Rock Cake

I'm back on the wretched ivs again... but I did get a little more baking in before I had to temporarily hang up my oven gloves.  Right now I am feeling pretty grotty and frequently nauseous, so baking is one of the last things on my list of things to do!  I have been indulging in some online retail therapy recently and my amazon addiction is showing no sign of abating, and one of my purchases is the lovely Ritz London Book of Afternoon Tea.  It is definitely one of those little books that are described as charming in the publicity blurb; its filled with lovely illustrations of Victorian ladies and gents taking tea and has some great little tea related poems and stories.  Its also written in the style of a slightly un-PC maiden aunt who has been at the sherry a bit too much... I particularly like the fact that the recipes are divided into English cakes and Foreign and Wicked cakes! Wicked French fal-de-lals covered in cream and other such decadence! I decided to have a go at their recipe for rock cakes as I have always liked a good rock cake and they really are so simple, its a good recipe for when you are feeling tired and full of cold- as I was when I made these.  One good thing I have discovered during making these, is that my kitchenaid can rub butter and flour together really brilliantly and far more quickly that I can do it by hand. It also means I don't get loads of flour and butter stuck under my fingernails which is one of my absolute pet hates-ick ick ick!

Lovely rubbed in butter

So a bit of a quick mix of everything else and whack 'em in the oven for about fifteen minutes and that's it- very quick and very yummy. I finished them with a good drizzle of leftover chocolate icing- I never throw icing away, I will make extra cakes just so that I dont have to!

Food and I

I have a bit of a funny relationship with food.  As a PWCF I have problems with digesting food, particularly with absorbing fat.  This means I have to eat as much food as I can, as often as I can, to maintain a healthy weight; its what I call the CF Diet. I can't remember a time when there wasn't a dietitian/doctor/nurse/parent telling me I needed to eat more-they still do! According to the health pros I should really be consuming one and a half times the recommended number of calories for an adult female- which I find practically impossible!  Added to this pwcf don't produce enough of the hormone ghrelin that makes the body feel hungry, so even tho I have to eat a lot I very rarely feel hungry.  People often say to me "oh you are so lucky you can eat whatever you want and not get fat."  Although I usually just smile at this remark, what I would really like to say is "b*ll*cks!  Getting past the obvious fact that being thin is never going to be any sort of compensation for having CF, this is simply not true.  I do not get to eat what I want, if I did I probably would not eat very much at all and would survive on tea and cake!  What I have to do is eat even when I don't want to, when I am feeling nauseous or when I have awful heartburn and quite frankly this is not fun.  If I don't eat enough the weight falls off me at an alarming rate and I can go from my okish BMI of 19 (the dietitian would prefer 20+, 20 being 'normal') to about 16 or even less, which is getting into dangerously low. malnourished territory.  For most women this would probably be fabulous-easy weigh lose, but for me it means no energy, lungs get rapidly worse and I end up on IVs or worse.  Without the high calorie intake I try and maintain, my health collapses frighteningly quickly, so I really don't have a choice as to whether I keep to my diet.

I would seriously contend that my CF diet is just as hard as any diet to loose weight. Frequently, I get to a point where just the thought of having to eat makes me utterly miserable and sometimes I even start feeling sick.  People often think that I must just 'be used to it', and yes, I suppose I am used to it but that doesn't make it any easier.  It also does not change the fact that its never going to get any better.  I have a target weight to get to and I have occasionally managed to get to it, but once I'm there the slightest cold can result in my falling straight off it again.  Also, maintaining this weight is really difficult, if I relax my intake down goes the weight again.  So, not only is this diet unpleasant it is unending. I am hopeful that a new study that is designed to see if injections of ghrelin could stimulate my appetite may make eating a bit easier if I am actually hungry sometimes. However, the study is still going and it takes a long time for these things to be approved-sigh.  In the meantime I will just have to keep eating...

Fantastic book!

Not really all the same size...

