Coffee & Cake

 Who doesn't like a piece of cake with their coffee. All my life I have loved to bake, however since retiring I have got into the habit of baking a cake a week. Then the wife and I have a slice with our morning  (or afternoon) coffee.

This week it was a lemon drizzle cake, nice and fresh with a lovely sharp taste of lemon.

Heat oven to 180C / 160C fan. Gas 4

RECIPE

225g unsalted butter, 225g caster sugar, 4 eggs, 225g self raising flour, zest of a lemon.

For the toppin

Juice of one and a half lemons, 85g Caster sugar

METHOD

Beat the butter and sugar together then add the eggs one at a time, slowly mixing through so that they don't curdle.

Sift in the flour then add the lemon zest and mix well

I don't use a loaf tin, instead I use a 20cm round silicon dish. I line the bottom of the dish as it makes getting the cake out easier.

Put the mixture in the dish, level with a spoon and bake for 45/50 mins.

Test with a skewer and if it comes out clean, it's baked.

Don't turn the cake out yet. Mix up the lemon juice and sugar, prick the cake all over and then drizzle the mixture over the cake so that it soaks in all the way.

Leave the cake go completely cold so that you end up with a nice crispy, sugary top.

Turn the cake out and enjoy.

Garden Change

This week I have decided to have a change round of the garden in the front of the house. As we have off road parking most of the front is shingle. However there are a couple of area's that I have utilised so that we at least have something green there.

The photos shown here are of the garden as it is and has been for the last few years. A rather unruly bush, some marigolds, gladiolis that I tried planting directly into the shingle and a sort of miniature conifer patch. It was this that I really wanted to change as some of the conifers were getting rather woody and straggly.

 

The idea is to change out some of the conifers with grasses and alpine plants, leave the gladioli's in and also plant some fleabane daisies with them. The unruly bush needs some serious pruning and the pots need sorting. So far I have managed to change out the woody conifers but unfortunately rain has definitely stopped play.

It's starting to look pretty good, as soon as the rain stops and I can get the remainder of the plants in, I'll show some more photo's.

War Cabinet

 Over the years I have amassed a number of trophies and nick knacks. Some from sport, i.e. golf and petanque, some from my army days and the rest are gifts, some old, some new. Nobody ever really sees them so I thought that I would share them with you. Mainly so that I can get back into blogging, cos of course the first thing is that I need something to blog about.

Anyway, the first pic is of my "War Cabinet", lol, where I keep my bits and pieces.

In here is a miscellaneous amount of trophies, army stuff and things I have collected on my travels.

So starting with the first pic, these are my two recent trophies from Petanque. I started playing in 2019, just before lockdown. Great, I find a hobby I like and then can't play it because although it's in an open space it's also with up to 20 other people. Anyway, late 2020 we were able to start playing again, albeit with the 2m distancing and things took off from there. I love the game now and play twice a week, plus league games and a few competitions during the year. These two are from the Club Doubles which my playing partner and I won.

This pic is of glasses that I have collected. The stein was from Czech Republic, way back in 1997 when I went to stay just outside Prague with a penfriend. We visited the castle in Prague which also at the time housed the Czech Parliament. One day, the president arrives and Bozenka (my friend) just walked up to him and said hello and introduced me. I was gobsmacked when he shook my hand and then walked inside. I told her, in the UK you wouldn't get within 10m of the PM never mind shake his hand. Anyway, on the way home we called into the village bar, in Roudnice, and the barman gave me the stein to bring home.

Just a pic of a few golfing (and other) trophies I have won.

This one is special, The pewter mug was presented to me in 1981 when I left the Guards Depot after serving there for 3 years as a senior instructor. The brown mug was handmade in Cyprus in 1974 by a local craftsman. It has a large crack because my daughter dropped it, good old super glue. The glass e-type is because that is my all time favourite car and was given to me as a prezzie. I got to drive a vintage e-type a few years back when my children bought me a blue letter day for my 70th. I got to drive one around a race track. 4.2ltrs of pure muscle and growl. Bliss. The hip flasks are, 1 for winning the Charity Shield at Golf, the one behind is a simple Welsh Guard one and the last one is a memento from The Falkland Isles with the map and dates on it. The "nuts & bolts" motorcycle represents my love of cruisers and finally the brass snuff box belonged to my great grandfather which he used in the mines and has his name and date on it. William Jeffrey Jones 1888.

Hopefully you've enjoyed a peek into part of me and I haven't bored you too much.

Here I go again

 So, it's been a little while since I posted on here. Some health issues, plus a lack of focus. Anyway, I'm back with another attempt at letting the world at large know what I'm up to. First up is a visit to London that my wife and I paid back in June. Weekend of Sat 14th June. Some of you will recognise that date as the Kings Birthday Parade. To take it back a little while, last November 2023 I attended a re-union of old comrades in Weston Super Mare.

Lovely place, Marlene (the wife) and I lived there for some 10 years. Anyway, during the obligatory raffle I, with the greatest stroke of luck won the top prize, two tickets to the Kings Birthday Parade, on the actual day no less.

So, a weekend in London, see the sights etc and generally enjoy ourselves. I've done the troop a few times, both on parade and street lining, however Marlene has never really seen it except on TV. A fantastic weekend and even the rain at the end of the parade couldn't dampen our spirits. We had great seats, just to the left of Admiralty Arch so we could see everyone coming on to Horse guards Parade, all the carriages and oh so lovely to see Catherine, Princess of Wales arrive. Marlene was ecited because not only did she have ringside seats but she had her own personal tour guide as I was able to eplain what was going on and all the drill movements.

