2011

Happy New Year! It’s 2011 already, really? Time flies when you’re ridiculously busy. I so didn’t get 20 hats knit for the ‘Big Knit” maybe about 6 in the end, I’ll just have to start earlier next year. My exams in December were pretty grim, I’m still waiting for the results so fingers crossed they’re not as awful as I’m expecting. Ireland was buried in snow for a few weeks, the most snow since records began, so the libraries and then the college were closed for a few days, not very helpful when you’re trying to cram. Our last exam was very nearly canceled because of the weather, in the end I’m glad it wasn’t, it’s one less exam i’ll have to think about next semester.

I may have got bored of the snow quickly, but I know someone else who definitely didn’t…

The photo above won a competition on facebook- I got a €100 voucher for a pet shop!! I’m considering using some of it to buy Grizz a coat, I know he’ll look ridiculous, but he shivered so much in the bad weather when we took him out I felt cruel making him go for walks. On one or two really icy days he downright refused to go out! Most days though he just loved jumping around in it.

I had a nice quiet Christmas at home in Dublin with my family, we usually go to our holiday home in West Cork for Christmas but this year the weather was insanely cold and the roads were icy, so we stayed in our nice warm house until the 28th when we headed south. The house was freezing for the first day or so but the sense of community we have down there more than makes up for it. Grizz loves it as he can run free across fields and along the beach every day, and play with his doggy friends.

I finally finished knitting this hat, I finished it before, then realised it was too small as I did one less pattern repeat than i should have before the decreases, woops. Oh well it’s finally done now and its very cosy. I think dad is jealous, I might have to make him something similar for his birthday in February!

I didn’t get to do nearly as much baking as I would have liked over Christmas, mainly because we seemed to already have a mountain of sweet treats to last us until March! I made some Peanut brittle for the first time for my mum for part of her Christmas present and it worked out amazingly well for a first attempt. Unfortunately I didn’t get a photo of it, but I imagine I will be making it again soon as it was very popular! I needed a recipe with no sugar thermometer required, and no corn syrup. You can’t really get corn syrup in Ireland but sugar syrup does the job. I subsequently tried to omit the sugar syrup and change the sugar and water amounts to account for it but it didn’t turn out as well at all. I also changed the measurements to metric for those of us on this side of the atlantic!

No Thermometer No Corn Syrup Peanut Brittle!

edited from http://www.couldntbeparve.com/2010/12/peanut-brittle-2/

Ingredients
400g granulated sugar
240ml water
120ml sugar syrup (recipe below)
1/2 tsp salt
2 tbsp margarine
1/2 tsp baking soda/bicarbonate of soda
200g peanuts

Sugar Syrup = 200g sugar, 80ml water (makes more than is needed for this recipe)
Directions: Add sugar and water to a pan, gently boil until sugar has dissolved and mixture is syrupy (about 5 mins). Keep excess to make more brittle later!

Directions:
Line a rimmed baking tray with parchment paper. In a medium saucepan, combine sugar, water, syrup and salt. Bring to a rapid simmer over medium-high and cook until deep golden/until mixture has reached hard-crack stage, about 20 to 25 minutes. Remove pan from heat. Stir in margarine, baking soda, and peanuts (mixture will foam). Stir until mixture is no longer bubbling and caramel is smooth, 1 minute.
Transfer to the prepared baking sheet and spread with a lightly greased spatula. Do this quickly as the mixture sets quite fast. Don’t be tempted to have a taste until it has cooled completely- it’s REALLY HOT!!! keep kids and unsuspecting family members away! when it has cooled break into pieces, SMASH tray on a hard surface so peanut brittle dramatically shatters- clearly the best way to do it!

So Long Summer!

Well, Summer has been and unfortunately is gone, far too soon if you ask me. It has been pretty hectic, hence I haven’t had a chance to post in months. Grizz is a tiny puppy no more, rather an 8 Kilo lump, but still pretty cute if you ask me.

Here are some of the things I did this summer

Taught sailing for 6 weeks
Went to Essex with the scouts
Taught the dog to sit, give the paw, lie down, roll over, spin around and high 5!
Saw a big air-sea rescue operation up close
Lots of walks on the beach
Learned how to play flip cup
took 26 kids on the london tube at rush hour
Went to a high ropes park
Didn’t teach the dog to come when called, hmm i gotta work on that
Failed two exams but repeating them next week
Made marshmallow fondant icing
Went to Thorpe Park
Got Grizz a lifejacket and brought him on the boat
Ordered some cool stuff from threadless.com
Won a €50 token for an online pet shop
Went to the cinema
Made a campfire blanket
Turned 24

Made new friends and caught up with old ones. That was the best part.

