Bread and Baby Sitting!

Here I am, home again after my cat-sitting weekend! I must say that they were all very well-behaved, they came when they were called, ate all their meals without (too much) fuss and allowed me to sit around reading and relaxing and really enjoying myself. The views from the house are spectacular, the mountains are majestic and the vines covering the slopes look like a patchwork quilt joined together with farm roads.

The view from the patio, vines in the far distance.

'Mum' drove home on Sunday and from then until Thursday morning when I left to come home, Catherine and I explored and found a few new places to eat, and returned to a few favourite places that had impressed us the first time around!

The little squirrel didn't have pizza though!

While I was there, Catherine showed me a cast-iron bread pan that Stu had bought to bake his amazing 'no-knead' bread. I have tried this once before, but the combination of wrong flour and wrong-size baking pan, put me off trying again! But, being a person who loves cooking and baking and getting it right no matter how many times I have to do it (ja right!) I was keen to try again, especially when we found the exact bread pan in their local Builders Warehouse! Add to that the fact that I got a really nice pensioner discount, and I was hooked!

Do You Know The Muffin Man? Or Woman?

It's not often that I get the baking urge, in fact it is very seldom! But every now and then I bake my one and only speciality, namely 'Cheese, Olive and Poppy Seed Muffins'! Note the capital letters there to really underline their yummyness.

I tend to make them more to give away than to eat, usually to our wonderful MOH (Meals on Heels) dentist friend who regularly arrives at the door with grapes, braaied meat, curries and stews. How to reciprocate when this man makes Gordon Ramsay look like an amateur? In a short answer...........Muffins!

My award winning muffins!! No award yet though!