Nice people thread 2 - now even nicer

lostinrates

lemonjelly wrote: »

:kisses3: thanks for this lir.
Both myself & a close friend are big cinnamon fans.

Personally, I am a fan of most things cake related

Me too, cinnamon. In savoury cooking too . I like baking cakes even now I mustn't eat them often. In fact, today I'm mainly baking for the freezer...baking makes me feel calm.:o

PasturesNew

lostinrates wrote: »

...meanwhile dog-dog stole a victoria sandwich I did this morning for the freezer. ..

Sorry, but that is f'in funeh!!!

PasturesNew

lostinrates wrote: »

Loosen your belt, then look at the butter quantity. Its US cup measurements, is that ok?


Oven to about 170c (350f).

Line and grease a tin (I've actually used a nine inch suace pan to day...most tins still packed. IMO its better in a bundt, I've had to lengthen the cooking time today for the ''normal'' cake shape)

Mix (electric hand whisk used in the lost house) 1 1/2 cups of melted butter,2 1/2 cups granulated sugar (I use golden but white is fine), 6 eggs, 2 tspns vanilla extract. I often also add the finely grated zest of an orange. Mix till all smooth.

In another bowl sift together 4 cups plain flour, 5, oh yes FIVE teaspoons of baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon baking soda 1/2 teaspoon salt.

Then add the dry stuff to the wet stuff gradually and combine (I use mixer). Then add a cup and a half of orange juice (or milk if not fancying orange flavour) and mix again till smooth.

Put some batter (1/4 or a third) in the cake then sprinkle with some, say a teaspoon, of cinnamon. pour another 1/4-1/3 batter and sprinkle some cinnamon, and so on.

On top of cake sprinkle some sugar (say a teaspoon or two). Bake for 1hr or and hour and a quarter (though mine was longer today)

COOL IN TIN. Serve with icing sugar if desired.

edit: NB, the sugar on top makes it lovely and crunchy, but also means you can't do the spring back test very easily...all I can say is it takes longer to bake than you think.

If you can take a couple of photos of this, then I can write it up, with the photos and put it online so you can have a url to it to share with others.

I can do that in about 10 minutes flat - and it'd get some good eyeballs across it.

Go on, let me scribble that up online with photos!

P.S. I would, of course, stick it somewhere where I might gain £5/year from it being popular, so I'm telling you that right now.

lostinrates

PasturesNew wrote: »

If you can take a couple of photos of this, then I can write it up, with the photos and put it online so you can have a url to it to share with others.

I can do that in about 10 minutes flat - and it'd get some good eyeballs across it.

Go on, let me scribble that up online with photos!

P.S. I would, of course, stick it somewhere where I might gain £5/year from it being popular, so I'm telling you that right now.

I can get some photos for you, but its not my recipe...what about copyright? AIUI its ok to share on forums in own words...is it ok for you to use?

carolt

silvercar wrote: »

That's the way I do it. If you ever can't get between the two on level 1 (and I have known it to be cordened off) you can also get from one to the other on the top level.

You can also use the pay on exit machines from either car park - it doesn't need to be the one your parked in.

Shall have to show OH these posts - as a non-driver, it's all meaningless gibberish to me - I know bus routes like the back of my hand, but when I'm in the car, unless I'm specifically navigating (and sometimes even then ), I just gaze blankly out of the window, or try to break up the fights on the back seat .

Reminds me of very funny trip to Watford last year, in the evening, with OH and DD1. We parked in one of the shopping centre car parks (Kings? Queens?) and went off - in a hurry, so only vaguely noting where we'd left the car - floor etc.

Came back in the pitch dark and rain a couple of hours later, and...our car had gone. Looked everywhere, couldn't find it. Getting increasingly worried, phoning MIL babysitting to say we might be some time, when OH suddenly spotted our car in the far off distance, over several roofs. No idea how to get there...

Turned out we'd parked in the other car park. V funny farce of running up and down steps, over levels, hitting dead ends...

Made it eventually. Hate those carparks now - not sure I'd get OH to park in them again at all. :eek:

Well, it's funny now, but it was actually quite scary then...

silvercar

carolt wrote: »

Reminds me of very funny trip to Watford last year, in the evening, with OH and DD1. We parked in one of the shopping centre car parks (Kings? Queens?) and went off - in a hurry, so only vaguely noting where we'd left the car - floor etc.

Came back in the pitch dark and rain a couple of hours later, and...our car had gone. Looked everywhere, couldn't find it. Getting increasingly worried, phoning MIL babysitting to say we might be some time, when OH suddenly spotted our car in the far off distance, over several roofs. No idea how to get there...

Turned out we'd parked in the other car park. V funny farce of running up and down steps, over levels, hitting dead ends...