In a bid to make my cf diet a bit more easy to live with, I do tend to eat little and often rather than big meals which frequently get thrown up again... This is probably why I adore afternoon tea and small baked goods. They are much easier to eat and really help keep my intake up.  Also, as Dan Lepard says in his book Short and Sweet (pictured) sometimes 'we like to have our own cake rather than a piece of someone else's!"  I'm trying to widen my small things repertoire a bit and I found a recipe for Chocolate Whoopie pies in Dan's book that looked very promising.  They are two small cakey-biscuits sandwiched together with marshmallow frosting and finished with chocolate icing-nom.  I think I may have made mine a little bit big, and next time my inner pedant will definitely insist I get the piping bag out and make them more tidily! I dolloped these ones onto the baking try with a spoon and I think they were a bit big once put together to be described as bitesize...  I was feeling far too lazy to be more careful, but I think they could look really fantastic if made a bit more effort. I'm not totally convinced by the marshmallow frosting that sticks them together, as I do find marshmallow a bit too sweet even for me and it is so sticky that dealing with it is fairly annoying! However, the little cakey bits are delicious, so next time I may try using butter cream or possibly chocolate ganache. I also like the idea of experimenting with a lemony version and maybe a chocolate and cinnamon one...mmm...

 



Cake!

I've got a bit behind already with blogging the cakes I've been making-oops.  So here is a quick post of two that I made a while back.  The first is a Honey Cake from Nigella's chocolate cake hall of fame in her book Feast that I made for my birthday lunch.  It was a little later than my birthday cos as usual I was on ivs so had to put it back a week.  It's a really gooey, sticky, rich cake that you can only eat small slices of due to its density! Classic Nigella basically.  Sadly, I can't claim that I thought up the lovely marzipan bee decoration idea, but they have proved so popular that my Mum has had me bunging them on cupcakes and cakes for family birthdays ever since.

Making the bees.

The second cake I made to take a to a Halloween party, the theme of which was bad science.  Now I was assured by Mr EB that the obvious cake to make for this theme was The Portal Cake, from the game Portal.  I've not actually played this game but ever happy to make cake I agreed.  This is a picture of the cake from the game-

Apparently, the game's main premise is that humans will do anything to avoid death and to get cake-seems fair!  But as you are trying to escape from an evil computer, sometimes the cakes you find are a trap and is actually going to you, hence the quote 'the cake is a lie!'  This was exclaimed many times when I took the cake to the party, but didn't stop people eating it.  It looks like some sort of black forest gateau, but I'm not a huge fan of them so I made a cake called Brooklyn Blackout cake from the Hummingbird Bakery Book and covered it in chocolate custard and shredded chocolate.

A fairly convincing interpretation!

Three layers and LOTS of chocolate custard.

 

The photos here are all taken by Mr EB, hence they are all much more in focus and interesting than my attempts.  So just to finish off, here is a rather fun picture he took of my gorgeous Kitchenaid with me in the background.

Hmm

I've written and rewritten this post several times over the last couple of months but I'm not really sure what to write in this blog anymore.  I always wanted it to be about things I've made or done, shows I've done,  places I've visited and fun, cheerful (preferably shiny!) things, with maybe a bit of awareness raising about CF and encouraging people to sign up to the donor register and donate to the CF trust.  I don't want this blog to simply become a long guilt trip by me to make people give money and I definitely don't want people feeling sorry for me! It was never meant to be a litany of my treatments and health problems, as quite frankly I am fed up of having to put up with them myself, without boring everyone else and repeating it all online.

So, I don't know where this blog is going to go... I was feeling rather down about it all, I hate having to be sensible all the time and not do things cos of my health; it's very annoying, not to mention frustrating, irritating etc.  So I'm going to make a list of things I can still do and that may even be doable whilst on ivs, as they take up such a lot of my time these days. I definitely want to try and resurrect my hat a week project, which got totally scuppered by my health, however, it may have to become hat a month!  But I don't want all the lovely and rather expensive things I've got for hatmaking like my blocks and lots of feathers and materials, to just sit about gathering dust.  They were bought for a reason and they are darn well going to be used!  There must be more things that I can still do so my brain does not moulder and I loose all the skills I worked very hard for.  So on my list, I'll start with more crochet as I can already do the basics but might try some more complicated things. Then there is tatting which is a type of knotting my mum used to do, which I've always fancied having a go at.  More machine embroidery is also on the list as my machine is just sitting about too.... Although this is a bit on pause due to software problems- don't ask, it's very annoying!

