Yesterday we made a little trip to the shops. We were looking for some stuff for the new baby to come ( from my boyfriend´s sis) + some stuff for my sisters´little girl…We didn´t find what we were looking for, just some clothes for my nephew, but I also wanted to buy her some toy, but I didn´t like what there was in the shops. In the end I found a kewl thermo, with capacity for 550 ml. I fell in love with it, so funnyly decorated ¡! I showed it to my boyfriend and then left it on the shelf again. But then I remembered I wanted to buy one of those thermos for making my own yogurt… and that one was perfect!! Cause it was not too big but had the capacity for 4 yogurts… so that was perfect for our kitchen….. Then I also saw these lil´ bowls… I saw some in those shops that sell everything but they never fit with their lids, so I never bought them. Small bowls are not easy to find so I bought this little set of 4 bowls ( also from the baby´s shop ), perfect for storing yogurts, lemoncurd, custards etc…yippie!!

My boyfriend was looking for those things you put in the baby´ s cradle, arghhh I don´t know the english name for that!! Sozzz , well the thing is that all we saw was not very great, they were ugly in fact!! So in the end he bought some basket for the swimming pool we have in a field my family owns.

I just had to draw some of the stuff we bought, including that lil´dress for the new born baby which is pretty funny too. I need to buy more colors if I have to keep on painting + practising.

I made three bottles of Lemon Syrup J… Now I¨m just waiting for the label of them, as my boyfriend offered to make them for me… I´m waiting!! …I love labels, cool designs, and I also love glass bottles and I´m kinda collecting them. Of course they are supposed to have some use. We have plenty of lemons these days and I need recipes!! So I also made two different LemonCurds and the result was not very good, in fact they look great but the taste is awful.. arghhhh —- Can you believe it??

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I don´t know if it´s because I added the whole egg, white part + yolk. I made lemoncurd once and though it wasn´t that great as I expected at least you could eat it! And the difference with this time is that I used only egg yolks. But I had all that lemoncurd made, so I was not going to throw it!!!

So I made the dough for ginger cookies+ added lemoncurd… the result is great!! delicious ginger cookies with lemon flavor!! Yep yep…!!! I don´t know what could fail with my poor lemoncurds, the thing is that now they´re resting in the freezer waiting to be used with more cookies. And the bad thing is that I don´t know what Lemoncurd is supposed to taste, but I´ve read everywhere it´s really delicious. I should try and make it again but ONLY with egg yolks, not the whole egg. This afternoon I´m preparing aniseeds cookies and I also want to experiment adding sum lemoncurd…..

I think I bought the barbecue sauce mostly because of the kewl design + kewl bottle. And I was wondering what it tasted like the barbecue sauce. I would also like to try to make this sauce by myself cause I don´t like much the flavour of all those spices.

I don´t like ketchup at all but sometimes we mix ketchup to make some sauces, and I think Heinz is the only ketchup I can stand, so we always buy this brand.

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I liked to paint a lot when I was a kid, but bit by bit I left the ‘hobby’, well I usually used pens + watercolors+ felt-tip pens + markers etc to decorate FB´s (friendshipbooks that is ), me and my sis enjoyed a lot at it!. The watercolors case is a present I got when I was about 13, some some years ago now… I was surfing through some arty blogs and I just felt like trying, they were so good!! so here you are my first sketch!! I would like to practise a lot more and be creative but that´s something not very easy to me… SO for the first practise I used the Kitty bee + blue Rino.

P.D.: I forgot to say Rino has been helping with the cookies!! Here he is with the aniseeds!

If someone has some special or delicious tested crumpets recipe I would really appreciate the help, as I´ve been searching through the net and the info seems not to be very clear. Anyway, it seems they´re quite delicious and everyone wants to repeat after eating them so I´m pretty curious about their taste… And I love ancient recipes!!!
I have Elizabeth David Book, gotta collect the tuna cans since I don´t have cooking rings for the crumpets !
Same thing goes for Aberdeen Rowies, if someone has a tested yummy recipe would be pleased to get it. If not, I´ll have the choose from the recipes I´ve collected.

See YA!

Hi ya all!!

Lately I´m not updating my blog much, well it´s because of some reasons…, during the mornings I´m catching up on my english, I have a book which tells about the life during the beginning of the 20th century ( very interesting i love to read it !!!) I find it relaxing and I´m even learning about different kinds of plants, flowers, trees… I can´t believe all the words I still have to learn!. But at the same time is great finding those ‘new words’…. So that way I don´t play with the computer in the mornings since when I´m on the computer time flies. And I´m improving my english a little bit.
And then, in the afternoon we´re taking computer classes. Unfortunately it only lasts 20 days, and it´s only 2 hours every day. It´s interesting to know what is like a computer inside…. but some explanations are so ‘abstract’ to me….
And well, not that much is going on in my life either!!!!!!!! I made croissants again, this time they looked kinda better than last time so I´ll show you the pics, they were good and I´m willing to bake them again….

