The secret life of me...

.... that the first of my 'Very Large' eggs (purchased yesterday at the farmers' market) turned out to be a double yolker

... a very naughty blogette...

I've had a whole week off work and I've not made a single solitary blogpost! Am contrite...

I've had a week off because I've been doing an opera showcase (to celebrate the end of term of the course that I'm doing).
We had dress rehearsals Monday and Tuesday and shows Wed, Thurs, Fri and Sat... In fact - in some ways, it didn't really justify so many days off, but I've done similar things in the past whilst working and it's a whole lot more straightforward (and less stressful, so you sing better) without the added complication of trying to leave work early on time for five whole days!
Anyway - it all went fairly well - I think everyone was pretty pleased and is over now...
Am looking forward to next term now - we've had our new extracts assigned - I'm a Rhine Maiden (tee hee...), a customer of a Medium and (very briefly) Orpheus - should be fun (though nothing as spectacular as the arias I did this term).
I'm increasingly realising that I've got some problems with the whole singing thing though
I find the class workload quite heavy, but it's manageable and, at the very least, means that I'm singing a few times a week.
However, I really am not getting enough singing the rest of the time - I rarely practise at all - I find it pretty hard to do in the flat as LBF is mostly there when I am, and I know that it's a really annoying thing to do (though he'd put up with it if he had to) and also find it weirdly difficult to practise effectively in that kind of close proximity to anyone else. I guess I just have to bite the bullet and do it (as well as manufacturing some time to do it in) - I really need to - I can feel myself stagnating...

In other news, I made really good pigeon breasts with leeks and red wine sauce today, tasty burger rolls and rhubarb and white chocolate muffins yesterday and marshmallow (who would have known that it was even possible to make marshmallow??) earlier in the week... Otherwise, I have no significant achievements to show for my holiday week - still - I have a further day off tomorrow - maybe I can remedy the situation at the eleventh hour.

I'm hoping to have a shower and go to bed - the hot water situation here is a bit dubious at the moment though, so I'm procrastinating a bit.

Hope everyone else has had a nice weekend.

So I got this from a magazine, but I believe it originates from this book (which, by the way, I have hopes of receiving as an Easter Egg some day....)

Ingredients:

For the brownie:
200g plain chocolate (the darker, the better, as far as I'm concerned - I used 85% cocoa solids)
200g (unsalted) butter (in fact, I always use salted - I think it tastes better) or marg
250g icing sugar
3 large eggs (I used duck eggs, but probably they don't really need to be that large...)
110g plain flour

For the cheesey bit:
400g cream cheese (I used a mix of mascarpone and ricotta, but pretty much anything would do)
150g icing sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract (or real vanilla pods, scraped - I'd steer clear of vanilla essence though - is usually revolting...)
2 large eggs (as above)

For the top:
284ml double cream (or whipping cream)
100g icing sugar
150g raspberries plus more for decoration

Method:

Preheat oven to 180/fan 160/GM 4

Break/chop chocolate and melt in a bowl over a pan of simmering water (usual thing - make sure the bowl doesn't touch the water and keep stirring).

Beat butter and sugar together (you can use an electric mixer with paddle attachment if you have one, but I didn't and it worked fine).

Add eggs one at a time and beat in.

Gradually beat in flour, mixing well after each addition.

Beat a bit faster (or turn mixer up) until mixture is lovely and smooth.

Slowly pour in chocolate and mix thoroughly.

Pour into 30cmx23cmx5cm baking tray (lined and greased) and smooth the top.

Beat cheese, icing sugar and vanilla till smooth and thick (mixer - slow paddle attachment again)

Add eggs one at a time while still mixing - should be smooth and creamy.

Beat up to make it a bit fluffy, but don't overmix or it will split.

Spoon the cheese mix on top of the brownie and flatten the top.

Bake for 30-40 mins or until cheesecake is firm to the touch and browning round the edges (centre should still be pale).

Cool and chill in fridge for at least 2 hours (overnight for best results).

For topping, whisk cream, icing sugar and slightly squidged raspberries (I just squashed mine with a fork) and beat till firm but not too stiff.

Turn the brownie out of the tin (mine came out pretty easily) and turn it back the right way up.

Spread pink cream on top and decorate with more raspberries.

See pictures in previous post

Good luck!

1. To celebrate the first day of spring, an ice cream parlour in America are giving away free ice cream all day Friday. What is your favourite flavour ice cream?

I like fruitilicious icecreams
Actually, I'm a bit torn - I love the fact that the nice people at Ben & Jerry put little feeesh and dinosaurs in their icecreams, but wish that they'd make more tasty fruity flavours...
I quite often make my own - might add some dinosaurs next time

2. Today is officially the first day of spring in the UK. When you think of spring, what is it that comes to your mind first?

Boingy spring lambs
Though there aren't many of those round here...

3. Do you wish that daffodils, snowdrops and other spring flowers would flower all year round??

No - they're nice for a while, but I like the seasonal variety...

4. Have you got your garden looking all spring like yet?

I don't have a garden
I did start planting things on the balcony last weekend though (and am planning to do more in the coming week) and have revived my ailing blueberry bushes, I think...
Is definitely coming up for barbecue season too

5. What will you do today to feel all spring like (keep it clean you smut monsters out there!!)??

Probably dance down the street in the sunshine, singing and swinging round lampposts as I go

Am loving this...

I was diagnosed at 20 something (unable to perform calculations as too stooopid, but it wasn't very long ago), but I would still have totally loved this

I'm wondering about giving up Diet Coke - I'm pretty sure that it isn't very good for you, and I must give the vending machine £5 a week on top of the cans that I buy from the supermarket...

I don't drink hot drinks at all (because I don't like them) and can't drink sugary things (unless my blood sugar is actually low, when I need, but don't enjoy them).
I think that it would be quite boring just to drink water all day long (and I already drink more of it than can possibly be healthy) - I like it, but I also quite like variety, so I'd probably just replace the Diet Coke with something equally destructive and expensive (unless anyone has any other beverage suggestions)...

And I know that it would make me feel ill and grumpy for a week from the caffeine withdrawal, too...

Hmmm...
What to do....?

Saw this and thought of you...

Not in an offensive way, just in a rock-god-cutting-off-his-hair way

I was quite glad to read this article...

I'm horribly, horribly judgemental about what people read on trains and in public and things - to the extent that I would most definitely tailor my own in-public reading accordingly - I always thought it was just me

Must be almost the last person to do this, but here goes...

Instructions:
Look at the list and make bold those you have read and italicise the ones you own but haven't read yet (note, not just own and will never read ).

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen -
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien -
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte -
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling -
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible - Actually, pretty sure I've read most of it...
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte -
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations -
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott -
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy -
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare - Lots of plays and sonnets, but not all, I think.
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien -
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot -
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens -
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams -
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll -
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis -
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis -
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown -
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins -
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery -
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding -
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan -
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert -
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons -
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley -
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt -
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce -
76 The Inferno - Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens -
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas -
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Phew - done

This is a very strange list - I wonder what it's supposed to represent....