Fluffy Puffs ,Guilt and buckets

I'm ethnic, so that means I cook, clean and feel guilty . What do I feel guilty about? Doesn't matter really as long as there some guilt in my life. Not getting enough exercise, eating too much, not visiting aged parent often enough, not checking my spelling. Blah, blah, blah You know how it goes. Now I'm being helped in my quest to be a good ethnic by all the regulations and water restrictions. I'm really trying to save water but I hate being made to feel guilty all the time. I've reduced my showers to less than 4 minutes and I catch the first lot of cold water in a bucket. My house is full of buckets. I'm a bucket connoisseur now. My kitchen has 2, 3 in the laundry, 1 in the bathroom. I feel guilt if I don't put all my washing machine water on the fruit trees, guilt if I don't know whether something is recyclable. Do you know that bucket rhymes with an extremely rude expletive! I'm not saying it but I'm thinking it. If I have to feel guilty then the best guilty feeling is eating Fluffy Puffs.
Everyone needs these!!

250g Ricotta (smooth)
2 eggs
2 tblspn vanilla essence
120g plain flour
1 tspn baking powder
1/2 tspn salt
Oil for deep frying
icing sugar to serve
plate with paper towel to absorb some of the oil

Method:
Whisk together eggs, sugar and vanilla until pale and light, Fold in ricotta.
Mix together flour and baking powder then fold it into the egg and ricotta.
Heat some oil . ( not too hot else the middle doesn't cook through)
Drop in a teaspoonful at a time . (about 1/4 the size of a walnut - it fluffs up to the size of a small walnut !)
Don't overcrowd the pot. 5 -6 is enough at a time.
Cook for 2-3 mins , turning over once.
When they puff up and are brown allover , remove with a slotted spoon onto the paper , then put on a plate and dust with icing. Makes about 35-40 balls

We've seen various versions of this recipe and have adapted this one a bit to suit us ( us being cooks who like things simplified where possible)
huggs Little Ma

Homemade is best

Hi Everyone
It was a friend's birthday a few weeks back and we were trying to think of a prezzy to get her. We were really into cooking that week so we decided to make her her own truffle filled tin and a packet of the best Burnt Butter Biscuits ever. The truffle recipe is one I made up. The decorations on the top tell you the flavours. The blue faces are the originals, the yellow squiggles are vanilla, the red swirl roses are rose water and the green question marks are brandy flavoured.

This green jumper is one I had to restart because I left it sitting for a few too many months. Consequently it did not fit me and I had to start the next size up. Hopefully it will still fit next winter. [trust me to finish it before summer (:




bye for now MnM

Love my old TV and new socks

As a kid I always wanted to have a TV outside. So I dragged this old TV out of the attic ( It was our first TV from 1980) and it works a treat , except for SBS. We sat outside watching morning shows with our breakfast and in the afternoon - sport. I felt like I was on holiday without the hassle of packing, organising animalcare , getting there blah, blah. Love holidays , hate organising them. We took out some armchairs and footstools. Had shandies, softdrinks and chips. How decadent! I finished my Caspian Sea Socks while enjoying the outdoors and TV.
I used Bendigo machinewashable wool in almond and dyed it using foodcolouring.The original pattern used more traditional colours, I guess, but I wanted to try food colouring and wanted to keep it simple in case I needed more of a color. ( I didn't, had some left over and am trying to make a coloured knitted beret thing with the leftovers - more on that later) I loved the colourwork, the new stitches especially the edge and it was a free pattern from Knitting Daily. There were mistakes in it , some I left , others I fixed. But they fit me , and not anyone else in the family so that makes them mine !

Caspian Sea Socks

huggs Little Ma

Moggy monsters

This week we finished making these cat toys which were started a few months ago. They were made out of some leftover handspun wool we had laying around. They were originally circular in shape but we made one a little too big so decided to make a snowman -like toy. Mistakes aren't always a bad thing.

hiya
Aren't they cute.These little monsters just grew with each idea. I love when projects grow with inspiration and end up different to the original idea. It's just so much more fun than planning and working to a plan - sometimes : )
huggs Little Ma

Broad beans

Yoohoo
Notice the broad beans in the last post. I was told that I had planted at the wrong time, wrong place blah, blah. Now I have huge bush-things of broad beans - so there! Trouble is I don't think I like broad beans (oops kept typing Brad beans - hi bradley - no offense intended) and I don't really know how to cook them - there's something wrong there isn't there?
huggs Little Ma

The missing pool

Hiya- It's finally all working - I am wonder geek, hear me reload ! Okay, not all true and I did have help but I managed to get my mac working. I'll whisper that in case it hears and goes all technical on me again. ( But I'm having a quiet woohoo)
Now for some things we've been up to besides learning about the reproduction of bacterium and the Kingdom of Monera.
No matter how messy the garden there's always something lovely. The gerbera has survived for a few years now and right next to it is a'Cherry Pie' Lantana type of bush ( can't remember what its name was and I know Lantana is a weed in the bush) . We thought we could smell a bakery from the car but it was this little plant we'd bought. Smells gorgeous. So far it's been hardy and lives well with the other plants.

We finally had the pool removed . Now it just has to be cleared of that horribly invasive ivy plant. Fluffy the 12 year old chook and her mate Other Chook are helping. Can't wait for our new chookies. They haven't hatched yet - maybe they haven't even been laid but we're hoping for some black and red ones. Can't get speckled ones atm - nuts. The dogs would love to help but the black likes to pick them up by the tail and put them away and Violetta (hasn't she grown) is suppose to act like a lady but instead tried to eat Fluffy and wondered why Other Chook was pecking her! So she's banned atm.



We bought some moulds from Kerry at

Chocart

and this bunny was our favourite. Getting chocolate making stuff was impossible down our way but we found Kerry's site on the internet and after a few emails trying to work out what we needed , she sent us all the stuff -very easy. Beats hairing around town. We did heaps more , including making fondant . That was good till I tried to actually use it and then it just stuck to my hands . Obviously did something wrong.
Shucks will have to make more chocolate. We will be buying better choc buttons , the ones we got locally weren't that nice. Tasted like cheap easter eggs - yuk.
I better go and get rid of the evidence .
cheers and hugs Little Ma and MnM

Glitches

Hiya
Any minute now there'll be some pics and stuff and it
will be exciting and wonderful but atm my computer is
having a hormonal imbalance - and I really don't want
to talk about it : /
I'll go back and work on my Caspian Sea Socks and hopefully
by the time I've finished , the planets will align and all
will be right in my cyber world.
Am I a positive thinker or what ?!

hugs Little Ma