Happy Thanksgiving

It is a hard year to find things to be grateful for in the current climate. Yesterday there was an attrocious terrorist attack in Mumbai, earlier in the year and ongoing are the job losses, people I know, young people and friends are battling cancer and other diseases and this doesn't mention the ongoing trials, tribulations and suffering that so much of the world does on a daily basis, out of the public eye and swept under the carpet.

It is a particularly prolific trying time at the moment, but perhaps there is still something deep that we can be thankful for at least for today. I know for me I am grateful that we are well and healthy (an old cliche, but so true) and I am grateful that we have a roof over our heads and food on the table in front of us. I am also quietly optomistic and hopeful that with some of the economic crisis that is going on, that perhaps the world will start to become a better place, that people might become more empathetic toward each other and that as a world we might begin to be more consciously aware of each other and help those in need much more. I hope that the New Year might start to take a turn for the better for so many families and that would be my thanksgiving wish if I could have one.

I am also grateful for my children, so, so much for the brilliance they've brought into our lives. Yesterday they chose to make up some boxes to send to some people overseas. We decided to send one to a soldier through a friend whose brother is deployed overseas and the other we've sent to some friends in Africa who, by far are not a charity and I hope they won't view it as that, but don't get the frivolity that we are lucky enough to have due to the unselfish choices they've made to help in that part of the world. It's nothing much, some magazines, a dvd, chocolates, some coffee and some little luxuries, but I hope it'll make them smile and think of home!

I also wanted to share a couple of craft projects I'm working on and one I've finished and then I have a recipe too.

This just needs darts to finish the sides.

This is Mr Beehive's sweater. It is knit in the round and I have yet to do the sleeves. It's a very easy raglan, but the yarn is so heavy that my wrists ache if I do too much.

..and this baby is a skirt I made yesterday for myself. It is admittedly a "little prairie girl yeeha", but I like it. The photo on the top shows the ruffle that I made, you can actually see it clearer in the bottom picture.

Finally, a recipe for you to try. I must warn you, it's calorie laden, but ya boo to that, it's lush, it's decadent, it's e.a.s.y!!!!

BTS Cheesecake!!

Two pots of Marscapone cheese (or Philly if you can't get marscapone!)

Three limes juiced and you need the grated rind too.

Enough icing sugar to sweeten the cheese but not overkill

2 packs of ginger snap biscuits

Butter

Small bar of 60% cacao chocolate

1 large glass of wine

Okay, so smash up the biscuits into small pieces, or grind them in a processor. Add about 6 oz of melted butter to the biscuit pieces and then press down firmly into a flan dish and let cool and set in the fridge. Whip up the cheese - do this by hand otherwise it just goes runny! Add sifted icing sugar to taste. Add the juice of three limes (more if you want really tangy, but watch it doesn't get too runny)and the zest from the rind. Stir and place ontop of the now cooled base.

Put back in fridge.

Drink wine!

When it has cooled, use a cheese grater to grate or roll if you are fancy bugger, some curls of chocolate onto the top of the cheesecake.The rest of the chocolate may be consumed at your leisure.

Enjoy!

Turkey Time!!

I'm a slacker I know!


Thanksgiving has been and come and I haven't updated my blog.


So what to tell? Thanksgiving was......well Thanksgiving. Turkey, trimmings and hours of preparations all to be quaffed in half the time under the disguise of alcohol so it never tastes as it ought anyway!!! Of course, it is a far bigger thing to the Americans than it is to us (one of my dear friends was up at 5am shoving stuffing up her turkey's bum - now there is the first difference - I don't DO 5am and turkey butts, my style of cooking is always and shall always remain "It will be ready when it is ready and I am a vegetarian so I shall cook you meat but a refuse to venture to deeper depths!!") but I do like the idea of a celebratory day to give thanks for the harvest and our fortune at having food on the table (I know this isn't the main story behind Thanksgiving, but it works for us aliens!!). However, it always amuses me how people have to shop like it is the end of the world on these events, argue and hustle each other in the supermarkets over the last gallon of milk and then complain afterwards that they have WHAAAAY too much left over and they don't know what to do with it???!! For me, that kind of defeats the object of being grateful for being fortunate enough to have food on our plates only to then chuck half of it away afterwards. We only have one small container of leftover turkey in the freezer and I made turkey and veggie puffs with the leftovers for the day after Thanksgiving. Other than that, we are all out of leftovers.

This year I was on call, so was expecting to get to the point of putting the bird in the oven only to be called away...........fast forward a week and my client rings me to say she has had the baby. It happened so smoothly she didn't feel the need to call at 2am......so good for her and a teensy weensy thank you for not waking me up!!!!!!!


Instead Mr Beehive was able to leap on a plane last minute and hop over to the UK for his grandmother's funeral. Naturally, things always happen when Mr Beehive is out of the country, this time I came down with some unknown stomach bug and the Little Miss fell off the second to last step of our wooden stairs and tried to stop herself.....with her teeth!!! Fortunately she hasn't lost any, but we now sit and wait to see whether she has destroyed the nerves and ends up with a black tooth permanently or not.

Last Saturday, Mr Beehive and I went into the City for the day. We set off with an agenda that half an hour into our jaunt we had ditched in favour of taking off our watches and just wandering. I have always said that NYC is not a city that you can get lost in and just stumble upon stuff like London is. Well, that might be the case to an extent, but if you know where to wander, the architecture and diversity is stunning. The buildings always amaze me, so Gothic and 1920's classic, so tall and vast, so intricate:



Battery Park



Buildings near the Courts.

The Woolworth Building

The Flat Iron Building

We spent most of the day just drifting from Battery Park on the very south end of Manhattan up to the Frick on 75th st (?) near Central Park. It was so fantastic not to have any commitments, any reason to have to rush off somewhere, no lunches to prepare, no taxi services to provide etc. By around 4pm, after Dim Sum and a great reflexology session in China Town, we had gotten to The Frick Museum that Mr Beehive had wanted to see (I am not so much of a pre-Raphalite or Renaissance kinda gal) so we wandered in there for a look. Then later on we decided, off the cuff, to go to see the Bodies exhibition by the Seaport. That was so interesting. Mr Beehive had not been very up for it.......his squeamish side I think! Only it was far from squeamish, in fact you had to remind yourself that they actually were cadavers on many occasions as they looked almost plastic. It is a fabulous exhibition for anyone who is wondering. Really educational and informative and not at all gory. They have done an amazing job, the cadavers have been preserved initially to mortuary standards, dissected, soaked in acetone and then pumped with a kind of silicon or polymer and sealed in a vacuum chamber after preservation to maintain them in this permanent state. For the layperson, this is a great insight into how the body functions and also what a mess one can make of the body by smoking, drinking excessively and overeating. If you get a chance, go to one of the exhibitions, they are all over the world I think.

We now have our watches firmly back on once more to resume parental duties........Sir!!