Lucky Mascot?

I've blogged before about going to the football with my dad but we also used to go to the rugby. We lived right next to the Athletics Ground where Rochdale Hornets used to play and from being tiny my dad would take me round there on a Sunday afternoon. I was rugby obsessed and even though I watch more football these days I still reckon rugby league is the best sport ever to watch as a neutral.

I've not got to a Hornets match since 2006 though. Don't know why really, I suppose I moved out of Rochdale and getting anywhere on a Sunday is a bit of a nightmare. They're still my team though and I always keep an eye on how they're doing. I miss my rugby and keep saying I'm going to get back down to Spotland for a game so I thought putting it on the list would make sure I did.

This challenge has been on my mind this week for a couple of reasons so tomorrow I'm off to the match. The first reason is this awful picture that appeared on facebook last week

It's an absolutely terrible photo but I don't care because it reminds me of good times back when I was a kid. For those of you who don't know - yep, the kid is me and I'm sat on the knee of Aaron Sawyer. He played for Hornets in the 80s and was my first ever hero. The guy was great!!!! He was my favourite ever Hornets player and the reason why Manly are the team I support in Australia. I didn't even know this photo existed until I was tagged in it on facebook last weekend. Brought back great memories and made me want to get back to the rugby - although possibly not sitting on players knees anymore!!

The second reason was the cup draw. We're playing Bradford Bulls. It got me thinking back to the 1990 -1991 season. That was a depressing year. The year before had been great and we'd gone up into the championship. Getting promotion was great, but we weren't really ready for it. We only won one game in that championship season - against Bradford! And yours truly was the mascot - looks like I was a lucky one.

So tomorrow you'll find me down at Spotland, cheering on the Hornets and hoping that just like on October 14th 1990, I'll be the lucky mascot.

COME ON HORNETS!!!!!!!

On Top of The World

I suppose if you're one of my football-type-mates you'll think this is going to be a blog post about FC United. It isn't sorry - but keep reading and then have a look round. There are a few FC type posts. You could click on the join button too - that would be great ;-)

What I am going to blog about is my trip to Blackpool and more specifically to the top of the tower.Being up there really did feel like I was on top of the world. I could see for miles. Anyway I'd been up it as a kid with my dad but it was on the list of challenges because I'm terrified of heights. And I mean terrified! This is the girl who once had to have the mini baby big wheel stopped because I was crying so much.

The tower has changed a lot since I was 7. I suppose its a long time ago now. Its now the The Blackpool Eye. Looking at the website didn't make me feel any better about going up there, I mean a glass floor 380 feet up just doesn't sound like my idea of fun!

We went over to Blackpool on Saturday dinnertime mainly because Dan was running the Blackpool half-marathon on the Sunday morning. We decided to make a weekend of it as I love Blackpool and it would be a good chance to get another challenge ticked off.

Saturday was just a nice chilling day, wandering around the prom and the piers although every time I looked up at the tower I felt sick. I also managed to get another challenge ticked off when I visited Gypsy Sarah Petulengro and had my fortune told.

I've always been a bit sceptical of stuff like this but interested in it at the same time so it was really interesting to have it done. I thought it would all be a bit vague so you can read what you want into it but she was pretty direct and spot on with a lot of stuff. Still not sure if I believe in it or if it's just lucky guesses and picking up on signals but it was interesting and I believe more now than I did before.

Sunday afternoon was the moment of doom. We'd booked the tickets online ages ago or I'm sure I would have bottled it. My stomach was doing backflips as we walked down towards the tower. All the waiting around didn't help either. Once I got there I just wanted to get in the lift, get to the top and get straight back down again but I had to queue, watch a film and then queue again.

When we finally got in the lift it was made of glass. I hate heights and lifts aren't my strong point either - especially glass ones! Setting off and being able to see all the way down did nothing for the nerves and I grabbed onto the nearest person - luckily it was Dan! Once I got used to it it wasnt too bad though, I was just starting to relax and we were at the top - it only takes 69 seconds.

It wasn't actually as scary as I expected. The proper floor bit was fine but I wasn't too keen on the glass bit. I wanted to go on it but it just didn't feel right. I ended up holding onto a post and backing onto it VERY slowly. I did relax once I'd been up there a bit though, I was walking normally on it and I even managed to look down!!!!

So here we are - on top of the world (well Blackpool!), absolutely terrified but so glad I did it.

Happy Birthday Dan!

