The Marching on of Time.... Again

 

Well, January is already more than half way through. And what a wet January it has been so far! I feel for anyone affected by the flooding :( We had severe flooding here in Gloucestershire in 2007 - for more details click this link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/gloucestershire/floods/
Our house wasn't touched by water in any way (other than our back garden and patio being very, very soggy) so we were lucky there. We didn't have electricity for just over 24 hours - but the worst bit was no running water at all for 16 days. It was the very start of the Summer school holidays - we wore clothes for days and days and went to relatives and friends further afield in the county for a bath/ shower every few days (making do with strip washes and baby wipes in between) and to do a load of two of washing. We flushed the toilets with rain water, scummy washing up water, cooking water..... it wasn't much fun after the first few days. However, there was a great sense of community and people were looking out for one another, which was lovely.

Back to the here and now - Mr G is still job hunting - he had an interview yesterday, so fingers crossed for that one! We had large food supplies in the garage before this (tins, rice, pasta) - they have come in handy and are now much reduced. We aren't yet watching every penny totally - we did indulge in a £10 takeaway this week - it was the end of a long, tiring week. I did choose what we had with regards to cost, though - so was mindful. It was much appreciated - all the more so for being a very occasional thing now. I have a budget for food, toiletries, cleaning things, newpapers (an occasional Sunday Observer) and guinea pig food/ bedding of £300 for January (2 adults, 2 teenagers, 2 primary school children & 2 guinea pigs) - it's going to be tight, but I'm doing my best to achieve it! The takeaway will come out of that budget, too (eek!)

Am having a pottering about sort of Saturday today. The small two had swimming lessons this morning, but after that it's been 'a bit here and a bit there' sort of day. I've made robot suits with the small two from two large-enough-for-them-to-wear cardboard boxes, toilet roll tubes, bits of scrap/ recycled ribbon, a lot of sticky tape and colouring in with felt tips - they've had a great time! Other than that, I've done the usual washing, kitchen cleaning, tidying, vacuuming - but it's felt quite indulgent because I haven't felt rushed to HAVE to do something/ be somewhere. I have a small grocery shopping list of about 6/7 items, which I will do tomorrow. I *do* need to go into town to do some banking for various things, but that can wait until Monday or Tuesday, depending upon the weather. 

I've been in the kitchen a lot this week, making various things, including a spinach, mushroom and lentil dhal/ curry type thing, courgette and tomato soup, lentil and bacon soup, a lot of croutons from crusts to go with the soups, cornflake flapjack (using up the 'dust and tiny crunched bits at the bottom of the box), 3 root mash (parsnips, carrot and potatoes) to go with leftover slow braised lamb shanks from a couple of weeks ago and Paul Hollywood's lemon drizzle (see this link on another blog - http://whatwouldnigellado.com/lemon-drizzle-cake/) I made it as both a loaf version and as 12 cupcake/ small muffin sized ones. The loaf version was nicer, in my opinion. I chose his recipe rather than my usual one because a- I thought I should try a recipe from his book which I had for Christmas and b - I wanted to use lemon curd up and my usual recipe doesn't use lemon curd (I could have added it, I know) Paul's version isn't lemon-y enough for my taste. Next time I would replace one third to half of the milk with lemon juice and also add zest to the batter. And double the amount of curd! I rarely keep a recipe 'as is', preferring to play and make my own changes to suit my taste and storecupboard.

I shall try adding some pictures later!



lentil & bacon soup


tomato & courgette soup

garlic and  basil croutons



cornflake & sunflower seed flapjacks

lemon drizzles

Monday Musings

Ooh - another few days since my last post.

Thursday 2nd June we awoke to what promised to be a beautiful day, so I decided to take the children to  Slimbridge WWT for the Downy Ducklings event. A quick trip to the local supermarket for bread and a flurry of packed lunch making ensued and we set off.

Slimbridge is great - it's only about 20- 30 minutes from us (at the most) and we have family membership, meaning that, as long as we visit at least 4 times per year we get our money's worth. We went to the first play area (after buying a bag of seed for £1 to feed the ducks, geese and swans and booking a place on a Downy Ducklings Tour) - Welly Boot Land. Aimed generally at the smaller children, it has running water (shallow) in it and soft cushioned play surfaces, slides, a climbing frame and things to do in the water. DS3 (2) loved it and made myself, DD (13) or DS1 (11) walk around and around with him. DS1 also took him on the roundabout - which he thought was absolutely fantastic. DS2 (5) had a good time playing, climbing etc too. We had our lunch in the play area and also some ice creams - it was a super hot day and we caught the sun, even with factor30 suncream on (DS3 had a sunsuit on too, and they all had hats and sunglasses on) After almost 3 hours in the play area we had a walk around and fed some of the birds, before heading back to the main building where we grabbed some refreshing cool drinks (having drank all of ours) and a chocolate muffin each (left over from lunch) before having a tour of the duckery.

