All home made...

I've been making chocolate and I promised on my last post that there'd be photos. Well there are, but I underestimated how difficult it is to take photographs whilst my hands are full!

I had wanted you to drool enjoy an online chocolate experience but instead, you may have to make do with just licking your lips a little.... no girding of loins necessary just yet. The full monty will have to wait for another day.

So, without further ado...

Milk chocolate melted to 42 degrees C

Cooling nicely ....

This is as cool as it needs to go before bringing the temperature back to about 29 degrees. This is called 'tempering' the chocolate. There are several methods - including putting it all on a marble slab - I'd love to try this but don't have a large marble slab....one day....so I 'seed' the hot chocolate with cold which helps to speed up the tempering process.

I tried very hard to capture a reading of 29 degrees, but every time I got there, I had to put the thermometer down, pick up the camera, point, focus....and by then, the coolness of the ambient temperature meant my reading had dropped...but this is a good temperature to work with the chocolate.

The milk chocolate was then poured into a tray - nice and thin - and sprinkled with a mixture of dried sour cherries, raisins, caramelised almonds and salted pistachios. The combination of sweet, sour, salty, chewy and crunchy is absolutely wonderful!

Next task - add the secret ingredient to the rest of the milk chocolate - popping candy!! This makes the chocolate pop in your mouth as you eat it...mind-blowing!

This was when it got rather tricky and I needed at least three hands...

Mind blowing popping dinosaurs....

and snails!

Chocolate bark, packed and ready to go.

And I also did a tray of white chocolate - this time sprinkled with intense-flavoured freeze-dried raspberry, the sour cherries and caramelised almonds. This is a lovely combination too as the fruit cuts through the sweetness of the chocolate.

I made dark chocolate too but, having found the photography fiddly and not a little risky, I didn't take any 'action shots'! I made the fruit and nut bark, some chocolate gingers and some after dinner mints.

Later on, the children found one of my Snakes and Ladders game that I use for teaching English. In fact, this is one that Romy made when she came to help me one day. And so they had a game of that. Only we had no counters, so they used a chickpea, a pinto bean and a white bean! Resourceful bunch they are!

Market day dawned rather frosty!!

Ruy volunteered to get up early and come and help. See, even our frost remover is 'home made' - it's a milk bottle top!

Yes, it was minus 6 degrees - and it wasn't 9.09am, it was 8.09am - we haven't put the clock back in the car! (Oh, it's dusty too, isn't it... I'll have a word in the right ear about that!)

Despite the cold, the sky was blue and La Mota looked spectacular in the morning sunshine.

The market was in car park of a bar just off the road between Alcala la Real and Alcaudete - and there was a pleasing number of other cars there.

However, I didn't get round to taking photos....but Ruy took a couple of me setting my stall out.

In the literal sense.











And we were able to nip in and get ourselves some nice toast with tomato and olive oil (absolutely delicious) and some coffee.

And Ruy had a bit of chocolate from time to time too....

And guess what! By 11 o'clock, I had to move everything around and stand in a strategic, shadow-casting shape as the sun had begun to melt my chocolates! Nothing too serious though. We had a good laugh, lots of chatting to fellow stall-holders and in the end, I discovered I had sold quite a bit of chocolate.

Just another week or so before the next market...which is the CHRISTMAS market!! So I shall be making chocolate Christmas trees, I think!

Signing off - amended to 'in defence of Skelmanthorpe!'

This post was intended to be a brief two liner explaining that for a little while I would be 'offline' as we're off where there's no wifi, no internet connection, a deadzone. (FR's parents' house, where the internet connection we had when we lived there has been withdrawn - and then to his grandfather's house, where there is no wifi and no mobile signal either!)  However, events overtook me, as usual.

I wanted to put something like 'where the sun don't shine' for no internet access but of course, the sun will be shining, so that wouldn't do at all! So I popped onto the Urban Dictionary to check out synonyms for 'deadzone' - and found something that made my eyes pop a little.

Entry number 7 under 'Deadzone' reads thus:

Skelmanthorpe The only place in the world where there is literally nothing of interest whatsoever. Located 6 miles south-east of the town of Huddersfield in West Yorkshire, Skelmanthorpe is said to hold 4000 old people, out of a total population of 4000. Ask yourself; How dull and uninteresting can it be here? Surely this is an exaggeration. Well no, dear reader, I cannot put into words how unbelievably lifeless and dead it is, since i cannot describe nothingness. Man 1; 'Skelmanthorpe is where i'm taking my kids on holiday!' Man 2; 'You sick, demented bastard.' skelmanthorpe deadzone wasteland old people nothingness sensory rape by ShaardMeisterJim Oct 27, 2011 share this add a video

And instead of telling you what we are going to do on our visit of undefined length in northern parts of Spain, I feel I must right the wrong of this dictionary entry! Skelmanthorpe is a lovely place I know well and visited often. It has a wealth of interesting facts and features associated with it and I have friends who live there. I very nearly bought a little apartment there once, in a beautiful converted church - though in the end I didn't (NOT because it was a dull and uninteresting place full of old people but because it was the very week I met FR and our immediate intention and desire to reproduce could have meant a one-bed, bijou apartment would prove very impractical!)

