Stir up Sunday adventures

Today is Stir Up Sunday. Called this because the words opening the 1549 book of Common Prayer for today are:

Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people;

It was seen as a reminder to the cooks and the good wives of the villages and towns to get making the Christmas pudding. Although I'm not religious I do love that old language of the Common Book of Prayer and the St James bible. The language is so dramatic, mysterious and poetic. It makes me think of the poem by John Donne "Batter my heat three person God" one of my all time favourite poems:

Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you

As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;

That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend

Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.

I, like an usurp'd town to another due,

Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end;

Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,

But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue.

Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov'd fain,

But am betroth'd unto your enemy;

Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,

Take me to you, imprison me, for I,

Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,

Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me

Any way enough of religious poetry. As it is stir up Sunday I decided to make a proper Christmas cake. I've never made one before, in fact I've never made a traditional fruit cake before. So the preparations started last night as you can see below:

Mixed fruit steeped in Courvoisier 

 I got all the mixed fruit, sultanas, raisins, currents, peel, glace cherries and apricots together then steeped them in some brandy. The bowl was then covered and left over night.

Mixing the cake was fairly straight forward like making any cake apart from the fact that their were so many ingredients. I used Nigella's Traditional Christmas Cake recipe as she has a very helpful conversion table for measurements relating to different cake tine sizes and shapes. I'm afraid I can't link to it as it's copyrighted so not on the web, but it's in her Domestic Goddess book and the one I use Feast.

Ingredients mixed ready to go into the tin

It was hard going folding in the flour and fruit towards the end as the mixture was so full of goodies!

Double lined tin, expert work by Jason

Jason lined the tin for me with double thickness baking parchment, the double thickness and tall sides help prevent the edge of the cake blackening and drying out. There is no way I would be able to line the cake tin like that!

Mixture in the tin ready to go into the oven

So the mixture goes into the tin and into the oven for 3 hours at least at a lowish heat (130C in my fan assisted oven). I tested mine at 3 hours and then gave it an extra 10 minutes. Here it is fresh out of the oven.

Fresh out of the oven

That isn't the end of it though! I then had to wrap it in double thickness of silver foil and leave it. As I type this it is steaming nicely as it cools, this prevents the top of the cake drying out.

Wrapped in silver foil

So now I just wait for it to cool, then wrap it up again and store it in a air tight container for at least 3 weeks before icing it. That means I'll probably ice it the weekend before Christmas as that is 4 weeks from now.

Of course I shall post up a photo of the cake when it emerges from its silver foil cocoon and once I've iced it! 

A day in the life part 5: fireworks & cake!

My last entry of the day. After making the 2 cakes we packed up the lemon drizzle and headed round to Alice & Jon's. We had a lovely dinner there and then went out info the freezing cold night to set off fireworks. Or "do fireworks" as 4 1/2 year old Amelia put it. We had a fabulous time and once the excitement was over we played a time travelling / alternate history card game!

Below you can see some photos of the fire works, the garden chimney fire and my lemon drizzle cake. The other cake pictured is a traditional Scottish ginger bread loaf. It's made to a recipe from Jason's family. It's the first time I've tried it and Jason was really impressed! I was so pleased to do the recipe justice!

I've just finished packing for my trip up to Doncaster tomorrow so I'm done in and ready for bed now!

I'll post the ginger bread loaf recipe ASAP!

A day in the life part 4: cats

Whilst Jase wasn't helping me bake, he was kept very busy: please see below!

The cats certainly know how to keep Jason busy, responding to their every whim!

A day in the life part 3: bakimg

So this afternoon I've been baking. Below you'll see the semi finished lemon drizzle cake. It's been drizzled and is waiting to cool. Then I can drizzle some orange icing on it to make it a St Clements drizzle cake!

In the pan frothing is the start of the Scottish gingerbread loaf. It's in the oven now. I've over filled the tin with it so I'm not sure how it will expand!

Whilst baking I've been listening to Radio 2 - I am getting old! I usually listen to 6 Music but it's not as good at the weekends. IMHO!

A day in the life part 2

Biggleswade was manic full of people wrapped up warm against the elements. The shops & coffee shops were full of Hallowe'en, bonfire night & Christmas displays. All very colourful.

I bought ribbon and elastic from the wool stall - even something for a Christmas present project. All came to £2.59 - cheap Christmas presents indeed!

ASDA was hideous, huge queues at the tills & no icing sugar! But I got some from Spar & a taxi home.