Made it eventually. Hate those carparks now - not sure I'd get OH to park in them again at all. :eek:

Well, it's funny now, but it was actually quite scary then...

We've done the same. In fact I think a lot of people must have because they have now coloured coded each level and each car park.

carolt

Really bad piece of building design - if they have to have two carparks in the same shopping centre, you think they could at least build clear walkways from one to the other.

lostinrates

carolt wrote: »

Really bad piece of building design - if they have to have two carparks in the same shopping centre, you think they could at least build clear walkways from one to the other.

I've done similar in Oxford, got the right car park but just couldn't find the car. Can't remember now why but I do remember that it started off funny and ended up terrifying. I had two car park attendants helping me in the end.

John_Pierpoint

PasturesNew wrote: »

My generic advice to people is: Get a good, well-known, web host that has cpanel and fantastico (e.g. bluehost is one). Register your domain with a reputable company (I use 123-reg, but I don't use them for hosting). Point your domain name at the host. Then, because you have fantastico, poke about in there for scripts and you'll find you can "one click install" Wordpress. This is the version of Wordpress that you install on your own domain (so not Wordpress.com, which is the same software).

You'd then have:
- a domain name you aren't going to "lose" because the cheap. flakey s0ds went out of business (happened to me this year)
- hosting that you have good/easy control over (123-reg tends to tie you down to their packages too much for me).
- Wordpress would be installed.

Get a graphic designer who can design Wordpress themes. Install the theme (couple of clicks once you know which clicks).

Then you have: a highly optimisable, advanced, well supported, state of the art, customisable Content Management System that you can easily set up and run yourself. AND.... Wordpress has these fabulous (mostly free) things called plugins. You wake up one morning and decide your website needs extra functionality, do a google search and there's the instant solution either free or cheap, just a couple of clicks away.

You can set Wordpress up in two ways:
1] It is a blog/works like a blog, when you post a new entry it's at the top, just like a blog.
2] It is a website, like a website. You create pages, not posts, so it's static.

You can run two separate installations, separating the web pages from the blog pages, or fiddle around and get them both working from one installation (I've never gone down this route, so can't say how that'd work, but I bet it's straight forward really).

When I set up Wordpress I instantly get dbackup installed and running: this automatically backs up my entire site and emails it to my gmail account as an attachment every day, that's backup sorted out immediately and painlessly.

After that I just sit and think "OK, so what do I want this domain to do then" and add in the necessary plugins. I've got all sorts of functionality.

Every one of my domains runs on different plugins.

My downfall is never actually paying for a theme, so I just pick up free ones and they're really pants. And they take you hours to find. Free themes are plentiful, seemingly good, but really suck up your time to control.... you don't want that, so just find yourself a good, reliable Wordpress theme designer.

You can have membership sites, mailing lists, newsletters.... all sorts of great things that you'll wish you'd thought of 3 months down the line - and if you need to call a programmer each time there'd be a 2 month delay to get something vaguely like you meant, with a cr4p front end and a huge bill.

Two of my websites I've got set up so that the urls aren't dated. I've installed a plugin that says to itself: "Oh, she's not posted anything for 4 days, I'll take the oldest one and repost it". Which then automatically pings ... and google goes "oh - look - a new post - marvellous".

There's a lot more to it all than just the above. But that's what I'd say to anybody to do if they want: An instant, easy to use, reliable website that has 1000 different plugin functionalities that they can have up and running within 5 minutes of thinking of it (except some do require a bit more setting up, like mailing lists/newsletter list management). But you cut out all the time delays and specification writing and testing and costs.

HTH

It's a BIG subject.

Hi Pastures,

Any chance of you posting a link or two to these DIY web sites, so we can evaluate them? (or link back, I seem to remember you got involved in helping a redundant car salesman with his blog).

I have a friend who needs a web site for his business and probably gets seriously stitched up by the traditional "mating elephants" way of doing things:

.....you cut out all the time delays and specification writing and testing and costs.

Is the free plug in software fairly secure? It would not look good if someone hijacked a web site?

John

Ellie2758

ooooooooooh no need to apologise, i LOVE missions, cant you tell?

Having read the reviews - although of course the Dunhelm one has no reviews as it isnt on the website - I would say it is worth paying more for the Lakeland one as the legs fold away whereas the others have to be removed altogether for storage....

vivatifosi wrote: »

That'll be the second closest Dunelm to me when it opens. Maybe I can meet up with your missus, talk cushions and window treatments .





The Argos one is the most similar to the Dunelm one, looks the same make, but the Dunelm one is only one tier. Not sure I'd want two tiers, but it is very close to the same (only more expensive).

Ellie, now I've sent you off on so many missions I hope you like it, I'll feel very guilty otherwise .