Butter Tarts

I pinched this recipe from the internet. I've made a few adjustments and had things turn out really well. The original was apparently from Brantford.

Prep Time: 30 minutes
Cook Time: 10 minutes
Total Time: 40 minutes

Ingredients:

PASTRY
2 cups flour
1 cup shortening
1 teaspoon salt
1 egg
1 tablespoon vinegar
2 tablespoons cold water

FILLING
1 egg
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup maple syrup
1 tablespoon melted butter
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup raisins (optional, or can be replaced with pecans)

Preparation:
Pastry:

Blend the shortening, salt and the flour with a pastry cutter, or two knives, until you've created a uniform mixture that is crumbly and about the size of frozen peas.

In a separate bowl, mix 1 egg, 1 tbsp white vinegar and 2 tbsp cold water.

Add to shortening and flour mixture. Mix all ingredients together, but only until just mixed and no more. The key to flaky pastry is not to overhandle the dough.

For ease of handling, make a ball of the dough, wrap in cellophane and place in freezer for 10-15 mins.

Roll out dough onto floured surface to about the thickness of a CD case. Using either a cookie cutter or something like a jar lid, cut out circles from the dough.

Press dough circles into a muffin pan.

Filling:

In another bowl, mix well the maple syrup, brown sugar, melted butter and egg.

Add vanilla and stir in raisins.

Spoon filling into pastry shell to just below the rim. Bake at 200c for about 10 mins until golden brown.

Makes about a dozen tarts.

What have we come to?

I've recently happened across an interested article on Treehugger.com about our attitudes towards meat in the industrialised world. I've included at little snippet of the article here, on Colour Circus, but if you're interested enough to read the rest of the article, you can click here.

"National Butchers' Week aims to help Brits learn more about the meat they eat. The poll surveyed 1000 adult meat-eaters on basic cuts of meat.

An alarming 17 percent thought that pork wings are an actual cut of meat.

Nearly twenty percent thought that tofu ribs and leg of liver were cuts of meat. As many as 23 percent thought that chicken chops or lamb drumsticks were something that you can buy from a butcher."

My diabolical tea scheme

Each morning I purchase, from the coffee bar downstairs, a large cup of tea for 40p. But unbeknownst to the establishment I have, over the weeks, amassed a selection of teas in my desk drawer. For herbal or green teas I reuse the café’s paper cup and all I have to do is add hot water from the coffee machine before I can enjoy a steaming cup of bliss.

For a cup of PG Tips I have a far more sinister tactic. I reuse the café’s paper cup, pop in a tea bag and hot water and head for the elevator. Once in the lobby I make my way over to the café but instead of going to the counter I aim slightly to the right and walk up to the carafe’s. It’s at this point that I adopt a nonchalant aire and casually milk up my brew ‘till it’s colouration indicates the perfect timing for delicate application to my pallet.

Minor infringement or massive disgrace? Have a look at the math and you be the judge …

Black tea

40p x 2 cups a day x 5 days a week x 16 weeks = £64 total savings

Herbal/Green tea

50p x 2 cups a day x 5 days a week x 16 weeks = £80 total savings

Please note that the only real cost to the café is a splash of milk which probably only measures a cup every 2 days. The rest is just good economics!

Heavy Petal

Hey, check this out! I haven't really looked through it myself, so, if you wanted to kind of give me a summary, that'd be cool!

http://heavypetal.ca/

And if you feel the need of a diversion, check this out... (no summary needed!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmjLqddPqZQ

At long last

Well, ıt's been a whıle. It's been so long ın fact that I can't remember half of the thıngs I want to wrıte, and the thıngs that I can remember are so abundant ın number that ıf I trıed to transcrıbe them all I would have to neglect all else and probably dıe of starvatıon.

So. ınstead of all that I'll ınstead tell you that I mılked a cow ın Latovnık, Bulgarıa. It was later ın the same day that she'd gıven bırth. At about 8am at the neıghbourıng farm Aıden and Aıesha's cow gave bırth. We came by to see ıt after breakfast (about 9 am) and the baby was just tryıng to stand and was stıll covered wıth after bırth.

