Recipe: Cosmopolitan Cocktail

This is a drink recipe for those who are not opposed to alcohol in small quantities.  This is an absolutely delicious and light drink.  You can increase or decrease the alcohol amounts according to your tolerance level, but this quantity works well if you are only drinking one during the course of the evening.
Mark and I made these a week ago instead of going out.  The total price to buy the ingredients (enough to make about 16 of these drinks) was R225-00, where buying 1 of these drinks at a cocktail lounge is about R35-00 - so I'm saving about R20-00 a drink by making them at home.  Naturally we didn’t make all 16 in one night, and still have a lot of the ingredients left over for another time! (so when am I getting visitors?)

For a virgin drink (safe for children):
Replace the Vodka and Triple Sec with Sprite or Lemon Water. 

Ingredients:

• Vodka
• Cranberry / Cherry / Wild Berry Juice (cranberry is the best, but others work alright too)
• Lime juice
• Triple Sec
• Cherries
• Ice to chill

Method:

1. Mix 1 part Vodka to 3 parts cranberry juice in a shaker. (or 1/4 cup vodka, 3/4 cup cranberry juice)
2. Add Ice, a tablespoon of lime juice, a tablespoon of Triple Sec and shake well.
3. Pour out into glasses (strain out ice), add a cherry and an umbrella!

 The meal I served with it will be coming out on my blog at a later date!

Ashleigh’s Diary and In Ashleigh’s Kitchen

Hello Readers,

This is a little announcement that I have started 2 other blogs…

While this blog you are looking at is my primary blog detailing my thoughts and my recipe's, I have started 2 others with more specialized entries:

Ashleigh's Diary - this blog contains information from my day to day life and on going updates of the challenges I present to my readers occasionally on this blog.  While this blog only contains the highlights, Ashleigh's Diary contains information on a daily basis.

In Ashleigh's Kitchen - this blog only contains recipe's.  All recipe's I have posted on this blog too, but In Ashleigh's Kitchen contains the recipe's without the fluff in between (great if you only want to subscribe to recipes.

So feel free to take a look if you want to!

Admirable Character Traits of Disney Princesses (Part 10)

This is the final chapter of the Disney Princess series that I started.  The last princess is Rapunzel from the movie Tangled.

I personally prefer her at the end of the movie with the short brunette hair, but that’s just me…

Rapunzel is unique in that she expresses what most 18 year old girls in the modern world feel.  How many parents or boyfriends have said to their young loves “What do you want? Just tell me what you want!” and the young woman replies with tears in her eyes “I have no idea what I want!”

Rapunzel knew she wanted to see the lanterns, she knew she didn’t want to disappoint her “mother”, she knew she wanted out of her tower, she knew she was scared of the world outside the tower – see the contradictions here?  She was truly a confused teenager.  But she has some amazing character traits that we can learn from her.

1. Mastered her natural talents – she studied and practiced as much as she could in her tower.  She learned to bake, sew, paint, and many other activities.  She was always looking for something to do and she didn’t allow herself to become idle, if she had a talent for something she learned to do it well.
2. Kind – all the Disney Princesses are kind to others, and Rapunzel is no exception.  She is kind to the people around her and even those who are “undesirables” in society.
3. Charismatic – even though she had been starved of human interaction in her tower, she was extremely charismatic and knew how to handle people.  She was able to get people to do what she wanted them to do, but she never abused this ability by getting people to do things that were bad, rather to get people to do good things.
4. Adventurous – she loved the adventure of travelling to see the lights.  Even though she was scared, and showed it at times, it never stopped her from continuing her journey.
5. Adapts quickly – when she left her tower she was shy and a bit jumpy, but she grew and adapted to the outside world quickly and fit right in with the people around her.
6. Overcomes her fears – I think her biggest trait though is her ability to overcome her fears.  During her quest she was afraid of many things, but with internal difficulty she overcomes each fear.  How often are we held back by our fears? But when we overcome them we really move forward in life!

Recipe: Ginger Beer

This recipe comes from my grandmother’s recipe book.  My grandmother was a great homemaker, always providing food and treats for her family.  I remember going to her house for Sunday dinner.  She passed away in 1996 (I think!).  My father took her recipe book.
A little story that I remember from my childhood of this Ginger beer:
My father decided he was going to make it once and we got a big bucket to fill glass coke bottles.  Well, he went to release the pressure from the bottles daily, but one day he couldn’t get it open, so he took a drill to drill a hole in the top of the bottle.  We lived in a long open plan house, so the kitchen was next to the dining room which was next to the living room with no walls dividing the rooms.  My dad was working at the kitchen sink and the TV was on the opposite side of the long room. The bottle of ginger beer exploded spraying the entire room from the kitchen to the TV in the living room!  Everything was sticky with Ginger Beer.  All I remember is my mom saying “I’m taking the dogs for a walk” fetching the lead and disappearing for an hour.  My dad and I started cleaning up, my mom finished the job when she got back.
So below is the 2 recipes in the book.  We make the bottom recipe of the two. next to the recipe it says: Mrs Hawyes, so I am guessing my grandmother got the recipe from a Mrs Hawyes!  Here are the 2 recipe’s that come from the recipe book in their original format.  My conversion of the recipe is below this image.

