what day of christmas is this???

so its the last week of work thank god and a pleasent surprise came my way when my boss said that for the rest of the week i could start at 9am rather than 7am, it makes a huge difference (trust me)! things at work are so quiet it reminds me of the last week of school before summer holidays..... nothing is happening and everyone is pretty relaxed....

i wish i was relaxed though as apart from the 9am starts i have been pretty stressed out, my car was making horrendous noises and with a trip away scheduled for sunday to napier for the first part of the holidays impending i thought i should get it sorted.... worn break pads and rotors (?!?!?) apparently and $376 apparently! as i have splurged on christmas shopping i am broke till next pay day which happens to be NEXT thursday (christmas eve). too late to get the car fixed and too late to travel to napier! luckily my mum said she could help me out, lend me the money and hopefully we will have it fixed by the weekend.... all things going to plan

amongst all of this i have decided its time to slim down, i have put on around 6kgs over the last few months and have really started to feel it and look it! it has been consuming my thoughts for quite some time, frustrated with myself for even letting it happen! but i realised its all in my control and if i just stop eating when i dont need to (mars bars, packets of chips, biscuits etc etc) and get a little more active then hopefully i can reclaim my body!   ................  sounds easy right? i will let you know how it goes......

anyway on the topic of food i successfully made my own christmas mince pies! the first round was a trial and tonight i am going to make them again so i can give them out as presents on my last day of work to my work mates! i got an easy and yummy pastry recipe from the nestle site... it is as follows

Ingredients:

75g butter (softened)
1/4 cup of icing sugar
1 egg yolk
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 cup plain flour
1 tsp cornflour

for the fruit mince meat i have to admit i cheated! it was too expensive and time consuming to get all the different fruit etc etc so i got some good old earnest adams, added 1/2 cup of dried cranberries and a few tbps of whiskey and let it soak for a day or so....

the rest of the instructions are from the same recipe as the ingredients (i left out a few things they said, like adding chocolate to the mincemeat mix etc) and they are as follows

Instructions:

preheat oven to 180°C and grease mini tartlet tins

cream butter, add icing sugar and beat until mixture is light and fluffy. beat in egg yolk and vanilla essence.

sift flour and cornflour together and gradually stir into creamed mixture to make a smooth dough. place rounded teaspoons of dough into the tins, then press evenly over the bottoms and up the sides, making an indent in the bottom of each.

bake tart shells in preheated oven for 10 minutes. remove from oven.

fill with fruit mince meat, cut little rounds or xmas shapes for tops and pop them over each tart and return for 10-15 mins

remove from oven and allow to cool in tin.

once cooled, dust with icing sugar

now for the pictures....

they arent the prettiest of pies but they have the home made charm i guess! next time i will sieve (which i need to buy) the icing sugar over so it doesnt look so patchy and thick

noodle box lined with serviettes and a texas cupcake paper ready for the pies to be put in

pies in the box, gonna put four in each, thats all the boxes can really fit unless you want to really squash them and then risk the pastry breaking! disaster!

after closing the boxes up i thought they probably needed something christmas-y as they were just plain white boxes, so chucked a ribbon round and attached a little tree decoration with a cute paper clip and i was away laughin! a easy home made and cheap gift thats so cute i doubt anyone could resist....