Our dinner tonight - Chilli Con Carne from scratch!

Ingredients

2 onions,

2 large Portobello mushrooms,

2 fat cloves of garlic crushed,
splodge of vegetable oil

1 x 400g tins of chopped tomatoes and 1 can water,

1 tablespoon tomato puree,

500g good minced beef,

2-4 heaped teaspoons dried chilli flakes,

1 tsp cumin seeds,

1 tsp ground cumin,

1 tsp dried thyme,

1 tsp smoked paprika (pimentón),

1/2 bottle full-bodied red wine,

1 cans of red kidney beans,

1 bunch of fresh coriander (stalks & all) chopped,

a generous splash of Worcestershire sauce,

Suzy salt and Percy pepper (having an Ainsley moment)

What to do ...
- Finely chop the onion, slice the Portobello mushrooms and crush the garlic. 
- Gently fry in oil with sprinkle of salt for about 15 mins, until soft. Add the mince, turn the heat up to medium, and cook until browned.
- Then simply stir-in the rest of the ingredients, incl. the chopped coriander stalks, reserving the leaves until later.
- Bring to the boil and then  simmer for 1 and a half hours, stirring regularly and adjusting the heat if necessary.
- Check and adjust seasoning with both Suzy salt and Percy pepper!! *
- Add the chopped coriander leaves, stir and serve with white rice and/or bread.

* To be fair ... I also bring out the chilli and red pepper jam at this point - that's another recipe for another day!

Obsessive me!

I have been busy building the school website.  It's become an obsession.  It's the kind of obsession I love.  The stay awake 'til 2am changing / adding pages obsession.  I have turned the KS2 School Council into obsessives too!  They are stopping me in the corridors.  Throwing ideas at me across the lunch-hall.  Coming to my room when they should be in registration.

We've had 3000+ hits!

I don't think it's all me preening!

BUT ... it might be ;o)

Flaming June

To be honest I find myself let down by supposedly 'flaming June' - it's normally my favourite month.  Long warm evenings with the balcony doors pushed wide open, air redolent with the scent of BBQ, crispy bowls of cooling salad and a long glass of something cold to sip on - ah June!

But no ...

Instead here I am thinking if I put the slow cooker on now we can have a stew and mash tonight and where's my dressing gown??

F-F-Friday

So glad to see you Friday ... it's been a long week!

Colleagues have moaned about writing reports on a computer ... preferring instead to write them by hand?!? WTF?!? It's 2013!!  I don't write anything by hand if I can help it these days.
The last straw was being shouted at by one of the witches of Eastwick - the temptation to pull my fish back and smash her in the gob was strong ... which is why I now finding myself at home sipping gin!

Happy Friday evening all.

Hello BLOG!
And hello blogosphere :o)

I was kind of thinking I might try to post a little bit.  The odd recipe, some photos, a bit of a blether / gossip.

I think that I stopped posting when the 'colleague from hell' suddenly found my blog ... but. that colleague from hell is no longer a colleague!  We'll see - watch this space

I thought I might just ... post!

So remind me again ... how does this Blogger WYSIWYG thing work? And there's an updated Blogger interface - who knew? And how does html and brackets work again? *my brain hurts*

Larry the lobster

Larry the lobster, originally uploaded by Laquet.

No-one is too old to win pass the parcel! No-one!

HNY

So, I realise this is a little late* and that it's been a little while** since I've posted here BUT "Happy New Year" everyone - I shall try to do this (with a little more content) a little more often ;o)

* Heck it's the 3rd of January already, in fact it's nearly the 5th of January which makes it nearly my little brother's 38th birthday. Little brother!! 38!! How the heck did that happen?
** August 2009 ... ooof?!?

Adding to the list

I have a list, it's short and unpalatable and today I am adding to it ...

It's the List of Things I don't want to eat again before I die. Up until today it consisted of tripe, blackcurrants, marzipan, rhubarb, goosberries, aniseed/liqourice and mango*. As of today you can officially add Westphalian Black Rye Bread. Why? Why? Why would anyone want to make a cheese sandwich out something that tastes/smells and has the consistency of sour Christmas pudding. Mother's Pride someone please!!!

* A short list I consider myself an omnivore.

So x2

So ... we're off today ... what a surprise, we're heading to France. No, wait I went to Spain in June so I do officially go other places for holidays. The best news is that I will not be back for a month. One whole month people! 31st July to 2nd September - I know *smiles smugly* a month +

You have Simon's full permission to flip me the bird, he's back on August 16th!!

Be good while I'm gone, play nicely and don't bother to try and find the key to raid the drinks cabinet ... I'm taking it with me.

Unconscious Mutterings #338

Not having had the Internet at home for the last 6 weeks or so I have missed my weekly unconscious mutter, 5 of them in fact ... not that Simon would say I've been quiet ... don't worry he'll pay for it!!

I say ... and you think ...

Banter :: chat
Amazing :: Grace
Towel :: bath
Cinema :: Odeon
Newspaper :: daily
Not good :: bad
My type :: tall and dark with nice hands!
Twinkle :: twinkle little star - all three verses!
Actress :: actor
Daft :: silly

Wanna play? Well, pop over here and do some muttering of your very own!

So ......

Well, it looks like I was right after all, my blog was being read - but by someone from work. A someone who is in fact a colleague that I bitched and moaned about. And during a "challenging chat" two weeks ago when she accused me of divided loyalties and not sticking up for her* out it all came. And I hold my hands up - guilty as charged. Not of the divided loyalties BUT about venting about my job and the people I work with (BUT not the people I work for) on the Internet. So here's me private again. Not that I am about to vent because there's fiendishly clever people put there who can get past things like this - not that I think I work with anyone who'll manage that but all the same ;o)

In other news I have managed to get my laptop working online! Double whoop! In fact I think I shall probably be whooping about this for a while! Whoop! That'll teach me not to check the box in Internet Tools that says "never dial up a connection."

And with less than three weeks to go until France - there's another whoop for you!

*It should be noted that she hadn't "dressed herself in glory" as she'd been caught by the boss with a bucket of bleach and a just boiled kettle in a classroom of 5 year olds. Guess who's just been asked to take on whole school responsibilty for the devil that is "elfs and safefty" next year?