It was my dad's 65th birthday (his actual birthday was the 3rd but what with all the well everything that we've been doing - we decided to post pone it!). My dad is a massive fan of the Discworld series by Terry Pratchette - I introduced him to them when I were back at university.
SO I themed his birthday. We had:
The luggage and Friends:
Wizard Hats and white chocolate stars:
I made one or two of them 🙂 If my Bro and his wife could have made it I was going to do chaos butterflies and Death cupcakes but as it is I already made far too much!
And of course we had the main cake - the Great Star Turtle A'Tuin rinding through space with the world on his back, held up by four elephants - who admittedly look like some sort of elephant/mouse cross bred.
Dad seemed very please even if we did have a clash of the culinary cultures over his macaroni cheese and fried onions (Alaric put them in the actual macaroni cheese which was great but as we had never had that before and the only thing like it had been a horrible celery in the macaroni cheese - we initially all reacted with horror which we tried to cover up as he had been cooking for ages making all the sauce and everything - poor Alaric). We had pear cider and opened the Cider Brandy Alaric's Step brother Simon got us.
Dad's reaction to the cake was great - he says he loves the elephants and the fact I put the mountains in too 🙂 The Luggages didn't not come out as well as I wanted but Jean who had been watching The Colour of Magic and The Hogfather with Ferfer came into the kitchen and exclaimed 'Mummy you've made Luggages!'
I think the box set of Discworld films was greatly appreciated by Dad as well 🙂
Alan Turing one of the most important people in the history of the computer would have turned 100 today if he had lived. Though the chances of living to 100 are not great Turing didn't even manage to get as far as he should have.
It is occasionally argued about but it is considered that he committed suicide due to being hounded by the powers that be and given chemicals to subdue his sex drive. The reason for this was that he was Gay and in 40's and 50's being homosexual was not just illegal but thought to be a security risk.
Alan was faced with the choices of chemical castration or prison and exclusion from his work. He chose the chemicals. They had nasty side effects but he seems to have taken his treatment mainly in his stride.
Mr Turing wasn't just a mathematical genius he was a war hero having worked at Bletchley Park during the second world war cracking codes and thus saving at least allied lives. He is most often mentioned in association with the enigma machine.
His contributions to modern computing are huge and he is considered one of the founders of the subject Computer Science.
His achievements are great and yet the first time I heard of him was when I picked up one of Alaric's computing books after our move to Gloucestershire. It is strange that like Ada Lovelace he seems to have fallen through the cracks some what. And worse than that his centenary year is plagued by arguments of how to portray him.
Is it good or bad for those on the autism spectrum to know of him and so on. If he had been alive to day he would have probably been diagnosed with Aspergers syndrom but why is this a problem? Yes that was a facet of his personality but that is all. Use him to show others in the same situation as him that they can achieve by all means but that is not what is happening - I think there needs to be a gear shift in society. After all with the modern world lets face it the Geek shall inherit and that is all geeks, the meek, mild, argumentative, know it alls and the distracteds.
His achievements are his and he should be being portrayed as a founder and hero to everyone and I mean everyone. I will twist Alaric's arm into writing a blog post about Alan's achievements.
We made a Turing Machine Cake and drew the shamefully bad picture at the top of the post.
It is Mid Summers Night and it is tipping it down. The rain seems to last forever even though yesterday was lovely. Now I find it really difficult to have energy if the sun is not shining so I decided to make a sun picture to share with everybody and amazingly the baby let me! Though she her self did end up covered in pen and we had a slight altercation over running off with all of mummy's pens.
Thursdays is Alaric's day in Bristol so me and the girls tend to bake stuff and watch films. Today we did bagel burgers and solar cakes complete with sun spots 🙂
Recipes will be on Salaric Cooking soon 🙂
As of yesterday our garden broke even on the amount of money spent on plants, soil and pots, ok so it is a slight cheat as we bought alot of stuff with us and have been given a lot of things and that does not include Mary's apple tree but still I am very happy with this. Especially as everything is in pots and containers!
Above are some of our crops 🙂 At the weekend I bought a lovely rosemary plant for 50 p too 🙂
I love my salad! Recipe is on Salaric Cooking.
So Jean wanted to celebrate the Queen's Day so we have been 🙂 We have been to lots of fantastic events and I've even done a poetry reading at the Stroud Water Festival which was lovely. But before I write all that lot up here are the cakes Jean baked and I decorated 🙂
This was my first attempt at these sort of cupcakes 🙂 Technique learnt from The Baking Bird and Lakeland Youtube videos. It was also my first attempt at using cooky cutters for making the decorations something inspired by my friends at Centre Arts in Cheltenham. The big cake is a rich fruit cake with brandy soaked fruit.
As an aside The Baking Bird is doing deliveries throughout the UK and she is giving a chunk of her profits in June to Shelter Box. If they do a big bake again next year I may take part 🙂
Write up on cake making will appear on Salaric Cooking shortly. Also just click the photos if you want to see a bigger image 🙂
Domestic, Events and Outings, Recipies, Relatives, The Family | sarah | 
Mon 16th Jul 2012 9:55 am | 
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