Some culinary adventures may also feature in my new list of things to do.  I may finally write my definitive list of the best places to eat tiramisu that I've found! Any excuse to eat more tiramisu... Perhaps I shall embark on a challenge to make all the recipes from one of my many recipe books with my marvellous new Kitchenaid mixer- courtesy of Mr EB and my parents for my birthday.

It is quite ridiculous how much I love this machine! Not only is it a beautiful colour (Ice Blue), but it makes baking so much easier, as I was starting to find holding and using a hand whisk annoyingly tiring.  So now I can sit and let this do all the hard work.  It also has loads of extra tools and gadgets that you can add on, like an ice cream maker and a sausage stuffer so I feel this may feed my gadget hoarding gene too.   Watch this space for, hopefully, a bit more regular blogging...

Oh dear...

... I've not been a good blogger. No posts for over two months-opps. To be honest tho, I've not really had very much to blog about! Work wise its mostly been alterations- which are not exactly exciting! Otherwise, my life seems to revolve around far too many courses of IVs - including the last eleven days being incarcerated in Papworth's CF Unit.  My health really has gotten a bit pants. I've been having IV's every four weeks sometimes only every three, and its not exactly an exciting fun thing to blog about. I'm not one of those bloggers who want to blog every tiny aspect of their lives, as most of the time I find it very hard to believe that anyone would be interested in the banality of my medical regime!  I could go into great detail about my IVs and all the tests I've been having and the problems of being in hospital, but quite frankly it bores me so I doubt anyone else wants to know! All I really want to say about my health at the mo is that it is crap, I have to take too many drugs, but it is sooooooo good to be out of hospital! I was getting serious cabin fever in there!

Another consequence of all these damn drugs is that I have had to cut right back on work. Making sure I hit deadlines has resulted in my having to work when I am on IVs which is really not ideal. Not only am I tried but  my brain is all drug addled so even simple jobs take a lot longer. Worst of all it is very stress full! The last thing I need these days; the consequences to my health really are not worth the money I may earn... So once again, my health is forcing me into changing my life in big ways I don't want. I haven't quite worked out what I am going to do but I am going to have to 'Adopt, Adapt and Improve!'  Suggestions on a postcard....

Bridaltastic!

Well despite me continuing heavy IV regime I have managed to do some work during the last couple of months!  Two more of my lovely friends from Lindy married their gentlemen friends recently and both brought their dresses to me for adjusting and adding some extra je ne sais quoi! The first nuptials were Katherine and Graham's, and as Katherine has the most gorgeous auburn colouring she wanted to add some extra teal aspects to her dress which would match her bridesmaids (which I also made for her)  Her dress was a lovely draped organza ballgown, with a lace up back and ruffle details.  She wanted to add a sash to highlight her teeny tiny waist, and add some sparkles to the flowers on the front. I only took a couple of photos in the workroom but you can see how pretty the sash looked-

I will try and get some pictures of the dress in action and post them soon. As usual my camera does not do just to just how lovely the teal coloured satin looks in real life.

The second wedding was that of Natalie and Geraint, and Natalie wanted a rather dramatic transformation for her dress! I must have chopped about 2 feet off the bottom of her skirt! Changing it from full length and  more, to tea length... This is the dress before-

and hopefully I will get a picture of the after from Natalie as I managed to forget to take the after shot- I was on IV's at the time! You can see in the picture of the front, that there was an asymmetric overlay to the skirt that stayed at tea length for a while and gave a natural length for the new hem line. I used the off cut of her skirt to make her a veil and two shrugs, one with 3/4 sleeves and one with little cap sleeves (and I still have several metres of the chiffon left!). 

 In the end she wore the short sleeved one during the day, and the sleeves when it got a bit chillier in the evening. I was lucky enough to go to both weddings and had a fabulous time at them both, I always love to see people I like wearing things I've had a hand in :-) Apologies for the lack of photos I will try and rectify this soon...

