My Lucky Dip Life!

I've recently learned to crochet.   My sister taught me the basics on a flying visit at the end of summer and thanks to the WWW I'm progressing well.  I think I might have a little addiction forming really.  I'm not the kind of person who can "just sit" and watch TV, so crochet is a great way of being busy whilst doing nothing!  I've made a few scarves for the girls, I've made a few scarves for myself....and this week I'm busy on another new scarf for yours truly! (aren't I lucky!) It is my own design - I'm just making it up as I go along.  I wanted an infinity scarf, but decided to crochet from side to side rather than continually as I've yet to master a neat finish when going up a new row... the one stitch I knew I needed to incorporate was this puff stitch .  It is the 3 rows of big chunky blobs on the right hand side for those who don't know it.  I learned it when I made the Urban Jungle slouch beanie, pictured below  - wha...

  While on the topic of gross Halloween treats, I thought I'd quickly share what I made last year.  All in all a much more successful eating experience!       This is what I did:     Make up a batch of greengage jelly or yellow jelly and add a few drops of green food colour, your choice really. Take a canned Litchi and stuff a cherry (bottled) into the cavity to create an 'eyeball' Put the juice that comes from the bottled cherries in a pan, bring to the boil and thicken with cornflour - add a bit of sugar to taste if you like and then wait for it to cool. Layer spoon fulls of jelly, Litchis and cherry syrup in a glass.  Enjoy!   This is really effective if you make up the eyeballs just before you eat it, otherwise the Litchis tend to go purple and they don't look as good as when they are first done!   These really went down a treat last year!    

Have you seen these Jello Worms all over Pinterest lately?  I knew I had to try them out - excellent fun and maximum gross out value don't you think?   I didn't have a milk carton, so used a water bottle to hold the straws.  A square milk carton would obv. have been a better choice but necessity and all that... I was a bit nervous when I started making this... I'd bought what I thought was jelly whilst on holiday in Germany recently, but you know, not understanding German....the fact that it said "gelatin" in the list of ingredients gave me faith.  You know I haven't found proper Jelly here in the Netherlands... So,  I used a pack of German Jelly and a pack of gelatin and followed this   recipe, even though I had to fiddle about with the Jelly quantities...  Cherry flavour...super sour!   I was filled with trepidation at this point - you see the recipe calls for a certain amount of cream and when I mixed it in it ...

Each year around Halloween I like to make Toffee Apples.  They are so simple to make, yet for some reason they only make an appearance once a year - probably because they are cumbersome and tricky to eat and sticky toffee tends to go flying everywhere when you crunch into them.  Saying that, could you resist sinking your teeth into one?  I certainly couldn't  (well I had a civilised slice if I'm honest) and for those who know me, that is saying something as I don't eat sugar as a norm.   Some of the ingredients you'll need - I forgot to put vinegar and red food colouring on the counter - oops! The recipe says to pour boiling water over the apples to remove the waxy coating, you know how you can buff up an apple and make it shiny because it has a sort of waxy bloom on it?  Well that can prevent the toffee from sticking to the apple so it has to be removed.  Well that made my warning system go off, but anywa...