Scones

I'm feeling a little late to the game here but I have gotten much better at scones lately. Lots of recipes state buttermilk but I've been making mine with yogurt - either plain / O% / flavoured - and the scones are so much lighter.

Recently I made them with blueberries and raspberries and the yogurt and they were really good like a cross between a cake and a scone.

This is roughly the recipe although I don't actually weigh it out....

8oz flour

2 oz butter/marg

2oz caster sugar

1 egg

a glugg of skimmed milk

2/3 tblsp yogurt

berries (optional)

Bake at 160 for 10/12 minutes (depending on your oven). Serve warm with butter.

"onny"

One of Martha's absolute favourite things are tangerines - she calls them "onny" (orange)

At the weekend she went into the kitchen and managed to reach a bag of them and escaped to the stairs (with a hat on - she loves to wear a hat!) trying to get into them. She then handed the bag to my dad and waited with her little hands clasped to have one peeled for her.

Growing

Our girl is growing and has started little sentences. This weekend she very helpfully transferred a load of card/paper recycling into the general bin saying each time "going in a bin" I only transferred it back after she had gone to bed as she was having such a nice time!

Martha and the dollies have a banana snack.

The beautiful bulbs that our neighbour brought for us when she came to dinner...they seem to grow every morning.

Round up of January

Never before has a month seemed to fly by so fast!! It's been a fab start to the year...we seem to be gettting on top of a few things - paperwork (some, not all) plus my business is going great guns and I feel more organised with storage for that too.

And amazingly my food shopping seems to be really working out - lots of freezer food and my beloved Abel & Cole organic order have been so great this month. I've planned a weeks' worth of menus and pretty much stuck to it. Just got into a great routine with it all. I think I have saved quite a bit too which is good as things are a tad tight due to a non-paying tenant (not easy to pay for someone else to live in your house for 3 months!)

I am managing to not spend and not even visit the charity shops (well...only one day of rummaging!) although I am being tempted by Emma Bridgewater again and new shiny pottery - even the brochure is such a treat to read. Maybe in March I will think about a teeny spend in her online shop.

Twice I've made sticky pudding with dates that I got in my weekly box. I'm not keen on eating dates but they do make an amazing pudding. The recipe is much easier than it looks and the results are good.

Also we celebrated Burns' night at church - wonderful haggis and I got to say the Selkirk Grace which is lovely.

We had a friend to dinner last night, one of our neighbours and she brought me a huge bowl of fabulous hyacinths - they are not in bloom yet but their heather-coloured papery skins look amazing just as they are.

All in all a good start to 2011 and now onto February!