Well it's the husbands birthday today. One of my challenges is to make a cake for somebody so today seemed like a good day. I know it doesn't seem like much of a challenge when you look at how baking obsessed I am but when I wrote the list I was hardly doing any baking.

Anyway I've made up for it not being as much of a challenge as some by going completely over the top with it. Dan's a runner and every Saturday morning takes part in parkrun so I thought I'd make some parkrun themed cakes for him to share with all the runners down there.

 

 

I started off with cupcakes. I tried to do a grass effect in green buttercream and added the letters DFYB in sugar paste. It stands for Don't forget your barcode and you need to be a parkrunner (or married to one!) to understand the significance. The 100 is for Dan's mate Simon who was completing his 100th parkrun that morning and not an indication of how old Dan is!

 

Cupcakes are ok but they were never going to feed everyone at parkrun so I decided to make a big layer cake aswell. I've made big cakes before and decorated them but this was my first attempt at fully icing such a big cake. It didn't look as good as I'd hoped but I know what I need to do next time. It seemed to go down well on Saturday morning though and thats the main thing!

 

 

I had a complete nightmare with this cake (and the cupcakes!). Friday just wasn't my day in the kitchen at all. If you'd asked me at 10pm on Friday I'd have said I was never going to bake again. It was never gonna last though. I did a bit yesterday and it's been another full on baking day today to produce Dan's birthday afternoon tea - Dotty style!

 

 



The butties were a bit of an afterthought so we just ended up with whatever I could find in the fridge - ham and philedelphia. Everyone knows that afernoon tea is all about the cake anyway! And theres a lot of cake - 2 scones each, a cream egg brownie and vanilla chocolate cupcake. And theres even more cake in the kitchen as I had to make them all up in baches of 12.

So there you have it - I made a cake (los of cakes!) for someone. All thats left to say is Happy Birthday Dan!!!

Random Tea

Today's challenge was to turn to a random page in a recipe book and cook whatever was on that page. I love cooking and I love trying new recipes so I was looking forward to trying this one. My only worry was that I was gonna end up with some recipe for a vegetable side dish or something. I'm sure posh peas are very nice but they're not exactly going to do me and the hungry runner for tea!

I decided to use my Jamie's 30 minute meals book to make sure I got a proper meal. Flung it open and it landed on this page

I was well impressed when I saw what it was - I couldn't have planned it better. Piri-piri chicken! I love it. Anyone who knows me well will know I spend a lot of time in Nandos so I just knew this recipe was gonna be my thing.

I didn't manage to get it done in 30 minutes - mainly because I didn't have a liquidiser - but it didn't take long and I had an impressive looking meal for not much effort at all. The full menu was piri-piri chicken, rocket salad and dressed potatoes followed by portugese tarts for pudding. Lovely :-) I'd post a picture but the food didn't hang around long enough.

Something Yummy For Money

One of my challenges is to raise £1001 for charity over the 1001 days. Should be do-able as it doesn't have to be all at once and it doesn't have to all be for the same charity. It's only a quid for each day of the challenge.

I was already at £70 after the FC United Minithon but with it being Comic Relief last week I thought it was the perfect opportunity to raise some more. I'm very into baking at the moment and there were bake sales going on everywhere so it was an easy way to make money. I made cakes for my work, Dan's work and Hope Methodist Church.

 

 

This was the set I made for Dan's work. I decided to go with a bit of a red nose day theme. They weren't sold for a set price here so I can't be sure exactly how much my cupcakes made. They just asked for donations so to count it toward the challenge I divided the total amount of cash donations by the number of people who donated cakes and came up with the figure of £14.63

 

 

 

For my work I made another box of the comic relief cupcakes and also a box of lemon cupcakes. We sold these at 20p per cake and all mine were sold so they made £4.80. The cake sale at work was manic - 200 kids, parents and grandparents. I've still got the bruises on my legs where I was pinned against the wall by a cake table!

 

 

For church I made strawberry and vanilla cupcakes with comic relief toppers, lemon cupcakes (some with lemon buttercream and some with sherbet lemon sugarpaste). I also had my very first attempt at cake pops without too many disasters. I was really chuffed with my little self as my cakes sold out in less than 5 minutes :-) The cupcakes were sold for 50p each and the cakepops for 30p making a total of £13.50

 

Over the three cake sales my cakes raised £32.93 for Comic Relief. My total raised for charity so far now stands at £102.93 - over 10% of the way there!! The big one is coming in the summer with the Great Manchester Swim, find out more and sponsor me here.

