chatting chicks

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baking, cup cakes, cupcakes, dessert, food, friends, hen party, party, recipe, recipes, romantic notions

A friend of mine is getting married next week and even though I am , thankfully, not  a bridesmaid I have somehow been roped in to helping out. One of my jobs was to help out with her hens, a quite lingerie party, so  I baked some cup-cakes.
As the numbers were fewer than she thought our venue fell through so we ended up in a church-hall without wine. As there was plenty of fruit and cheese  the night out turned into a ‘lunch-eque’ gathering, all the chicks chatting and crumbling crackers while the bride-to-be unpacked  beautiful knickers and bras. This low-key event was exactly what the bride had wanted and that was the main goal.

It was very obvious that every hen in the room had a loving attitude towards the bride-to-be but somehow the festivities did fall a little flat. It may have been the sudden change of venue, or the non-atmospheric room, maybe it was the lack of music or that most of us didn’t really know each other but I couldn’t help but feel a little sad that this supposedly joyous event turned into a bit of a bland bash.After all aren’t celebrations meant to be filled with laughter and fun, not serious advice and friendly nods, aren’t you meant to get excited about the adventure that lies ahead?

But then maybe as a still seeking single I have too many romantic notions about how I think these things should be, or maybe a few cupcakes and crackers just don’t say “party” to me.

PS: The recipe for these delicious cupcakes couldn’t be any simpler. Heat the oven at 200 degrees. For 12 just mix 125g of butter/margerine with 125g of caster sugar. Add in 2 large eggs (I normally add an extra one for more fluff) and beat till nice and creamy. Then add 125g of self-raising flour into the mix (if you sieve the flour the batter becomes really smooth, and if you don’t have self-raising just add 1 tablespoon of backing powder). For a little extra smoothness and taste add 1 tablespoon of vanilla (or any other flavour) and 2 tablespoons of milk (I sometimes use yogurt it gives it a little extra cream). Then just fill your cupcake forms with equal amounts of batter and bake for 15-20 minutes until golden brown. For the icing mix 2 cups of powdered sugar (icing sugar) with 2 tabelspoons of butter /margerine, add in 2 tabelspoons of milk and 1/2 a tabelspoon of vanilla (or any other flavour). If you want to colour it just add as many drops of food-colouring as you like.  just make sure that the cupcakes are completely cold  before you ice them.

positive party planning

Tags

Dublin, health, home, intense emotions, laughter, mental-health, miscellaneous, new neighbours, party, people, psychology, random, stress hormones, thoughts

Yesterday two of my lovely neighbours and I decided to turn talk into action and plan a street party. So we sat, talked, drank tea, ate cake and tried to figure out the least stressful and easiest way to get the ball rolling and the party started.

With so many new neighbours moving in to the street we decided that it is the perfect time to celebrate and get to know one another and what better way to do that than with a BBQ.  But while we where making decisions and chatting about flyers and food my mind wandered wondering how strange it is that we love parties so much. After all they only really have the fun part of function.

I imagined how odd it would seem to an alien to land on earth in the middle of a celebration of some kind: groups of people coming together to eat and drink, mostly the kind of beverage that makes you a little dizzy and ditzy, talk quite loudly at, more than with, each other and possibly make fools of themselves while they sway, jerk and twirl to loud music and laugh hard and long and lots.

But the more I thought about it the more sense it started to make. As human beings we tend to be able to express certain intense emotions more easily in groups of people. For instance we probably have all experienced pant-wetting and off-chairs and sofas falling fits of laughter when we are with friends but rarely, if at all, does hysterical hilarity overwhelm us when we are on our own. And as we all know laughter triggers endorphin production in our brains making us instantly feel better. But it does have other very positive side effects too: it boosts your immune system, lowers your stress hormones, relaxes tense muscles and makes your blood vessels healthier, so in essence laughing can prevent heart attacks.

With our plan positively done and a plan B ready and waiting in case the weather decides to pour down on us we left my neighbours kitchen with a few more items on our personal to-do lists. Feeling good about ourselves and looking forward to a celebration in the not so far future we went home excited and ready to party.

SO if you are in the neighbourhood in   few weeks from now, come and join us for some BBQ and lots of healthy laughter.

pop-tarts and parties

Tags

american goodies, breakfast, flappers, food, friend, frosting, party, pop-tarts, poptarts, roaring 20s, strawberries

I was at a roaring twenties party last night and with whiskey sours, gin gimlets and highballs on offer we definitely were defying the prohibition, taking full advantage of the speakeasy in my friends living room. With light jazz bringing out the inner flapper in us we chatted, drank, danced and some even smoked cigars till the wee hours of the morning.

