Life just gets in the way...

I haven't blogged since March - March! How is that possible? This weekend it is July... Where did the time go??

OK, a quick catch up for anyone checking in with the blog.

New Year's Resolution - we are still going strong with the resolution and cooking from a recipe every week. We've missed only two weeks since the start of the year but sort of 'made up' for it by doing two recipes in other weeks. It's still a great idea and it has made us not only cook new things over and over but turn to our cookbooks and recipes for a little tip or trick when cooking something really basic or an old favourite. We've also cooked about half a dozen different types of pancakes! Our new exciting breakfast is pancakes at least once a week and we've tried crepes, drop scones, buttermilk pancakes, American style pancakes and more - it's a great way to do something different at the weekend...

Secret Post Club - my other favourite thing at the moment is Secret Post Club. Run by Heather from the Notes from Lapland blog it is a monthly gift swap for bloggers. I love it! Everyone month I get to have a think about what to send, make something new for someone, get creative, look out for some little bits and bobs to make up a great package to post and then just when I'm least thinking of it something arrives for me! I've always believed in the power of post, ever since I spent a summer working at a camp in America, I love sending postcards, letters and little gifts to friends and this just takes that to the next level, spreading the joy across the internet making something as anonymous as blogging into something as personal as the joy of giving...

So, it seems I need a new blogging strategy... hmmmm... Let's hope it doesn't take quite so long for me to blog again... :)

Week Four - Lemon Drizzle Cake

This recipe came from a yoghurt pot. I tend to keep recipes that I find on packets or in magazines and one of my major motivations for making this resolution in the first place was that I now have an A4 ring binder stuffed to the brim with bits and bobs that looked tasty but have never been cooked in my house.

I love baking and try to do it as much as possible. Before The Child came along there was usually a banana cake either in the tin or in the freezer as I made the best of browning bananas, but now he'll make short work of them before there is any danger of them getting to that stage!

Having had a mild obsession last year with lemon and poppy seed muffins I thought this was just the next natural progression and decided to make this recipe this week.

Another angle for the resolution is that The Boy works shifts so isn't with us every week. In his absence it falls to me to make sure that something is still cooked to a recipe each week to keep us on the straight and narrow with this year's task. I thought about cooking a main meal but the thought of making something, probably enough for four, and having to eat it every night while he was away was just depressing. Thinking about it again I decided that it would also be nice to have a treat while he's not around, something to keep me going, and offer to visitors, so baking seemed to fit the bill! So most weeks you see baking as our recipe will be the ones I'm home alone!

This cake was great, really easy to make. But I must make a confession, something that hasn't happened to me in many a long baking year - it didn't cook all the way through! I think I took my eye off the time just as it went in the oven and so just estimated how long I thought it had been in. When checking it I touched the centre gently and thought I felt the cake spring back under my finger, but once I had got it out and it started to cool it became clear that I'd got something wrong as it sank and was basically raw in the middle! Oops!

Not to be put off I just cut that bit out, drizzled the icing on the rest of it, and away we went. It was yummy! But another word of warning, it didn't keep very long at all. I think a combination of the middle having not cooked properly and the icing making the cake very lovely and gooey mean this is one that you just have to guzzle down the day of baking - what a chore!

Lemon Drizzle Cake

Week Three - Butterbean and Sprout Falafels

This week we had a new twist to the resolution. Surrounded by veggies that we about to expire we realised that if we went out and got new ingredients for a meal, which no doubt there would be leftovers from, then we were in danger of ending up with a whole rack of veggies straight in the compost. Not good.

So we used the BBC Food Recipe Finder and put in the ingredients that we had to see what would come up. All you do is put in the ingredient(s) that you have and away you go. Handily for us there is even a tick box for 'Vegetarian' so that all the results only come back with veggie options.

I put in brussel sprouts (always left over after Xmas, even though we totally love them) and pressed search. What would we find?