It mıght seem odd to mılk a cow the same day ıt's gıven bırth but worry not! We saved 2 teets for the baby and mılked the other 2 for us. We made pancakes (more crepes but apparently that's what the rest of the world calls pancakes. Who knew?) wıth the mılk and the colostrum gave them a great buttery flavour! The mılk was ın my belly about 10 mınutes after I'd taken ıt from the cow!

It was a good day!

Oktoberfest

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

I'm not going today! Aside from the beer I had this morning for breakfast (it was a traditional Bavarian breakfast apparently, and was composed of white sausage, white beer, and big ass pretzels. It was pretty damned good too!) I will be giving the drink a bit of a miss today. Instead I think I'll try to take it easy and do some corresponding with the folks back home.

Time for a recap . . .

For the moment I'm in Frankfurt (as pictured above) but will be leaving for München and Oktoberfest tomorrow. So far this has pretty much been the pace of the trip. Quick! We stayed in London for 3 nights at a hostal in Lewisham. It was even more awesome than you#d have imagnied. Folks there were awesome and Richard and I had some great times!

Now we're in Frankfurt and things are just as great! Last night we went out to try some local apple wine and some traditional Frankfurt foods. What we got was a 10 liter jug (it's the smallest they had) of apple wine and a HUGE plate os meat layed over a bed of saurkraut. Seriously, it was a plate of meat! Sausages, ham, whatever! It was delicious! And much to my dismay and misinformation it cost €11.50.

Today we forced ourselves to wake up before 2pm and are going to go walking and exploring for a bit.

This gent went to Gent

That's right. On 4 hours sleep I went to visit the medieval city of Gent. It was awesome. Cool architecture, winding canals, pedestrian only sections of town, tons of bicycles, and a very friendly livable overall feeling. It's kind of what North American cities should be, but probably never will.

After seeing the castle (only €1.50 because I'm under 26 ;) ) I walked around for a while. Actually I walked around for hours because I got lost and just kept walking. Eventually I made it back to the station but I was hungry.

Knowing that I would eat when I got home I tried to forget about it and not waste money on some crap. I ended up buying an entire bag of chips and a sausage on a bun smothered in fried onions, sauerkraut, and hot mustard. Instead of the warm feeling of accomplishment; of having willpower strong enough to resist temptation; instead of this I got indigestion and €4 less in my pocket. Kind of makes me feel bad about fibbing to the guy at the castle.

A couple missing pieces.

Ok, while I've got a moment I'll fill everyone in on a few things that've happened since my arrival in Ireland.

Since my arrival the weather has been pretty cold and wet. This is to be expected in Ireland but what bugs me is the past few weeks have been really beautiful and sunny. Everyone I've met has jokingly mentioned that I missed summer.

I've been helping one of my hosts build a tunnel (greenhouse thing) and that's been interesting. The biggest accomplishment of the day was getting power to our caravan! We've been powerless 'till now, reading at night to the light of flashlights. But that's sorted now, and it wasn't bad to begin with anyway, just makes for an interesting trip!

I've been eating great as well, everyone seems eager to feed Keith and I. Today for lunch we had fried pumpkin, potatoes with cheese over them, baked beans and cooked carrots with peas. It was tasty and we washed it all down with some Darjeeling tea.

I guess that's all I really missed since my last post, and I should go now anyway. I told Keith and Colm (my host) that I was just going to respond to an e-mail and I've been gone for the better part of a half an hour!

(There'll be more pictures when I remember to take my camera with me to update my blog)

My morning in the USA.

I was in the US today (dropping Dad off at the Buffalo airport) andwhile I was in the country I tried to order a Whopper meal. Everything was fine, except the price. I payed with a $10 Canadian bill and got back $1.50 American. I wasn't THAT hungry so I cancelled my order.