Enjoy a pretty picture of my cousin’s pink corner.
I love it. In fact I want it.
But that’s not what I planned to post about today. Today I wanted to post about being brain dead.
Seriously. My brain is stuffed. Or its leaking like a sieve… I’m not sure which. I’ve had to make calls today and I keep making mistakes. I mean, I’m not dialling wrong. I’m dialling one place and asking something unrelated to where I called. For instance I called the accountant and asked about travel to Australia. I called the council and asked details about my unemployment status. Next I’ll ask the Australian embassy about cutting down a dead tree on the road outside my place…
Brain dead. As I said.
So, having established that, here is a photo of the next two dogs I’m working on next to the rag dog I’ve already finished.
I think I’ll end it here for now. There are just too many things going on in my mind to actually make sense. And I have a few more calls to make. Hopefully the right info to the right people this time…
I’ve been promising to share my yogurt ice cream recipe for a while now and thought it was about time…
Before I get into specifics let me explain that I found this recipe in a magazine many years ago and made it, loved it, and have since been trying to make it less fattening and guilty making. So, basically, its not the original recipe any more!
So… originally the recipe called for 750g yogurt, 400g cream, whipped, 1 cup fruit, 1 cup icing sugar. You blend the fruit with the yogurt, add the whipped cream, freeze for 3 hours, then chop it up and blend it again. I can’t remember if it was supposed to be repeated, but I know that it was always rock hard when it was ready.
First time I made it I used raspberries. I had more than one cup, more like two and a bit, so thinking ‘more is better’ I added them all. Wrong. More is not better when dealing with fruit that has pips… The ice cream was amazing but I was constantly spitting out pips .Lesson learned.
The next few times I made it I experimented with using flavoured yogurts, my favourite being a fig yogurt I could get in Australia. For fruit I’ve tried tinned peaches, banana, figs, strawberries, rockmelon. I even tried coffee but don’t recommend it. Yuck.
By far the best flavour I found is banana and strawberry. Together,
On to the cream… when I first made it, in Australia, the cream was so rich and gorgeous it would coat the inside of your mouth. Okay, sounds gross, but I loved the richness of it. Here in Greece cream leaves a lot to be desired. Its like the thinnest of thin whipping creams in Australia and doesn’t have the substance or flavour. Whatever. The point of my experimentation is that I was trying to find a way to make the ice cream better suited to someone (me) who has no will power and is addicted to the stuff. I’ve tried just not making it, but then I crave ice cream… so better to make my own healthier stuff.
In the process of experimenting the first thing I did was use 1kg of yogurt instead of 750g cause I just buy the large tub. I’ve used 5% fat yogurt and 2%, and actually prefer the 2%. Having said that, let me just say that while cream might suck in Greece, the yogurt is out of this world. Better than the greek style yogurt can get in Australia.
Next thing I did was cut down on the sugar. In fact I’d cut down to 1/2 a cup sugar right from the start. Now I use honey.
So, I used more yogurt to cream… then I began cutting down the cream. To be honest, I’m now using no cream at all and it seems fine, even when using 2% yogurt. I can’t really tell the difference. The ice cream is no softer, I still have to cut it into slices and either wait for it to soften so I can eat it, or suck on it like its a popsicle. It really is hard as a rock.
Right. This is my recipe for frozen yogurt/ice cream.
Ingredients:
1kg natural yogurt (no sugar added)
2-3 ripe bananas
1-2 cups strawberries (I use frozen when I can’t get fresh)
1/2 cup honey (you can add more if you need or if the fruit isnt sweet enough)
Put the fruit in the blender and blend till smooth. Add in yogurt, top with honey. Blend till well mixed. Pour into a cake loaf tin and place in freezer. Remove in 4-5 hours and slice. Put in a freezer proof container and return to freezer. Serve slices as required. Eat without feeling guilty cause, like, yogurt is good for you!
How easy is that? You just use the fruit you have and mix it all up in one go, come back 4-5 hours later to slice up and its done!
Firstly I did some baking. I made a cake and some apple crumble. The cake was something I just felt like making. I hadn’t made a cake for ages. It was a plain butter cake but I’m thinking maybe it had a bit too much butter… I used the pure butter made here on Paros cause I was told it was the best for baking. Maybe it was too strong? Who knows.
