I do declare, I made some eclairs!

Eclairs are made with choux pastry, which is totally different to make from other pastries I have made before.
Most of my cookbooks are of vegetarian food, but I have a small selection of baking books - not one of which had a recipe for eclairs. Online, there are hundreds, and they vary a lot. In the end I settled for Mary Berry's one as it looked simpler than the others.

http://www.mykitchentable.co.uk/index.php/2011/09/mary-berry-chocolate-eclairs/

Although it was a relatively straight-forward operation, I created an awful lot of washing-up, and masses of mess! It was fiddly, getting the mixture into a piping bag. The eclairs looked very thin when they were piped onto the baking trays, but once cooked, they had expanded and risen beautifully. Golden, light-as-a-feather, fingers of fun!

I whipped the cream too vigorously, so it was rather too thick to pipe. I spooned it into the eclairs and drizzled the chocolate sauce on top.

Result: not a bad first attempt. They could be neater, more even, but they were lovely to eat. My boys loved them, and the friends who were here liked them too.
Personally, I find that too much cream does bad things to me, I have an intolerance, so have to be very sparing in eating it.

My son has requested that I make a new batch this afternoon, and I am happy to oblige.

I gave my friend Sam a couple of eclairs, as a thank-you for lending me the piping bag, and her feedback is as follows:  "marvelous eclairs" and "divine darling!"

So, that is the 12th item crossed off the List.

There must be fifty ways to show I'm fifty

I have written a song!

More accurately, I have re-written the lyrics to the Paul Simon song - Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover, so with that famous tune in mind, here are my new words:

Fifty Ways to Show I’m 50

(To the tune of Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover)

"The problem is how to get these done in just a year
 The answer is easy if you do it without fear
I'd like to try out 50 new things, step it up a gear
There must be fifty ways to show I’m 50

I said it's really not my habit to be brave
Trying out different things, that’s not how I behave
I may be middle-aged, but I’m not yet ready for my grave
There must be fifty ways to show I’m 50
Fifty ways to show I’m 50

You just go for a manicure
Maybe even a pedicure
Write a short story

Watch Citizen Kane

Read Anna Karenina
Knit a Dennis the Menace jumper
Just grow a big pumpkin
Then go glamping at Hay

Ooh do some tae kwondo
Have a tattoo, ooh
Go visiting Iceland, and
See the Northern Lights
Invent a new cocktail
Make up a new song
Go up in the London Eye

And learn a new dance

She said you have to draw a portrait of your sons
Then get on Pointless, meeting Alexander Armstrong
I have to learn to do some re-upholstery
And write a blog

You need to visit Bath and see the sights
Then solve a Rubik’s cube and always get it right
Eat only raw food for a week, enjoying every bite

There must be fifty ways to show I’m 50
Fifty ways to show I’m 50

Make money for charity
Play a ukulele
Sing the Sound of Music
Dressed up as a nun.
Get a photo of my family
Teach the kids to do laundry
Get lost on a bus, then
Walk on Hadrian’s Wall

Get a film on YouTube
Make a patchwork quilt
Find out about Didlum
And make some éclairs
Tell people they’re lovely
Learn to stitch tapestry
Just help me to do this
And I’ll love you for life!

Quite pleased with this - but now I need to learn to play it on a ukulele or something, make a recording of it, then make a video to go with it, and finally, to get it put on YouTube! No idea how to do any of those things, so advice is welcome.

Tackling Tolstoy - Anna Karenina

One item on my list of 50 is  - Read Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy.
It is a huge book, a classic of Russian literature, and despite being a big fan of Russian books in my earlier years - Dostoyevsky of course, but others too - I had never tackled a Tolstoy, mainly because of the size.

Today I finished reading it, and I found it engaging and was rather surprised at the character of Anna. Anna is beautiful and popular, but unhappy with her older and boring husband. When she leaves him for the dashing Vronsky, she knows she is giving up her place in society for love. She seems to despair at the loss of the son she has to leave behind, but I think he is only precious to her as an idea, rather than as a real person. Anna is insanely jealous, angry and changes in mood rapidly to extremes. She is able to charm and fascinate everyone she meets, but this covers a deeper unhappiness. She takes opium every day and becomes increasingly unstable, eventually taking her own life. It is also the story of Levin and Kitty, and the contrast between this couple and Anna and Vronsky is marked. Levin is happy living on his country estate, farming and making land improvements. When he has to live in the city, he is like a fish out of water. But, like Anna, Levin is very changeable, one word or look can defeat his confidence and make him forget all the good and positive thoughts he was having. Kitty seems to be a simpering love-struck girl at first, and falls seriously ill following Vronsky's withdrawal of his attentions. However, Kitty shows her true strength when she nurses Levin's brother through his final illness, taking charge when Levin is at his most helpless and ineffectual.After reading this huge book, the ending seems to come quite abruptly, with Vronsky leaving to take part in a war, and Levin finding a religious fervour which threatens to make him more accepting of his lot in life.