It's very name is interesting, conjuring up a Viking history, which indicates it dates back to around the 9th century. Locally, it goes by the unusual, if not very pleasant name of 'Shat' - no idea why and don't like to ask. It was pretty much destroyed during the Norman Conquests - he had a lot to answer for did Norman - but sounds like it bounced back to become the place to be for rowdy revelling in the 1770s, when the Skelmanthorpe Feast was held, complete with bull and bear-baiting, gypsy fortune telling and a fair bit of drinking...

And in 1934, a cinema was built in the village! How many villages can claim this, I ask you? Agreed, it turned to hosting wrestling matches in later years to boost revenue (given the village's lively history, perhaps this is not surprising) and then, later still, a bingo hall and then a squash court. And to completely refute the entry in the Urban Dictionary, it is now a Youth Club - so much for only old people in Shat!

It has a very nice Mediterranean restaurant, called 'Volare' which has been seen in sunny weather, to sprout cosmopolitan tables on the pavement outside its doors. And being a good Yorkshire village, it has an excellent chippie. At least one.

There are two very good primary schools, no less than five churches, cricket and football teams - and heavens, the Kirklees Light Railway runs through the old station.  (And that does Santa Specials!)  It also has one of the oldest established brass bands in the whole country and they're good, very good.


 (....and 'Oh no, it's Selwyn Froggit' was filmed there too..but perhaps that's not one of the pluses..)


There, I feel I have done by bit to right a wrong. How is the world wide web going to manage without me in the next few weeks, I wonder? What have you read or seen on the internet that has shocked, outraged or merely made you tut at its inaccuracy?

I might manage a sneaky peak at what's going on because all being well, I will be meeting up with my sister and family on the north coast of Spain for a 'prehistoric day' - we plan to visit caves in Puente Viesgo and then to retread dinosaur footprints on the beach at Colunga - she's bringing me a very special present I purchased with my birthday money - a tablet! Not an iPad, couldn't run to buying one of those, but a rather nice little android. I am ridiculously excited about it.

See you anon. Happy holidays - and remember, if you're visiting the north of England, give Skelmanthorpe a turn of the head and a cheerful wave - I'm sure you'll get a friendly response.

Go Faster Stripes

One of my favourite bloggers was doing some important musing and wondering recently. She was particularly intrigued by how Alice's chocolate had achieved its stripe. I was almost overcome with excitement - because I KNEW.

Yes, I know how the stripe was placed so elegantly in Alice's chocolate. And this post is to demonstrate to MPM (and anyone else who may be preoccupied by the problem) how it's done. Albeit in a rather rough and ready version...

First off - prepare your chocolate making equipment - including here, white and milk chocolate (all I had in) and some chocolate moulds. (Yes, they are dinosaurs!)

Without going into the details (because this isn't a chocolate tempering workshop) melt the chocolate in preparation for putting into the moulds.

And then here is the clever bit - unfortunately I was unable to capture the actual moment as I was without a photographer and my hands were occupied. To get a perfect stripe, one should use a piping bag but I couldn't be bothered. I just dribbled a thin stream of chocolate directly from the spoon into the mould; allowing the chocolate to make a line in each individual mould. (Apologies for the photography.)

Allow this chocolate to set in the mould before filling with the white chocolate. And then wait til this sets too.

Et voila! One 'inset' stripe. And I confess, it's not elegantly placed - it would have looked better offset to the left as you look at it and with a little bit of pink or red chocolate in the indentation and if time had been on my side, I would probably have made these with a truffle centre, rather than solid. But you get the idea...?

Random dribbling! And a fair bit of blobbing.
Hope this unprofessional guide explains it for you, MPM. And anyone else struggling with the same anxieties.

And I hope she doesn't mind if I pinch one of her comments I read on her blog - 'Pass me another atom, this one's split!' Love it!

FR in Spain

FR left for Spain yesterday morning and phoned me from the beach in Colunga today. We went to this beach about 4 years ago - on the Jurassic Coast of northern Spain. There are dinosaur footprints on the beach! And not just one sort of dinosaur, but big feet and small feet imprinted in the stone at the foot of the cliffs there. Herds of them all passing together - really amazing.
Just a man and his dog there today apparently.
We've talked a lot about going to Asturias to live and FR is there to look into the sort of property we could afford and to investigate which area would suit us best. I wish we could have all gone but the two weeks of Easter holidays is not enough and I want to keep the disruption to the children's schooling down to a minimum. They are really looking forward to going - which makes me feel that the 6 months they did at school in Spain 2 years ago was a good thing all round. Hasn't put them off, anyway!
I've started to look at Galicia as well as Asturias. It's awfully hilly in Asturias, seems a bit smoother the further west you go. And the houses there are big, with huge rooms and altogether more openness around them. Mark Adkinson from Galician Country Homes phoned me yesterday after I'd emailed about a property and did a good job of selling the province.. we'll see.
FR is sleeping in the car tonight - it's a big people carrier - hope he's OK. He will not stay in a hotel, preferring economy over everything but I know if it gets too uncomfortable, he can go to Leon to see family or down to Valladolid to his parents. Wish I were there with him.