All in all, a wonderful time, happy memories for me and new ones for Marlene.

Front of house

About 18 months ago, bored and with nothing to do, I made a comment about the front garden. So the wife says, well why don't you sort it yourself.  I have to say it was a bit of a mess. There was a huge Fuschia bush that just grew everywhere, lots of spanish bluebells and many weeds. Against the house wall was just one small nondescript bush that I still don't know what it's called.

We started with a bush on the corner of the house but it still looked awful. Various plants have gone in over the last 10 years but I didn't like them so now I've done my own thing.

I started by trimming the bush on the corner and making it look presentable. The little box hedge below it got a haircut as well (social distancing was obeyed, lol) and now it looks ok.

Then I dug out the whole of the corner nearest the pavement, took as many roots as I could find out and planted it with low growing conifers etc. I love Rosemary as a bush and planted that as well. A few large rocks that we had were placed randomly and I think it looks pretty good. I keep getting the odd fuschia root poking through but up it comes.

Last summer I planted a hydrangea bush and it's doing quite well. Although the fron of the house is covered in gravel, there's some decent soil underneath and I feed the plants regularly

Then late last year I moved a climbing rose that wasn't doing very well, planted it in front of the window on a trellis and it's already going great guns. We've had a few lovely white flowers off it but it's going to need a bit more traininig around the trellis and by next summer it should look beautiful. I'm very pleased with it all. Maybe I'll get a second rose but haven't decided yet.

Garden Furniture

So the last time I wrote I was in the middle of sanding down my garden furniture and restaining it. I had completed the chairs and the bench and the all came up pretty good. Hard work in the hot weather we were having but worth it in the end.

Both chairs and the bench were dismantled, sanded down within an inch of their life and given a lovely new coat of natural cedar stain.

Once the first coat was dry (takes about 3 or 4 hours depending on weather) it was time to reassemble ready for the second coat




















Then finally, all together with a 3rd coat of stain and ready to last another few years. One year of protecion for each coat so the makers say.



The problems started to arrive when it was time to take the table apart. Unfortunately, where the slats were dowelled underneath, moisture had seeped into the joints and the wood had gone soft and in some places started to rot.

After sanding a bit more of the table down on top I then discovered that a corner of the table had actually split and unfortunately there was nothing I could do to repair it. 

I wasn't too upset as this table and chair set have given about 15 years good service. The main problem now was to decide on what table we would buy to replace it. The last one was good solid heavy hardwood and if I could get the same table it was going to cost. No chance of visiting any shops, so it was online we go and trawl through the different sites. My god, so many different garden tables ranging in price from the very cheap £25 to the really expensive, over a £1000. Eventually, on reccomendation I had a look at the IKEA web page and lo and behold, there it was. On offer at a £110. Of course then you had to add delivery because there was none available in store to "click & collect", naturally, and the delivery charge is a whopping £40. It kind of put me off and I was going to wait until places started to open again but my daughter said she had an Ikea Family card, brilliant, add the card number in and a big £25 discount. I could live with that. So last week the table arrived, delivered by a nice young man who even lifted it over the back gate for me. 

So easy to assemble, came with full, easy to read instructions, all the nuts and bolts were there and although the instructions suggested two people to assemble it, I managed it easily on my own. Just laid it upside down on the flattened out cardboard boxes and it took me just under the hour.

It's slightly different from the last table, that was 50ins X 28ins. The new one is 48 ins square so we can actually sit 8 people around it. We are really pleased with it, and although I will probably have to sand and stain it next year, one because it's darker than the rest of the furniture and two, because the stain on it at the moment is very light and won't take many knocks. To be fair it's only to be expected given the price, but a job well done I say.

Now we're set for the rest of the summer and even the cat approves.  Next project, well that's the front garden that needs a bit of a tidy. Not allowed in the back garden as that belongs to the wife.

Succesful Weight Loss

It has taken me 5 months, starting on January 6th this year to today's weigh in to get down tonear where I want to be and to be officially declared a "healthy weight".

Probably, like many others of a similiar age, as we have got older, the waist line may have thickened a little and the weight has crept on. Since Marlene and I both retired, the work load has gone down and the leisure time increased which meant that all those calories we used to burn off, stayed with us. So, in January this year we decided that we would go on a controlled eating regime. Not quite a diet as such, but more reducing portion size and cutting out a lot of the snacks.

We have always ate healthy, haven't used many processed foods for years as we tend to cook from scratch. We used a program called "My Fitness Pal" which allows us to see what calories we should consume and track them, plus sugars, carbs, sodium and salt etc through what we eat.

It's easy to use and it has worked very successfully. We still have our glass of wine on the weekend, we still enjoy the occasional bar of chocolate and we bake a cake and it lasts us the week for "elevenses.

A little bit of exercise, which normally means a 20/30 minute walk once or twice a day and voila, I have now lost 9.75kilograms of useless weight from my tummy and jowls. Plus I feel much better and can bend over and cut my toenails without struggling, lol.

We shall continue in the same way until I meet my target weight of 13 1/2 stone, so just over 5 pounds to go. Then of course will be the real test, can I keep it off. We shall see.