I'm not at all afraid of hard work, I just wish I was working directly for myself in a slightly nicer working environment. Possibly one that looks like the above, which is very conveniently located at home. How to make that a reality, whilst still paying the mortgage is what makes it a little more tricky.Unless someone wants to pay me to stay at home and bake, read, knit and blog! Any offers or ideas considered... These lovely cupcakes provided some late night snacks at our housewarming party over the weekend. A very simple sponge and then topped with lovely icing made by taking a hint ... read more
Delia’s Plum & Cinnamon Oat Slices
My Mother in Law brought round a bag of plums from her neighbour's garden the other day which was lovely - but left me with the question of what the heck to do with them! I have to admit that I've never cooked or baked with plums before, but it's always good to try something new. A quick check through all my cook books found a couple of recipes, but in the end I went for plum and cinnamon oat slides from The Delia Collection: Baking. It's quite a simple recipe where you end up baking a flapjack like thing with a layer of plums between two layers of oat mixture. The plums ... read more
Make do and mend
I caught this story on the BBC news website yesterday about how John Lewis have updated the old Government make do and mend booklet to help people survive the credit crunch. I've always been a firm believer in thinking that there is so much we can learn from the generations that lived through the wars, but it almost seems a little late this update. I think that people are already starting to learn how to be frugal; how to stretch ingredients to make more than one meal, how to update those things at the back of the wardrobe rather than replacing them with ... read more
The Subterranean Railway – Christian Wolmar
With everything else that's been going on recently reading (like blogging) has been taking a bit of a back seat. I'm starting to catch up a bit now on the reading front though - so book reviews will shortly return! Working in London the underground forms quite a major part of my life without me really realising it. Without the tube I'd struggle to get to the office everyday, or to get home at the end of the working day. I'd also not be able to quickly whizz underneath the city to go and meet friends of an evening, or to get to work meetings in other parts of the capital. Apart ... read more
UK carbon production
Interested in knowing just how much carbon the UK is producing right now? Interested in understanding how this changes throughout the day based on how much everyone is using and how electricity is being produced at that moment in time?I've been pointed towards a couple of websites recently that help answer these questions and are absolutely fascinating.The first one tells you the carbon content of the UK grid right now (sampled at 5 minute intervals) and also tells you the source split at the time between fossil fuels, nuclear and renewables. The second provides a trend ... read more
Garden fruits
As I wrote a while back I've been making very small steps towards being self sufficient for a while. Now that I've got a garden it should be somewhat easier. One thing that I was keen to do was try my hand at growing some sort of fruit, but having taken a look at the contents of our new garden it seems I may already be a step ahead of where I thought I was. The apple tree outside the log cabin was obvious (even to us!) but the others gave us a bit more to research. (Cooking apples we think based on the look on Mr C's face when he took an exploratory bite!) ... read more
Plant or weed?
Apologies for the blogging break. Returning to work has sucked me into the corporate world (not a nice place) for this last week or so and finding time to do anything else has been a tad difficult.Following the comments back on my question about identifying things in the garden I've decided to follow Mrs Nesbitt's suggestion and see if anyone reading this can help.So, question number one. All around the edge of the decking and the steps up to the decking is this. A few people seem to think that it may be related to a strawberry plant, but no one is totally sure. I realise ... read more
Queen Camilla – Sue Townsend
I realise that this is unlikely to ever be classed as a high-brow book choice, but I was delighted when I saw a copy of Queen Camilla in the local charity shop a few weeks back. The Queen and I, also by Sue Townsend, is one of my favourite books of all time and this is very much in the same vein.Quite simply, the Royal Family is living in the FEZ, or it give it its full title the Flowers Exclusion Zone. ... read more
Identifying green things
I promise that I'll blog about something different very soon, but this has to be another gardening post I'm afraid.We're progressing quite well, but one thing is constantly foxing us. How are we supposed to identify those things that were already in the garden when we got here? I can recognise some of the more basic thing - grass, dandelions, bind weed etc, but we're now at the stage where I'll come to something when clearing a bed where I stop and try to work out of it's a weed or something that I should be leaving in.Based on the simple information of it has leaves ... read more
Gardening first steps
Now that I've got the garden I've been planning for for ages it's almost hard to know where to start! The garden is very much a blank canvas so although there are plenty of weeds to sort out the general lack of flower beds meant that there was very little that had to be done straight away. One exception to that was the area that I quickly identified as a possibility for my first veg plot. I didn't need the gardening books to tell me that the first thing I needed to do here was clear the site of all the weeds and rubble. The previous owner had kindly left behind ... read more