And there it was, the answer to our dilemma - Butterbean and Sprout Falafels. Even the fact that they had butterbeans in was a bonus as we had some in the freezer from an earlier experiment with The Child - the beans were rejected and have been frozen ever since waiting for me to try them with him again.

It is great to feel that the resolution is growing with us, that we can enjoy great new food but also use ingredients that we already have in the house, this week felt like a lazy one as there was no shopping to be done before we started - bonus!

BBC Food Website - the recipe finder is on the homepage.
Butterbean and Brussel Sprout Falafels - we made the fried sprouts and dip as well, yummy!

Week Two - Handmade Ravioli with Caponata

The Boy took control this week and chose to make ravioli from scratch (without the aid of a pasta machine!)

The basic recipe and method for making the pasta dough is really simple. Kneading it was a bit tough though and by the time we had left the dough to stand while we rolled the first lot out it became really hard to manipulate at all. So it is possible to make this without a pasta machine but to get it really fine/thin and not completely break your wrists I would advise rolling it all out very quickly once the dough has rested!

The Caponata was a simple recipe but tasted great. I was dubious that the aubergine would cook through as the actual cooking time seemed really quick but my fears were totally unfounded as it was tender and well cooked by the end. A nice quick recipe that would make a great filling for jacket potatoes or served as a tapas with other dishes.

Jamie's Basic Pasta Recipe
Jamie's Caponata Recipe

Week One - Korma

I've made New Year's Resolutions for many years. Nothing major and life changing. One year I vowed to be 'more high maintenance' in an attempt to be a bit more of a girl, put make up on every day, have regular haircuts, that kind of thing. Another year I decided not to put off things any more, mainly dull purchases of things that I needed but would rather not have to buy. Each one has worked out quite well, I wouldn't say I'm still a high-maintenance, well-groomed, perfectly-organised version of the person I once was, but I think it all rubs off on you a bit over the years.

And so, as I mentioned in my last post, we decided to cook a new recipe every week for the whole year.

Week One - (Not) Chicken Korma from Indian Food Made Easy by Anjum Anand

I made this recipe using Quorn pieces instead of chicken as we are veggies (the same weight of Quorn as she recommended chicken), and I added peas as we love them, but apart from that we followed the recipe to the letter.

It was a great meal. The korma was really delicate in flavour and the coconut tasted delicious with the spices. If I was going to do it again I would crush all the whole spices very slightly before I put them in again as I feel like the flavours didn't really infuse into the dish as much as they could have.

It was very straight forward though, really easy to make. The Quorn was marinaded beforehand and then as long as you have everything out and ready it is only a matter of minutes to have it bubbling away on the stove. Otherwise it would only have been a few more minutes to fish around in the cupboard - either way it is more of 'throw everything in' dish than a 'complicated cooking techniques' one.

The Boy and I are thinking we will do this again as the centre piece for a curry night, serving this with Daal and making our own naan bread.

You can see the recipe in full here.

New Year, New... Er...

And so it is 2011. Here we are. Another year is upon us. And what is this year going to bring? Well, goodness only knows!

I liked 2010, it was a good year but trying to look at the next one stretching out in front of me I seem to feel like it is just so full of potential and possibility that I could easily end up doing nothing with it at all.

I've not made any resolutions - well, one with The Boy to cook something new from a recipe every week but that's for fun, not self-improvement.

So this could be the year I do anything at all. Set up a new business, find a new job, a new home, move to another part of the country. Anything is possible and suddenly it's exciting all over again...

Posh afternoon tea by the sea...

Run dirty girl, run!

After having to pull out of the Windsor Half Marathon despite doing the training I thought it would be a good idea to sign up for another half marathon asap in order to keep my momentum going.

But the nights are drawing in, the weather is getting a bit wet and the excuses start to pile up. Do I want to go out for a run? It's so wet/dark/murky/cold/all of the above. Why don't I just stay indoors in the warm and curl up with a magazine/book/hot chocolate/chocolate/cake/all of the above (!!)?

