Happy Halloween everyone!  I pretended not to notice that it got dark at 4.30pm and hurried home from work this evening to bake pumpkin pie and carve a rather cheery face out of the shell (isn’t he cute?  And don’t I have a bit of a thing for polka dots?).  I then realised that I have absolutely nothing bar gradually cooling, non-transportable and not massively attractive pie to give to any kiddies who come a-knocking at my door, so am spending the rest of the evening hiding on the sofa with my crocheting (I finally learned!  More in my next post!) and several cups of tea.  Nothing makes me more excited about Winter than the prospect of making yet another blanket for my bed…

What are you up to this Monday?

I was flicking through my Google Reader this morning when I came across this lovely little post by Laura on mini-goals for the month of June.  Reading this has inspired me to set a few tasks of my own for the next circa 28 days.  I’m always lugging this notional ‘to do’ list around in my head, and I’m sure it weighs me down at times.  I’m figuring that the best way to start getting some stuff ticked off is to write it all down here and cross it off as and when it happens.  So, for the month of June, here are my own ten mini-goals (exclamation marks indicate my resolve to achieve):

1. Bake a carrot cake! – I love carrot cake, but have never got round to baking one myself.  This month, I’m gonna do just that.  Pow.

2. Finish the formidable Tony Blair book! – I’m on page 429 of roughly 700, and the going is slow.  It’s taken me around three weeks to get this far but with a few nights of solid dedication, I’m hopeful I can bust this tome into submission by the end of the month and get onto something a few shades lighter.

3. Learn some Spanish! – I have been meaning to get my old Spanish books out for years now and take the language up again, PROPERLY this time.  I’m going to try my best to start making progress towards this this month.  A few words or verbs an evening perhaps?

4. Research loans! – The most boring task on the list, but probably the most necessary (although ‘bake a carrot cake’ puts up a good fight!).  The ugly truth is that I will most probably need to take out some kind of bank loan to cover my tuition fees and living expenses for next year’s foray back into the world of university, and I will also need to get it sorted out sooner rather than later.  June is the month peeps.

5. Repair my wheels! – Ever since I took a nasty tumble off of my bike, and then watched despairingly from the pavement as my spanking new £15 front light was crunched into the road by three consecutive cars, I’ve been harbouring a terrible fear of city cycling and have allowed my most beloved bike to languish unused, with the result that she has now deteriorated into a somewhat very sorry state.  That has to end.  This month, I’m going to take her along to the Bike Station for one of their ‘fix your own bike’ workshops (£4 per hour, for all the tools and tips you could ask for).  Hopefully I’ll be back on the road, ringing my bell and filling my wicker basket with groceries in no time (ok, I don’t actually have a wicker basket yet – that’s another ‘to do’).

6. Complete quilt project! – I found a lovely rose-print bed sheet in a charity shop last week, which seems too pretty to stuff away underneath my duvet.  It’s also king-sized, so would probably be an awkward fit anyway.  After some pondering, I’ve decided to cut it in half, stuff it and sew it up into a sort of half-quilt thing for the bottom of my bed.  It should only take me one evening.

7. Repairs! – Another one for the sewing machine.  Two of my latest second-hand acquisitions need a bit of work with the old needle and thread before they will be ready for wearing out.  I love them both, so am keen to get this done pronto.  Hello June!

8. Paper cleansing! – I am categorically rubbish at keeping my paperwork under control.  I have a big groaning box full of the stuff which has been staring me in the eye for too long now.  Again, it should only take one evening to sift through, and I know I will feel soooo much better when it’s all done and dusted. I’ll also be able to find my passport at the drop of a hat, fancy that?!

9. Tune in! – I recently acquired an old MP3 player, which I have yet to load up with a single song.  I love listening to music on the go, so there’s really no good reason for this laziness.  90s CDs, I’m coming to get you!

10. Take a swim! – Simple really, considering that the pool is on the route home from work!

These are the mini-ten for June.  I’m going to keep them in a separate page at the top of the blog so I can refer back and strike through.  I feel so productive now.  Adios amigos (see, number 3 has begun already)!

Image above from Flickr – rossbelmont.

PS I completed my first ever guest post yesterday, which has this morning been published over at the Fabulous Savings blog!  Have a snoop on over there if you’re interested!

OK so I know everyone has been babbling incessantly about how simply gorgeous the British weather has been for the last few days.  But I’m going to gush over it some more.  Why?  Because we hardly ever get the chance, and it has been phenomenal, that’s why.

I had such a relaxing, sun-filled weekend – the first in what feels like a very long time.  I genuinely think it important to have these lazy, not-doing-anything-but-that’s-fine spells every now and then – a good spattering of them throughout the year, if at all possible.  For me, Saturday and Sunday involved an almost outright refusal to do anything particularly noteworthy (if you’ll excuse the fact that I’m noting it here) and a big, cheery ‘hello’ to indulging in lots of lazing and pottering around.  I had a couple of coffees with a couple of friends, made some nice food, watched some trashy television and read a lot.  And I tell you this, it felt like heaven.

As to the sun, I can’t really describe how liberating it feels to step outside wearing sunglasses and flip flops after such a long, cold, bunker-down Winter.  I really did imagine myself as some kind of animal shyly testing the water after months of hibernation only to find that the world had changed for the infinite better in my absence.  It was wonderful.  The joy of simply walking around and taking in the sights and smells of a fully-blooming Spring!  I live very close to one of Edinburgh’s most central green spaces – known as The Meadows (see photo) – which transforms itself almost instantly into something closely resembling the site of a music festival as soon as the sun comes out to play.  I went up there on Sunday afternoon to read my papers on the grass and the atmosphere, which hits you in the face as soon as you arrive, was little short of carnivalesque.  People drinking beer, people having picnics, people playing guitars, or football, or frisbee and people simply sitting alone, contentedly watching the world go by.  It was such a heart-warming sight to see so many smiling, sun-splashed faces and to listen to the lilting babble of so much laughter and conversation floating by on the breeze.  The Meadows in Summer always reminds me why I love the city of Edinburgh – it’s alive.

