Ten Thousand Spoons

Whilst I’m here posting recipes I may as well bring you up to speed with what’s been happening lately. Won’t take long, I promise.

As some of you who follow my Twitter feed may have read, I’ve managed to get myself a mortgage. I’m officially a grown up now. I’d always thought that shared ownership would be my only option because I wasn’t previously able to get a mortgage on my feeble salary, but I guess now that the market is slowly picking up there’s better deals available. Besides, shared ownership schemes don’t seem to be that money saving when you consider you’re paying both rent and a mortgage; add in something like £100 a month for service charges and it all starts to mount up. Also, our local housing association is fucking useless when it comes to dealing with even the simplest enquiries so I wouldn’t entirely trust them with my hard earned cash. Anyhow, I spoke to a few mortgage advisers and I’ve managed to find myself a fairly good deal – so long as I can find a place for less than £110 grand, which is easier said than done. There is the option is to move slightly further afield where the prices are much cheaper (because the area is skankier) but then that adds more time and money onto my commute and ideally I wanted to stay close to D and also to mum just in case she gets poorly or needs to make a quick escape from dad (he’s still behaving like a total prick, so the sooner I can get away the better) – with both my brother and my sister also planning to move away shortly I think mum’s feeling a bit down, so could do with having at least one of us living nearby. I have viewed a couple of places locally though; one was lovely but massively overpriced for the work that needed doing and the other was well within my price range but the building was quite run down, there was something iffy about the freehold lease and I don’t think the communal areas had been cleaned or decorated since the 1960s. But I’ll keep on looking, something’s bound to turn up.
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Posting this for emchi :)

You will need -
3 eggs
1 large pot (approx 150ml) double cream
3-4 tablespoons vanilla essence
75g caster sugar
Icing sugar (for dusting)
The ability to make shortcrust pastry – or you can cheat like I did and buy the ready made stuff (approx 350g)

1. Roll out the pastry and place it into a 20cm baking tin (preferably one with a loose bottom so it’s easier to remove later) – make sure the sides are all even so that none of the filling will spill over. Bake it until it starts to turn lightly golden.
2. Mix the cream and vanilla together in a saucepan. Bring to the boil and then leave to cool.
3. Beat the eggs and sugar together, then slowly add the cream – but leave a bit of the cream to one side, you’re going to use that later to pour over the finished tart.
4. Pour the mixture into the pastry case and put it into the oven (on approx 150C) to bake for around 35 mins, or until the filling is softly set.
5. Leave to cool completely then remove from the baking tin and dust lightly with the icing sugar. Serve with the remaining cream.

Much better than thought it would be. Given that it’s a Guy Ritchie film I expected Holmes to be a cockney gangsta, but he’s managed to stay relatively close to the character (though he’s quite different to the Jeremy Brett version I grew up watching on telly.) It’s a bit comic book style in places and complete bloody nonsense in others, but it’s good fun overall. Though if they make a sequel then that awful Irish jiggy music needs to go.

I think these are pretty much the same resolutions I made last year, but this time I might actually get around to accomplishing them…

1. Find a decent place to live, even if I have to kill an estate agent in the process.
2. Learn to drive.
3. Spend more time with D.
4. Makeover this blog with a new layout and more interesting content.
5. Drink less Coke.
6. Read more books, spend less time online.