The solution? Sign up for a half marathon where the dirt etc. is half the fun. And so, training began today for the Dirt Half Marathon in Leighton Buzzard at the end of November. I have my place, I have paid. I've checked the elevation of the course (slight hill between miles 6 and 8) and now all the reasons that were keeping me for running are reasons to be out. I have to train when it is horrid weather in order to be fully prepared for what is ahead.

I might yet regret this, but there is nothing quite like the buzz of coming in from a long wet cold run, so then again it might be just the boost that I need to keep the training up over the winter months.

Dirt Half Marathon

An ode to unwritten blog posts...

I realise that this title suggests that I might be about to write poetry - sorry, I'm afraid that I'm not. Given that my main thesis here is that sometimes time is against you I definitely don't have the time, or the creative inclination, to manage to make this scan or rhyme. Sorry. :)

However, this blog post is dedicated to all the blog posts that never quite get written. Whether you think of something and forget to scribble it down. Or write a title and never get round to filling out the body of the text. Or save a draft of something that just doesn't sound right and delete it. Or lose your train of thought half way through a sentence. Or for the mothers who blog you start to type and then... well, either they are in something they shouldn't be or they wake up!

So next time you think of something to blog and don't quite manage to post it, fear not. Remember that the times you do will mean even more as they shine with the creativity of all the others that could have been...

The perfect breakfast...

...French toast with fruit and maple syrup, as much toast as you can
slice and eat to toast on your own table in a Dualit and Monmouth
coffee... This is breakfast heaven!

Nostalgic morning snack...

Things lost that can't be found...

Today I'm at my Grandmother's house waiting. Just waiting for people to call, waiting for my son to finish his long afternoon nap, waiting to be able to go home and get dinner on. Just waiting.

I'm in my Grandfather's study. When I first set up Making Do and Mending last year the 'Mending' referred to the fact that I lost both my Grandfathers last year in the space of just four weeks. As my Mum said later in the year, 2010 owed us a good one, because 2009 was just about people dying. So now I'm doing my waiting while sitting in the place where my Grandpop did his filng, typing, thinking and writing.

When my Grandmother is gone I know that this house will be gone too, but I am sitting here wishing that we could keep this room to visit whenever we liked. There is so much of my Grandpop here. Literally, he had so much filing! But also, it is just so amazing what he kept in here, and what he kept. I've just found a little magnet stuck to the side of his filing cabinet that gives his name and what it means. I have no idea who gave it to him but I know that he must have kept it because it meant something to him, like the little cartoon that someone drew him to thank him for monitoring a conference, or the pictures of the family, or his little address books and a neat drawer of his pocket diaries going back decades.

Last week I looked after my Grandmother for the day and I went to pick up a prescription at the pharmacy. Seeing my Grandmother's name on the prescription they asked me how my Grandfather was and I had to tell them that he passed away. The pharmacist said that he had always been coming in and that she was only commenting to another member of staff this week how they hadn't seen him in a long while. I was really taken aback. I knew that he regularly went to the high street, did all his shopping there at the same shops every week, but it had never occured to me that anyone else had noticed, or that he had spoken to people or made an impact on their lives. It made me smile, so like my Grandpop, and then miss him terribly.

My Mum says that people stay alive in our memories. I hope that I have stories to tell my son about Grandpop so that even if I can't sit in this room or touch any of these things any more I can still feel him close like I do today.

Roasted courgette yumminess...

If you get lemons... or courgettes...

One of the things that I can't get my head around my life is that I don't have a garden. I would love a garden. I'd be out there everyday. I would open my back door and stand nursing a cup of coffee looking out at the world to start my day. I don't mind what is out there in the garden, a bit of lawn, a bit of dirt, a nice patio, slabs of concrete, I wouldn't care, I would just be out there enjoying a bit of the outdoors that is all my own.

I would have a chiminea, a small table and chairs so that I could sit out for longer during the year, not just in the summer.

