What A Beauty.

Be still my beating heart. Oh ASOS.

Madame Squirrel’s Bucket List Part II

6. Make a dress from scratch.

7. Learn how to sew (should probably do this one before I make a dress).

8. Volunteer and work with Kakapo’s on Codfish island and Anchor island off of the coast of New Zealand.

Sirocco the Spokesbird for all Kakapos.

For more information on this amazing (and adorable) animal and how you can help save them; please visit www.kakaporecovery.org.nz

9. Learn how to blog properly (should have done this one by now…oops).

10. Attend many a cake decoration class.

In Search Of A Cream Tea.

I recently went for a lovely weekend away in Dorset and on the way back home, my partner and I decided we would get a cream tea (get into the spirit and all that).

We forgot that trying to do anything on a Sunday (especially in winter) in this  country is impossible.

EXHIBIT A: We found a lovely looking tea-room on-line which was in the New Forest and was perfectly on our route back. It closed at 5. Fine, we thought, we’ll get there in time. We pulled up just before 4.30. The closed sign had just been placed on the door.

EXHIBIT B: Following the early closing of exhibit A we drove to exhibit B, a pub in the town of exhibit A, advertising on a chalk board  “cream teas all day”.

Problem solved, we thought.

We parked (easily, which was a shock in itself) and walked into what appeared to be the entrance of the pub.

Now this is a problem with British eatery establishments. There are rarely ANY signs telling you what to do when you enter. Do you order at the bar? Do you wait somewhere to be seated? Do you find yourself a seat? No, not one hint of what to do to give the restaurant your custom.

This pub was no different, after 10 minutes of standing about awkwardly, trying to make eye-contact with a member of staff so that we could order or at least have some inclination of what to do, we huffed off.

EXHIBIT C: I remembered seeing another tea-room as we drove through the village to exhibit B, so we walked there.

Finally, we thought, we can have our cream tea (we were starving and grumpy by this point after failing to eat anything during the day…first world problems I know).

We entered the tearoom…again staff (in this case a teenage boy) failed to tell us how to order, so we went and sat down.

After about 5 minutes the aforementioned teenage boy comes over and tells us that they are about to finish serving hot drinks. We ask him if can we order, at which point he tells us to order at the till (could have done with that info. a little bit earlier sunshine).

At the till we order and he goes into the kitchen.  We are then told that the cook is not serving any more food…not even cold food.

Do we complain or even stamp our feet a little bit.

No!

Instead, we apologise for being so late and hastily shuffle out of the shop.

We ended up eating a custard slice, in the car, at the services on the way home. Story of my life.*

Love

Madame Squirrel

* Not the story of my life at all.

Disclaimer: Madame Squirrel is not usually this grumpy; she just really really likes cream teas.

Madame Squirrel’s Bucket List

I don’t believe in New Year’s Resolutions. If I was going to do anything (i.e lose weight) I would have done it already. Instead, I’m going to start writing a bucket list, hopefully a lifetime means I may get round to some of the things I want to achieve.

1. Learn the whole of One Week by the Barenaked Ladies (so I can rap/sing along to my heart’s content).

2. Swim with Whale Sharks.

3. Own an Alexander McQueen Dress.

This one will do please: 

4. Learn BSL (British Sign Language).

5. Cook a thai curry from scratch (preferably in Thailand…but if I’ve just bought that dress that’s unlikely).

The D.I.Y Christmas

This year I have decided to make a lot of home-made foodie presents. Whether this is going to turn out to be more or less cost-effective than if I actually bought the presents in the first place, is another matter entirely.

Here is a list of what will be going down in the kitchen (Click link for recipes):

Sea Salt Butter Caramels as seen on The Baker Chick.

Buttermilk Bacon Pralines as seen on Framed Cooks.

Microwave Peanut Brittle as seen on Blue-Eyed Bakers.

I might dip the peanut brittle in melted dark chocolate once it’s cooled but we’ll see how much time I have.

Roast almond, peanut and pistachio cranberry nut brittle as seen on What Katie Ate.

Turtle Candies as seen on as She Wears Many Hats.

I recommend following ALL of the above blogs as they have really great mouth-watering recipes and just drool-worthy photos.

Now, some of these recipes do ask for light corn syrup which is not that easy to get hold of in the UK. I was lucky as my partner recently was in the US and he brought me some home.

Don’t despair though, as a few American Grocery based online stores such as The Stateside Candy Co.  (which also has three real stores) do stock dark and light corn syrup, Hooray!

Usually I find the cost of American groceries over here astronomical (I’m looking at you £7.99 box of Lucky Charms) but The Stateside Candy Co. sells a bottle of light or dark corn syrup for £3.99 which I reckon ain’t too shabby.

Somehow, I need to make all of these edible goodies presentable.  So far I’ve bought  cellophane bags from Lakeland, ribbon from The Ribbon Girl and I’ve also managed to get wax paper (for wrapping the caramels in) from ebay.

For inspiration I check out Marthastewart.com  for presentation ideas as well as  more gift ideas.

I’m going to try to take pictures of all these D.I.Y goings on and post them on here. I won’t however be posting pictures of my kitchen before and after nor my face as I become increasingly frantic and flustered trying to get everything done in time.

Any tips and ideas would be much appreciated especially if they are time saving and stress reducing!

Love

Madame Squirrel