Finally Planted Seeds For This Years Veg.

After the success I had last year with tomatoes and the success over the last couple of years with Chilli's, I decided I wanted to try growing a few more things this year. It's been so cold however I have waited until now to plant my seeds, and I am still having to use a heated propagator, I hope the weather gets better by the time the plants are big enough to go out.
If you like me are using a heated propagator don't make the same mistake I did last night and use non permanent pen to write your labels. When I woke up this morning most of them had blurred beyond readability. I should be able to work out what they say and rewrite them with a biro later, other wise I will be in a terrible muddle when the seedlings start to sprout as many of the seedlings will look quite similar.

This year I am growing "Tumbling Tom" and Gardeners Delight" tomatoes again as I got so many tomatoes last year from these two plants. I have also planted "F1 Bella Spinach" and "Little Gem Lettuce", I'm going to try growing the lettuce in my window box with a "Tumbling Tom" plant just to see how they do together. I've also planted "Christmas Drumhead Cabbage" and "Nine Star Perennial Broccoli" which is supposed to come back year after year and produce lots of heads.

I've also got some interesting new Chilli's that I'm growing for the first time this year, their names are a link to a site with pictures of them so you can see the unusual colours some of them are. I'm growing "Purple Tiger" which are purple (obviously), and "Black Pearl" which actually grow black before turning red and have lovely looking foliage. There's also "Numex Twilight" which grow pink purple orange and white! (not a great picture of the plant showing all it's different colours). And finally the better known (and bloody hot) "Scotch Bonnets" and I got a mixed bag so I should get a few different shades (the variety I have look like the yellow ones nearer the top of that page) .

I'll publish more pictures throughout the year as the plants grow, hopefully the Chilli's will go well and I'll have some good photo's of them.

Saturday Cat Post

A recently taken picture of Gizmo, I finally found the settings on my camera and this was taken with the "pets" setting. Sorry for the slow down in posting I've had a busy week again I do have some more recipes to post when I have time to cook and photograph them again.

Happy Valentines Day. Alternative Valentines Cards From Heartless Bitches International.

If you laughed at that, you'll love heartless bitches International

Heartless Bitch Bumper Sticker On Amazon.

Saturday Cat Post

I found this old picture of Tabitha when I logged into an image shack account I forgot I had earlier this afternoon, so I thought I'd share it with you. She's only 2 years old in this picture, now she's 8! She's a bit fatter now as well, but we all get bit fatter as we get older don't we, it's our metabolism changing we tell you!
And if you are reading this on Blog Explosion please go to the Battle Of The Blogs page and vote for me if you have time. I'm in a battle that has gone on for nearly 2 days now, the longest ever so far!

Great New Site I found on being Frugal!

I'd just like to say this is not a sponsored post, I like this site so much I'm promoting them without being paid :)
The site is called "Super Savvy Me" and has links to free samples for people from the UK and loads of articles about saving money. I thought I'd share it as the financial crisis has hit everyone hard so we could all do with new ideas on how to save money. Here's a link to a particularly good article about doing valentines day on a budget.
Even readers in the USA can benefit from the articles, but sadly I think the freebies will be only for people in the UK, sorry about that.

Things To Do On A Night Out In Leeds.

Leeds has number of night clubs you could visit on a night out the most famous being back to basics and speed queen and there is apparently a large amount of so called “super clubs”. They also run many seasonal events like gigs and parties so check out what's happening when you plan to go. If you decide to go to the “Rhythms of the City Festival” it's right by the Mandela gardens which were actually opened by Nelson Mandela in 2001. There are also a number of Quicksilver Games amusements you could pass some time in if you are into that sort of thing.

This is a paid post for payperpost.com

Baileys Cheesecake Recipe

This is a baked cheesecake recipe I originally got from the Somerfield magazine, but I found the mixture so runny it leaked out of my springform cake tin a bit during cooking, so I changed it slightly to thicken it and added more Baileys. as as we all know you can never have enough Baileys right girls?
If you are going to serve this cheesecake children (or just want to give your liver a break) you can reduce the Baileys to 60mls and add 100 to 150mls of cream according to taste. It does make a lovely cheesecake possibly the best I've ever tasted!

