Chocolate Mug Cake & Physiotherapy

Over the last few days I have been helping our good friends with their beautiful foal who was born with severely contracted tendons. She had a three day course of oxytetracyline not long after she was born but the tendons just did not relax enough and she has developed a leg deviation from compensating for her handicap when feeding. Last week she was given another three day course of oxytet and put on a strict two hourly 24/7 physio & hand walking regime. I have been helping with the over-night sessions and consequently have slept no more than an hour and a half in one go since that time and walked quite a few km so forgive me if I seem a little foggy, haha!

The good news is that the vet gave her her last shot yesterday (today is D-day) and has said that the improvement is good enough to keep going with her - YAY!

On the first night Karen made me Chocolate Mug Cake to help keep me going overnight and I was so impressed with the ease of the recipe and process, I thought I would share it here. It's clearly not an every-day food but most people would have the necessary ingredients in the cupboard and it could be a lifesaver in times of 'chocolate emergency'. Anyway, here it is for the chocoholics amongst us. PS I use a high quality cocoa powder that I get from Moore Wilsons, dark chocolate drops/buttons, fresh goat's milk and free range eggs, which all help give the cake a fabulous richness.

You’ll need....
4 Tablespoons cake flour
4 Tablespoons sugar
2 Tablespoons cocoa
1 Egg
3 Tablespoons milk
3 Tablespoons oil
3 Tablespoons chocolate drops (optional)
1 Mug

here’s what you do....

Add dry ingredients to the mug, and mix well.

Crack an egg and add it to your mug. Be sure to mix it well to avoid any pockets of flour in the corners.

Pour in the milk and oil and mix well.

Add the chocolate drops if you’ve got them, and a splash of vanilla essence too.

Pop your mug into the microwave & zap for 3 minutes on maximum power (1000watt).

Wait until the cake stops rising, and sets in the mug.

If necessary, run a knife around the sides of the mug, and tip the still warm cake out of the mug and onto a saucer.

Sit back and enjoy with a coffee - you deserve it!

Not so much else horsey to report. Grace heads home today and we have a new grazer arriving tomorrow (I think). Maude is due back in season soon so am watching her like a hawk and Bella will be scanned next week. The mare with Hamish continues to be difficult and he has a lovely little pony mare coming next week. His first pony, a dear little grey Arab/Welshie - very exciting! Aine's new owner will be here to see her again today and has paid the deposit so I can pass that on to the vet next week and chip away at some more of our current bill. That's about it really.

Friendship

'Build a bridge and then get over it.' I like this saying because I just don't see the point in bearing grudges and dragging up old things that should be long dead and buried - it's kinda like picking the scabs off old sores, you make them bleed again when they have nearly healed and all you end up doing is creating a scar. Surely it would be better to put a plaster on your sore and then, once it has healed, just remove it? Lets face it, playing with friends is so much more fun than sparring with enemies.

If people do wrong by me or my friends, I just distance myself from them as I find that it's much easier to do this than create a negative focus and dwell on it. Life is much nicer when you surround yourself with positives and push the negatives away. So, I just don't understand people who can't let go and who insist on letting things fester and eat away at them - It must make life really quite unpleasant to be so focussed on negative emotions? I genuinely feel sorry for those who carry the heavy weight of bitterness on their shoulders and the chains of paranoia around their hearts. It cannot really make for a very cheery existence and God only knows there are enough hurdles in life to face without wasting energy on suspicion, rumour and innuendo.

It also bugs me how easily people think the worst of others. What is with that? And how can a person make a decision on someone else based solely on on what they THINK that person may or may not have said about them according to a third party or parties? Surely it is better to go to the source and listen to what they have to say and then decide? Everyone has agendas it seems and some people will stop at nothing to advance their own agendas. That is just sad.

Seemingly random as this may seem for a blog entry, I have just read something somewhere that has reminded me again of some people's inability to let go, which has sparked this post and I thought I would write it in the hope that anyone reading it who is currently bearing a grudge thinks about how this negativity is affecting their everyday life and the way that they treat people or the way that they are perceived by others. In my experience bitter and suspicious people don't make very good friends, which is often a real shame as they inevitably are good people who have allowed bad things in their lives to affect them too deeply.