INGREDIENTS:

• 12 litres cold water
• 9 cups sugar
• 5 heaped teaspoons cream of tarter
• 5 heaped teaspoons tartric acid
• 2 teaspoons dry yeast
• a few raisins
• 2 tablespoons ginger

METHOD:

1. Put sugar in water and stir until dissolved ( I made a half batch in a 9 litre bucket)
2. Add other ingredients and stir a little.
3. Leave to stand for 24 hours before bottling (recipe calls for an enamel or earthenware container, I use plastic cool drink bottles, just release pressure every day or so)
4. Strain through a cloth or oil filter before bottling.

See the pictures below of the process:

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The Ingredients:

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The sugar water in the bucket:

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The mixture before leaving it to stand for 24 hours:

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After bottling (see I recycle!):

Admirable Character Traits of Disney Princesses (part 9)

My series on Disney Princesses and their character traits has almost reached an end with 2 princesses remaining.  Today we are going to look at the second last princess, Tiana from The Princess and the Frog.

Tiana doesn’t come from the distant past or a fantasy land like most of the Disney Princesses, but rather a land sparked in the music and mystery 1920 New Orleans.  Perhaps this allows her to relate to the modern generation of women a little better than the other princesses.  So what character traits can we learn from her?

1. Disciplined – Tiana is extremely disciplined and focused on accomplishing her dreams and goals.  She works 2 jobs so that she can save up enough to buy her restaurant, and in both jobs she is not the sort of woman who would ever be late for work, getting up early in the morning and going to bed late at night.
2. Hard-working – this is a common trait among the Disney Princesses and Tiana shares this one with Cinderella and Snow White.  You won’t catch Tiana relaxing on the sofa when there is still work to be done.
3. Self-reliant – this is a trait Tiana shares with Mulan.  They rely on themselves to get things done and don’t expect hand-outs.  Tiana does have a little more difficulty accepting help from other people than Mulan does though.
4. Self-motivated – she has the ability to motivate herself to get stuff done, she doesn’t need somebody nagging over her shoulder.
5. Hospitable – this is most noticeable in the young Tiana at the beginning of the movie in the scene where she is so excited to see her Daddy and then invites everyone in the neighbourhood to come and eat with them on their front porch.  It can also be seen in the restaurant where she works in the way she handles the customers.  However as she grew up she seemed to get distracted by her dream and forget what was really important and it wasn’t until the end of the movie that she remembered.

Snow in Bloemfontein, South Africa

Last weekend (Saturday, 9 June 2012) it was so cold in Bloemfontein, South Africa that it actually snowed!  It wasn’t a lot of snow, definitely not enough to play in, but it was still snow.  The last time it snowed here was in 2006.  Here are some pictures of the snow in my garden:

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This one is taken looking out of the living room door into the garden.

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A close up of the tiny little snow flakes:

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The flower bed:

Mark and I spent the day indoors wrapped up in blankets on the couch.  It was definitely too cold to do anything!

Admirable Character Traits of Disney Princesses (Part 8)

Princess Number 8 of the 10 Disney Princesses is Mulan. I thought Jasmine was hard to write about, but Mulan is proving even more difficult…

What appeals to me the most about Mulan’s character is that she was completely willing to fulfil her duty as a woman in the society she was raised in, but she was not created to be the typical woman.  Instead she was created to be extremely unordinary.  Occasionally in human history we are faced with woman like this one, woman who are simply MADE by God to go against the grain… examples: Joan of Arc, Queen Elizabeth I

Woman like Mulan are extremely rare and if you find a handful in each generation we should consider ourselves blessed.  There is only 1 Disney Princess in this league and that is Mulan.  So let’s take a look at her personality traits:

1. Self-reliant – she counts on herself to get things done and doesn’t expect anyone to be there for her.  A woman with this trait won’t ask somebody to do something for her if she can do it herself.
2. Not arrogant in her self-reliance – she has the personality to appreciate help when it is offered to her, and doesn’t show arrogance towards offers of help.
3. Determined – she will try and try again until she gets something right.  She will never accept that she cannot do something.
4. Innovative – she will look at a problem and find an innovative solution to it within her capabilities.
5. Mischievous – she has the little girl naughtiness about her.  A woman with this trait may be the sort to occasionally play a harmless prank on her family which then turns into a game… e.g. shoot her children with a water pistol from behind the garage when they least expect it on a hot summers day.
6. Respectful – Mulan respected her family, her elders and her superiors (in the army), even if she didn’t always follow or agree with them, she was always respectful in her speech to them.

Yet again I ask my readers, do you know any more of her traits?