Jolly Holidays

Oh dear, not blogging very much at all recently.  Mainly because I don't really think I've had anything that interesting to blog about! I've done barely any hatting because I've either been too ill to actually manage any work, or I've been doing alterations and small jobs that are not hugely suitable for blogging. I will post a few pictures of some of the bridal work I've been doing (once I'm allowed) as that at least is rather pretty.  I did manage to go on holiday in between IV courses, with the massed Evans clan (parents, bro, Josie and Sophie) and of course Mr EB- which was really lovely. We went to a gorgeous farmhouse near Woodbridge in Suffolk for a week. Having an extremely active two year old around for a week is not hugely restful but it is great fun. I have now been introduced to the many songs that Sophie loves by The Green Balloon Club on Cbeebies. Her particular favorite is The Waggle Dance, which is all about bees and flowers. So, my next Sophie based project is definitely a bee costume for her :-) I think my favorite song had to be Mini Beast Madness, which although about yet more insects is a total tribute to Madness-including cheesy dance moves and sax solo!

Whilst in Suffolk we pottered around many of the lovely towns and villages, and one thing that really struck me was the wonderful colours that many people had painted their houses. I'd heard about the tradition of painting houses in Suffolk a very characteristic pink, in fact quite a large number of houses round here are painted in that colour too.  But my favorites were definitely the ice cream colours that popped up all over the places we went to-

Aldeburgh

Framlingham

Woodbridge

I particularly like this last set of houses, as the blue house was further decorated by an amazing silhouette of I think a Regency scene. I've never seen anything like this on a house before, but I definitely think it should be encouraged, although I'm not sure Mr EB will let me start painting our house front mint green or Suffolk pink!

Peacock Green Dress

Oh dear, I really have not managed to keep up my blog well at all recently. What with December being a total disaster health wise, 2012 did not start much better as by the end of Jan I was back on the IVs, AGAIN!! I just can't seem to manage to go more than a month without them these days, which makes having any sort of normal life bloody difficult. I can't give definite answers to invites because chances are I won't be able to make it cos of my health. Work is totally stressing me out as I would hate to let any of my clients down, and I can't let the bridal clients down! I'm doing some alterations to friends wedding dresses and the thought of letting them down has left me with more than one sleepless night... so I am having to make very difficult decisions about what I am going to take on in future. I hate that yet again my bloody CF is dictating what my life has to be.

Anyway, rant over, one very good thing that I did manage to go to over the Christmas period was a wedding of Simon's friend and colleague Tom and his now wife Eden. They got married on New Years Eve in a gorgeous country house in Somerset. As the dress code was Hollywood Glamour it was an obvious opportunity to make myself a dress for a change, and of course a head piece to with it (see previous post). I decided to go for a colour I don't often wear, and don't have a dress in- dark green. I've had samples of silk from James Hare Silk for ages and I often order bridal fabric from them, but I've not had a chance to use their new heavier weight satin back crepe that comes in loads of utterly gorgeous shades. So I chose this beautiful peacock green satin and a fairly simple design as the fabric is so lush that it would be a shame to distract from it. Sadly, these photos really don't do the colour justice but you get a slight idea of how fabulously intense the colour is.

As I was stuck on IV's for sooooo long before Christmas, it was an excellent opportunity to do some beading on my dress. So whilst sitting with the drip going I would gradually add on more and more strings of iridescent blue and green beads around the neckline. Again the photo doesn't really show the colour very accurately.  It is surprising just how quickly I finished it, although with three sets of two hour drugs to drip in for two weeks, maybe I should not be so surprised....

Close up of the beaded loop at the centre front neck.

A better butterfly picture

I'd forgotten Mr EB had taken a couple of shots of the butterfly for me before we went off to the wedding on New Years Eve. The colours in this shot are far better than my poor attempts at capturing peacock feathers, although I always thought my hair was darker brown than this!

Hat a Week 5: Peacock Butterfly

I actually managed to get some hatting done whilst stuck in Papworth, but as usual it took ages for me to actually take some photos of it... I made this peacock butterfly to go with the green silk dress I wore to Tom and Eden's wedding on New Years Eve (pictures of that to follow as well!). It was a bit of a fiddle to make, as attaching feathers to wire and then onto a delicate beaded body and then onto a comb was rather harder than anticipated. In fact, next time I make this design I will probably make a small buckram body onto which I will mount everything and then attach that to the comb. Hopefully this will make it less delicate without being too bulky!



