Yay, snow day!

We've wimped out of going into work today.

Actually, Jon is working from home and so is plugged into the main PC whilst I use the Eeepc on the sofa. The uni where my office is based is closed; it's at the top of a hill and when I talked to my colleague earlier, she said someone she'd spoken to at the uni told her that people weren't able to get up the hill in their cars.

It's only put about 2 inches down here so far, but we're quite sheltered and I think it's worse on more exposed local roads. It's been snowing steadily for most of the day so it may get deeper - let's hope, egh?

Still, it's given me a chance to take the Xmas decs down and do some tidying. The ironing is next.

I've also made a seed cake for the birds and put it out along with the remains of the tarte tatin I made for Christmas Day. The tarte seems to have gone down very well with Mr Blackbird, actually I appear to be responsible for creating a feathered monster who's smacked off his tits on sugar and is aggressively defending his slice of pie from all comers. He's already seen off a thrush and a jay and is back for his third piece that's the size of his head. Mrs Blackbird is round the front of the house delicately picking all the berries from our pyracantha.


I promised pictures of my chilli fairy lights and here they are with my favourite tree decoration, the drag queen poodle.

Oh, and whilst I'm trying to put off doing the ironing, here are photos of the new chair and sofa.

Chillies

I'm completely knackered after partaking of a cooking marathon this afternoon. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but I think I've over-done it. We've now got enough tomato and pepper soup to float a small navy, there's a lamb tagine cooling in the oven, a chicken rogan josh marinating in the 'fridge alongside tomorrow night's dinner of stuffed peppers. Oh well, the tomatoes were going manky, so I did need to use them up, ditto the peppers and it's been a few weeks since I had a curry and I'm beginning to get withdrawal symptoms.

The idea was to freeze a lot of this (all the soup, the tagine and half the rogan josh) but I've just discovered that there's no room in the freezer 'cos it's taken up by the gammon joint I bought to cook for Boxing Day (a Gordon Ramsey [ugh, spit] recipe that ends up with it being baked in treacle - God it's tasty). Bugger. Some major re-arranging is going to have to be done once I can stand up again.

Anyway, chillies. Someone asked how I dry chillies, so I'm posting the answer here for future reference.

Method 1 - just freeze them instead

Method 2 - thread (or tie) them by the stalks onto a length of cotton and hang in a warm place - airing cupboard, above the cooker vent at the back of the hob, or just dangling prettily in the kitchen somewhere.

Method 3 - spread them on a baking tray and pop them into the oven every time you finish cooking and have turned the heat off. I've got a double oven, so I just leave them in the top oven/grill and the heat from the main oven below dries them out over a few weeks.

Method 4 - put them in the oven on the lowest light possible and keep a very careful eye on them. I'd say this is the most risky.

You can then either leave them whole and just use as normal, or put them through a blender and use them as crushed chillies - but be very careful not to breathe in the fine dust as you decant them into a jar.

Now, if you're really lucky, I'll post a picture of my new fairy lights that are shaped like chilli peppers - once we've put the Xmas tree up.