Skip to main content

Bubbles, boys and bananas

What is round; rainbow coloured; floats out of Littlest's hand; runs away in a bobbing, up and down, teasing manner; can be chased; and is most unsatisfying and unwholesome when eaten?

Bubbles!




These pictures were taken shortly before Bertie Baggins and Four-legged-friend discovered an unopened bag of dog food in the garage. And opened it.
Of course.
And being Labradors with absolutely no idea of when enough is enough, they ate and ate. And gorged themselves on dry dog biscuits, which are now expanding in their tummies, making them thirstier than normal and rendering them prostrate on the floor in a stretched-out, tummy-hurting, bloated and drunk-with-food sleepy state.

They are not even interested in the roast dinner!






I'd be deluding myself - wouldn't I - if I thought they might learn from their greed? I must resolve to be a better dog mummy and ensure the transit time for sacks of dog food from car boot to utility room cupboard must be shorter and not include an unattended sojourn at dog nose level.



Best thing to do with overripe bananas? - Make banana bread. I am sure there are lots of alternatives, banana ice cream is pretty good, banoffee pie fairly spectacular but banana bread, especially one with rum-soaked sultanas is hard to beat. Unbeatable in fact! First rule is to follow a tried and much-trusted recipe (I first made this in 2002 according to my scribble down the side of the page).




'Tried' as in many times before and 'trusted' as in hasn't gone wrong yet ... which where cake baking is involved, in my house, with an oven of unpredictable temperature, has to be acknowledged as the mark of a pretty fantastic recipe. I am not sure if I can say here who the recipe is by, or in which of my legion of cook books it appears - suffice to say that the lady in question tweeted about the coffee version of her banana bread recently. Try it, if you can find it. Enjoy!




I may be breaking even more rules with what follows but ... assuming you find her recipe and if you require it to be gluten free (which we do), simply substitute gluten free flour, add a teaspoon of xanthum gum (helps to bind the GF flour) and try using soft brown sugar - the result will be a banana bread that tastes of banana toffee. Wonderful! We had it for Sunday pudding with vanilla ice cream and strawberries. Mmmm!



Just in case anyone is concerned, both dogs appear to be fine. Happily snoring. Paws twitching ... probably remembering the excitement of ripping into plastic and being rewarded with lots of crunchy biscuits ...


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Colour, Delacroix, flochetage and why don't we all have a go at inventing words

Yes - it is a real word. Flochetage. Well, a real-ish word. One invented by the painter Delacroix, when he found the dictionary cupboard bare and required a word to describe his technique of layering different coloured paints, using lightly pulled brush strokes to create texture and pattern and thereby enhance his base-layer colours (... lost? - stick around, read on and all will become clear. Or perhaps muddier ...). Flochetage implies both stringiness and threadiness. Apparently. And it sounds good - in a filling-the-mouth-with-sound sort of a way. Try it ... flochetaaaage. Not that I speak French. So I am probably mis-pronouncing it. Nor am I an artist. So what do I know about painting techniques - except that I think this one works. What I do like is the concept - you invent a new technique in whatever it is you do, hunt around for the vocabulary to describe it, find the dictionary is lacking, so make up a word of your own and announce to the world what it means. Delacroix isn...
Post a Comment
Read more

Curlews, summer skies and walking in circles.

Summer skies over the Yorkshire Dales and my mind is set to rest mode. But that rest is not totally restful; there is a niggle ... a memory, a hint of childhood, something that unsettles slightly - a light brush stroke of discomfort; a gossamer breath of discombobulation and a 'Woah! Wait a moment!' moment of 'that's-not-right!' - we're about as far from the sea as it is possible to be in middle Britain and yet, I can hear the distinctive Peep! Peep! of oystercatchers and the piercing cry of curlew. Here -  in the blue skies of the North Yorkshire dales and along the footpaths - and above the endless miles of drystone walls are birds that should be at the coast.  Oystercatchers, with their distinctive red pliers attached to their heads feed on - you've guessed it - oyster beds. All along the coastline of the British Isles, their distinctive cry is the call of summer. Drowned out somewhat by the banter of seagulls but sharp and ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Heaven clearly can't wait. Ranting and screaming inside. Growing old and lecturing ... myself, mostly.

What follows should come with a warning - it is a preachy rant. Stop now if you're not in the mood for a lecture. Or, if you're into procrasti-reading, read on and (hopefully) enjoy my latest piece of procrasti-writing. Apologies too for the reference to elderly leakages. And farts. And now, for being deeply irreverent. Sorry. Heaven  can't  wait. Meatloaf was wrong. Clearly the 'band of Angels' is impatiently putting together a gig. There's a party happening which we haven't been invited to. Yet. What a terrible year 2016 has been, so far. And we are barely dipping our winter-wrapped toes into Spring. Is it that the roll-call of those summoned to a higher place grows ever more poignant as we age? Prince was but a few years older than me. Victoria Wood, a meaningless number of years older still. Meaningless because what does age mean astride the long plateau of middle age before the eventual slide into decrepitude? A few years here, a few there - we...
Post a Comment
Read more