Good luck McLaren team... watch out for the koala bears :)

Easter Simnel Cake

Ingredients

8oz plain flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
4 oz sultanas
2oz chopped almonds
2oz chopped walnuts
11/2 oz candy peal
grated rind of 1/2 lemon
3oz ginger pieces (in syrup)
6 oz glaced cherries
7oz margarine
6oz castor sugar
4 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
2 tablespoons brandy or milk

glace icing for decoration
angelica - to make leaves
marzipan
rose food coloring
rose water

Method

- Line an 8" cake tin
- Sift flour and salt and add sultanas
- Chop nuts and grate lemon rind into this
- Soak ginger in hot water and cut into small pieces
- 1/4 the cherries and pour boiling water over them to remove
syrup, add a little flour and add cherries at the end
- Add mixed peal, ginger and cherries to the flour
- Meanwhile in another bowl, beat togethor margarine, sugar
and vanillla essence
- Beat into this the eggs, one at a time with some of the flour
- Next add flour and fruit mixture to this and add brandy or milk
- Pour into cake tin and bake in oven for 1 hour at 340 degrees F
and 1 hour at 320 degrees F (Please adjust for fan ovens)
- Allow to cool and stand for 1-2 days before decorating

Decorating the cake

- Cover cake in marzipan after brushing cake with apricot jam
- Place a second circle of marzipan over this - so that it
just covers the top of the cake (more apricot jam to attach)
- Using scissors or a knife, cut teeth in the edge of the second circle
of marzipan for decoration
- Gently mark a small cross in the centre of the second circle of
marzipan only and then more diaganols so that you can peal back
marzipan in the centre to give up to 12 small 'leafs' in the centre of
the top marzipan layer
- Put rose water flavored icing in the centre
- Make rose buds from rose colored marzipan and place them
between each of the marzipan 'leaves' and one extra large one in
the centre of the cake, on the icing - use icing to attach.
- Soak angelica in hot water ad put two pieces of angelica on either
side of the smaller roses and around the central rose.
NB. Cut ends to be pointy.
- Brush the marzipan roses with rosewater.
- Brown for a few minutes under a hot grill .. if you dare :)

NB. You can make marzipan rose buds by first coloring the
marzipan with a few drops of food coloring in a plastic bag and
squeezing the marzipan until colored - a little like play dough :)
Then using a small liquer glass as a template cut out several
circles of marzipan and place togethor to make a rose bud.
Using a knife, cut in half to make two.

(this is a recepie my mum found in a Home and Garden
magazine when they first got married).

Smoke on the water

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvfvX9Py5is&feature=related

thinking about a warm evening looking down on the sea somewhere in the south of france, althou little difficult to sleep because of the frogs and army of ants crossing the room. Wish i was there now, maybe driving along the coast road.. blue sea below and scent of cyprus trees in the warm air

Sea squirts... our distant cousins

http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag/artaug98/tuni1.html

Was thinking... maybe there should be an official 'no worry' day... not one single worry is allowed to cross your mind during this day.... images of your mum saying all te things they do, to calm you down.. would appear and blast away the worrys

After months of cold nights and log fires..

the dusk night air filled with chirping birds fades away to an almost lilac blue night sky. Dreaming of travel and far away places.

The racetrack in Bahrain seemed almost surreal..can imagine in the huge heat and with sand and small palm trees stretching into the distance and all the wild road markings and few pit stops, after a while my concentration would drift...

its great to see Schumacher racing again and finishing sixth

but wonder how big the f1 cars have become.. think the cars when they were smaller seemed more racey, think they have morphed into small pointy petrol tankers with a helmet

F1 Bahrain BBC1 11.10

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfoLMa8bET4

Duck and Dog

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ficwZQYmRLE&feature=related

Bioflavanoids in pollen tablets promote fracture healing
http://www.honeybeeswax.com/store/bee-products

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x43oe_bangles_walk-like-an-egyptian_music

'Face' on a snowdrops petals

www.bsbi.org.uk/Snowdrop_identification.pdf

i havn't seen the film and it must be me.. but an orange haired Johnny Depp smiling as the Mad Hatter, is kind of scary

for little and big people

somewhere in this website is an exploding parrott
www.aglassandahalffullproductions.com

Honeybee