Sunday 14th September

Well here we are, another week has gone by, and you'll just have to excuse the feeling of mild panic that's gripping me firmly by the throat. Yesterday, you see, I spent some time looking at all the stock I've put up for Christmas to sell in my Ebay shop, and parcelling it up into what's to be loaded in which week, and counting up the weeks to a safe date to post for Xmas and reach it's destination - and my only feeling since doing this is HELP!!!!
Still all in all, I feel I've made a positive start. I've got the bag with the next two weeks worth of bookmarks sitting right by the computer, I've photographed a good half of them, and I've even got about 15 scheduled listings. All to go live over the next two weeks. Fancy having an advance look? Here we go:
















These are just three of the collection I've made over the last nine months! The pink pendant bookmark is part of a group that feature wonderful glass pendant pieces made by Shoozles, who makes the most wonderful glass art. Check out her photo's on Flickr;
http://www.flickr.com/photos/shoozlesfusesglass/
She does some wonderful work.
Anyway apart from all this, normal work continues - I still have to do my normal schedule, including night shifts!

I recently wandered on to a great website. http://www.lovefoodhatewaste.com/ is a brilliant site, where you can find tips on how to save food, and recipes to use up leftovers. I'm going to eat well tonight, and use up the left over hunk of a loaf of granary bread, half of an onion I used yesterday, and the end of piece of cheese. Sounds ghastly doesn't it? But in fact these are the primary ingredients of a Garlic Soup - go check it out on the website. I've adjusted mine a little from the recipe, but essentially when I got in this morning I cut the bread up into cubes and popped it into the oven to dry at 75degrees for a couple of hours whilst I slept. This afternoon, I sauted (or fried if you prefer) the finely sliced onion, and three cloves of finely sliced garlic in a little butter, and added about a litre of chicken stock - no reason why you can't use a vegetable stock! Then you crumble in the bread cubes, reserving a few to serve, and simmer the broth for 15 to 20 minutes. I'll float the cubes on the hot soup, and sprinkle over the grated cheese before I sit down to eat, and I have to say the aroma of this soup is just fantastic. And I feel really pleased with myself, because frankly the bread was heading for the bin, and probably the cheese too in a couple of days. You know what it's like when you have one of those tiny little cubes of cheese in the fridge - it inevitably ends up being thrown out when it's green and mouldy because you can't think what to do with such a small piece of cheese. And it's such a waste! So I'm pretty chuffed with this new site, you can look up recipes by clicking on an ingredient, so if you had - for example - part of a cauliflower left over, you could click on the cauli icon, and hey presto up comes a nice recipe for left over cauli! Cool or what?!