I am glad I have read Anna Karenina, it is a good story, and if it hadn't been on The List, I might never have attempted to read it.

Forgot to say...I did a fundraising event for Alzheimers

At work, we have a chosen charity each month, and take turns trying to raise funds, in a variety of ways. Some can be as simple as a Wear Red Day, or a bake sale, others try different methods or events.
January was for Alzheimers Society, and Howard and I decided to combine our love for quizzes, puzzles and food.

I made a Puzzle book to sell, with ten types of puzzle, including Wordsearch, Anagrams, Crosswords, Logic Puzzles etc. I added a little movie quiz too, which I compiled by taking 10 random DVDs from my shelf, and making up questions about them. Perhaps you would like a go? Oh, go on, then...

1. 'This ABBA-obsessed misfit ditches her pathetic life and plastic friends in a small Australian suburb for big-city dreams in Sydney'. Name this 1994 film starring Toni Collette.

2. In The King's Speech, who played the speech therapist to the king, Lionel League?

3. Who was The Other Boleyn Girl (2008)? Name Anne's sister, and the actress who played her.

4. In the classic cult film from 1987 Withnail and I, which actors played the two unemployed actors who go on holiday to the country 'by accident'?

5. Moon is an engrossing, intelligent sci-fi movie from 2009, starring Sam Rockwell. Who directed and wrote the film, and who is his famous father?

6. Danny Boyle's film Millions, about 2 young brothers finding a suitcase full of cash when it falls out of the sky, is based on the best-selling book by which author?

7. The Kite Runner was a great success as a book and a film - in which country is the story set?

8. Who played the voice of Marvin the Paranoid Android, in the 2005 movie of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy?

9. Which famous author wrote An Education (2009), an award-winning film set in 1961 and starring Carey Mulligan? He also wrote About A Boy.

10. In Walt Disney's The Emperor's New Groove (2000), what is the name of the emperor from Peru who got turned into a llama?

Howard organised a lunch-time games and food session in the staff room, where we ate soups and bread and curries and rice. We played memory game with a pack of cards, tried to Name the Celebrities before they were famous, had a go at logic questions, oh all sorts of fun parlour games!

We raised a total of £130 for Alzheimer's Society, I am delighted and very proud of this!

Plus, that was the 9th List item, hurrah!

50 Words of Grey

For my 8th List item, I wrote a short story.

I have shown it to one friend, who thinks it is rather good, so perhaps it is not too bad, for a beginner. Not sure I have got the point of view right, and the tenses too, but I can edit it. It has about 1500 words.

The only problem is....it sort of....errr... turned into a piece of erotic fiction. Well, they do say write about what you know, for a first book!

Therefore I have a dilema - do I write a tamer version, for publication in this blog, or do I keep it quiet and show only trusted friends who beg for a look on my blog?
Does it count towards my 50 List if I have shared it with only one friend?
I have ticked it off, but would be interested in finding out what anyone thinks.

Item Number 7 - Carl the Menace jumper

Here is the finished jumper, it took many weeks to make, and it is far from perfect, but Carl loves it, and he does look good in it. I hope he enjoys wearing it.

Citizen Kane

I watched Citizen Kane this afternoon, a freezing cold Thursday when I was off work with a sore throat and a lost voice.
The film was made in 1941, and was directed by Orson Wells, who was also the main character actor. Wells was only 25 at the time, and he won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.

Citizen Kane often features in Top Ten lists of the best ever films, or variations of this theme, so I was curious about it. Realising that I have seen very few of the classic films, I decided to add one to my List, and Kane was the obvious choice. But I have also taken the opportunity to see some other classic films as part of my quest, notably some Hitchcock movies, including Spellbound and Rebecca.

So what did I think of the film? Beautifully shot in black and white, strong use of shadows and light. I like the way the story of Kane starts with his death, and his life is told through the eyes of other people who knew him. Kane was immensely wealthy through inheriting a silver mine, and used his wealth to buy a newspaper empire. But power corrupts him, from being idealistic to cynicism, and he tries to get elected as state governor. This fails because his affair with a singer is made public. The overbearing way he treats both his wives shows that power is more important than anything else, but his dying word is 'Rosebud', and when this is made known to the newspapers, there is a hunt to find out what this meant, giving the reporter a reason to interview people who knew Kane, and to tell their story.
It turns out that Rosebud was the name painted on Kane's sled, which he was playing on when his parents sent him away to be brought up by a guardian in the city, aged 8. The reporter never found this out, but I suppose the significance is of a small child being denied parental love, which affected his whole future life.

I am glad I have seen this film, I appreciate it is wonderfully made, but some of his motivations are hard to understand, and his second wife is very annoying. It is not as emotionally accessible as I would prefer, it did not draw me into the feelings of the characters enough. But this could be age of the film.
7.5 out of 10

Number 6 crossed off the List