The West Wing, soon will be having another run.The West Wing, 20 more eps and I will be done!!!!
It has been a Herculean task, but out of 22 episodes of West Wing I have found 20, and 24 out of the 26 episodes of Deep Space 9. It is s good day!!! I have labelled them all and they are in order and I have commenced the mammoth taping task. I think I will tape and then watch as I can do other things and now and save this for the hot summer days. There is a new Buffy Planner Diary thing out. I am so excited, I might live for more years if there are new planners!!! I am watching it on ebay, but I am hopeful of finding one or more in Target as thy stock the Buffy things. There is the www.minotour.com.au website though and I have found another Blake’s 7 audio that we don’t have. This is very exciting too. I also Googled some Star Trek : Enterprise calendars that are only $12-73 Australian from the USA. Here they are almost $30. Darn GST. I am feeling somewhat better today. We slept till about 9 and it is cooler so I feel calm. I have eaten proper food and had cups of tea. Last night there was an excellent show on the ABC that shattered my illusions ( not hard, apparently), it was called ‘David Hockney : Secret Knowledge and I quote from the ABC website : David Hockney, one of the world's most celebrated living artists, theorises that cameras were instrumental artists' tools 400 years before the birth of photography; demonstrating how artists may have traced projected images. He showed how the artists used curved mirrors and/or lenses to cast an image onto the canvas and then they traced it. I am devastated. They just didn’t learn to paint better at all , they learned to TRACE. It was very good, it had practical demonstrations using models the same as the actual paintings. It was a good investigative show.
I am half way through ‘Exile’s Return’ and I have had an email reply from Fiona McIntosh re ‘Bridge of Souls’. She says that even though she has finished Book 1 of her new trilogy, the publisher won’t publish till this time next year, but at least by then all 3 will be finished. Don’t publishers understand the need to read? Obviously not. They know not hat they do. What recipe shall I add today? It seems that this has become what I do, add a new recipe each day. Today it shall be…..
Rocky Road Brownie
200 g dark chocolate
250 g butter
1 ¾ cups brown sugar
4 eggs
1/3 cup cocoa
1 ¼ cups plain flour
¼ tspn baking powder
60 g pink/white marshmallows
½ cup nuts you like!!
Melt butter , chocolate and sugar - cool slightly. Whisk in flour, baking powder and cocoa, and then the eggs. Finally stir in 60 g of halved pink and white marshmallows and ½ cup of nuts of your choosing.. I would also add some chopped white/milk chocolate.
Pour into a lined 20 cm square tin and bake at 160 C ( 140 fan-forced) for 45-50 minutes. It should be just set and will be squishy, but it comes away from the sides of the tin slightly. Trust me, no more than 50 minutes or it goes too hard and burns. Cool in tin and then slice. This freezes very successfully.
It must be earthquake season : we had one, East Timor, NZ and now Japan. We are thankful no-one here was hurt. It is not one of the plagues of Nature we endure here. We are pretty lucky, we have floods and wind and bush fires. People insist on trying to call bush fires wild fires, but that is an American term and we like to call out fires bush fires as they are in the bush. Australian slang, or Strine as it is known , is not widely spoken in its extreme form. We do used Australianisms, like arvo for afternoon, and Hooroo for goodbye, noggin for head etc, but we don’t all speak like the Crocodile Hunter. I like to think I speak well, and I liked to set an example for the children at school. I have a telephone voice though!! An especially polite voice for answering the phone. The spell checker recognises arvo!! I must have made it learn. NZ are not following on in the cricket, we are batting, hoping to get a second innings lead of 500 or more runs, while resting the bowlers.
I should go now and plan my Christmas cooking and make a list of ingredients so I can start cooking when the weather is cool. I need the list for gingerbread and for the Stained Glass biscuits too. Peri is resting now, she was sick last night but seems to have recovered. Harki has had a big play with the giant tennis ball in a plastic bag and is sleeping as well. We will wait for the postman and see if he brings us anything.