Woo! Second Prize!

I made another instructable for the smoothie contest... it's instructions on how to make an Ancient Roman "smoothie" based on Apicus' spiced wine recipe and a story about Nero sending slaves to the mountains for snow... You can read the whole thing here at instructables if you want. I had fun making it, and the end result was pretty tasty (hubby finished off most of the wine the other day :P).

To my surprise, the instructable won second prize in the contest! I'm amazed I won anything at all, and I thought second prize would just be a subscription and/or a tshirt, but I actually get a Magic Bullet blender set o.O

So nifty... I'm trying to think of something to make for the cupcake contest too...

I'm Not Dead! But this chocolate tastes terrible...

I've finally gotten around to making something! It took an Instructables contest to get me motivated. I made an attempt at making Mayan Chocolate for their Chocolate Contest (with not-so-great results, but I posted it anyhow :P).

More coming... Really...

I have a post in the works about my old fashioned christmas dinner... Yes, it's very late. I also have no pictures. Christmas and the resulting behindness in my school projects has put blogging on hold for a bit, but hopefully I can get some projects done and get organized by the end of the month.

For now, I'm starting my blogroll with The Steampunk Home. I used to read it regularly and just now rediscovered it...

Victorian Cold Cream

Found a modernization of a Victorian cold cream recipe, and I've decided to make a couple batches to add to my soaps and baking as presents for people. The original recipe quoted on the page sounded interesting, and mostly simple:

Two ounces of oil of sweet almonds, half an ounce of spermaceti, a drachm of white wax and one ounce of rose water...

Auntie Kay's Mincemeat Recipe

Continuing with the old fashioned Christmas stuff, I decided to make some mince pies. Rather than search the net for recipes this time though, I decided to pull out an old recipe book that was written by my Great Aunt for my Gran on her wedding day in 1940. My mom has it now, and it's a really fascinating little book, with recipes for everything from ketchup to cough syrup. There are two recipes in it for mincemeat; I chose the first one purely because it made a smaller batch. Here's the recipe as it appears in the handwritten cookbook: