Hot water pastry Recipe

For those of you who are interested in the Hot water pastry Recipe that Peter mentioned in his Pasties post yesterday...here it is:

Hot water pastry

150g butter, chopped
2/3 cup (160ml) water
2 1/2 cups (375g) plain flour
1/2 teaspoon sea salt flakes

Place the butter and water in a saucepan over high heat and bring to the boil.  Remove from the heat.  Add the flour and salt and stir until a smooth dough forms.  Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead until smooth and elastic (usually takes only a few minutes).

Recipe from Donna Hay magazine, Issue 57, p150


Then just roll it out to desired thickness (not too thin) and filling and enclose.  Bake until crisp and golden.

(one batch of dough makes about 6 large pasties)


If you've every made cooked playdough before you will find this pastry recipe a very similar process (and the end result is a fairly similar consistency).

Pastie time

It was my turn to cook dinner tonight... Pasties are nice and easy. Hot water pastry really is dead easy to make. Throw in some veggies and some meat and bake. Voila, yummy dinner.

Rugby time...

I took Ben and Joanna to the Chiefs game against the Crusaders last weekend - haven't got around to posing any pictures or anything yet.  The game was a sellout, so the crowd was large and loud, which always makes it more fun. Between the three of us, we had the Chiefs colours covered, but after the game Ben declared that he was a Crusaders supporter - mostly because he knows more of the Crusaders players (Richie McCaw and Dan Carter etc).  Oh well, we'll see if he changes his allegiance one day...

New playhouse!

Last weekend I pruned a few more branches from some of our trees.  One of them is an evergreen, so it still had lots of leaves.  The result is a big pile of leafy branches, which we couldn't do much with other than pile next to the fence.  The chickens were really excited by the new vegetation and spent a few hours climbing through it and over it and in it.

My new exercise toy

I got this so I can get up early in the morning to exercise without freezing my butt off outside (with all those sub zero mornings we've been having!)

God's winter brightener

I love how daffodils flower in the middle of winter here. It's nice to have some nice bright yellow to brighten up the house on cold, grey, cloudy days.

22 days

Of frost that is. we've had that many days when the temperature has gone below zero this year so far. Last year we just so happened to have a total of 22 subzero days all year. I think this is going to be a colder winter...

Ventilation system installed

Now, hopefully our condensation issues will lessen.

Lost another

Ben just lost his 2nd top front tooth.

Back update

I haven't posted about my back for a while and a bit has happened so I thought I should give an update.  Unfortunately I still can't post that it is totally back to normal (although the physio does assure me that this day will come).  My back has improved a lot and the physio thinks we have narrowed it down to just being a  sacro-illiac joint (SIJ) problem now (very severe ligament strain).  Unfortunately this joint isn't the easiest to treat and when she sent me for an x-ray they identified a minor spondylolisthesis of one my lumbar vertebra and exercises to treat the SIJ problem can aggravate the spondylolisthesis and visa versa.  So I have been doing a combination of exercises and treatment to deal with both of these, but in the past couple of weeks my recovery has plateaued (again!).  So they physio suggested we try acupuncture to try and relax the muscles and reduce any inflamation etc in my SIJ - my first treatment was last Wednesday and I'm having my 2nd today (the physio says that it can take up to 3 treatments before an effect is seen).

Personal Best

We trapped 2 mice in 2 minutes only 20 minutes after setting the traps!

We are hoping this means that we have killed all the mice in the house and not that there is a large family currently inhabiting the house (there is no evidence to suggest there is more - we hadn't actually noticed any mice activity until tonight and I've been on the lookout with the cold weather we have been having).

BBQ time

It was a sunny afternoon, so I decided to throw the sausages on the barbecue instead of in the frying pan. 8C was warm enough!

Like Father like Son

Peter and Ben having fun making electrical circuits at Ben's energy elective class sharing afternoon.

Ben really enjoyed this elective learning about different types of energy (renewable and non-renewable), static electricity, basic circuit diagrams and building circuits. Peter has enjoyed playing around with some basic circuits with the bits and pieces he has at home.