I posit a POSSET for your Beloved....

 How simple can a dessert/Brit pudding be? So simple it needed a colourful and fun background to give it some counterpoint, and hey with all the snow here and lack of colour I need something bright to revive my eyeballs.

ELIZABETHAN POSSET:

OED definition is: Drink made of hot milk curdled with ale, wine etc (sounds charming....) formerly used much as a remedy for colds. In the Elizabethan era it became the recipe you see below...a more refined pudding in the truest Blighty tradition.

OK I’ve said some of my other desserts/puddings here were simple but this beats them all….4 ingredients (you can even make it 3 if you want to use just sugar - delete the honey and add in 2 extra tablespoons of sugar) and 3 minutes of cooking and a really impressive and divine dessert results!! Sure to impress your beloved on Valentine’s Day!!

INGREDIENTS:

Makes 4 servings.

½ cup/3oz sugar (I used organic slightly brown sugar but if you want your posset the palest of colours then use white)

2 tablespoons of honey

1 1/2 cups/12 fl oz heavy/double cream

Juice of one lemon

METHOD:

1. Put cream, sugar and honey in a heavy bottomed pan.

2. Warm to just barely boiling

3. Simmer very gently for 3 minutes and stir occasionally to prevent stickage.

4. Transfer to a bowl, whisk in the lemon juice dribble by dribble…be in

awe as the mixture thickens.

5. Pour into small, ½ cup containers and allow to cool then pop

into the fridgerdator (tee hee) for about 4 hours until completely set.

6. This is a truly amazing dessert/pudding but I realize what it actually is is a slightly set sweet cheese…do try it, I know you will be impressed!!

Here's what I am working on right now. There's part of that word above that becomes so important in just 10 days time...but which should be as important every other day of the year! and YES glitter glue...I have found a way to use it in my geometric paintings....I know it's hokey and silly but glitter glue takes me back to my childhood and sparkly Christmas cards and my transparent pink plastic stilletoes that had sparkly bits all through them...boy I LOVED those shoes and, of course, they were PINK!!

And here's some pictures of Maine's current disappearing act...more snow due tomorrow and potentially again next Tuesday...how much more shoveling does a girl have in her I ask you??

 

I took these pictures at dusk, my favourite time of the day to be wandering out in a snowstorm...the low light and snow certainly make any colour stand out admirably...and I was cheeky and used the flash to accentuate the gold leaf and tiny snowflakes.

James' "Leap, run, leaping" below is running out of steam and has almost sunk beneath the waves of snow, will she disappear completely in the days to come?

 

And finally "Girl Facing North East"  stands strong against the winter winds.

More colour on a rainy day!

'PRISM MANDALA' 2006

I originally finished this 'mandala', an acrylic painting on panel, late in 2006 but just recently I felt compelled to rework some of the layout and now it is refinished as below....

'PRISM MANDALA' 2009

.....there isn't that much difference but I think I have simplified the overall feel of the painting and I prefer the way it looks now. These 'mandala' (circular designs used for meditation) paintings really are meditation for me, they are fun to paint and remind me of Spirograph and Paint by Numbers, both of which I was obsessed with as a child. The watercolour illustration work I do, as in the previous post, is actually hard work that requires a lot of planning, thinking and lengthy execution so when I want to relax and have fun I draw up a complex design on panel and fill the shapes with my happy pastel pallette....a colour wheel I cannot, no matter how hard I try, get away from. The painting is relaxing and pretty mindless and I can make these panel paintings really quite large...up to 4 feet diameter and larger if James is willing to help me do some carpentry which I am useless doing on my own.

It has been raining non-stop here in Maine for what seems like an aeon so I thought I would brighten things up not only with my Prism Mandala but with a picture of some stunning paeonia's from our neighbours garden, they have a beautiful, evanescent scent which makes me smile on yet another dreary weather day!

I had two recipe posts lined up but have recently had some major computer problems and lost all the images I had for these posts...I am rebaking and photographing tomorrow so the next recipe should be up by the weekend...check back for chocolate caramel shortbread squares!!

Blast of colour on a drear Maine day!

On this day of mists (it really is misty out there) and mellow fruitfulness (our neighbour, Tom, did indeed just bring us a pumpkin he had grown) as I look out the window at the occasional dredging downpours from Kyle, is he a tropical storm or a hurricane...THEY haven't decided yet, I felt I needed an eyeball awakening BLAST OF COLOUR! So I put together some pots of paint I am using at the moment, and a few design layouts I have done as small acrylic paintings, to jolly myself along amidst the sogginess of a house with three damp dogs, sticky floors and steamy windows. Here are the photographic results. Hope it's drier where you are! Anyone for tea?