Got home and took out the washing pictured below. I'd bought a game for Jase - the latest Prof Layton game for the DS. I said he could have it as an early wedding anniversary present. That prompted him to give me my anniversary present early. Our first anniversary is paper so Jase got me something fabulous. A kindle paper white! It's the latest kindle with a much cleats screen and built in front light!

The most accessible kindle yet for me! It's fabulous with a jolly honey yellow case. I'm a very lucky wife.

Now it's time to bake!

A day in the life

I've not blogged much lately so I've decided to blog through out the day today. This should kick start my blogging again! I'm going to use photos a lot.

I woke up at 9 then took ages over breakfast which is pictured below once I'd finished it. Kasumi the cat joined me at the table as you can see. I also wrote on my mental health blog about coming off my anti depressants and took a photo of my lovely Christmas cactus! It's flowering early for Hallowe'en and bonfire night this year.

I also chatted on twitter to a few people. But I've got to get moving now as have a lot to do today.

Jason is making me laugh now so I better go. I'll blog again in a couple of hours!

Japanese beer hall

Tonight we went out to eat in Shibuya. We didn't want anything too fancy so went to Shibuya as there is plenty of choice there. We settled on going to Ginza Lion which in the evening becomes a bit more like an izakaya where you can have beer and order smaller plates of food especially to share.

As you'll see from the many photos below they are advertising themselves as a Japanese beer hall. They even had a German style Octoberfest menu along with the Japanese autumn specials.

The first beer I tried was a white beer which was very crisp and refreshing. We opted to share a plate of different sausages and some potato with bacon. You can see a photo of the sausages below.

I then tried the mango beer. It's a beer cocktail of lager and mango juice/purée it was nicer than it sounds. I had some deep fried octopus and finished with a "half and half" beer a mix of lager and stout! All of the beers were good if a little unusual.

We went for a wander around shibuya afterwards and I had some ice cream from cold stone creamery. The girls serving sang me a song as they made up my ice cream! Only in Japan :-)

Tomorrow we are visiting friends before a tropical storm rolls in over night. Hopefully typhoon jelawat won't be too destructive!

Yoyogi

Yoyogi, a set on Flickr.

Photos from visit to Yoygi Park today.

My lost in translation day

Today Jase was busy at work so I had to fend for myself in Tokyo. Unlike Scarlet Johansson in the film Lost in Translation I didn't hook up with an ageing Hollywood actor, instead I hung out with some Japanese pensioners in the park.

It was very clear and sunny this morning so I was able to take some photos of Mt Fuji (Fuji-san.) When I've seen Fuji-San before there has always been quite a lot of snow on the top. I've included a photo below.

The park I really wanted to visit is called Shinjuku Gyoen but on arriving and finding the gate locked, a park keeper told me it was closed today. I decided to get back on the metro and travel to Yoyogi park instead as that was only one line change away.

I was pleased with my ability to navigate the Tokyo metro alone especially a journey I hadn't planned on. I do find Japan generally very accessible even the metro.

I've been to Yoyogi park before in the spring. Back then the park was full of cherry blossom and couples enjoying the spring weather. Today it was sweltering at about 27 C in the shade. The park was not empty but it wasn't busy considering the good weather. The cicadas were providing a sporadic high pitch trilling as they come to the end of their summer. The Tokyo crows were everywhere, as you can see below they are huge, not at all afraid of people and they are incredibly raucous.

I found a small flower garden which was buzzing with insects and pensioners photographing the flowers. It seems that in Japan photographing flowers (well practically anything really) is a national hobby. It is so nice to be somewhere where people don't think it's odd that I am photographing plants & flowers.

The pensioners and I patiently moved from flower to flower like lazy bees. I was lucky enough to photograph some real bees. Let me tell you these bees are huge! Twice the size of bumble bees back in the UK. There were some even bigger black tailed bees too. I couldn't get a decent picture of one of them though.

I got some pictures of a oak bush green cricket like things as well, which I'll put on my Flickr page. I saw some yellow butterflies but they're much too fast to photograph easily. I also glimpsed some huge dragon fly type insect that looked like they had a wing span as big as my hand!

After getting very hot taking photos I walked up to the Harajuku exit and up Omotesando which is a large shopping avenue with some very posh shops on it, like Prada & Louis Vuitton. There is also a toy shop called Kiddieland, which is just amazing so I had a quick look round but wanted to buy the whole shop for my nieces & nephews!

I then had lunch at Ginza Lion, opting for a hamburger steak and egg on vegetables and rice mmmm. I walked back to the hotel along the edge of the Summer Palace gardens.

Since getting back to my room at 3ish I've been watching Discovery Channel UFO conspiracy programmes. Hopefully Jase will be back soon. By the time I up load this he'll be back.