The gummy fail

I stumbled across a recipe for homemade gummy bears and I if I were to say that this didn’t tickle my pickle I would lying (eww guys that’s gross). The recipe that I (tried) to follow can be seen here: http://undressedskeleton.tumblr.com/post/42764785751

I tried to follow the recipe but I had no lime juice or orange juice or mangosteen juice or stevia on the raw or even most of the fruits that were used. So I improvised….recipes are for wimps anyway. Famous last words

Hence the use of guava juice, apricots and even a little bit of grenadine and the new flavours of gummy bears were born: Apricot, Orange and Banana and Very Berry. 

Another a really large, gaping problem was that I did not have a bear moulds,  a bear shaped cutter  or even any cutter small enough so even this had to be improvised upon. I did however have a selection of farmyard animal moulds so the ‘bears’ now turned into gummy animals of some description (and hearts). 

Although the gummy things will turn out rather larger than what I been hoping for, they are going to be more like jelly babies than gummy bears. Oh well, In the words of Beyonce: ‘ I don’t think you’re ready for this jelly. 

Alas what I had been hoping for did not happen as when I put the  gummy in the moulds it did not come out.

When heavily greased the shapes did come out but.... this one was supposed to be a duck

Basically the only thing I have been able to achieve this morning is a big ball of goo. It's like Flubber except for the fact that it doesn't bounce or dance or even play the maracas 

After a lot of patience and a whole lot more trial and error I was finally able to create at least some gummy things out of the apricot, orange and banana batch (although I realised soon after it had set that this flavour was not all that pleasant)

It did however require me to grease each little mould before using it every single time. I also learnt that moulds with anything fiddly were a no no so little lambs, bunnies, chicks and anything else vaguely Easter related were out of the question. Gummy blobs are therefore the dish of the day.

The very berry gummy/jelly has still not set (4 hours later) this is probably due to the fact that this batch has a lot more liquid in the mixture than the last one, although I did boil this batch for longer. So I will just have to sit tight and wait to be able to fail all over again. In the meantime I'm making raspberry shortbread.

The wheels on the bus

Let me share with you a pearl of wisdom that I have observed from my years of riding one the bus. Although I should add that I only get the bus to get me to and from destinations not like that really cool girl that a friend of friend of a friend once knew who had an obsession with bus drivers and would ride around on buses all day.

Although I have spent a good proportion of my life stood around waiting for buses, a fact that wasn’t so bad when I was at university and could dance around at the stop while I waited, although that would probably work better now that I live miles away from the bus stop because people have no idea where I live whereas then they did…And then there was that other fun time where a drunk person tried to follow me home one night (fear not I got off a stop early and dawdled all the way home making sure that the bus, and the drunk guy, were well out of sight before I let myself into the house.

My chemistry teacher once told me that people are like electrons. Or maybe it was that electrons are like people, I’m not too sure. Anyway people on buses will occupy the rows of seats singly wherever possible and then double up only when necessary. When the bus gets really full and the young bright things are expected to give up their seats I often find that the inner Rosa Parks will come out in people with them exuding a manner of ‘I will not be moved.’

In the same vein if the bus is really busy and people have to stand they are very reluctant to move. You can literally hear them saying ‘This is my spot.’ Not that you will hear them talking of course, people do not talk to each other on buses.  This leads more often than not with a populace of people at the front with little to no room for people to get on let alone get off and the bus being sparsely populated at the back. 

It doesn’t make a jot of difference how many times you have been in this situation things will never change, people are creatures of habit and even if you tell them to ‘move down the bus’ chances are that they will go straight back to their old habits the next time or more probably just nervously shuffle about when asked and not actually move anywhere. 

One thing that I can say for buses (or the peasant wagon as they are often called) is that they do not do much to restore my dwindling faith in humanity. With shootings, sex scandals, murders and government failings on the rise it's not hard to see why my belief is on a downward spiral. Of course there are the rare cases in which I think that there might be some hope for us like the time when somebody gave up their seat for an older passenger (the fact that it was me is beside the point) but that's the point, they are only rare.