Living in the UK again

 After five weeks of back to back dog sits, it’s good to be back home. For the rest of the year, I have more sits,  but they are a week here and there, but not stacked up. As someone said, you get to look after these lovely dogs, but you give them back and get your freedom in return. Before I got home, I finally managed to give my second 700ml of plasma, it was a heart in your mouth moment when the machine tested my iron levels, I was well over. I have another donation in a weeks time. You can give it more often than blood, as I assume the body makes up the plasma loss a lot faster than the red blood cells.  The nurse took a photo of me holding the bag of plasma, but it’s too cheesy in my view. There have been some gasworks near us, and I popped up there to see if they had any offcuts I could have. They are excellent to grow carrots in, you can make sure there are no stones in the soil, having the carrot growing off the ground, keeps carrot fly away too. It’s also easier ...

My Battenburg cake has just won in the TRHA Spring Show. How did I do it? Well  here  is a recipe, they are all very similar. You make a sponge mix, as per the recipe and divide it in half and colour half with red colouring and mix it in well. You need a rectangular tin, you can buy tins specifically for making this cake. It can be divided into four, I prefer to use two compartments and cut each piece of sponge in half to give me four slices. It needs to be greased and lined with greaseproof paper.  The mixture is then put in the tin, levelled out, note you will find the centre rises more during baking. After baking and cooling, (do make sure you don’t over bake it, else it will be dry.) I have a cake cutting wire that you can use to cut a cake in half horizontally. I used this to cut the top off the cooked slices so they are flat.  You also need to cut off the edges that were against the tin, to remove the crust if you like. Both pieces should be of the same size. Y...

So more from the Waltham St Lawrence sit. Not surprisingly in a truly rural area there are a lot more people walking dogs, I am sure some people come here to do so. As I often did the walks for my troop at the same time, I did met to same people. On one occasion I met a large group, it is based on a WhatsApp group where they organise days to go out as a group and where to go. There are lots of possibilities here! One of the dogs was a soppy black flat haired retriever. They are lovely dogs, not so popular now sadly. I met a lady with her Labrador, I thought the dog was quite old but she was quite young, just going grey early. The owner was in her late seventies, but full of life and humor. I saw her twice, the second time, she was going to a birthday party for her brother that day. It was a fancy dress party. She was going as Elvis, she had the wig and everything. I said well done her. The couple I was doing the dog sit for, she is a dog walker. As well as looking after her pair, she a...

The black Labrador sit is over, the two weeks flew by. We did not have the best of weather, but we did about ten kilometres a day. He became a local of the Cosy Nook and the TRHA shop open days on Sundays. I got to know him well and he me. He is a very easy dog, food, walks and love was all he needed in that order probably! The last day I lost our car keys in their sofa, so had to use our spare set, the original ones were soon found thank goodness. There was a day off before the next sit, to clean the house, do some chores and have two neighbours around for dinner.  The first cake was a crystallised ginger cake, with a lemon icing topping and chunks of that ginger atop. There were grated bits of the ginger in the cake itself. It was a bit disappointing but my cake testers did not all agree. I don’t think I will bother making it again. The allotment is now manured and the raised beds have been turned over as best as I can. I have decided on the piece shown, I am going to grow potato...