And last, these days I´m nervous for the Love is contest… what will happen??? I told some of my friends about my blog and about the video I made, and it feels kinda embarassing to me , maybe it´s because I´ve always been a bit shy.

http://video.sanriotown.com/video/9977ba75f1fce697

for votes you can go here and choose the one you like the most:

http://blog.sanriotown.com/directors_club:hellokitty.com/

If I had grown up eating croissants and donuts they sell at the shops/ supermarkets/bakeries today, I would not like neither of them definitely.
I remember when we were kids, my mother brought us delicious croissants every saturday while we watched the cartoons on tv. I still remember the texture inside, the delicious taste, how you could grab all the ‘belly’ inside and what it looked like. I´ve never forgotten even though many years have passed.
Today eating a croissant ( here ) is nothing great. If you buy it at the supermarket, it´s just the consistence of a bun with an artificial/extra sweet/not nice at all flavour. And if you get it at the bakeries/pastisseries you get something kinda messy, the only movement of grabbing it and most of the crust starts to fall in a million pieces, and well, if you decide to bite it (( well you should, you bought it to eat it didn´t you???!!! )) you´ll leave the floor with all those pieces , cause I don´t know what they add/do/put to get those ‘uncomfortable to teat’ consistence. A million crusts falling over, and a poor flavour and no texture inside.
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The thing is that they don´t realise it´s a mistake. We´re not …. ‘robbots’… or whatever you call it, can´t find the word. For me that´s what´s junk food. And the bad thing is that we, humans, seem to get used to every or almost everything. Luckily things are changing and people is being more concerned about food and things related.
And luckily there are some places which seem to keep authenticity. I´ve found a couple of bakeries in Barcelona that sell good quality ‘non-breakable’ croissants. I hope that in other countries you still can get a real CROISSANT.
Anyway I´m still looking for the perfect or ‘almost perfect’ croissant. And as I can´t find it anywhere at the moment, I planned to make it by myself.It´s quite a laborious thing, you know, all that laminating stuff and so on… I tried to make croissants three times. The two first times it was a total failure, so disapointed!! But the second time while I was throwing the pastry I just felt so bad for throwing it, I thought I would try to see if I could make something kinda ‘eatable’… So I took some of the pastry left and I put it in a muffin sylicon mold… 6 little ‘muffins’… Well my boyfriend tasted it and said it was delicious, one of the best things he ever tried. He said that if shops sold that they wouldn´t stop selling it. He almost killed me when I told him I had thrown the rest of the dough!!!
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He´s always telling me to do it again, but I don´t remember how I did it, you see that was an attempt of making a croissant, I don´t remember when the ‘ margarine, lard ‘ I used for laminating the dough went out of the dough. I had to play with that. And I don´t remember if I used lard or margarine.

A few months ago I tried again, but this time it was with butter, real butter. After my efford I succeeded!!! It was pretty good for being a beginner I must admit!!
Here is the result I had:

By chance, some days ago I found some advices on shaping them, advices which would have helped me to improve the result a lot, I think.OH I was so glad!! When you don´t have someone teaching you, being your own teacher takes some effort and many attempts, failures and when you finally succeed such a big big happiness . So now I´m willing to do them again. Wish me luck!!!

( more to come later with this post ……………… )

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For those of you who are on a diet, or simply if you want a healthy food, here it is a delicious carrot ‘cake’, or better a carrot snack. It keeps well in the fridge many days.This recipe admits many variations, for example you can substitute water for apple juice, you can ommit ginger if you´re not a big fan of it, you can add some currants, cut the amount of almonts to 1/3 cup instead of ½ cup etc. It´s a good choice to take away to the job if you eat outside, and it combines very well in a meal with wholemeal rice for example, very healthy!!!

Ingredients for the carrot snack: 1 cup and ½ water, ½ cup almonds, ½ cup oats, ½ cup couscous, 2 tbsp. corn oil or some light oil, a pinch of salt, some cinnamon and some ginger.

Grate the carrots very thin manually, add the oats + couscous. Mix well. Add the water+ 2 tbsp. oil. Finally add the chopped almonds ( not too thin ), ginger+cinnamon+salt and mix again. Transfer the dough to a greased pan and bake in the oven at 200ºC for about 1 hour. ( My oven is very slow, so keep an eye maybe you have enough with a bit lower temperature ). And that´s it!!! Let it cool and enjoy!

It wasn´t easy to make the heart shaped carrots, as the dough doesn´t wear any flour and it seemed hard to cut. Finally I managed to do it and I turned them so I had the bottom part above and the result was a better presentation. I added a base of white chocolate as some lucky ones don´t have to look after their weight.