Medical, Necklace, Dr. Oz.

At long last I have heard from the vascular surgeon. I am going for a CT scan on Thursday at Guelph General and then seeing the surgeon a month later. Gawd knows when I will get any surgery done though.

I have been having some correspondence with the young man who made my birthday earrings which I wear all the. I asked him what else he had made and he sent me a picture of a necklace which I love, it is made of Smokey Quartz, Garnet and Citrine, it has a sterling silver box clasp with a citrine set in it.

If you enlarge this picture you will see it more clearly, a delightful piece. It has not been sold yet and I am saying he should try selling it on eBay – I am sure he would do well especially as he is only asking $250.00 for it. Maybe he could also get a contract with a jeweller to display and sell his pieces. My mother would have loved this piece.

Watching Dr. Oz again last night, he was talking with experts about the chicken we buy in supermarkets. It seems most of the chicken we get is loaded with anti-biotics which are given to the birds to increase their growth – the upshot of the segment was to buy organic chicken, properly labelled as such, as it has not been brought up on all kinds of chemicals. I must say it made me think twice about eating chicken at all.

I receive a BBC email each week and this dessert by Nigella Lawson looked good and chocolaty to me (is that a word?) plus being pretty simple to make. A lot of the recipes given by the newsletter are more advanced than I normally publish although they sound pretty good.

Rocky Road Crunch Bars

Source: Nigella Lawson

No one is ever going to complain about having one of these in their lunchbox, and they're pretty handy to have around in a kitchen for a quick, snatched burst of energy at any time.

Ingredients

125g/4½oz soft unsalted butter

300g/10½oz best-quality dark chocolate, broken into pieces

3 tbsp golden syrup

200g/7¼oz rich tea biscuits

100g/3½oz mini marshmallows

2 tsp icing sugar, to dust

Preparation method

1. Heat the butter, chocolate and golden syrup in a heavy-based saucepan over a gentle heat. Remove from the heat, scoop out about 125ml/4½fl oz of the melted mixture and set aside in a bowl.

2. Place the biscuits into a plastic freezer bag and crush them with a rolling pin until some have turned to crumbs but there are still pieces of biscuit remaining.

3. Fold the biscuit pieces and crumbs into the melted chocolate mixture in the saucepan, then add the marshmallows.

4. Tip the mixture into a 24cm/9in square baking tin and smooth the top with a wet spatula.

5. Pour over the reserved 125ml/4½fl oz of the melted chocolate mixture and smooth the top with a wet spatula.

6. Refrigerate for about two hours or overnight.

7. To serve, cut into 24 fingers and dust with icing sugar.

Have a great day