The ideal, unattainable man

The ideal man for me... A combination of at least 3

If i'd been raised in a different time, i'd disregard monogamy

Who was the one who said, only one man and woman should wed?

There are so many that get left out, if we shared then their loneliness would be spared

The humour, the laughter and all the fun times

The chest, physique, the eyes and thighs

The dimples, charm, jokes and smiles

Ambition and drive, a future visualized

Individually great, but together unbelievable

The ideal, unattainable man

A shoulder to lean on

An arm you can trust

Friends to be cherished

A line not to cross

No ideal

Just something unreal

The ideal, unattainable man

Teya-Lilly Greeting card sneak peak

Not sure if I mentioned that I was embarking on a new project, that was taking up all my time, money and sleep… Post has gone unopened (to be fair that’s nothing new), emails unanswered, phone calls unreturned and most worryingly Haagen Dazs not being eaten!! Well it is very close to completion and here is a sneak peak…

I actually feel physically sick, light-head, extremely apprehensive and nervous about posting this, but here it is out in the real world and no longer knocking around in my otherwise full head, well a little bit of it anyway…

I present to you… TeyaLilly greeting cards!!

Hope you like it and are now as excited for the final products as I am xx

w: www.teyalilly.com (coming soon...)

e: info@teyalilly.com

The Great Purple Alpha-Bake | D for Dark Chocolate Fondant

So I was really nervous about this, as a Masterchef fan i’ve seen many a fondant relegated into the realms of over cooked chocolate cake type thing. Being the (scatty-at-best) novice that I am, I figured if they couldn’t do it then what chance did I really have. Nonetheless I rolled my sleeves up, dug out the recipe that made it sound the simplest (courtesy of Donna Hay) and went into battle.

Melt chocolate into butter, okay seriously even amateur fools couldn’t mess this up, but I stood over it like a Hawk watching prey, stirring occasionally waiting for the inevitable, which in my case would’ve been the chocolate ‘seizing’ and creating that stiff grainy paste you get when you over heat it. But the Hawk-like stance i’d adopted in front of the cooker kept the ‘seizing’ at bay.

Whisk eggs, egg yolks and sugar until pale… Electric whisk, bish, bash, bosh… The bosh took a little longer to arrive then I expected and I was pretty certain I missed something out as the paleness was a long time coming, but we got there eventually.

Fold chocolate mixture into egg mixture adding flour… Panic set in as the flour formed small lumps which I convinced myself were the eggs scrambling from the heat of the chocolate, I was pretty close to binning the whole mixture and claiming defeat, when like a fairy liquid bubble one of them burst and the flour poofed out like fairy dust. Whey hey!! Back to folding; over, round, through, over, round, through…. Gently so as not to remove air or some such nonsense, and no stirring – not sure why, but i’m sure i’d heard it somewhere. I spooned the mixture into 4 (out of the hundreds that clutter my cupboard) gü ramekins and packed them up to bake later while at my cousin’s house for dinner.

I also made Chocolate Cheesecake Brownies for the kids (also courtesy of Donna Hay) as I figured they wouldn’t appreciate the fine dining experience that my Dark Chocolate Fondants were sure to be *ahem*. Brownies, with a cream cheese mixture swirled through it, sounded like Hummingbirds Black Bottom cupcakes to me, so I was game. It all went to plan and was pretty straight forward until it came to the ‘swirling’. Brownie mixture was thick and cheesecake mixture was runny, so ended up sitting on top, creating more of a ‘topping’ than a ‘swirl’. Although they didn’t look as pretty as the cookbook picture they tasted pretty darned good!!

When the Fondants, left at the hands of the oven timings, came out we initially thought they were over cooked, but closer inspection (a knife to the heart – lol) produced oozing melted chocolate… Result!!! Masterchef contestants eat your hearts out!!

The Great Purple Alpha-Bake | C for Cherry Apple Pie

So I totally forgot to blog this one and it was so long ago that I can’t remember the process that well. The pastry was easier then I though, but not very successful, which suggests that more then likely I done something wrong. Actually it’s almost certain that I messed up as although the pastry flavour was ok, it was pretty dry, possibly too thick as I didn’t do a fabulous job of the rolling out. The filling was nice, the cherries made everything red and the cinnamon really enhanced the flavour. I had so much filling thatI also made a crumble-type pie thing, which was also dry.... I wasn’t blown away by it, but it was edible. I guess it sits somewhere between the disaster that was A and the amazing success that was B.

Shoe-shell-shock

Picture Credit: kittydoll67

It has been 6 days, 12 hours, 27 minutes and 56 seconds since "it" happened and I finally feel ready to talk about it...

*Takes deep breath, composes self*

Sorry I thought I was ready, this is gonna be harder then I thought.

It was a Friday, it was quite mild, I had been out, builders had been round, a discovery had been made. A box had been opened, something had been found, panic had set in, whispers had gone round...

"Who’s gonna tell her?"

"Not me"

"I can't"

"She’ll be distraught"

"Someone has to"

"Ok I will"

A worried, anxious looking face approaches me; a hand is placed on my shoulder, a rub, a pat, a squeeze, a sorry smile...

"Sooo.... there was a pipe leaking outside.... the window ledge you had stacked your erm shoe boxes in has been affected.... it's erm kinda damp, some of the boxes got a little bit ruined, the shoes were.... *ahem* A little bit wet"

Cue heart sinking, floor moving, walls rotating, hot, sweaty, dizzy feeling

No-one is making eye-contact with me, my voice is a high pitched whisper that belongs to someone else "what do you mean... wet?"

"Well, they must've got wet as they appear to be, well, you know, slightly dampish looking, go and have a look, it's not that bad"

Again with the high-pitched whispering voice from unknown “slightly dampish looking” what the hell does that mean?

The walk downstairs is dreamlike, the 14 steps, become a long, windy spiral staircase of epic proportions with the words “wet”, “dampish”, “shoes” floating in and out of my consciousness.

I get to the room, boxes on the floor, one on the top, lid slightly raised... A pair of Office shoes, the ones I bought when I was pregnant, my yummy mummy out on the town, laden with post-bump memories shoes... Are.... GREEEEEEEENNNNNNNNNN!!!!

My heart is beating so fast I feel faint, I back out of the room holding onto the wall as I go so as not to fall over, sit on bottom step head between knees trying not to hyperventilate... Brown paper bag, brown paper bag. Words are dive-bombing me, cartoon-style... Consciousness is trying to elude me…

I am shaky and nauseous, tears prick at my eyes. I can't bring myself to go back into the room, the possible devastation is too great to even contemplate... Hundreds of pounds worth of ruined, irreplaceable, invaluable, sentimental, beautiful, beautiful, shoes. Yearned for, owned, broken in, loved… Leather and suede, patterned and plain, pointed and rounded, knee highs and ankles, straps and courts, wedges and stilettos, lace, buckles, zips and bows… Ruined... I am overcome, inconsolable, unresponsive.

I don’t know how long I sit there in the vacant grey mist of sorrow…

Eventually someone ventures downstairs to take a look…

Only to find that the general disorder and devastation that chooses to follow me around like a travellers rucksack, coupled with my perfectly honed, but unintentionally lackadaisical way of never returning things to their rightful place had resulted in all but 2 of the shoe boxes being empty...

Panic over!!! Chaos reigns supreme!!! Oh yea!!

“No woman needs more than one pair of shoes. But when it comes to shoes and women, the word ‘need’ doesn’t make any sense.” - Alicia Muñiz (shoe collector, designer, and founder of Comme il Faut)