Shed Message System

I’ve been shed working for a few months now and while being away from distractions is a big plus, sometimes you want a distraction. Especially when the distraction is a nice cup of tea!

The first Shed Message System was an old wireless doorbell, which worked but could be somewhat of a surprise on conference calls, so after “accidentally” buying too many Local Bytes smart plugs I upgraded the Shed Message System with an old LED light box. No more loud ringing!

Obviously the only message was “Tea!” which was good, but what if there was cake instead? I wouldn’t want to be ambushed! So a little bit of Home Assistant hacking later, and I now have a selection of messages using an input select helper.

Turning the smart plug (LED sign) on with the big tea button automatically sets the dropdown to “Tea!” (the original and still the best) and turning it off resets the dropdown. So now I just have to check Home Assistant when the sign lights up to get the message and, even more amazingly, someone in the house is daft/lovely enough to make tea and use the Shed Message System!

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Have you seen this cake?

After 10 days of stirring and feeding, here’s the finished German friendship cake:

Well, what’s left of it anyway; day 10 was Sunday! It didn’t turn out too bad at all, and is particularly tasty warmed up with cream.

Since there already seems to be an established German friendship cake outbreak in Hampshire, I took our three new starter portions further afield. Surprisingly I’ve had reports that one of them has travelled further still and is now on a caravan holiday in Sussex!! It hasn’t sent a postcard yet though.

New home

Not us; the German friendship cake!

It seems to be enjoying the new bowl and two days of stirring. Tomorrow it needs feeding!

German friendship cake-a-thon

Thanks to Jim, there’s a new cake in my kitchen, or there will be… eventually… it needs feeding first:

Luckily I still have some of Jo’s marble cake to keep me going for now!

Actual wedding anniversary

After a year of weekly Friday anniversaries and a six month hot chocolate anniversary, we’ve made it to our first real anniversary! After an inspired mini wedding cake from Jo I think the new symbol for first anniversaries should definitely be cake!

Big wedding cake:

Mini anniversary cake (genius!):

Very much looking forward to elevenses… and of course another year with Jo!

Welsh cakes

The lack of a recent blog post is because I spent a glorious week beyond the reach of the internet in a cottage in the Brecon Beacons. No broadband, no telephone, no wifi and no mobile phone signal! Bliss. Instead, we did have lots of sun, waterfalls, roman roads, reservoirs, mountains, mountain railways, coal mines, and castles. And a TV (freesat) so Jo could keep up with the world cup!

The lack of rain was a bit of a surprise, which meant we ended up in the pitch black down a coal mine on the hottest day of the week. I think the guide thought we were mad but, having been waiting for a rainy day to visit the Big Pit, it was the last day of our holiday. It was well worth a visit anyway; probably my favourite part of the week, despite banging my head repeatedly. Fortunately they supply hard hats!

We also had tea.

The Old Barn Tea Room

Not much about this place on the internet, which isn’t surprising given it was right next to our cottage! I thought we might visit more often but we actually only went once in the end; it didn’t open until 11am and Jo did a great job with the self catering. The walnut and cherry cake made a welcome arrival snack before we settled in to the cottage though. Should have got a slice or two to go before coming home!

The Mountain Centre

The best thing about a cream tea here is the view. Certainly the best view from any of the tearooms we’ve visited so far; the photos on their web site don’t do it justice. You can take your own food for a picnic, which would have been nice if we’d have come prepared. No problem though, the cream tea did the job, with Jo describing the cream as, “Just like whipped clouds.” Plenty of whipped clouds as well, stretching the jam/cream ratio slightly with those tiny jars of jam. Certainly too much cream to entertain any daft ideas of putting the jam on top.

I also made an impulse purchase of a package of Welsh cakes before we left. Definitely need to find somewhere that sells those round here!

Tea pigs and traditional English ale

It’s about time I continued the series of tearoom related posts with a long overdue review of Ginger Two. In other drink related news, the Southampton beer festival has been running the last few days, so there’s a slight change to the previous two tearoom format. Unfortunately my acronym based link between the two is more tenuous than it might have been since the Hogs Back Brewery’s Traditional English Ale wasn’t even at the festival. Oh well.

Ginger Two, Winchester

Ginger Two is tucked just out of the way off the High Street. Winchester has much more choice for tea and coffee these days but this is definitely my favourite. We’ve been here before and they seem to have increased the amount of space they have since our last visit, so I guess they must be fairly popular.

We ordered cream teas this time; unfortunately they didn’t arrive, so we weren’t able to assess the jam to cream ratio. Apparently they noticed that the scones weren’t fresh enough. I’m impressed they care that much about the quality of the food they serve. (I wonder what they would make of Gavin’s misguided views on how to apply the jam and cream!)

Plan B was cheese scones with chutney, which I’d order again just for the smell! I’m a big fan of cheese and chutney so everything worked out nicely there.

I haven’t been anywhere else where the tea comes in temples but they do make an excellent brew. We even indulged in some tea pigs of our own to keep us going until our next visit, although you don’t get many in a box so I think we’ll be saving them for special occasions!

Southampton Beer Festival

I almost missed the beer festival this year but thanks to Twitter I managed to get hold of a ticket at the last minute. I had the usual dilemma of whether to try some of the local beers, or stick to beers from further afield which I’m less likely to see. I had a few from Hampshire last year so decided to do the opposite this year. Having flicked through the list of Hampshire beers after the event, it appears that I might have chosen unwisely! Apparently Botta’s Best is brewed just down the road in Botley- will have to try and find that somewhere before next year. Any ideas?

Of the tiny fraction of beers I managed to try, I think these two were my favourite:

• Heritage Ale (Three Castles, Wiltshire)
• Eddystone (South Hams, Devon)

And the wooden spoon goes to:

• Chimera IPA (Downton, Wiltshire)

Of course they were all a million times better than anything at my local!

The cake fairy

Reentry from honeymoon to real life was softened a bit by this…

…which was waiting for us when we got home this morning.  Looks like the cake fairy got in while we were away! And the milk fairy had restocked the fridge so we could start making up for missed tea without any shopping delays!

It’s been a fantastic September so far, but it’s not over yet. The rest of the month I will mostly be:

• Married!
• Unpacking
• Going back to work tomorrow- urg!
• Catching up (what’s been happing the last few weeks? Anything interesting?)
• Writing lots of thank you letters
• Looking at wedding photos
• Looking at honeymoon photos
• Finding out why @jthouse is frozen
• Working on my second CurrentCost development board circuit (this time sensing pipe temperature- any clues?!) inspired by the homecamp blog
• Taking things apart
• Going to another wedding!
• Other stuff I’ll find out about when I risk looking at my inbox in the morning

But first, of course, I’ll be eating cake! (And sleeping!)

More tea?

We spent a very nice long weekend loafing around drinking tea, mostly at home to avoid any lovely bank holiday traffic. We did end up getting out to two local tearooms over the weekend as well; once before getting lost in the Meon Valley and the second time to catch up with friends from the other side of Hedge End.

Lilly’s Tea And Coffee House, Wickham

This was the first time we’ve been here since it became Lilly’s Tea and Coffee House, and it’s much better than before the make over. It seems quite spacious inside and there was a very tempting selection of cakes, but we both went for a cream tea. My only complaint with the food was the jam, cream, scone ratio: tiny jar-plenty-1! There just wasn’t enough scone to hold all the cream! Nice scone though, and larger than average, but just the one.

There were also a surprising number of staff, most of them looking slightly frazzled though. Despite being a good half an hour before closing time, we had the nagging feeling of not being made particularly welcome. They were all very efficient but Jo thinks they may not have heard of service with a smile.

The Anvil Tearooms, Bishops Waltham

Second time at the Anvil and I was very much looking forward to another slice of Tunisian orange cake. There was a scary moment when it looked like someone was buying the last piece!!! Luckily there was another whole cake ready to go, and it was every bit as good as I remembered. Jo had another cream tea, just for the purpose of comparison of course. Much better jam, cream, scone ratio, with the ideal two scones and bowls of jam and cream. There was also butter here, which is nice.

As before, the service is more unique than the average tearoom, which I like. And the singing chef is still singing.

If you want a more modern cream tea, I’d recommend Lilly’s tearoom, but my favourite is still the Anvil.

Mmmm, cake

Thanks to Richard’s departure from computer related blogging, this chocolate cake emerged from the microwave after just 5 minutes!

It very nearly jumped out of the mug and escaped the microwave on its own while it was cooking. Might try a bigger mug next time; yes, there will most definitely be a next time!! (On the subject of mugs, Ian does get bonus points for his inspired choice!)