Thank You
Well, this is the last day of the year, and I've at least got my blog started. I didn't really know much at all about blogs, until I read something in The Times that sent me to Manolo's shoe blog.
http://shoeblogs.com/ I love shoes, so that was a great site, and from there I discovered Feet on the Ground
http://www.feetman78.blogspot.com/ another great site regularly updated with pictures of the sexiest feet; how I envy Feetman - women send him pictures of their feet, he's such a lucky guy. Linking on from these sites, I found two others which are also my favourites; Sasha's Skin.
http://sashasskin.blogspot.com/ She's a lovely girl with a nice site, which can be said also of My Dumb Stories.
http://cowgirlslilstories.blogspot.com/ Now there must be a way of doing these links on the site names rather than showing the http: thingies, but I've not found it yet; give me time!
I also don't know how to add captions to my pictures. So the pictures below.... have now been titled, as I've discovered how to do it. Easy, really...
Happy new year, and I hope everything goes well for everybody
The next reservoir up the valley
The path round to the village
The path down to the next reservoir up the valley
Our reservoir from our bedroom window
The Reservoir
Finally, after the really cold days we've had since Christmas, the weather's broken and we've had rain, and wind, and it's warmed up a lot. So I'm really pleased I went out and took some photographs yesterday. I started a photographic course in September which runs for two years covering five units. We've just finished the first and have to write up some topics and do a series of ten photographs - the topics are very wide; 'transport' or 'the world around us', so you could do almost anything. But you do have to take the photographs manually, not let the camera work on automatic, and I think you have to try to capture movement and depth of field (I'll check all this out when I'm back at work when I have a bored moment). So... I went out to take photographs around the reservoir which is outside our window. My plan was to manually capture the water flowing from one reservoir into another, with one picture 'freezing' the water, and another showing it 'flowing'. In the event water wasn't running between the two reservoirs, and I tried to take a picture of a small waterfall in the stream running into the res, but it was fairly dull down in the valley so I couldn't get a fast enough shutter speed to 'freeze' the water. Still, I got some good shots, and I'll try and put a few up here. I'm new to blogging, so have no idea how to do this at the moment, but I'm sure there will be simple instructions leading me through the process
...
A Good Recipe
Ingredients for Pears in Stilton:
2 large dessert pears (Conference pears we use)
2 tbsp lemon juice [30 ml]
2 oz curd cheese - we use philadelphia [50g]
3 oz stilton cheese, crumbled [75g]
2 tbsp vegetable oil - sunflower oil we use [30 ml]
1 tbsp mayonnaise [15ml]
pinch of mustard powder - we usually put this in
pinch of sugar
1 tsp poppy seeds - not vital, we leave out if can't find any [5 ml]
salt and pepper
We like pears to be ripened up a bit.
So, using the ingredients listed before:
1. remove cores from pears with apple corer and sprinkle cavities with half of the lemon juice
2. Cream together the two cheeses . Press as much mixture as poss into the cavities, cover and chill until ready to serve
3. just before serving - whisk the oil, mayonnaise, remaining lemon juice, mustard, sugar, poppy seeds, salt and pepper together. Spoon onto 4 individual plates, cut each pear in half lengthways then slice, fan out in the dressing. Serve at once.
C'est tout!