 

An Armenian Meal

If you read this blog often (or at all!) you'll know that me and Dan love our meals out. So far we are loving the challenge of finding new places to eat but we were struggling to think of where to go next. A quick search on trip advisor and we found this place - The Armenian Taverna

We had no idea what traditional Armenian cuisine included but it sounded like something a bit different and the reviews were great so we decided to give it a go. So on Friday night we headed into town and found a little place we've probably walked past hundreds of times before. It's opposite the town hall, just a little door that you'd probably never notice but it's well worth finding.

I've got to admit when we first went in I wasn't too sure about the place. It's downstairs in the cellar and the further down the stairs you get the mor you feel like you're going back in time. It's all red gingham and ornaments! But get past that and the place is lovely. It had a really nice family run feel to it which you don't get in many places anymore.

Because we knew absolutely nothing about Armenian food we decided to play it safe and go for the Armenian Banquet.
Armenian Banquet - Starters: hummus, falafel, tabouleh, baba ganouge, kufta, yershig, taramasalata, mutabal, binirow borek, chef’s lavish bread;
Main Course: a selection of chef’s mixed kebab - chicken, minced lamb, lamb chop and pork cooked over charcoal - served with rice and with a skewer of grilled onions, peppers and tomatoes;
Dessert: Coffee and an Armenian delight.
I'm still not entirely sure what everything was but I loved it all. I love meals were you can just sort of tuck in and have a bit of everything so it was great.

I definitely want to go back, think I'm going to be more adventurous this time though and choose something off the main menu. It all looks good though so I don't know what to pick.

I'm now at 4 out of my 10 new restaurants and I've loved them all (maybe I just love food!). Think I'm going to try the greek place next...

Holiday Highlights

Well I survived my first week back at work. Nearly killed me when the alarm went off at half five on that first morning but once I got out of bed it wasn't too bad. Got me thinking I haven't told you what I got up to in the holidays though.

As usual, I didn't get through even half of what I had planned. I'm always full of big ideas but the reality of my holidays is usually pjs, slippers and slobbing in front of Jeremy Kyle. I did manage to get a bit more than that done at least.

I did loads of baking. I'm really into it since I did my cupcake class. Treated myself to some new nozzles and cutters from Hey Little Cupcake so I've enjoyed experimenting with them and seeing what I can come up with. I love making cakes and usually I enjoy eating them but I have to admit I'm a bit cupcaked out. I've given a lo of my cakes away to other people this week though and they seem to have gone down alright. I've even had one lady ask me to make some for her daughters birthday with a big party cake - and she's going to pay me!!! Well chuffed with that, it's fun to do and if I can make a bit of extra cash from it - BONUS!

I've done lots of snuggling up with my letters so I've managed to complete my reply to every letter within a week of receiving it challenge. I'm well chuffed with my little self!! I just hope that now I've finally caught up I can stay that way but I don't hold out much hope.

My favourite day of the holidays though was the Thursday when I travelled up to York to meet my penpal Clair and complete another challenge. I'd been looking forward to it for weeks and bounced out of bed on the Thursday morning in a giddy mood. The closer we got to York though the less giddy I got and the more nervous I became. We got along great in our letters and texts but what if it was all a bit awkward. People who know me think I'm nuts but honestly I'm really shy with people I don't know. And then I had the worry of not recognising her, what if I walked right past her at the train station? That would be embarrassing.

Clair had said she would stop that proplem by holding up a sign with my name on. However, the trains were all over the place so I ended up on an earlier train that was running late meaning I was there first. And then Clair was running late because she was stuck behind a tractor - a sign of things to come! I hadn't realised just how far out in the country she lived.

After worrying about not recognising her, it was actually quite funny when Clair arrived. She walked into the station through a different door to the one I was stood at. I saw her out of the corner of my eye and was 99% sure it was her. Not quite sure enough to shout her though so I ended up chasing her around the station for a few minutes while she tried to find me!

When I finally caught up, we went to her car where she introduced me to her husband Mark. The three of us spent a lovely day together. We had dinner at Wetherspoons (italian burger - yum!!) and then they took me out for a drive in the countryside around where they lived. Clair had described her town in her letters but I had no idea how far out in the country it was. It was so pretty, surrounded by hills and the moors. I saw the Kilburn White Horse and a beautiful monastry. I was really excited by the sight of a red phone box which Clair and Mark thought was hilarious. It was a really nice day and I hope we can do it again soon.