Rainy Day Rhubarb Crumble.

All this rainy weather does not make for a very active, go-getting Ruth, I'm afraid. So after a pretty powerful start to this month blogging-wise that I'm quite pleased with, things have slowed down a fair amount in these parts.

I do try and take advantage of these lighter evenings but find myself getting tied up with Great British Menu and then it's cold and dark. It's safe to say, I can't wait until Summer(!)

That said, a couple of weekends ago, the miserable weather provided a great excuse to do a smidge of comfort-baking. A household favourite, rhubarb crumble cake, funnily enough, using my own recipe. I'm trying to snap as much as I can but I'm not really feeling it, I quite like these though, and a selection from the Easter weekend which I'm yet to share - stay tuned!




I love finding a recipe that just means adding to something simple, all you really need for this is a basic sponge base.




Baking has actually become a bit of a work-out since my stick-whisk decided that it couldn't handle cake-mix.



Rescuing daffs-season is over now but it was pretty cool to have some homegrowns decorating our home for a bit.



We had enough rhubarb left over to make a couple of tiny crumbles, well, it would be rude not to!


Not too shabby! ♥


I dunno, there's something about this miserable weather that makes me grateful for a lie-in on a Saturday morning and curling up on the sofa of an afternoon and catching up on new TV shows - our current favourite is Fargo, have you seen it?

Newbury Home.

Hello! I'd like to begin by stating how freaked out I am that in my absence, Blogger appears to have had a complete personality overhaul, we'll see how it goes shall we?

I've spent a lot of this week sat in our new flat watching The Real Housewives of Orange County. What is a girl to do when it's pouring outside and there's no Internet? It took way less time to unpack than I thought it would and we were all done by Sunday evening - in time for The Voice, yes! - and celebrated with a post-unpacking-how-great-we're-moved-in Bucks Fizz toast.

I'll apologise immediately for doing such a 'everything'-heavy post, but it's been a while and I have so much to tell you. My job hunt, despite lack of Internet has been mildly successful and I'm officially signed up with two of the recruitment agencies in Newbury - I'd like to big up Newbury's Reed btw, their staff are fab - and I even have an interview with Crew Clothing on Monday. Don't get me wrong, retail has never been my first choice, but believe it or not this is actually the first shot I've even had at a retail role, as they seem to be just as good at ignoring me as other positions. A photography role I went for in Reading last week sadly wasn't to be, as I'm without a full driving license, but the new home and start have me in a positive mood so I'm not too downtrodden.

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Anyway, I'm sure that what I have to say really isn't thatfantastic, as as I said, I've been vegging out on the sofa all week. So here is our home, and it's becoming more so by the day, I can't wait to have our friends come and stay, we're in dire need of at least one comfortable chair though, which is what Sunday's planned monster carboot voyage is for.
This is from when things were a bit overwhelming. Easily the most boring and annoying thing to unpack was clothes, so repetitive and there's just so much of them.


This is Moon unpacking our bargain-tastic TV table.


This is from the first night, things look a bit different now, but similar. We concentrated on making up our bed and then doing the kitchen/lounge, we needed somewhere to sit once we were bored of unpacking, right?


Snug mug.


Long came to visit us on Sunday, he didn't pick a great day to do it, he's not too far away though so I'm sure we'll see him again soon. I just hope the next visitors we have don't coincide with more bad weather.


We're going to try and grow a few things, fingers crossed.


I promise to take an updated photo once the weather is better, I really love how light the whole flat is. When Long came, he brought us a bottle of Chambord and the cute Rex cushion shown here. ♥


The bluebells and the vase they're in are from my Gran :)


That breadbin is one of the main reasons I'm having a semi-love affair with Wilkinsons right now, and it matches my amazing toaster!


Tea-making station/Kitchen/Dining/Lounge.


Weird thing to move in somewhere and not have a bin, so we had to pick one up. I hated this at first but it is only a bin and Moon was so insistant that we needed something purple for our home.


Garden photo, to be continued...


Bedroom.


That black thing, opens up, I haven't filled my side yet, it did have our bed linen in it until I discovered that even our bed had drawers.


Amazing shelving unit, but thanks to less-amazing previous tenants we can't get a TV signal in the bedroom, I'm sure we'll work something out.


Office/spare room.


Hallway gallery, ho ho ho. ♥


Funny how even though I've moved the same things are still around me, it's pretty good though.


Moon's brother brought these back for him from Hong Kong, so cute!

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It's so amazing to have so much storage, and still have heaps left over. I was genuinely beginning to believe my mum when she was nagging me about how I have too much stuff. I think she'll find that I don't, I can barely fill a two bedroom flat. We have empty cupboards, and shelves and it's great. Although I'm maybe slightly annoying that I'm unable to stay and enjoy our new home's broadband offerings, another reason we're heading back to Surrey (as soon as I finish this) is to pick up little Dolly cat. After planning all week how to approach the issue, I just came out and said it, right after getting down to the business of why the previous tenants had cut off the phone line and how some people just came round and cut down all the trees in the garden - one reason why I've not shown you the garden, but another being because it's currently cold and wet. So yeah, we were looking like pretty favourable so we can keep her, and I'm so pleased.

I hope to keep a finger more firmly on the pulse of things from now on, I hope I've not bored you too much. How has everyone been?

Recipe: Oreo Chocolate Chip Cookies.

I suppose I'm somewhat trying to create a bit more structure to my blog and have less really long posts about several different things.

Here is another thing I did at the weekend which I mentioned in my previous post. Moon and I baked cookies!
I know it's actually quite bad of me to bake these kind of things but every now and then isn't going to do anything except make me happy with a full tum.

Tumblr is a source of all kinds of wonderful baked good and these cookies are no exception. Moon posted the link on his Tumblr and that was it settled, we were baking these when I got down to his! The original recipe can be found at How Sweet It Is and we basically followed the recipe exactly, it's just ours look a bit different, and we changed a few things to adapt to our basic British baking knowledge. They were delicious though so I thought I would share the recipe with you, with pictures!

I recommend once baked that you enjoy with a glass of milk, which is exactly how Jessica over at How Sweet It is feels, you can't have anything Oreo without milk.

We followed with American measurements because I have measuring cups and vaguely know the quantity from sight but to get a conversion to weight follow this link.

Makes around 15-20 medium to large sized cookies
Ingredients
1 cup of butter
1 ½ cups of sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 cups of plain flour
½ cup of cocoa powder (we had ¼ cup of cocoa powder, ¼ cup of Lion milkshake mix)
1 tsp baking soda
¼ tsp salt
1 cup of chocolate chips (they didn't have any at Tesco so we put in chunks of milk chocolate)
1 cup of Oreo cookies (we used a whole packet, -2)

Instructions:
1. Cream butter, sugar, eggs and vanilla until fluffy.
2. Add flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt and mix until combined.
3. Crush your oreos.
4. Fold in chocolate and crushed Oreos.

5. Add dough to cling film, compact and roll up.


Thankfully this isn't what he usually looks like.6. Refrigerate dough for 2-4 hours (or even overnight).
7. When ready to bake, pre-heat oven to 300 or Gas 6 and cut through your cookie dough roll and place dough onto greased up baking tray (foil/baking paper will also work).

8. Bake for 12-15 minutes then remove from oven and allow to cool.

Once cooled, enjoy!

It may look like a brownie but they easily taste better than any supermarket cookie, delicious.