Sugar and Surprises

This morning was hectic. I was in charge of our scout’s Cake Sale to raise money for our summer trip. I guess I could now call it our annual cake sale as this is the second year we have done it! Yesterday I spent the day baking- 3 batches of cupcakes, a lemon drizzle cake, and dolling-up some shop-bought muffins that a parent donated. Unfortunately I was too busy for photos and my brothers camera was nowhere to be found. All in all the cake sale was great- oddly we made the Exact Same amount of money as last year, €640, very strange!! We probably would have made a little more had the scouts not helped themselves to lollipops and a few cupcakes! They were over the moon when I told them this would be enough to add a theme park to our agenda for the summer camp.

This afternoon I was puppy-proofing the house for the new arrival on Wednesday. Tigger was too busy sunning herself in the hot weather to be concerned with what I was up to, taking down curtains and putting away ornaments and rugs! The weather here has been unbelivable the last few days, around 25ºC which is practically unheard of in Ireland. I sat outside for about 20 minutes eating lunch and my arms started to get sunburnt, that is how fair-skinned I am!

This evening I had a big surprise, I knew it was coming, but not in the quantity that it did. I finally got my overpaid tax back! I’ll tell you that it is enough to buy myself that new camera I’ve been drooling over for the last while, the Pentax Optio W90; waterproof, shockproof and most importantly sandproof, as thats how my last camera ‘bit the dust’! Hopefully this will mean lots more photos to post up here.

I’m also going to order Grizz’s name tags from here http://www.indigocollartags.com. The tags slide onto the collar so they don’t jangle and there is less chance of loosing them, I think they look great!

Ahh…

At last, finished the exams, finished second year. Back to normal with some cupcake baking.

Praline Cupcakes, a mish-mash of recipes from Rachel Allen’s ‘Bake’ book. I haven’t tasted them yet, I’m waiting to sit down with a cup of tea to watch the Leinster vs Munster Rugby Match, I hope Leinster win!

It hasn’t yet sunk in that I have a whole FOUR months off college. I’m sure it will go by pretty fast though all the same. I have lots of things planned like work experience in my local small animal vet, teaching sailing in West Cork, and going on annual camp to Essex with my scouts, oh and not forgetting house training a puppy. That should be fun! He arrives in 11 days time, It can’t come soon enough!

Well, hello there

Hello new blog, pleased to meet you. I am a busy vet student and I probably, no, I definitely, have more important thing to do than make a blog, but I’m doing it anyway. I’m a procrastinator. If anyone knows how to cure this, please let me know.

At the moment I’m in 2nd year veterinary. I’m in the middle of my exams, 4 more to go. One of the exams we had was practical animal handling. I got shat on by a hamster!

When my exams are finally finished I’m getting a puppy, a little border terrier guy who we’ve named Grizz…

We went to visit him a few weekends ago, he’s about 3 weeks old in this picture. I’m hoping his escapades will provide lots of material for this blog. We’ll be bringing him home some time around the end of May. I’m Very Very VERY excited!

So excited in fact that today I made some doggy treats, just to practice, y’know? I based them on this recipe http://sharedsugar.com/2009/12/oatmeal-peanut-butter-dog-treats/

Oaty Peanut Butter Dog Biscuits

Ingredients – makes about 40 biscuits

2 tbsp peanut butter

2 tbsp honey

1/2 tbsp olive oil

120ml chicken stock

75g porridge oats

150g Wholewheat flour/plain flour or a mixture of both

Directions

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees. mix together the wet ingredients- peanut butter, honey, oil and chicken stock. In a separate bowl, combine flour and oats. Mix the dry ingredients into wet ingredients to form a dough, add more flour if the mixture is too sticky. Place dough on a floured surface and roll the dough out to about 1cm thick. Use a small bone shaped cookie cutter to cut out biscuits. Put the biscuits on a lined baking tray. Bake for about 14-16 minutes. Transfer to a cooling rack. Feed to well behaved (or not so well behaved) doggies!

They have gone down really well with the two dogs I tested them out on.

Enjoy!