Hot Cross Buns

Hot Cross Buns

Just  imagine the crosses please.

Every year for a good many years I try to make hot cross buns and every year there is just something not quite right about them.

We don't as a family do much to celebrate Easter. In England when we grew up it was considered mostly a religious holiday and commercialism hadn't quite crept in as it has done on so many other holidays. We attended special church services and events ; there were a few items that came in the shops such as chocolate eggs, an extremely expensive and rare treat at that time and of course. on Good Friday, hot cross buns. We all knew the rhyme,

Hot cross Buns,

Hot cross Buns,

1 a penny, 2 a penny,

Hot cross buns,

If you have no daughter ,

Give them to your sons,

1 a penny, 2 a penny,

Hot cross buns.

So I guess I try to keep the tradition going. I have tried all kinds of recipes. Some from England. Some from the USA. Some have been terrible – a total disaster. Some have been as huge as dinner plates,- some have been like rocks,- some have been almost right but not quite so I'll keep trying I expect.

Yes I could go to the local English shop and buy some . They even sell them here in Texas now. But you know I think the real reason I like to cook them is the smell while they are cooking. It is a smell that evokes memories of past years and those lovely buns, hot and streaming with butter on a Good Friday morning.

One of the simple pleasures of life.

This year was no different. I followed a real English recipe. I had to convert all the metric measurements to fit my cups and ounces and even to change them a bit . I don't think you can get caster sugar here and even the regular sugar is different in a slight way. I put the mix in the bread machine to form the dough and when it was 3/4^th the way through, horror of horrors, I looked in the machine and it was a thick puddle of liquid not a solid mass of dough. I quickly added a cup more flour and prayed. At the end of the dough cycle, the mass that came out was, shall we say, rather fluid ,so I added more flour and kneeded the whole thing in my very sticky hands until it adhered together. I formed the buns , let the whole thing rise , cooked them and got “okay” buns just not RIGHT buns.

 You will also notice , NO crosses. That's because you are supposed to put icing crosses on after they cool off but then they wouldn't be HOT would they and if you heat them, the icing would melt.

So I prefer “hot” rather than “cross”.

But they taste fine especially with a big pat of butter.

A Lovely Surprise

A Lovely Surprise

Bouquet no 1

I'm not one much for surprises especially the one's where friends think you will love a special event or present and then all you are feel is really embarrassed. I've had a few of those in my life. Best to be forgotten.

The other day I had a really nice surprise and one I really appreciated. A lovely box was delivered to our house and even before I had opened it I could tell it was probably flowers of some kind.

Yes I had been ill and maybe that's why someone was sending me flowers.

But who could be sending me flowers? A few names flashed through my brain. I had already talked with many of the friends and they had already wished me well.

I ripped open the box and saw just a lovely mass of multicolored spring blooms.

Just wonderful!

These are the irises who will open up in a few days.

However it was the card that gave me the surprise.The card read “To Shirley & Mike. Thinking of you, love Joan and Ron”.

 It was from my old college roommate Joan. It was she who had sent the flowers and certainly brightened our day.

 Joan and I roomed together throughout college in England with all the teen delights and sorrows that go along with that lifetime in the 60s .We had lots of fun , shared life and got on very well. We both married and even though we moved away from each other, we kept in touch, although it is was hard to do when you live so far apart. Understandably life trends to crowd friends out with present day happenings.

Joan and I have kept in touch with phone calls and the occasional email and when I called her back to thank her for the wonderful flowers, it was just like being back from a weekend away from college, with Joan being her upbeat self and her telling me all her latest news. I felt like I was 19 again which is a very pleasant way to feel.

So thanks Joan for the wonderful flowers. Mike and I both appreciate them but even more we treasure your friendship.

Thank you.

Purple takes the First Prize!

Purple takes the First prize!

If you remember seeing any of my blogs from last year you will remember that the iris es in my garden were truly spectacular. Much better than any other year since we have lived here.

This year I thought they would not be good and in fact all the plants in mid March looked just horrible and who can blame them when we had a winter that had very little rain or moisture falling and we had freezes on an almost constant basis.

 Since April the weather has changed . It is now getting to about 80 degrees most of the time and the sun has returned . We have had a few cloudy days and even a pretty heavy rainfall.Good growing weather!

 As I walked the other morning I glanced at the irises and saw to my surprise that at least some of them were forming buds and the leaves had gone a very healthy green color again. Then this morning I saw the purple iris had bloomed so that one has been given the First bloom of the season award!!

I shall make a plaque for it.

I just love irises.

Computers -always problems

Computers -always problems

Photo to promote anti stress

Problem No 2 setting up a new computer.

My old ancient lap top which in true sense of the word, was really a desk top as I never moved it from the table where it sat. I took it once when I went traveling and found it just too heavy to cart around. It has had a good life but like me , some of the parts are now unreliable or just don't work. It is very difficult typing anything on a keyboard that will miss out “S” some of the time. I am sure lots of people got an email from hirley in the last few months. Even more so. poor old lap top liked to go to sleep and didn't want to wake up, also sometimes a bit like me. If I turned it off , just to get it up and going again involved a lot of wiggling the lid back and forth and pressing all kinds of keys to wake it.

So eventually I gave in and Just a few days before my thyroid operation we went out and bought a new Dell”all in one” computer. I can't think why they call it that as everything on it is separate, the monitor, mouse and key board. We went to browse but ended up buying a computer which if very fast , the screen is huge, almost bigger than my old TV and the keyboard is a wireless key board. I suppose if I wanted to ( and could figure it out) I could sit across the room and type. But of course unless I had first class eyes I wouldn't be able to see the screen then to know what I was typing.

Would I have chosen some of these things? No. It came as a package with a hefty discount so it seems like a good buy and I am sure it is.

The problem came with getting it all set up. It is a combined touch and mouse screen etc so first I had to get used to all the waving of fingers across the board and figuring our where things kept disappearing to.The other big problem was it was a Windows 8 which led to all kinds of problems for a few days. Plus a lot of choice words on my part directed at the new toy.

Then just as I think I had most stuff set up what happens -it automatically downloaded 8.1, changed all my passwords and settings and I had to do the whole learning thing again.

I guess the good point is it kept me sitting down while I recovered from the surgery and kept my mind of other things .

I hate to say this but I still have old faithful lap top sitting on the same desk because even now I find I have to use it when I can't find something or things just don't work on this new Dell.

This too will pass.

Time Out

Baylor hospital

Time Out is what I have been taking for the past two weeks to deal with a few problems that had to be attended to .
Problem no 1
As many of my blog readers know from either me chatting with them or otherwise,  I developed a small "lump" under my ear lobe shortly after Christmas. I know that isn't right.  My family doctor put the fear of God into me by insisting that I go the same day to get a CT scan done to find out just what it was. The scan revealed a nodule ( fancy word for lump) on the parotid gland. No, I didn't know I had one of those and the times I had to tell people not carotid or parrot gland , I guess lots of other people don't know about parotid glands either. Just so you know, it's a gland under the jawbone and stretches into the cheek and under the ear.It helps make saliva inside your mouth .
After discussion with the ear , nose and throat surgeon, Dr D.( a very tall , handsome doctor,who easy could appear in one of the TV series)  it was decided that the nodule had to be removed as these often turn cancerous especially in older people.
Did you know I was older??I really have never thought that but NOW I do.

The biopsy on the nodule hadn't shown signs of cancer but best to be on the safe side, get it out before it got larger or decided to mutate into cancer.
"Oh yes and by the way. we also found a nodule on your right thyroid as well, which also is seeming non cancerous but just in case, we better take that out as well." Just as well the whole body wasn't scanned. All sorts of odd nodules etc might have been found that had to be taken out !!
 That I wasn't so sure about but after a lot of reading on my part and especially as this doctor is so highly recommended by everyone you talk with and because it would only be day surgery, I agreed I would go for the 2 surgeries.
I was nervous about having this done. I am one of those rare people who at 76 years old have never had a surgery done and never even been in hospital .I even had both of my babies at home; those were the good old days !!!
So last week I went into the Baylor hospital in Fort Worth and had my right thyroid complete with the nodule taken out.The hospital staff were excellent, very well coordinated and organized and in  no time at all I was on my way home  minus my right thyroid and nodule. This was followed by a painful couple of days with a drain tube from the very small incision but helped with the aid of some very potent pain killers which made me very woozy. I had the best of nurses , Mike, who made sure I did what I was supposed to do, took the right medicines,cooked great  nourishing meals and kept me from overdoing anything.
So now tomorrow I go back to the doctor to make sure problem no 1 is fixed.
Problem no 2 the removal of the parotid gland will be done at the end of this month so that gives me a good 2 weeks to worry some more....
but I can have a glass of sherry at least during the the first week!

New Computer Test

So I finally decided my old lap top was messing up just too much. Much of the keyboard worked just when it wanted to. The videos were jerky and sometimes just wouldn't play so the time had surely come for it to go to computer heaven.

Mike researched for me and found a good deal which we went out and bought.
It has a ginormous (sp) monitor as I bought a all in one computer this time instead of a laptop. It actually isn't all in one although it is sold that way. The screen is large enough for me to watch Netflix movies on in comfort from my arm chair and finally I have a keyboard where the keys actually work.
Now comes the hard part of learning or relearning how it all works. Spent a good hour just getting the clock to be correct.

Blogger so far is doing very well although I have yet to find some kind of photo to put on here. Most of my photos are still on the old computer and I have no idea how to get photos from my camera onto this computer.
But so far so good.

Celebrating our 54th Anniversary

Celebrating our 54^th Anniversary

When you first get married you really can't imagine how life or marriage will be in 10 or 20 years time ahead let alone 54 years.

Well I can tell you if you get married to the right person, with similar ideas and feelings, if you both work at helping the marriage to succeed by listening to each other , appreciating each other and loving and helping each other, the time passes before you know it and you look back and wonder where did the time all go and aren't we very lucky people to have found the right person to share our life together. Many people never have this.

So for this anniversary I found this nice video on youtube of one of my favorite songs 

" After All these Years"

.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-ZBtjscRjs

This  song is for you Mike.

Love you for ever.