Ingredients

150g Milk Chocolate digestive biscuits
50g Butter (melted)
2 tsp instant coffee
2 eggs plus one yolk
50g Caster Sugar
1tbsp Cornflour
2 200g tubs of cream cheese
150ml Baileys (or any brand Irish Cream Liqueur)
150ml Sour Cream
25g Milk Chocolate

Method

1. Preheat your oven to 170c/ gas mark 3, line the base of and slightly grease a 20cm springform cake tin. Crush the biscuits and stir into the melted butter then press into the base of the tin.

2. mix the coffee with 1tbsp of boiling water stir until dissolved and leave to cool.

3. Mix the eggs and Yolk with the caster sugar and cornflour in a bowl Add the soft cheese and Baileys (and the cream if you are making the reduced booze version) and beat until smooth.

4. Pour into the tin and cook for 45-50 minutes until set around the edges. It should still have a slight wobble in the centre.

5.While warm spoon over the sour cream. Cool then place in the fridge for several hours or overnight (it tastes even better when left overnight in the fridge, but I can never resist having a slice the day I cook it).

6.When set remove from the fridge and melt the chocolate in a bowl over simmering water (I use a microwave as long as you watch it closely it doesn't burn) then drizzle (or just splatter as I did on the one in the picture) over the cheesecake.

It really is the ultimate cheesecake recipe, if you like Baileys chocolate and cheesecake you will love this. just a shame it's so fattening...

Great Book about different Cheesecakes both baked and chilled and Amazon.co.uk check it out below, I love this "I love Cheesecake" Apron, and don't forget you need a springform cake tin to make a baked cheesecake like this it makes things much easier.

And More Available on Amazon.com if you are reading from the USA.

Book Review- The Covert War Against Rock By Robert Constantine.

Regular readers will be aware I quite recently wrote a series of posts about the death of Jimi Hendrix, it was during my research for these posts that I stumbled across an extract from this book The Covert War Against Rock and subsequently bought it. It has proved to be an Interesting read, it discusses the death of many other Rock and Rap stars dating from the 60's right up until the 90's including Jim Morrison Brian Jones, Peter Tosh and Tupac Shakur.

The book describes a secret operation by The CIA code named operation CHAOS, and claims and also provides some good evidence that this operation played a part in these peoples deaths.

The Operation was basically a list of names of people who were thought to be harmful to the government, or dangerously subversive and were being watched. If this is true then it's an amazing coincidence so many of the people on this list died in mysterious circumstances towards the end of the 60's.

The author from what I can ascertain is another of the crew that alleges The CIA uses Satanic cults and mind control to programme people to commit certain acts. A theory I find a little far fetched I must say. Though my knowledge of psychology tells me that "mind control" is indeed possible though highly unethical, I just don't know why these authors always have to ruin their claims by saying crazy stuff about Satanic rituals.

I also noticed a mistake in the chapter about Hendrix, he says Monica Danneman phoned “Eric Bridges” to inform him Jimi was ill. It's pretty well documented that it was “Eric Burdon” from the famous band “The Animals” she phoned. Only a slight mistake, but if he managed to get a famous persons name wrong how many more mistakes are there in this book?

There are however a lot of claims made that are chillingly believable, though in my opinion there isn't really enough evidence to back it all up. The quotes are mainly taken from the press and interviews with people published in the press (and we all no what bull the media is capable of peddling). The sources for the most disturbing pieces of information are usually anonymous so it's hard to see where he actually got his evidence from. But one could argue that if there really is a massive cover up going on and people are being killed then witnesses would want to talk anonymously!

This book is worth reading if you are interested in the lives and untimely deaths of Rock stars in the 60's, or CIA secrets and covert CIA operations from that period, or both! It is well written and where possible sources are given. It paints a very sad picture of what was actually going on in the 60's and raises a lot of questions about peoples untimely deaths. I hope one day books like this will help pressurise the authorities into actually finding out what really happened to guys like Jimi Hendrix and Brian Jones. Who were after all not only Rock stars but just 27 year old men with bright futures who did not deserve to die in the violent ways books like this suggest they did.

The book is available on amazon now click through to find a better price