Close up of the beaded body

Its very difficult to get the sheer beauty and colours of a peacock feather to come out in a photo- I'll try getting Mr EB to use his superior skill when he has a mo! You can also see the sticky tape I had to use to attach the comb to the dolly head temporarily... As it has no hair, comb based designs can be a pain to attach to the dolly, but I would rather use tape than put a wig on it!

28 days later...

... And I'm finally line free! Hallelujah! I have gone through exhausted, past shattered and arrived at catatonic. I've tried to think of ways to describe it, having a head full of cotton wool making all my thought processes dull is one part. Having limbs like lead whilst trying to walk through treacle kind of gets the physical aspect. It's just all a bit blurgh. To be really rather annoying, it turns out that the original sample that set off the whole MRSA panic in the first place has been reexamined and reclassed as not MRSA but MSSA, or methicillin sensitive staph aureous... All that barrier nursing and schmozle wasn't necessary! Gah! A least the drugs do seem to have finally worked and my chest has improved and is drier than it has been for a long while, so I'm hopeful that I might actually be able to stay off the ivs for more than just a month - fingers crossed...

I have also had my first proper shower for 28 days! Yes, I know that sounds utterly disgusting and like I have not washed in all that time, but don't panic, I have! The problem with having a port is that the needle is in my left upper chest, and it's covered with a fairly large dressing. You have to try and keep this as clean and dry as possible to minimise infection risk. The port line goes all the way to just by my heart so if bacteria got into it via the access point it could go very quickly right round my blood stream, not something I want to happen. So you have to be really careful to not splash it- not easy, especially when you have long hair which needs washing. This means showering becomes a fairly comedy routine or trying to shower one side of your body whilst sponging round the dressing! The other rather ick thing is that when you take the dressing off after fourteen days there is rather a lot of dead skin and oil from your skin stuck under it, so after 28 days it is just gross, but now I am clean and fresh and can splash about in the shower as much as I like- bliss!

December disaster

Well so far I could really have done without December, and that's before I've even started thinking about Christmas. I had an awful head cold that rapidly went to my chest. So off to Papworth I went and got two weeks of Tazocin and Colomycin, annoying but necessary. It meant that I had to have a line in at the G and S ball, not really an accessory I'd chose to wear to a white tie event, but at least I got to go. The drugs didn't really fully get me better, so I was expecting to have to do another week. What I was not expecting was that a sputum sample I gave them at day seven of the drugs would come back as MRSA positive and that the doctors wanted to admit me for two weeks of three antibiotics to eradicate it.... Argh! Now MRSA in itself is not that much of danger to people with CF as it does not cause a massive decline to the lungs. However it's not something I really want lurking so I could see why the consultants wanted to be so aggressive in their treatment. What is really annoying is that by having an instance of MRSA I was immediately banned from the CF unit because of the risk of infection to the rest of the unit... So I had to have a side room on a different ward. Fortunately, the room was very nice and ensuite, sadly the air conditioning within was incredibly noisy and I could not turn it off. On the first night I was freezing and ended up with an awful headache. Also, the staff are just not the same as the CF nurses, who I've known for years, are experts in CF care and let you sleep undisturbed. They also don't quibble about heating up food that you've brought in yourself, home cooked or bought. As I was being barrier nursed the housekeepers simply woud not heat up anything for me... Apparently once something has been into a barrier nursed room it is not allowed out again, even if it's going to me nuked in a microwave! However, this was not a protocol observed by all of them, some of them would, some of them lectured me on infection control and would not! I've lost quite a bit of weight as a result which will result in the dietician yelling at me! Being barrier nursed is just frustrating!

