I can't imagine the effect in her stomac! This is why she was drinking a lot these days. We'll have to take her to the vet. Silly cat!

BAKING ETC.

I wasn't feeling too good this weekend. Tummy ache... When I'm like that there isn't much I can do and there is no point for me going out and making plans.

I spent Saturday reading "The Tin Drum" in bed then I watched "La Vie en Rose". Sunday (today) I was feeling slightly better and decided to get up and cook a nice breakfast with scrambled eggs and salmon. Now I am also a mochaccino master. The milk frother I got for Christmas works a treat!

In the afternoon I watched an old series from 1995 entitled "Full Circle" with Michael Palin. Very interesting to see how much the world has changed in little over 10 years. Around 4pm I decided to bake scones and use my new heart-shaped cutter. They came out really nice and pretty. I had them with Cornish clotted cream and Bonne Maman Wild Strawberry jam.

For dinner I prepared my absolute favourite: lentils and polenta. This is really traditional of the area I come from and I always use my granny's recipe, which is the best. I could eat this dish every day. It isn't anything refined, but it is very healthy and I love it.