The Downy Ducklings event runs during the May school half term every day and also for a few weekends after that week. You have a talk about nesting, egg collection etc and get to see them 'candle' fertilised eggs at different stages. If you're really lucky you can hear a chick attempting to break out of the egg. You also get to see newly hatched ducklings and goslings and also slightly older ones.

We have done the tour for several years now. It's not as 'good' as it was a few years ago - bio health & safety rules mean you see less and can touch less - but the newly hatched ducklings are so sweet!

We came home after our tour, tired but having had a good day out.


Friday was a bit of a catch upday with housework. I had intended to do some gardening, but spent the day doing chores in the main except for a couple of hours in the afternoon tidying up in the back garden

Saturday - DD was meeting friends in Cheltenham for shopping and I had a couple of things to do, so we took her and went for a wander around ourselves. I returned some things to M&S and we bought DS1 several pairs of sports trousers, a new wet coat and some waterproof trousers. DS2 also found himself a tshirt in the sale that he really liked, and Mr G had a new polo shirt bought him. DS1 also bought himself a second hand Nintendo DS game and some Pokemon cards with his birthday money.

When we came home we spent some more time in the back garden - it's looking so much better!


Sunday - a day of making sure the children had done all their homework, school uniforms were ready and similar things. It rained incessantly from 4am until late evening, so no more work was done in the garden and the poor guinea pigs stayed in their hutch in the garage. It was also Mr G's best friend's birthday, so we spent a couple of hours with him.


This morning is, if not warm, at least dry! I have two loads of washing on the line and another in the machine almost finished to go out. I'm hopeful it will dry! I've also made a quadruple batch of the cornflake flapjacks. 2/3rds areasper the recipe (sort of, I'm a 'throw-it-in' sort of cook, so there's less sugar, more syrup (to finsh the jar), and more oats) The final 1/3 have chopped nuts (needed using up) and chopped glace cherries in. The oven is just beeping to say they are cooked - yummy!

Wow - time flies by!

Well, I haven't posted in over a week - have been really busy, so I'll try and do a quick catch up now.

Thursday 5th May - DS1 & DS2 home from school as their school is used as a polling station (grrr!) We have postal votes and they went back mid April, so that was ok. Spent the day trying to get things done and made harduphester's banana loaf - I've lost the link but shall try and find it and post it another time. I had made it just for us to use up frozen over ripe bananas (my freezer is over full) but then remembered that DS1 needed to take a cake to Scout camp with him, so assigned it to that instead!

Friday 6th - my dad's funeral. Gorgeously sunny day. My dad died in March, but due to several factors we were unable to have the funeral until now. Beautiful service, which we held topsy-turvily - we did the committal at the crematorium first and then went to the church for a remeberance/ celebration of life. Although the service was held by a Baptist minister (my uncle) it wasn't religious in the main - one hymn and just a couple of readings - as my dad wasn't exactly a religious man. Was lovely and very, very moving. My dad wasn't an easy man - full of his own demons, which made life around him difficult. However, without him I would not be here (and therefore neither would my children)

There was a small wake at the church afterwards, which was nice and an opportunity to talk to people. Someone played a guitar and danced, which was also nice to see. After we left the church hall, myself, my husband, my sister & her partner all retired to the nearest pub for a swift drink and then went to a cafe to catch up with the rest of the family, where we stayed all afternoon in the sun. We only left when we had to go in order to take DS1 to scout camp (none of our children attended the service - they didn't relly know him - as I said, he was full of his own demons and it made life hard :(  )

Saturday 6th - Mr G & I went out for a lovely meal with my sister & her partner. She's younger than me and we don't have the same mum. I've always known about her, but our lives were such that we've never had real contact until now. We made facebook contact a few years ago, but both of us were too nervous to take it further - we had no time for nerves to kick in after we were thrown together after our dad's death! We seem to get on well, though - which is fantastic!

We got in at just before midnight - to the news that DS1 was ill and being brought home from camp :( Thankfully he'd only been vomiting - something he sometimes does with a combination of too much food/ running around and sun, so he was fine again in the morning.

Last week DS1 had his Y6 SATs at school. Thankfully he seems to be fairly chilled out about them.

I made these: http://onelifeand3kids.blogspot.com/2011/05/bero-cornflake-flapjacks.html - flapjacks with cornflakes in from another blog - very yummy!!

DD had fixed braces fitted to her teeth on Wednesday. She previously had some removeables. Her teeth aren't quite bad enough for NHS braces - but are bad enough that braces are recommended (?? - go figure!), so the treatment has cost us £1700! EEK! She is in a bit of pain, but has been very stoical and has eaten lots of soup and ice cream!