Comments problem

Hi Miriam,

I tested the comments on my other blog today http://keswickrambles.blogspot.com/ and they are working fine and I did it from this laptop too, so still don't know why I am having problems. It really is most frustrating to hear that you had problems too. My DH has another blog which is not blogger based and he manages fine with no hiccups and he is really not into computers at all, so I am concerned.  I hate these distractions which take the fun out of blogging.

Comments still not working

Hi all, I am beginning to be neurotic about this as I now cannot make any comments work, I just tried leaving a comment on the site and it would not work and I also tried leaving one on another blog and that did not work either. What is going on?

I know blogger crashed the other week and loads of blogs could not be used for days but should that mess up comments?  The only other change on my blog is I updated my browser to IE v 9.

So is it all a Microsoft blunder I wonder? Also my Skype has stopped working too. I need to look into all of this but not today.

Not allowed to comment

My  reply to your comments has stopped working, it won't let me comment, don't know what's wrong.

So in  reply to Miriam and Alice, Bella is very cute and uses it all the time as a ploy for lots of titbits  but I won't ever give her chocolate as its so bad for dogs. I tried buying her the special dog chocolate which does not contain the toxins that ordinary choccy has but she was not fooled, oh no, she spat it out........

Sachertorte

Self explanatory really, this is the cake I could not resist making, but you will note that I have scored it into quarters ready for further divisions.... It is so fattening, you would not believe it if I told you the recipe....I will only add that it is not a conventional cake, so you need to have fresh brown breadcrumbs and ground almonds to the ready.  I always make my own bread first and then save some to make the 2ozs of breadcrumbs required. It also contains creamed unsalted butter and castor sugar which I can now make myself with my new glass liquidiser as it grinds granulated sugar. You also need fresh free range eggs and they must be separated and of course good quality chocolate.  I use 2 types; Cadbury's Bournville for the cake mixture and Prestat  Choxi for the topping which is double cream and chocolate mixed.  Before you spread the chocolate icing on top you need to cover the cake top in Apricot jam too and I have to admit that this I do not make myself, I usually buy it. So now you know why it has to be given out in small portions. This is the richest cake recipe I make.

I have to report that I have tried very hard since eating some of this cake to lose the pounds by pounding up a hill or three.  It was the Keswick Mountain Festival over the last weekend and I was helping out with leading some of the walks, not fit enough to lead myself yet though as my ankle is still not 100%.  It was five hard days up the mountains for DH so he had the lion's share of this cake to himself. I did go out on the worst day though when the gales on the top reached 70 miles an hour, it was so bad on one particular ridge that I and one of our clients were blown sideways by the wind and another leader (a man) was blown off his feet. So today I am resting and I need to as it was very hard on the muscles.....If you need further proof of how tiring it all was, well here it is, Bella on the Langdale Pikes walk; day 3.

Kenwood capers



A dismal scene

I had been meaning to post for ages and then all hell seemed to break out last week when my beloved Kenwood Chef mixer of 27 years devoted service broke whilst making the daily bread...I had bought this dream machine back in 1984 and it had been touch and go if I could afford it back in those days. I had to convince myself that it was worth the money and I was right at the time.  Imagine my horror when it broke, because I can't do without it.

How did the local paper get in there?

So after researching the latest models I came up with the one above. They have not changed the design very much because it is so well made.  I did opt to buy the one with the glass liquidiser this time as I intended to keep the old acrylic one anyway as a backup and for DH who always makes soups with loads of turmeric in them and they stain so......The only real difference is that this model has a larger motor than my previous one and also does not have a medium speed attachment outlet, but I never used that anyway so I don't suppose it matters. I do use the top fast outlet for the liquidiser and sometimes the slow front outlet for a cream maker.

It's quite heavy

I have another attachment which peels potatoes but had never really bothered with it, but as I was playing with my new toy all last week I decided to give it a go. Hey it peels potatoes and leaves them as roughly rounded shapes. Next I popped them into my trusty Remoska and the result 40 minutes later was what you see below. I hasten to add that DH was away in Scotland in his tent doing 6 remote hills (I could not go as my foot is not completely healed yet) so I unfortunately had to eat all of these myself ;-)

These were simplicity itself

Meanwhile I have been resisting the temptation to try and make a cake so far but I think it will be soon.......