366 #42

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This time next week we'll be celebrating passing Day 300 of the 366 linky. Hopefully everyone can see the end is in sight and we won't lose anyone else before then.

You know the drill, join in with your favourite photograph of the week and show some comment love to everyone else in the community.

  1. Choose your favourite photo from the past week and link it up below.
  2. Please add the badge to your linked-up post so that other people know how to find all the other fabulous entries.
  3. If you can spare five minutes to comment on just a few other entries I know they'd appreciate it!
ShowOff ShowCase



Country Kid: Autumn Leaves

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I am sat here trying to recover from a gargantuam walk. "Let's nip up to town?" says I.

Problem is that once you've got to town (which is only a ten minute walk away), it's incredibly easy to nip to the park because it's only a few hundred yards from the town centre. It's a lovely, meandering, Victorian park. And it meanders down to the beach. Which is absolutely brilliant and we all love walking along the pier and plopping pebbles in the sea. There's just one problem with walking down to the beach…

…you have to come back up again!

However, as it is a beautiful day with an azure sky, wispy clouds and a warming Autumn sun, it was a really enjoyable walk along some of the very affluent areas of our seaside, Victorian town. One of the best bits about our town is the plethora of tree-lined avenues, giving an abundance of leaves. After the dry weather this week they were fantastically crunchy and inviting for a three year old little boy.

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coombe mill

Personalised 'Peppa Pig' Goes Swimming (Review)

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It's probably not going to come as a surprise to anyone reading this blog, but The Boy is rather a big fan of Peppa Pig. There is something about the porcine family which completely captivates him and he adores 'reading' the massive selection of books that we have.

Recently I was invited to review one of the fabulous personalised Peppa Pig books available from Penwizard.co.uk, specifically the 'Peppa and ____ Go Swimming' book. The whole ordering process is incredibly simple to do and allows for personalisation of the child's hair, eye and skin colouring, along with hair style and the addition of glasses.

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Bara Brith

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Bara Brith is a popular spiced tea loaf in Wales and means 'speckled bread'. The speckled part comes from the raisins which are scattered throughout the bread, which would have been made traditionally from leftover bread dough. To make the dough more of a sweet than a savoury, mixed spice is added, and the raisins are soaked in tea to plump them up and make the bread moist. Modern day Bara Brith recipes don't use yeast, making the loaf a lot quicker to make.

The first thing to do when making Bara Brith is to put the kettle on and make a strong cup of tea, but not for yourself!

Ingredients:

  • 225g mixed dried fruit
  • 225ml hot strong tea, strained
  • 225g self-raising flour
  • 1tbsp mixed spice
  • 25g butter
  • 100g brown sugar
  • 1 egg

1. Soak the fruit in the hot strong tea for at least an hour to plump up the raisins (this process can be sped up by microwaving it for 2 minutes). I added the mixed spice at this point to infuse it into the tea, traditionally it is added in with the flour.

tea loaf

2. Preheat the oven to 180degreesC/350degreesC/gas mark 4. Grease and line a loaf tin, or use a silicon baking 'tin' instead, far easier.
3. Sift the flour (and the mixed spice) into a large mixing bowl. Add the butter and mix into a breadcrumb consistency.
4. Stir in the sugar, then add the fruit and its liquid along with the beaten egg. Stir well to make a mixture with a soft consistency.

tea loaf

5. Transfer to the baking tin and put into the preheated oven for about an hour or until an inserted skewer comes out clean.
6. Turn onto a wire rack and leave to cool completely.
7. Serve the Bara Brith sliced and buttered.

fruit tea loaf