Pondering.

Why is it that just as one decides to embark on something new and different on the computer, something else crops up to throw a spanner in the works? Yesterday I went looking through my files for pictures I'd taken of various knitting projects as well as my file of recipes only to find that, because of the last meltdown I have lost a lot of the stuff I thought was safely backed up and archived, so I guess it's back to the old drawing board.

Since learning how to take pictures on my digital camera and getting pretty good results thanks to my wonderful D-I-L, Mary-Frances, who hunted down a great little gadget that enables me to see what I'm shooting when I'm outdoors, I've had the fun of Cork snapping and emailing things. As they say, one picture is worth a thousand words so, no doubt, something will appear in time.

In the meantime, if anyone is reading this nonsense, I must share a great biscuit (cookie) recipe. I made up half the recipe and froze the other half. From the way it went off I should have made up the whole batch. At the moment I have a batch of Walnut, Cherry slice (like biscotti) cooling. But in the meantime, a really fab. recipe.

CRISP CHERRY BISCUITS

1 1/2 cups plain flour
1 cup self-raising flour
1 cup caster sugar
2 teaspoons grated lemon rind (or orange rind if preferred)
1/2 lb butter
1 egg
7-8 oz mixed cherries (red, green and yellow glace cherries)

Line base and sides of a 3 x 10" bar cake pan (or slightly larger) with baking paper.

Blend or process flours, sugar, rind and butter until just crumbly. Add egg and process until combined. Transfer to a large bowl or tip out onto a lightly floured bench top and add cherries, pressing them into the dough. Knead gently until smooth. Press into pan and refrigerate for at least 1/2 hour.

When chilled, remove from pan and cut in half lengthways. If mixture is cut on the diagonal one gets nice triangular shape biscuits. At this stage half the mixture can be frozen if desired.

Cut each half into 1/4" slices and place on oven trays lined with baking paper. Bake in a moderately slow oven (325 F) for 12 minutes. Cool on trays then loosen with a spatula. Return biscuits to the oven and bake again for 10 minutes or until lightly brown and crist. Cool on trays.

These biscuits have good keeping quality. The hard part is keeping fingers, and I don't mean little fingers, out of the biscuit barrel.

The best laid plans of mice and men etc.

Just as I was gearing up for a nice big writing session a nasty bug decided 'not tonight Josephine'. Anyway, life goes on and I'm more or less back on deck again. Seems I started to get better just as I was getting stuck into a book I picked up the other day. As one who hasn't had much interest in women's fiction until lately, I'm greatly enjoying Debbie Macomber and he Blossom Street series. I can blame my wonderful daughter-in-law for the change in reading material. Mostly I read crime novel interspersed with the classics but when I go to Denver I catch up with a number of other genres. Although I've become a fan of books about quilt clubs I haven't succumbed to quilting. At the moment Blossom Street ties in nicely with my renewed interest in knitting which I started doing when the arthritis kicked in. As therapy it's been great and I've managed to produce a couple of nice garments for the grandchildren. At the moment I'm finishing off a mauve fluffy bolero style top for one of them. I plan to do three so all the under 10's have one. Katie just sneaks in as I started hers before she turned 10 last month. Which brings me to another subject.

Why is it that I seem to always be the designated birthday cake maker? Last year when I thought I was to provide the salads Joanne, my oldest daughter, rang to say that she was expecting me to bake the cake. This year the same thing happened and we found that both Rebecca (Joanne's oldest daughter) and I were vying for whose cake would be the party cake. If anyone can sold the problem, let me know because I'm sure Becky must feel a bit hurt that her efforts don't seem to get the appreciation they deserve. Also, I don't think the consumers really need hearty dose of cholesterol they get when I make my special chocolate cake. It's very high in good quality cooking chocolate. Ditto the brownies which I whipped up a week or so back.

Anyway, to get back to knitting, I'm just dying to finally complete the current project so I can (hopefully) photograph it and put it on this blog. So, until next time, back to the knitting needles.