To my further annoyance five days into the treatment the docs tell me that actually I might not have MRSA! Apparently as the lab has moved from Papwroth to Addenbrookes some communication issues have sprung up. The lab did not ring up the CF nurse to tell them of this MRSA as they are meant to, it just popped up on the computer when they checked for the results. So Sam the CF specialist nurse rang up and they confirmed it was MRSA. However, because the lab has had a few mix ups in the aftermath of the move my consultants got the consultant microbiologist to re-evaluate my results to make sure the diagnosis was correct. So possibly hurrah I don't have MRSA! Eventually the consultant got back to them saying that the initial pattern of growth for my sputum looked like MRSA but after a while of continued growing it didn't! So they are resending several of my samples to be more thoroughly tested to try and get a definitive result. So they know it's definitely staphaureous, which I have grown occasionally for years, the question is, is it methicillin resistant or not??? Apparently it is an 'unusual organism' and they need more data to decide. In the meantime I am left with all this to-ing and fro-ing as to whether all this treatment was actually needed. This regime is pretty hard core, ciprofloxicillin, fosfomycin and teicoplanin are all very strong. But I'm carrying on with it just in case, but it's only cos the lovely Dr Barker is very understanding, that she let me out after a week of incarceration and dropped the dose of fosfomycin from four doses to three. Doing a dose every six hours results in very little sleep and near hysteria! I also may not have needed to be barrier nursed at all if I don't have it, what a waste of bloody time that would have been. Darn microbiologists! I don't think they realise that the bugs are actually from people and how much stress messing up causes them...

Real life photos of a dress in action!

Yes I know I have not blogged in a month-total hat a week fail! But to be fair,I have had the head cold from hell for the past month, although it feels more like a year... I'm back on the IVs in an attempt to stop it going to my chest, which to be honest has not worked as it has and I am producing more gunge than a bad horror movie-sigh. Also, as is so typical as soon as I feel really grotty I get loads of requests for work which I have tried to keep up with, but some requests have had to be refused as I simply don't  have time when I feel this crap-its so annoying! This cycle of IVs every four to six weeks is just getting me down. I nearly missed the GandS Reunion Ball which would have been awful.  I did manage to go for some of it, but that was with a line in (not a particularly attractive look!) and doing no dancing (boo hiss!) and leaving early.  Better than nothing, but still so frustrating. I would have loved to dance with my lovely friends, but at least I got to dress up and see them.  I will try and get some photos of Mr EB and myself in our finery (white tie no less) but I didn't take my camera with us as it doesn't fit into an evening bag! Hopefully some of my friends will have got some shots of us...

Anyway back to the point of this post, I have received some lovely photos of an unusual gold bridal dress I made earlier in the year and it is so nice to see it on a person not my dress dummy. Helen actually wants me to remake the fabric of her detachable train into another garment (watch this space!) and very kindly gave me these shots when she popped over a while ago to talk about this new project. I have to say I think Helen looks amazing! She just has the style and personality to carry off this fairly unusual and dramatic dress-

I love these pictures! She just looks so happy and I like to think her dress added to her enjoyment of such an important day in her and her husbands life:-)

Hat a Week 4 - Spotted Bonnet

This weeks hat was a bit of an experiment. I wanted to try combining the two main ways of making hats, blocking and flat pattern making. Blocking is using a wooden shape and steam or heat to mould the hat form on the block, usually felt, straw or sinamay, for example this black felt cloche. Flat pattern cutting is when you work out how to make the shape out of flat pieces, for example this tricorn and most of my first hats were made from flat card patterns cut from buckram and then covered. The two methods are a bit like draping on the stand and flat pattern cutting when making clothes - one is done on a model in 3d the other flat on paper in 2d. Id never tried combining the two before and it is doable but can involve a lot of trial and error.  This hat is inspired by a hat made by Jeanne Lanvin in about 1910, the back is created on a block and brim was cut flat then the two were joined together.  It is a lovely tight fitting back sweeping into front brim that extends over the forehead.  I suppose it is technically a bonnet rather than a hat, but it is a rather charming that I have wanted to try and recreate for ages.

This is hat once the two parts have been joined, the edges wired and the shape mulled in domette. You can't really see the join (which is the idea!) but it runs from ear to ear over the top of the head. I finished the hat with a fabulous scarlet polka dot fabric and decorated it with black bias strips inspired by the decoration on the Lanvin hat. The back of the hat is pleated to take in the excess fabric around the curved back.

Detail of the pleated back.

As some of the under brim is visible when being worn I decided to line the whole in the same polka dot fabric, which adds to its rather cheerful appearance. I am really pleased by how this experiment turned out, and I have definitely learned a lot about using both methods in one hat! The next hat a week maybe a bit late as I actually have the opportunity to make a swanky dress for me for the G and S Society 50th anniversary ball in December, as well as some other ongoing work, so the hats may well have to take a bit of a backseat for a little while at least.