We recently had the heart-breaking experience of losing two precious and much loved horses and it would be very easy to focus on the fact that we lost these two wonderful animals that we held so dear in our hearts under awful circumstances, unfairly and, for no good reason but, instead, we have focussed on the amazing experience sharing our lives with these animals was. We have focussed on the incredible love and support we have experienced through the dozens of people who helped us both financially and emotionally through this time. We have focussed on the gifts of love and friendship that were heaped upon us after we lost Debi, whilst we cared for Silas and then, after we lost Silas. The last two months have taught us that we are surrounded in this life by good, kind and incredibly generous people. We are indeed, truly blessed.

Friendship

"Remember, the greatest gift is not found in a store nor under a tree, but in the hearts of true friends." -- Cindy Lew

Who finds a faithful friend, finds a treasure. -- Jewish Saying

"The only way to have a friend is to be one." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"A faithful friend is the medicine of life." -- Apocrypha

One who looks for a friend without faults will have none. -- Hasidic Saying

Friendship doubles our joy and divides our grief.-- Swedish proverb

"Life is partly what we make it, and partly what it is made by the friends whom we choose." -- Tehyi Hsieh

Life is to be fortified by many friendships. To love and to be loved is the greatest happiness of existence." --Sydney Smith

"One of the surest evidences of friendship that one individual can display to another is telling him gently of a fault. If any other can excel it, it is listening to such a disclosure with gratitude, and amending the error."-- Edward Bulwer-Lytton

Cute Friendship Quotes :

Love starts with a smile, grows with a kiss, and ends with a tear.
Don't cry over anyone who won't cry over you.
Good friends are hard to find, harder to leave, and impossible to forget.
You can only go as far as you push.
Actions speak louder than words.
The hardest thing to do is watch the one you love, love somebody else.
Don't let the past hold you back; you're missing the good stuff.
Life's short. If you don't look around once in a while, you might miss it.
A best friend is like a four leaf clover: hard to find and lucky to have.
If you think that the world means nothing, think again. You might mean the world to someone else.
When it hurts to look back, and you're scared to look ahead, you can look beside you and your best friend will be there
True friendship never ends.
Friends are forever.
Good friends are like stars....You don't always see them, but you know they are always there.
Don't frown. You never know who is falling in love with your smile.
What do you do when the only person who can make you stop crying is the person who made you cry?
NOBODY IS PERFECT UNTIL YOU FALL IN LOVE WITH THEM. (Isn't that the truth?)
Everything is okay in the end. If it's not okay, then it's not the end.
Most people walk in and out of you life. But only friends leave footprints in your heart.

Weeding

Today I hit the garden with a vengeance - phew! Still have some weeding to do and some more planting but got some herbs and 33 (yes, thirty three - yegads!) lettuces in. It's surprisingly satisfying getting stuck in and getting dirty, especially when performing a weed massacre!!!





I think it is coming on well but I suspect the whole gardening thing means I am now officially a grown up?

So fast it made my head spin

So on Friday I put Aine's official 'for sale' notice up on the blog and today I sold her. I kinda always knew she was going to be easy to sell but it still shocked me how quickly and easily it happened. She's going to a super home and I feel sure she is going to be her new owner's horse of a lifetime so I look forward to watching them together.

Now we just have to get her to weaning and register her with the NZ Irish Horse Soc. and get her branded. She'll be insured by her new owner, through Quadrant and we will continue with her early education until she leaves us sometime early next year. She's such a super filly, I'll really miss her but I am excited that Maude's owner has decided to use Maude to repeat the breeding for herself. All that begins next week!

Had an excited call from Aimee who has my lovely Lagan on lease to tell me she had made it into her PC Eques team and will be down at champs early in the New Year - Will be great to see them both in action and I will be sure and take my camera. They've had three ODE starts now for three top 5 placings as well as having qualified for HOTY in dressage. She's having a ball with him and I am sure he is having a ball with her too. Such a fabulous horse - Irish of course!