But more than anything I would grow vegetables and herbs. I know that you might have worked out by now that I already do this, but I mean that I would really do this. I'd dig up the lawn if I had to in order to have an allotment space that matched my ambitions. I'd grow vast quantities of everything that I grow at the moment - rows of tomatoes, courgettes, potatoes (OK, I've kind of done that this year but mainly because last year's pots came back to haunt me!), onions, garlic - of all varieties and store them in cans, jars, the freezer, as jam, as chutney, to keep us in local tasty produce all year round...

But alas this is not meant to be. My balcony herb garden, with a few trays of lettuce, does give us mint tea, rosemary, thyme and taragon on a regular basis and our courgettes are coming on a treat but it isn't the same.

However, I've found a solution - the local farmers market. Today I bought broad beans (mine got eaten by black fly last year, so I didn't even try again this year), peas, marrow and courgettes (fabulous ones in yellow and green shaped like gourds, not just the common green ones we are growing) and came home to cook up a storm. Shelling peas and beans while the babe chewed on pods and threw around a few fresh peas and roasting courgettes for a local ratatouille made me feel the satisfaction I get when I'm cooking my own produce. And before you think 'yes, but what did this all cost', well I got around 500g of peas for just £3, fresh from a farm in Kent, marrow for 80p, five weird shaped courgettes for £1 and two bags of broad beans for just £2. Everything was fresh, local and in season so it was all going for a song.

Delicious food from not so far away for not so much, now that is a dream I can get on board with until my garden dream becomes a reality.

http://www.lfm.org.uk/

Working 9-5, or maybe not...

It is tough enough at the best of times to decide what you want to do in life. Whilst it is true that trying make decisions about your life at 16 when you are choosing A level subjects is hard, I'm not sure it really gets any easier the older that you get. These days I feel like there are so many things that I could be doing, and so many cool jobs around that trying to think about sensible things like career progression is tying myself down to only one option.

Looking at work through the lens of motherhood makes things even stranger. I don't think I could love my new job as a Mum much more, and I know that I am very lucky to feel that way about it. But it does also cast a shadow on my work life up to now and where that might go next.

Unhelpfully I seem to be surrounded by people (note: mainly childless people) referring to my maternity leave as a 'holiday'. My best friend calls it my 'baby holiday' and is constantly moaning that I'm off doing baby yoga, coffee mornings, nursery drop ins and afternoons in the park while she is at her desk. I've tried to gently explain that yes, it is fun doing all these things, but my new job has very crazy hours (24/7) compared to my last and there are a lot more baby sick/nappy/washing/random screaming incidents involved than any other job I've ever done. But for overall job satisfaction, motherhood gives me more than anything else ever has.

And so now I look at my job and wonder, do I want to go back? On the most basic level the idea of doing something so structured, 9-5, meetings, overtime, spreadsheets, more meetings, just seems a million miles away from how things are now. I imagine motherhood on those terms - turning up at my 'desk'/the cot at a certain time each morning, meetings to discuss just how much dribble one child can get all over their clothes, overtime needed in order to make a few more quick meals to freeze ahead - and it makes me laugh.

In addition to all of this there is an extra element which I realise is totally personal to me when thinking about what I want to do - I don't really like the job that I would go back to. I'm passionate about what I do, I work hard at it and it makes me proud to be part of the team that I work with, but deep down it doesn't suit me. I wish that it did, but in reality having some distance from it could be just the push I need in a different direction.

And so my thoughts turn to what direction that might be. Again I am filled with excitement at all the options out there, all the things I've thought about trying, all the jobs that I come into contact with every day I think 'I could do that', 'I'd love to do that', 'What a cool job' and my mind starts whirring with plans, thoughts, ideas.

But this time I know that it needs to be worth it. And I know that I might decide that no job is worth it. Time that I invest in work is time that I invest away from my child and I'm acutely aware that I no longer want to fritter my work life away, wasting time I could be spending at my new job, watching my little one grow up a little more everyday. But at the same time I want him to look at me and his Dad and see that we do good jobs, that we work hard, that we love what we do, and I feel a responsibility to set an example in a way that I never did before.