It was past four when I crawled into bed, my head and limbs a little bit heavy but with a happy heart and a prize sitting on my kitchen counter ready for me to devour this morning: pop-tarts, the frosted strawberry kind!

The birthday girl and flapper instigator is American and a good while back the two of us were in a specialist sweet shop in town, which was stacked to the rafters with American goodies. At the time I remarked at how in films or sitcoms people always seem to eat pop-tarts for breakfast and that I had no idea what they were and that I was curious what the whole hype was about. Sadly the shop only sold ones that my friend didn’t approve of declaring that if I was going to try them they had to be the right kind: frosted strawberry.

Time has past and I have to be honest I haven’t really been losing sleep over my pop-tart inexperience. But last night my lovely, quirky and very special friend presented me with a box of pop-tarts imported all the way from the USA. So this morning my palate has enjoyed the sweet stickiness of pop-tart delights.

I did what I was instructed to do, try them in both the toasted and un-toasted variety and I was warned that they are quite sweet. But I have to admit pop-tarts taste better than I thought they would, even if the sweetness does make your teeth crawl and a sugary aftertaste lingers on the back of your tongue, stuck there no matter how many sips and gulps of tea you take.

The un-toasted variety seems to be less sweet but also less strawberrish, although I would argue that there probably aren’t any real berries in the pastry, just more brightly coloured and highly flavoured synthetic look-a-likes. But then when has that ever bothered the American food industry?

So with a new day starting off with a new experience I think it is safe to say that it has not been wasted, even if I decide to stay at home and not do much. And while I enjoyed my excursion to pop-tart-ville today, for tomorrow I think I will revert back to good old toast and jam, the more traditional and less sweet breakfast of choice.

friemily ties

Tags

chat, family, friemilies, friend, Germany, love, miscellaneous, party, random, thoughts, trip

What a trip, fun filled, lots to do, make and bake, family filled festivities and very little sleep. I saw and talked to most of my relatives, made table decorations, hugged and kissed my niece and nephews, squishy cuddles and wet ones in the case of my brothers nine-month-old baby boy, slept in guest-rooms and on sofas, went to an art exhibition and for walks with dogs, cooked, cleaned, shopped and jumped on a trampoline. Now I am home and quite exhausted.

I do love my family, at times because I want to and at times because you are meant to, but it got me thinking about what family actually is. After all as a single, with no children living on my own and in a different country from the family I was born into, are the people I saw on Sunday really the most important ones in my life?

As I sat at the table and chatted to my aunts and uncle I realised again how very little we have in common and how we know even less about each other. I always get asked the same questions, no mater if they saw me a year or a month ago: “How is Ireland?” “What are you doing now?” and the dreaded one “Is there a man in your life?”

The first is easily and almost always answered the same; Ireland is doing fine, the weather is a little mad and it looks like the financial crises is getting better in miniature steps. The second is an odd one as I have been doing the same things for a long time. My projects change and so forth but I haven’t suddenly become an astronaut or a gymnast. The third is the question I ignore or give a knowing smile and change the subject when asked. After all is it any of their business? And if I am really honest I am not convinced they want to know anyway. Their questions aren’t really about me, but for them to feel they made the effort.  Of course there is the exception in the form of my godmother who I have a different relationship with. We talk (or email) regularly and she knows me and what is going on in my life. But that also means that our chats are different and we don’t ask mundane, standardized questions.

So as my eyes drifted over the faces of people I have know for most of my life I had a thought, maybe family isn’t what we think it is but what we make it be.  After all my friends are the people I turn to when I am sad, need to vent and have fun with, not necessarily relatives. Some family members straddle the void between family and friends, others are stranded safely on a side I only visit a few times a year. And I am quite happy with that, seeing as there are only so many stories I need to hear about some cousins child, dog, friend or husband.

With that in mind I think we need a new definition of what family is, maybe even a new word for it. With the number of singles living on their own growing steadily the conventional idea about family and it’s structure seems outdated. But with the word “friend” being overused, including people we have just met or kind of know, maybe a word like “friemily” is what we should be using to describe those people in our lives that are the most important to us.

After a good nights sleep and a long list of to-dos I think today I will get in touch with some of my friemilies and tell them I missed them.