Well, hello there!

Per Harry's request, I'm popping in here to drop off a recipe for apple cake. I suppose it's worth also letting y'all know what's going on in my life as well.

I finally got my first job. I'm working with AQA 63336 (Any Question Answered). It's a service where members of the public can send in questions, and researchers such as myself, get paid to research and answer these questions. It's a lot of fun, but I'm still very new. I only started last week.

Tonight was choir practice, too, so as Harry asked me to, I took along some baking. Last time around, it was banana loaf. Tonight, it was apple cake. My recipe was taken from here but I made a few switches to it.

APPLE CAKE:

Ingredients:
4 apples
1/4 cup sugar + 1/4 cup for the apples
1/4 cup maple syrup
3 cups flour
4 eggs
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoonful vanilla
1/4 cup melted butter
1/2 cup orange juice
Mixed spice
Pinch of salt
Dessicated coconut

Preheat the oven at gas mark 4 (350 fahrenheit).

So, I peeled and chopped the apples, before rolling them around in 1/4 cup sugar with mixed spice, and set them aside.

In a bigger bowl, I mixed the flour, baking powder, vanilla, butter, orange juice, the other 1/4 cup sugar, maple syrup, salt, orange juice and eggs to form a smooth mix.

After lining a baking tray with greaseproof paper, I put most of the mix into the base, topped it with the apple slices, and then added the rest of the cake mix, and sprinkled some coconut on top.

Bake for 60 minutes. : )

In other news, I've also been working on voice acting work again. I used to be very into it a long time back, then got distracted by other things, but I'm slowly finding my way back to it. I've also gotten into comedy writing, largely inspired by Saturday Night Live (for those who haven't heard of it -- it's an American late night comedy sketch/variety show), particularly the 1975-76 season featuring the original "Not Ready for Prime Time Players". My influences also include the Pythons.

So I've been writing scripts, and then enlisting friends from the voice acting community to bring the characters and scripts to life. It's a lot of fun. ^_^

For your enjoyment, a couple of samples -- parody adverts!

Trifaunin
Running Time: 53 seconds
Size: 1.2mb

Cast:
Jim Barbour as the Announcer

Written by Fiona Conn

Produced by Fiona Conn

Music: The Girl from Ipanema


Magnisight
Running Time: 1 minute 37 seconds
Size: 2.2mb


Cast:
Jim Barbour as the Announcer
Cheryl Cunningham as the Testimonial


Written by Fiona Conn
Produced by Fiona Conn


: )

So, yes, that's what's been going on! Hope you enjoy the recipe and the commercials. *g*

~Fiona

Re: The Banana Loaf

Well, Harry, if you like banana loaf, you'll be happy at choir practice.

You can look forward to another hand-made loaf:



I cut down on the sugar, this time around, and lessened the amount of spice. I'd always thought the amount given in the recipe was somewhat dubious, so... And there are almonds in it, too, along with the pecans and walnuts.

~Fiona

Banana Loaf.... ish.

I was doing a lot of cooking yesterday. I tried to make chicken soup, but ended up with chicken stock. However, on the upside, I've put the newly made stock aside so I can use it for cooking in future.

Later on, I tried out banana loaf (well, -ish. I don't have a loaf tin, so I used a cake tin instead). I was working from this recipe, however, the instructions given didn't seem to be complete in places -- they say, for example, to mix butter and sugar, but give no quantity for butter. I guesstimated 1 tablespoon for butter, and that seems to have worked out fine. I also added pecans and raisins along with the walnuts, and used maple syrup in place of golden syrup. I also cut down the sugar to a half cup instead of the stated half cup of one sugar and quarter cup of another type of sugar.



For someone who doesn't really like bananas that much (I used to love them when I was a kid, oddly), it actually tastes pretty good, and I'd happily make it again. My initial thought upon taking a piece to nom on was, "whoof, nutmeg!" -- I might play about with the measurements for the spices next time; however, the nutmeg taste isn't quite so strong towards the centre, so maybe there was just residual nutmeg around the edges. I might also cut the sugar down to maybe a quarter cup, as I did find the sweetness slightly overpowering, and considering there's maple syrup used in it...

Not too bad an effort. Here's hoping everyone else in the house likes it. : )

"You know, it's such a shame that it's so hard to find good, honest, legal help these days..."

No, I'm not in legal trouble, but a rather scary email I received this morning certainly makes me wonder where Perry Mason is when you need him.