I keep coming back to the fact that I would like to do something creative, crafty, a little cottage industry that I could fit in around motherhood. I don't hanker for the office, for a space outside my home where I don't have to be a Mum, but I do want to have a little space for myself and something to call my own.

Bliss Buggy Push 5km - done!

And so I've survived my first 5km since the babe arrived.

It was a lovely day out with the Buggyfit girls - we came, we saw, we conquered. We were also the only eight people running out of around 50 so arguably we also stuck out like sore thumbs! But it was fun to be out and about and all for a good cause.

Alas I did not put in my best performance. My usual trick for events such as these of turning up with plenty of time, paying no attention to the ever increasing sunshine, add in the fact I was paying no attention to my child and once we got off on the course it all went a bit wrong. But only a bit.

Having eaten a hearty breakfast as I left I then didn't snack, so half way round had to stuff down a banana and drink my water quickly. That was fine but then the little un decided he was hungry and grouchy and didn't want to be in his pushchair any more, not matter how fast the scenery was whizzing by. (Not that fast as it happens, I'm really not the fastest runner out there by any means.) So we walked for a little while, and then had to walk again at the end. So we ended with a little walk across the finish line, me holding the babe as we went under the barrier.

Afterwards there was time to picnic and savour our success. And our rewards - a top goodie bag was given out to all runners with loads of goodies in it, perfect for some snacks on the way home.

So first step done. Next step - well some more training I guess as the half marathon is drawing ever nearer...

First Secret Post Club...

What a wonderful month it has been for post!

First I am kicking off my jewellery making by getting in some new supplies and making a whole new range to launch asap. This has meant many happy hours scouring eBay for bits and bobs, finding new craft shops nearby and generally getting back into a more creative state of mind. Most days something is arriving, from small packs of beads or buttons to squishy jiffy bags full of thread.

And then in the midst of it all I got my first parcel from the Secret Post Club. A lovely goodie (jiffy) bag full of delights. I'm so pleased with it, a good book to curl up with and a little notebook to put down all my best lists/thoughts/etc.

Bliss Buggy Push - one step closer to Windsor...

The challenge is set - well that's not true really. I'm running 5km on July 17th for Bliss at their Buggy Push in Kensington Gardens. But alas I only wish that were the challenge.

My friend Helen has signed us up for the Windsor Half Marathon at the end of September. Between us we are carrying a knee injury (her) and a post-natal out of shape woman (me) but Helen feels that she and half marathons have unfinished business.

It all started two summers ago when Helen decided that she wanted me to 'teach her how to run'. I resisted the temptation to tell her - put on your trainers and get out there - but she clearly thought I had a secret formula, so we started to go running.

This whole situation was my own doing. I drummed into her from the start that a 10km run was easily achieveable and by the end of the summer we should do one of the Run10k series for Cancer Research UK.

http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/10k/

But it all backfired. Helen swiftly realised that 10km was easily achieveable, so really why stop there. Let's do something really crazy and do a half marathon! So at the end of March last year we ran the Reading Half Marathon together and Helen bust her knee. It was also the last exercise I did before I became pregnant (literally, I must have conceived while I was having a break after the run and from that moment on was far too tired to run anywhere!).

So now we are both back in the game and Helen is determined that Windsor will be our true glory run, everything that Reading couldn't be as after 8 miles she was limping. I would like to point out that even so we made it round in 2 hours and 18 mins, so I keep telling her she really has nothing to prove. But she won't listen...

So anyway that gets us back to where we started - the Bliss Buggy Push. Me, and a team of other Buggy Fit Mums throw ourselves around their 5km course for a great cause. And for me the first race in my steps towards the Windsor Half Marathon.

http://www.bliss.org.uk/buggypush

http://www.buggyfit.co.uk/

http://www.runwindsor.com/

My new mantra...

Testing, testing...

I'm enabling mobile blogging - whoop! :)