Scholarships..Planning my Trip and Homework

Hello everyone! Just wanted to touch base with everyone and tell them that I hope you are having an AMAZING start to the week. My past week has been crazy!

I have been so busy with scholarships, trying to plan how much a month I need while I am gone, reading 5 chapters and doing two different types of math homework. Let me just say, I have forgotten how much it took to apply to a scholarship, from filling out 4+ pages to writing 2 different essays for one scholarship. It seems crazy that they would even have time to read so much, but none the less, I will write them all and make them wonderful because I need these scholarships!

Has anyone ever tried to plan your 10-11 month trip in advance? Let me just tell you, it is not easy! Trying to figure out their cost of groceries, thank goodness a supermarket chain over there has a website with current prices for everything I could ever need. Their cell phone plans, well let me just say their T-Mobile, is not at all like ours. They have way better plans, kinda cant wait to get my phone there since they are better! Bus, train and underground tickets, well those are pretty easy considering this is not my first trip over there, so I understand those. But let me just say, their prices are so much better then being here and paying so much for gas, I am excited to go back to an amazing transportation system.

Homework..oh homework. Most of you who follow the blog know that now both Cole and I are in school. Which means on weekends, we have double the homework time, which in turn means less time for him and I to spend together before I leave. This weekend was his first week back at school in a semester and let me say his has got to have the WORST college algebra teacher. The book she picked doesnt match her online math homework and test site chapters. Her lack of notes in class is crazy! All she does is takes the problems from the book, that the book works out then re does them on the board. I mean honestly, what kind of teaching is that? It took Cole, my sister, her boyfriend and I over 3 hours to complete 36 problems online. None of us remember doing those type of problems in our college algebra class. So I have now sent Cole to a tutor, he is past my help, I have no idea what his book was talking about! Now my own homework, well lets just say I hate to read and I consistantly have about 4-6 chapters a week to read. Plus I have a few hand written homeworks and a couple quizzes that I have to prep for.

This weekend, I was hoping Cole and I could have a night to relax and just go see a movie with a groupon that I have, but sadly that did not happen. I will be trying to make that plan happen again this week, but who knows if it will.

Below, I have put a recipe that I will be trying before I leave for my trip. It is a traditional grab on the go biscuit/croissant type item from Scotland.

Ingredients For Aberdeen Butteries:

250g butter
125g lard
1 tablespoon soft brown sugar
500g flour
2 teaspoons of dried yeast
450ml warm water
Pinch of salt

Baking Directions For Aberdeen Butteries:

1. Make a paste from the yeast, sugar and a wee bit of the warm water and set aside.


2. Mix the flour and the salt together. Once the yeast has bubbled up add this and mix well to a dough and leave to rise.

3. Cream the butter and lard and divide into three portions.

4. Once the dough has doubled in size give it a good knead then roll into a rectangle about 1cm thick.

5. Then spread one portion of the butter mixture over two thirds of the dough.

6. Fold the remining third of the dough over onto the butter mixture and fold the other bit over - giving three layers. Roll this back to the original size.

7. Allow to cool for 40 minutes.

8. Repeat stages 5-7 twice more.

9. Cut the dough into 16 pieces and shape each to a rough circle and place on baking trays.

10. Set aside to rise for about 45 minutes then bake at 200c for 15 minutes.





Other Butteries recipes can be found in the book A Cook's Tour of Scotland by Sue Lawrence and in The National Trust for Scotland book The Scottish Kitchen by Christopher Trotter.
 
I found the recipe here http://www.scottishrecipes.co.uk/butteries.htm. They have a ton of info on food in Scotland that i will be reading over before my trip.

Hope everyone has a great day. Its time for me to get ready for class!