The email in question purported to be from the FBI, claiming I had some kind of transaction going on in Africa, via Hong Kong and HSBC. My initial reaction was to go, "huh?" and re-read it. It threatened legal action if I didn't provide some kind of "legal identification". My next reaction was panic -- why was the FBI threatening me, who has never bought or won anything online, let alone even having a credit card? My third reaction was to re-read it again, and then google the FBI website.

As it turns out, the real FBI are aware of these emails, and have a page alerting consumers to be aware that these emails are fraudulent. Their site directed me to where I could safely report the email that I'd received.

I've kept a copy of the email as evidence, per suggestion at the FBI website. On further inspection of the email, I probably could have skipped being panicked altogether, since the email address it was sent from has a Polish domain extension (.pl) on the end of it, and didn't even use the FBI's domain on their email address!

It sure makes you wonder about some people, though. Why on earth go to such trouble to cook up such an elaborate hoax, in order to part you with your money? Why scare and threaten people when, if you know what to look for, one can easily figure out that it's disingenuous?

In other news, I started a new part-time volunteer job with the National Trust, yesterday. It's not everyday, unfortunately -- I'm next in on Saturday 12th. It's at Greenbank Gardens, out in Glasgow's southside, Clarkston. I work in the tearoom/giftshop. : ) I was shown yesterday how to work the till, shown around the bottom floor of the house (since that's where the offices are), and got to help out with serving customers. It was great fun.

Everyone was very, very nice. It was, however, pretty quiet -- despite the bank holiday -- because of the rain. It poured much of yesterday. Getting the bus back from Greenbank was straightforward enough, also.

I think I'm gonna like working there... ^_^

~Fiona

Oops.

I accidentally somehow goosed my harddrive. I'm not entirely sure what happened.

I'm on my mum's laptop for now. Windows didn't want to know when I tried to reformat/reinstall, but thankfully, Linux was happy to install. So now that there's something for the Windows backup to overwrite, here's hoping that I can get Vista up and running again.

(Mind you, it's probably about time I DID reformat/reinstall -- my disc was getting somewhat cluttered and full!)

Cross yer fingers, folks!

EDIT:: Okay, factory reset with the Vista/Acer CDs didn't work. Linux it is, then. Now I'll need to figure out how to make it recognize wireless internet!

~Fiona

Sun, Summer and Nature's Blessings

While we've had some rain recently, we've also been fortunate enough to have sun and warmth. I never usually liked Summer much... used to dislike the warmth, but recently, I've found myself craving that warmth, and the sun.

A cursory glance out at the back garden shows that our plants seem to be doing well. Little white blossoms on a shrub that has taken over the wall between us and our neighbours... and two horse chestnut trees also growing where Mr. Squirrel, in his wisdom, has planted his stores. I'm actually rather fond of the horse chestnut trees, and don't particularly want Dad to uproot them, as he has been wanting to do.

In the kitchen, Dad has a cutting from our roses. It's been sitting in a vase of water for a little while now. I didn't think it was doing much until recently, when it began to bud. It finally blossomed today, opening out to bask in the sun.

We've also had some visitors from the insect kingdom. I saw a spider in the house yesterday. We've also had ants in the house. I don't mind the ants: they're kinda cute, actually. Small, and harmless (but also happy to scurry into the bug box when you capture them to put them back outside).

Roll on Summer. : ) I'm looking forward to it, this year.

~Fiona

My little Oasis of Tranquility...

Green tea with homebaked cookies ^_^

I'd been wanting to make these since seeing them on Obachan's blog. However, I did end up changing the recipe a little to accomodate for not having certain ingredients -- such as canola, and sesame seeds. In their place, I used a little sunflower oil, and a bag of earl grey tea. Also used some milk to help bind the dough together -- the oil just wasn't enough to make the dough.

Recipe is here, but in Japanese. I used Google translator to help me get the gist.

I left the cookies in for an extra 5-6 minutes when cooking, as I wasn't wholly convinced after 10 minutes that they were fully cooked through. So they had a slightly crunchy texture on the outside, but inside, quite soft. There was a slight saltiness off the butter that I used to grease the baking tray (no baking paper, sadly), and the slight tang of citrus, and the taste of the tea leaves in the cookies. It was like drinking milky tea, it's the only way I can describe it!

After such a difficult morning trying to fix the techie problems, it was wonderful to have quiet to find a sense of calm in a simple cup of green tea, and some cookies. ^_^

~Fiona