Rice Pudding and Raspberry Leaf Tea

I've been drinking a lot of raspberry leaf tea this past week and a half.  It's meant to be good at helping when the ol' labour kicks off, and I must say in the mean time it intensifies the Braxton Hick's contractions.  All well and good- home stretch now (quite a scary thought!)

A friend has posted several times on Facebook recently about making rice pudding for her family, and every time I see her mention it, it makes me yearn for it.  I do have a bit of a weakness for a good old home made rice pudding.  I found a lovely recipe on BBC Good Food (once again they come good!) and it's so easy.  I didn't have pudding rice (it seems that not many supermarkets stock it these days, and people get very confused when you ask for it, wondering if you in fact mean tinned rice pudding!) so I used risotto rice, which worked excellently.

I love making this because a) it is so easy- just bung everything in a dish, pop it in the oven for a couple of hours, and voilà- a delicious dessert, and b) because it's great if you're trying to be thrifty- rice, milk, sugar and a dash of nutmeg- it doesn't break the bank!

Given that clearly I have a bit of a sweet tooth at the moment, I also decided to try out banana and chocolate chip bread in our bread maker.  I tried out a (disastrous) white bread recipe on the back of a yeast packet today, which did not work properly for some unknown reason, and after that decided that I had to have one bread success today, so I looked around on line for a nice (and not too complex) sounding recipe for banana bread.  What better than one with chocolate chips too?

I found the recipe here, but when I was about to turn on the bread maker, I did do a double take about the fact that it had no sugar in it (not in itself a problem, but it didn't sound normal for a sweet bread!) so I added 3 tbsp of sugar to the mix.  I was a little nervous about how it would turn out- especially given my failure once today already! However, I needn't have worried- it is delicious, and I particularly love the dark chocolate chips (chunks?)! A good breakfast tomorrow me thinks!

I finished my fat-quarters bag, and went with blue straps in the end.  I'm pleased with how it turned out, but with retrospect, you need a little more of one single type of fabric to make a bag of a more practical size.  It was my first little play with making up patterns myself, and I've learned a few bits and bobs, but it's given me lots of ideas for developing in the future!  And in the meantime, I reckon it would make a nice peg bag!

Right. I must stop now, and get on with clicking my needles together to finish that cabled cardi.  I'd like to complete it before the little one puts in her appearance, and I'm getting pretty close...
If you fancy another crafty blog read, one that I'm enjoying at the moment is Flossie Teacakes.  Lots of inspiration to be gleaned from there!

Hoping that you're having a lovely week.

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