MacArthur's Mutterings

Me Baking…Yes

 Now anyone who knows me will also know that me and kitchens’ do not go well together, in fact I have card on my desk at work which says on it “I have a kitchen only because it came with the house”, how true that is. I have lived in one place for a good 6mths before I even turned on the oven, actually I didn’t turn it on a friend came round to cook me dinner and when she got the no light would come on when she turned any of those knobs on the thing. She opened the oven door and found all the “stuff” inside was still in it’s wrappings and it had not even been plugged in. We ended up getting take-out that night, something to do with the fact that you have ‘burn off’ something or other before you use it, whatever.

A good friend of mine also made me some portions of his famous spag bowl to keep in my freezer and gave me simple instructions on how to re-heat them, one night after work I decided I was going to cook (yes I do consider warming something up in a saucepan cooking), so came in put the saucepan on the hob and stuck the spag bowl in the pan, went off to get changed then went on the net to check some email and before long there was this god awful smell, one that might out last religion (as Kenny would say) and I went running to the kitchen, and there in the pas was the mess that was meant to be my dinner – the one key thing I had forgotten to do was take the spag bowl out of the plastic freezer bag that it was in!!!!!

So when I tell you that I made scones last night you should appreciate just what a feat this was for me, I did it all on my own, well I asked The All Knowing I a few questions, like just what exactly is a pastry brush and do we have one? Which of these symbols on the knob is the oven? (I would have guessed that one wrong), and finally do these look done to you? And what got me to be baking in the first place you may ask? Well I blame The Girls who bought me Jamie Oliver’s Ministry of Food http://www.jamieoliver.com/jme/books/info/ministry-of-food-signed-edition/100011.html

Now I am not a big fan of watching him on the TV, he annoys me a bit, but the book is fantastic, I read it thinking “I could do that” and indeed I could, making scones was a lot easier than I thought. And my team at work made lots of appreciative noises when they were eating them and I am happy to report that they are all still alive and well.

I wonder what I might cook next….

Take your contacts with you…

A handy tip for those that might be leaving their jobs (for what ever reason) and want to get all the details from their contacts directory in outlook:

You can export your contacts to excel .. its quite simple. Follow the below instructions and it should work like a treat :)

1.                       In Outlook, on the File menu, click Import and Export.

2.                       Click Export to a file, and then click Next.

3.                       Click Microsoft Excel, and then click Next.

4.                       In the folder list, click the Contacts folder, and then click Next.

5.                       Browse to the folder where you want to save the contacts as an Excel file (.xls).

6.                       Type a name for the exported file, and then click OK.

7.                       Click Next.

8.                       Click Finish.