*three things that make me smile: an exercise in gratitude – feel free to steal this idea with wild abandon and fill your blog [or Twitter account or Facebook page or diary or life in general] with the happy*
Emily of Nerd in the Brain originally created Three Things Thursday, but it’s now being hosted by Natalie of There She Goes. Anyway, here are my three things this week…
First, The Sisterhood of the Travelling Sketchbook. It has been a great honour to make a contribution to this wonderful project, but today I am bidding farewell to the sketchbook and sending it on its way to The Crafty Creek. If you want to read more about it, check out its very own web site here.
Second, four eggs in one day. We have four hens – Anna, Tiffany, Mags and Alice. The latter three are regular layers, but Anna (short for Annagramma – the awkward one for those of you in the know) has not laid for eighteen months. Recently, however, there was evidence that she was going to start again. Over the past few weeks, there have been two or three eggs that might have been from her, but we have never been certain… until yesterday, when four eggs were laid. Hens only lay once each day, so four eggs means one from each hen and that means that Anna is doing her thing again. Hurrah!
Third, fool-proof recipes. Some friends came for lunch on Monday and I decided to try a new recipe – peaches and cream cupcakes. What a disaster – never test out new recipes when you are cooking for guests. Fortunately there was still time before they arrived to make something else, so I fell back on an old favourite, based on the recipe below (much covered in ingredients), which comes from a little book called Country Inns in the White Mountains: Favorite Recipes:
I generally make this with raspberries and white chocolate chips rather than strawberries, but you can use any fruit you fancy. The other good thing about this recipe is that you can use an off-the-shelf gluten-free flour if you need to and it still works well. When I have whey from cheese making, I use that rather than milk and the recipe still works… honestly it’s one of the most reliable recipes that I have and the muffins are always delicious. To give you an idea of how good it is, my guests all wanted this recipe to take away and use at home (and one of them runs her own B&B).
So, those are three things making me smile and that I am grateful for this week. What is making you happy?
The Snail of Happiness 
Andrew
/ May 18, 2017I absolutely love fresh eggs, but we have to buy them from a local friend that runs a farm. The township we’re in frown upon livestock, so my wife’s dream of owning chickens has to wait several more years. We’re allowed to grow plants though and we’ve got blossoms on our tomato plant and the chocolate mint is growing like a weed. Still waiting on our experimental strawberries, i’m skeptical we’ll get anything this year.
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The Snail of Happiness
/ May 18, 2017Fortunately in the UK, keeping chickens is not a problem in most places. We’ve had hens for about 7 years now and they have contributed to many, many delicious cakes and savoury dishes.
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katechiconi
/ May 18, 2017Hurrah for Anna! Perhaps she just needed a holiday… a very extensive one! The recipe looks lovely but is too small to read, and the image doesn’t allow you to click on it to enlarge. Could you fix that so I can go back and take a look? Three things: fresh fruit buns, finishing quilting something that’s been dragging on for weeks, and a stack of new books from the library to enjoy while it’s raining again/still/even more!
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The Snail of Happiness
/ May 19, 2017You should be able to click on the file now for a bigger version. Goodness’ I dislike the new post editor in WordPress – I can’t find anywhere in it to link pictures to the media file, which means using the old editor from the dashboard, which doesn’t easily do other things that I want to do…. grumble.
Anyway, hope you like the recipe and that your books are good.
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katechiconi
/ May 19, 2017I don’t use the new post editor at all, as it doesn’t do things I want (like specifying an image to link to the media file!). I don’t know why they changed the default from link to none, but there you go… Thanks for the recipe, which makes LOADS; I’ll have to scale that down a lot!
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Natalie
/ May 18, 2017I love muffins, I’ve not baked some in a while so I will have to try your recipe! Thank you for sharing 🙂
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The Snail of Happiness
/ May 19, 2017Hope you enjoy them – we always do!
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arlingwoman
/ May 19, 2017Your cover for the traveling sketchbook is beautiful. And I was just thinking I needed a recipe for strawberry muffins. Lovely–and in cups and teaspoons as well, though I’m in a house with a scale at the moment and could do all the weights!
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The Snail of Happiness
/ May 19, 2017Hope you like the muffins – the White Mountains in the title of the little book are the ones in New Hampshire, hence the cup measures.
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arlingwoman
/ May 19, 2017I’ll probably try it this weekend. It looks delicious.
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arlingwoman
/ May 21, 2017Mmmm. Made these today with some substitutions. Lovely old recipe. Yum!
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The Snail of Happiness
/ May 22, 2017Yay – so glad you liked it 🙂
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thehappychickfindingmyhappy
/ May 20, 2017Thanks for sharing. I love this idea and already use it myself. It beautiful to read about things that make other people happy.
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