Categorylife

The general parent category for most of the things I write about on here.

One of the more interesting Louisa-centric sub-categories is biodata (where I explore my personal history with graphs, maps and whatnot), and if you’re that way inclined, you can read about the wonderful felines and canines with whom I’ve shared my life too.

Carbon’s Street

carbon on rombalds street

(It really is his street, check out the reverse view of this picture on Google Maps – he’s sat in front of the car.)

My feet

my feet on a wooden floor

What he deserved

john's black eye

(I elbowed him in my sleep. It woke us both up and I had the presence of (sleepy) mind to say that an elbow to the face was still a more pleasant way to wake up than his usually incredibly jarring alarm. He agreed. The bruise came up a few hours later.)

Button earrings

button earringsFollowing a query from a reader yesterday, I’m doing a post on buttons on Recycle This next week and wanted to post a(n admittedly not great) picture of my most favourite earrings in the whole wide world ;)

I wear the dangly ones all the freakin’ time and they constantly get caught in my scarves but I love them. I should probably remake them so they’re a little less snaggy…

Before I trained my ears to accept dangly earrings though, I loved the studs – the buttons just glued onto stud findings. I like that the black ones were subtly buttony. ;)

Driving progress

After 23 lessons, I’ve reached the stage with driving that I reached with horse riding: I can get it to move, do basic steering and make it go faster.

The more advanced procedures still allude me however.

And also I can’t get the car to eat carrots.


Flatbread with honey & sesame oil

I wanted to make some flatbreads to go with our lamb tagine this evening but all the recipes called for plain flour & yeast and I couldn’t find any of the latter in our over-stuffed cupboard. I kept the yeast-activating honey from the recipes I found though and aside from that just improvised.

They turned out ace – sweet and tasty in their own right but the taste didn’t overpower or clash with the flavour of the tagine.

Recipe for flatbreads with honey & sesame oil

(I don’t really measure/weigh stuff so quantities are estimates)

  • About 150g of self-raising flour (since I had some of that)
  • 1tablespoon ish of olive oil
  • 1teaspoon ish of honey
  • A tiny bit (maybe half a teaspoon) of sesame oil
  • Some water
  • Toasted sesame seeds (completely optional topping)

Preheat the oven to about gas mark 5.

Put the flour in a mixing bowl and add the honey & the oils. Mix together (but it won’t mix that well because it’s pretty dry).

Gradually add water, mixing all the time until you get a well mixed stiff (ie, not sloppy) dough. Knead it a bit.

Divide dough into pieces – four for (my) hand-size breads, six for smaller ones. Roll them in your hands to make a ball then squish them out flat on a dusted board/counter. Squish them out further with your palm until they’re, I don’t know, just under 1cm? in height. Throw some toasted sesame seeds on the top if you want to use them.

Lightly grease up a baking tray with olive oil, or if you’re an excitable sort, a little sesame oil. Plop the breads on the tray and put the trays in the oven, top shelf, for about, I don’t know, I’m really not good at this numbers business, 15 minutes? – until they’re cooked but no more lightly brown on the bottom and slightly browning on the top. Leave to stand for a minute then serve immediately or as immediately as you can manage if you’re anything like us.