Happy New Year ( two weeks late)

Belated Happy 2011!

Christmas was pretty quiet for my family as we don't have little one's to celebrate with. We did have a little bit of excitement, though. My sister adopted another greyhound. It was very hard because we had only recently lost Salvador, her previous greyhound. He was such a sweetie and was so brave to endure bone cancer at such a young age.

Ella came into out lives December 22. She is only 3 years old. All black, full of dandruff and sweet as can be. Well, except for her covert peeing habit. Despite numerous attempts to take her out to pee, she hasn't gotten the concept fully and still pees inside the house. In part, it is because she is allowed to drink water all the time and she is not used to that. She is from Miami and is adjusting well to the frigid north. She runs around in doggie jammies and has an outdoor coat as well as booties. Van Gogh doesn't seem to mind her and although they don't play much together, they get along. She does seem to like cuddling, much to Van Gogh's chagrin.



I've also been working on a new quilt. It is blocks of coins and I can't wait to see it done. I love the bright colours and am slowly working on getting more coins made. I think I meed about 50 or 60 blocks. for a decent sized quilt.











Oh, yeah, did anyone notice my new blog layout? I have been a big fan of The Graphics Fairy and was poking around last night and also found that she has also crated free backgrounds so I thought, why not? New year, new look too, right?


Last year, for Christmas, I felt I needed a challenge and so I challenged my mum to a Sugee Cake Throwdown. Sorta like Bobby Flay and his throwdowns, I wanted to see if I could recreate the family sugee cake. Sugee or suji or sooji is cream of wheat or semolina (not to be confused with salmonella. The name sugee is east indian in origin. The Sugee Cake is a Eurasian specialty. Recipes are passed down and guarded jealously. Some people think it came from Sri Lanka or India but no matter what. it is a very rich cake, with loads of butter, and eggs. I used to call it the heartclogger cake as it required 22 egg yolks and 1 1/2 lb of butter.
Along with raisins, chopped almonds and also candied winter melon.

I made three attempts. The first two were just trail runs and the third was my mama's recipe. The trail runs were from miscellaneous recipes I gleaned from the web. Christmas eve, we had my dad and by brother in law taste test the cakes (was competing against mum) and I happened to win unanimously. I felt badly for mum but seeing it was my first time, I think I did well. I got my sister to freeze most of it since it is far too much a temptation, sitting around. She claimed that the cake called to her in Malay, inviting her to eat it. So, we may take some sugee cake out at Easter or maybe at our birthdays.