The apple crumble is something I enjoy making in cold weather usually cause I love to have it as breakfast with yogurt. Yum. I made some more of my yogurt and fruit ice cream as well, cause I’m addicted to it. I promise I’ll share that recipe soon.
I did some washing (well, I just put it in the washing machine and hung it out to dry in the sun). Today was a lovely day, windy but sunny. I took Lainee for a short run on the beach and continued working on my cat project.
This is how the cat began – I started it at the same time as I started the rag dog. I made the body out of cardboard from a weetbix box, the legs and tail out of wire.
I’d been slowly building up the cat body using scrunched up paper, aluminium foil and masking tape, then layes of papier mache. Today I added the head and continued layering paper to give it strength. With papier mache I found that I build up as I need to, even trimming bits off when necessary as I did with the bulldog. I will most likely begin working with papier mache pulp for the next steps.
I had good company while working… I was watching country music videos on YouTube and there was a lot of Alan Jackson in there. I love Alan Jackson. Nothing better than good music and singing out loud while you work.
The cat begins to take shape. Its a slow process as it needs to dry between layers. In between I did other things – its always good to have more than one project on the go.
And, cause Lainee won’t leave me alone, here are some pics of her on the beach. She really is quite demanding… she thinks she’s the only thing I should post about…
She was so happy on the beach today. Its funny how Lainee has been coming out of her shell slowly. I’ve had her for 1.5 years now and it seems like every day she shows me a little more of her character. The first thing she began doing was playing on the bed after I’d had her for a few months, but would stop the minute I tried to join in. Now she wakes up and wants to cuddle and then plays with me. Its our special time.
Since the weather cooled down she’s begun jumping around and even running when we go on our walks. Today she ran up and down the beach. It fills my heart with joy to see her like that.
We’re in full lockdown again as of today. Alert messages that scare the crap out of you. Having to send an SMS every time we leave the house – only allowed to leave home for specific reasons. The codes that got the most use for me last lockdown were shopping (2) and exercise/walking the dog (6). This time i can add ‘assisting an elderly person/relative of the first degree’ to my list. In fact I’ll be using that in a few minutes to go see mom.
This time we added a curfew: no one out after midnight. Well, that was in force up to last night… maybe its earlier now? I don’t know cause I’m usually in bed by then anyway! I sure do live the life!
Lockdown comes as no surprise. We could see it coming a mile away. We went into preventative lockdown in March and we had amazing results with very few cases of COVID 19 and very few deaths. Our cases have reached about 3,000 per day now and the capacity of hospitals to cope with critically ill patients is being stretched. Decisions were made that people over 80 with other health issues would not be treated… Is it any surprise its come to this? Open borders with a pandemic in full swing and what did you expect would happen? Whatever…
I envisage my life will be the same as last time: Adding in one elderly mother I’ll need to shop for cause she’s still on Paros, not in Athens this time. I’ll post something every day, even if its nothing much, just to keep doing something positive. I’d already begun working on some stuff, but this is a great reason to kickstart creativity again.
Lets start with something I finished a couple of days ago, ie pre – lockdown… Sorry about the poor quality of the photos… this phone just doesn’t have as good a camera as my last one.
This little patchwork rag dog is a textile sculpture. His frame is wire and papier mache, then fabric in layers ending with the patchwork layer on top using the tiny scraps I can’t bring myself to throw away when I make something. I have a whole suitcase of small scraps…
I love his cute little face…
A closeup of the stitching. I’m not neat. But I like it that way! The entire outer layer is handstiched pieces and his feet are slightly padded to create toes.
Please excuse the bad photos. I really need to set up the camera and a ‘lightbox’ again. Somehow in this little box of a living room/kitchen/dining room/office/studio…
And here is a photo of the ‘real’ dog.
This is 8 month old Morty. He’s not the real model for the rag dog, but he’s pretty close. He’s gorgeous and doesn’t seem to realise he’s a 25 kilo lump of a dog so I got some GREAT cuddles. I miss my big dog cuddles…I adore Lainee, but a whole body hug is just something else.
junk4joy 