So of course the hopes have now been mounted – can the weather keep up for the caravan trip in circa ten days’ time?  I can’t imagine many things nicer than sitting in a deckchair with a view to the sea, a cool beer in one hand and a good book in the other.  With this ideal firmly wedged in my mind (seriously, it won’t go away) I’m planning on making a trip to the library later to gather together some good holiday reads.  I’m going through a bit of an Ian McEwan phase at the moment – I almost want to eat his writing it’s so delicious – and because his books tend to be rather short I’m thinking I could easily get through two or three during the course of the week.  I would also like to do some pre-election reading as I am, for the moment at least, rather lost as to which box I’m going to cross on my ballot paper come May 6th.  Hopefully I can find something marginally more insightful than the dumbed-down party paraphernalia that seems to keep dropping through my letter box!

All in all, things are well in thriftylandville – sunshine, holiday, trip to the library and bruschetta (mmm, bruschetta) for lunch.  Oh, and I’m going to bake a cake this evening.  Because, you know, why in the hell not.  Happy, thrifty days!

Meadows photo courtesy of Flickr – rich13.

I reached dizzying new heights of bread-making pleasure last night with pizza dough.  I absolutely adore pizza and spent a week in Rome last May positively inhaling the stuff wherever I went (in an ideal world I would spend at least half of my time in Italy).  I’ve been meaning to make my own pizza ever since I got the breadmaker for Christmas but, as with most of these things, I just hadn’t managed to get round to it until last night.  Better late than never, however, and my was it worth waiting for!

Pizza dough, I have just discovered, is a remarkably simple and extremely cheap thing to put together – even if you do it by hand.  All it takes is water, butter, salt, sugar, bread flour and yeast.  It’s quite a time-consuming process with the breadmaker and my machine spent an hour and a half systematically pummeling the ingredients into form, but the consistency of the finished product was completely *amazing*.  Ridiculously soft, smooth and so pliable it could be moulded to the right shape quickly and without much effort on my part at all.

One batch of ingredients produced at least two pizzas’ worth of dough, so I put half in the freezer for the next time.  I used a rectangular baking tray – just because I didn’t have anything else to hand – which actually worked really well and made four pretty generous slices.  I’m now on the hunt for a proper pizza tray, however, which I’m told will apparently let the base turn consistently nice and crispy via the genius of small holes.  Hmm, I wonder if I could get someone to install a stone-bake oven in my kitchen as well…

Anyway, to this drool-inducing base I added the following:

A brushing of olive oil
A good pasting of tomato puree
1 red onion and a handful of chopped cherry tomatoes, caramalised in some balsamic vinegar
1/2 green pepper, chopped into small chunks
6-8 small-ish mushrooms, thinly sliced
1/2 ball mozzarella cheese
Handful grated cheddar cheese
Salt and pepper

I was cooking for a veggie friend last night, hence the reason why I didn’t include any meat but I was thinking about combinations on my way to work this morning (I have all my good thoughts either on the way to work or in the shower) and realised that the possibilities are endless.  Ham, chicken, salami, haggis, anchovies, tuna, eggs, sweetcorn, peppers, mushrooms, tomatoes, spinach, rocket, shallots, pineapple, olives…the list could go on, and on, and on again.

In light of this, I’ve decided that I’m going to make ‘a pizza a week’, each time with a different topping until I either get sick of it, or run out of combinations.*  Last night’s starter tasted delicious and for a few short moments I was in an real ristorante on a cobbled side street in Rome.  I’m very much looking forward to my weekly visits there.

Image available from Flickr: Sifu Renka.

*This is in addition to my current ‘a cheese sauce a week’ project, whereby I force myself to make one cheese sauce per week until I’ve cracked it completely and can produce something of the right texture and consistency with no lumps and no curdling.  All for the greater good!

As part of its fund-raising campaign for better and more affordable housing, the Shelter charity does an annual Spring event called ‘Cake Time’ (foams at mouth), where you basically bake a bunch of scrummy cakes and flog ‘em to friends, family, colleagues or complete strangers, in exchange for donations to Shelter.

A poster for Cake Time initially caught my eye in a Shelter shop window last year because of its cute and quirky advertising (glamorous fifties housewives, retro cake stands and pretty bunting ahoy – yay!).  I’d been hankering after a fun and easy way to raise money for a charity for a while and this seemed like the perfect thing, given my enduring and unqualified love for all things home-made.

So my friend Chloë and I hosted a Cake Time party at work last March which went down an absolute storm (give some people cake and they honestly will love you forever).  We raised around £65, of which I was rather proud, given the fact that my office is by most accounts miniscule.  And yes I did also take that princely return as reflective of the quality of the confection on offer!

I mention all this because I was contacted by Shelter earlier today about doing another event this year.  I agreed immediately, and have been avidly thinking of recipes ever since!  I might even expand this time and do some Del and Rodney-style flogging to friends and family as well as colleagues.

So if you enjoy baking and are keen to do a little bit for ol’ charidee, Cake Time is a totally brilliant way to get people together and have a bit of calorific and tasty fun while also raising some much-needed and hugely-appreciated cash for an extremely worthy cause.  You can register for your free Cake Time pack, which includes posters, stickers, recipes and a collection box here.  Oh and you get a nice certificate when you send your collected funds off to Shelter.

Job done!

Image above from Flickr: chotda.