Jim's banana bread

In Canada we used to get our banana fix on a Sunday morning with banana pancakes. Jim mixed mashed bananas into Aunt Jemima's pancake mix and topped it off with real Canadian maple syrup. Yum!

With no Aunt Jemima in Cyprus, we had to look for other ideas. Jim decided to try making banana bread and has been refining a recipe over the last couple of weeks. It's adapted from this one, but his new version is even better!

It's a doddle to make and tastes awesome! he's made two batches today. One for neighbours we are visiting this afternoon, and one to keep at home.

If you want to have a go, here's the recipe...

3 or 4 bananas
1/3 cup of melted unsalted butter
1/4 cup of soft brown sugar
1/2 cup of caster sugar
1 egg beaten
1 teaspoon of vanilla
1 teaspoon of baking powder
1 teaspoon of ground cinammon
Pinch of salt
1 cup of plain flour
1/2 cup of self raising flour

Optional : 3 or 4 tablespoons of chopped toasted walnuts and 1/2 cup of sultanas

Mix butter into mashed bananas, then add sugar, egg, vanilla, salt, cinammon (and sultanas and walnuts is using) sprinkle baking powder. Fold in flour. Do not over mix. Pour into a 4 x 8 inch loaf tin. Bake for one hour at 175c

Mended!

Hurrah! The quilt is 90% mended. My part of the work is done, and all I need to do is hand it over to Angela for her to redo the stippling. Such a great feeling to have it sorted!

In the end after I'd unpicked it (which was a horrible destructive experience) the redoing didn't take too much time. The back is repaired with a circular patch that matches the original fabric and the front has been repaired with identical fabric to the original triangles. 

As many people said it would, the front now looks as good as new. 

One small thing to mention though, I spent an hour this morning sewing little delicate hand stitches and THEN I lay it out...

The problem with the design is that you really have to take a step back to see the pattern, and I didn't... So yes, I unpicked it all and started again! Oh well...

Why we got a second dog

A short video clip which sums up why Macy's quality of life has been improved by having a pal!

Post

The British Forces postal service is, on the whole, a pretty wonderful thing, but it has the potential to both delight and disappoint in equal measure.

The idea behind BFPO is that you can post anything from the UK to a forces base overseas for the price of UK inland postage. This is achieved by the Royal Mail only taking the post as far as a sorting office in London, and then the military distributing it from there onwards.

The mail for Cyprus travels onwards from the UK by ship or plane depending on its weight. Small packages under 2kg get flown here and usually arrive in 4 or 5 days, bigger boxes come via regular ships which unload in the middle of the week. Any post from them usually reaches us on a Thursday, thus Thursday morning is always weighed down with expectation and Thursday afternoon is often shrouded in disappointment.

I ordered some accessories for my sewing machine and a dress (supposedly for a New Year Party!) six weeks ago and I've been on this Thursday rollercoaster for the last month, becoming ever more certain of success, and ever more disappointed as each week passes.

Still, sometimes BFPO delivers above expectations where you hold least hope. You may recall that when I signed up for my dressmaking course recently, I had to place a rush order for some Amy Butler & Anna Maria Horner fabric from the US (see above) and just ten days later it is here, having flown into the UK and out again. I also had a delivery of some customised labels from Singapore which also came via the UK and got here in two weeks.

So maybe next Thursday will be my lucky week for the sewing machine and clothes....

A guest for the week

It's warm again at last. Suddenly the temperatures have bounced back up to near 20c again and I've been able to put away the fingerless gloves that I've resorted to wearing in the office.

It's hard for people to comprehend that Cyprus gets cold, but trust me, when its 8c outside, its a lot colder inside most of the buildings and although it's not quite Alberta, it's been quite chilly enough.

The more observant amongst you may have noticed that photo above isn't of Macy, similar colouring yes, but it is in fact Bella The Beagle..... She's with us "on trial" from BARC this week and good heavens she's such a busy dog! Rather like an over enthusiastic house guest who leaps up from their seat every time you go to check on the supper, she wants to be wherever the action is.

She is getting on well with Macy and it has successfully taken the pressure off us exhausting Macy on long walks each day, so that is definitely a good thing. I still have moments of near-panic realising we might be about to become a pair of those certifiable "two dog" people though, so instead I think we would have to be "one and a half dog" people.... that sounds a lot less crazy.

Cypriot cooking

For Jim's Christmas present last month I bought him a Cypriot cookery class at the Paradisos Hills Hotel near Polis. I thought it would be fun to learn some traditional Cypriot recipes and an excuse to visit part of the island we haven't yet explored.

We did the class this morning with Niki and had a really great time. The thing that impressed us both so much was the simplicity of the recipes. Niki managed to cook three main courses, with side dishes, fresh bread and a pudding whilst instructing us and answering our inane questions in just two hours. We made lamb Kleftiko, Stifado, Frikassee, Tzatziki, Cypriot rice pudding and bread. The bread was the show stopper though, about 3 minutes to prepare and one of the ingredients was orange juice!!

We got to sample everything for lunch with a bottle of local wine and brought the Kleftiko, leftover bread and the rest of the wine home for lunch tomorrow.

We were really impressed with the hotel too, and will definitely go back when the weather is warmer for some more of Niki's cooking and a chance to enjoy sitting by their pool.

It's actually been a pretty busy weekend already, not only the cooking class today, but also my first dressmaking class yesterday afternoon and last night Jim and I attended our first formal partners function at the Episkopi mess.

It was a very different experience to the mess in Canada where we knew 90% of the people at the functions, and as this is a tri-service mess there were also some pretty strange things going on as the traditions of the Navy, RAF and Army clashed in completely incompatable ways. Who would know that passing port round the table could cause such fricton, but the Army have a tradition of never letting the bottle leave the table (so glasses have to be placed below the level of the table to pour the port) and the RAF have a tradition of never allowing the port bottle to make contact with the table - Rather tricky to find a happy medium on that one!

Better news

Good news, Angela the quilting guru eventually called! She was sympathetic and not judgmental (phew!) and had a few ideas about the value quilt, she thinks she can make the stippling match when I have repaired the squares and that will be a relatively quick job. I also remembered that I accidentally made a few extra squares for this quilt which I still had, so I've been saved that job. If I knuckle down and do it it won't actually take that long to fix.

I will still have to patch the back though and that will alway be obvious. I'm not sure what to do yet, the patch could be anything, but suggestions so far include a bone, a dog's face or some sort of note to record the "history" of this mishap. What do you think?

Meanwhile I have finally got round to unraveling this lovely jelly roll I bought in Canada. I have had it for about a year, and had been feeling obliged to use it to make something clever and intricate, but I'm starting to realise I only really like simple geometric patchwork quilts, and so really I should just get on with it, and make those.... so I am!

Meanwhile the weather here in Cyprus has suddenly turned very cold. It's dropping down to 10c in the evenings, which feels pretty chilly in a house with no central heating - I seriously considered wearing fingerless gloves to do the sewing this evening!