Currently

As my lack of recent posts might suggest I seem to have misplaced my blogging mojo. It might have been put out with a dirty nappy, sterilised with a bottle or just have run away from the chaos. So when I read Bex's Currently post a wee lightbulb appeared over my head and I'm unashamed to be rocking the copycat vibes.

Reading

I'm reading loads at the moment - 6 books so far this month, boom. But I'm not going to talk about any of them, brilliant as most of them were.

I'm loving is It's Time to Sleep, My Love. It has a panda on the front cover so of course smudge wanted to buy it for puff and I'm so glad she caught me on a weak willpower day. It is such a lovely wee story to read to a sleepy baby and the illustrations are beautiful.

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Hysterically, smudge heard me reading it to her baby sister and was a bit put out. Her new bedtime routine is a chapter of something age appropriate and this - she's 9 years old!

Watching

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SOA baby. 

I love the escapism of a Californian Motorcycle club and have to admit that despite the fact he definitely looks like he is need of a long bath and a good scrub Jax Teller might play a small part in the attraction of this show! 

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Listening

My November Prudence and the Crow box came with a mix CD. It's in the Kitchen CD player so I can dance around singing into a wooden spoon as I puree all the veg a growing baby consumes.

Recommending

Not really recommending more of a forcing everyone to agree with me on how brilliant they are by buying all the small children I know Blade and Rose leggings. Puff now has a few pairs of these and I am awestruck by just how good they are. They look amazing, are lovely and warm and just fit so much better for small wigglers than ordinary lycra leggings. I would love to post a picture of puff rocking them but all I can manage is a blurry fuzz - she just refuses to sit still!

Loving

Still loving winter and the boot wearing opportunities it provides. I did have a momentary wobble about what I am every going to wear on my feet when summer arrives. It didn't last long, I remembered I live in the west coast of Scotland, summer is months away and surely I can put up with non-boot footwear for 3 days. My purple DM triumphs are still going strong and I fall more in love with them every time I wear them. Which seeing as they seem to be surgically attached to my feet at the moment is saying something.

Making

I made the most delicious Herby Cobbler for tea on Thursday. Seeing as I'm the only one who enjoys lamb I decided to be wonderfully unselfish and substitute the lamb for stewing steak. Served with mash it was a perfect tea for a cold night and worth the faff of the preparation. 

That said, next time I'm substituting the baby onions for a couple of normal ones sliced!

Anticipating

I've got a really busy week coming up - something fun in every box of the next weeks filofax page. Brand new babies to visit, catching up with people and generally opportunities to drink coffee and eat cake. The best kind of week then. 

Growing Pains

Whilst I don't have any grand plans to embrace the Good Life and aim for self sufficiency, I do like eating the fruits of my labour. With this in mind I've been gradually incorporating more edibles into our garden. This year adding a herb garden and a couple of fruit bushes.

The herb garden, grown mainly from seed is a roaring success. I've made a mojito cake flavoured with homegrown mint. Smudge was incredibly impressed to be eating homemade pesto with basil she helped grow on the kitchen windowsill. I really must find recipes calling for massive quantities of parsley as it's about to take over the whole patch.

But the fruit isn't as big a success, abject failure might be a better description. My strawberries might not be too tasty given their still green colour.

The plum tree has been in for a couple of years now and has produced fruit. But I'm not getting excited about 1 plum buried so deep in the leaves that it too is failing to ripen. 

Our bargain from Aldi, blackcurrant and redcurrant bushes are looking lovely and healthy. Unfortunately, one naughty starling ate the entire crop. Given that the crop consisted of 3 blackcurrants I wasn't too cross.

The apple tree we picked up at Overton Farm's  apple fair last autumn didn't even bother to blossom so  no fruit from it either. Again it has grown and is looking healthy enough.

I'm planning on working lots of pot ash through the soil to see if this makes any difference. While I'm doing that I'm going to be offering thanks that we live in a time where I can just nip to the shops. It appears that the alternative for me would be starvation, or at least scurvy!

Green thumbs

I'm a fair weather gardener. g will bemoan the fact that I don't really weed. Digging, hoeing and mowing just aren't my bag. I feel guilty when pruning. 

What I like is planting. Especially seeing tender fresh green shoots poking out of compost. My kitchen window is perfect for a few reasons: Sunny, warm and most importantly I remember to water things when I'm elbow deep in dish water staring at dry soil.

I mentioned on Monday's post that I've just planted out my chives, thyme and parsley. So all that's left on my window sill are 2 trays of dill, coriander, basil and rosemary, my massive mango plant, 2 nectarine stones and an avocado. Oh yeah, what I like best is growing things that I have enjoyed eating.

My favourite is when everybody tells me it won't work. Meet the cherry stones that will never grow...

3 weeks ago I was over the moon that my mango stone had sprouted. Now I'm wondering where the hell I'm going to keep it if it keeps growing at this rate.

Healthy Living - Quitting Sugar

I mentioned in a previous post that I'm in the process of quitting sugar. Seeing that todays #BEDM prompt was Healthy Living it seemed a grand idea to give a bit of an update.

I FEEL AMAZING!!!!!

Getting here has been less that fun. Headaches, stomach cramps, killer drooth* and irritability. By irritability think of an insomniac, pmt-ing grizzly bear with a hangover and you still aren't close to what my poor husband has had to endure. Then all of a sudden I felt ok, actually not just ok, amazing.

I'm able to get out of bed in the morning without hitting snooze 7 times. I have more energy, I'm not actually doing anything with it but it's nice to have. My tummy has shrunk. I've lost 3lb. So I already look better. Of course that feeling has me standing up just a little bit straighter too. 

The odd thing is that my appetite has shrunk so that I'm having to remember to eat. Now being as that I have used this sentence to mock people horribly in the past I don't make this confession without feeling like a bit of a tit.

Last night when I shared a packet of maltesers with g I did it knowing what I was doing. Fully conscious that this was a treat. I'm not planning to never eat sugar again. I just don't want my entire day dominated by my need to work out where my next fix is coming from.

I even resisted lovely looking cake today. I wonder how long I'll remember that I like the way I feel more than I like cake?

*Drooth - a dry thirsty mouth - we Scots got all the best words!

Date Night

I married a cop. He did, and still does, look spectacularly good in uniform. I'm not allowed to post a picture here, he claims for security reasons. The fact he's a police office doesn't prevent him from telling great big whopping lies!

While the sight of him in dress uniform is definitely a tick in the pros column. A blot in the cons is shift work. It makes a normal social life an administrative nightmare. I have been to countless nights outs, family gatherings and even my little sisters wedding, where our daughter was a flower girl, solo.

The thing that gets me the most about him working shifts is that while couples snuggle up for date night across the land. I'm home alone, well not quite alone. Fighting with a bed hating 8 year old in the early evening and then later bored witless with television scheduling that screams "hey saddo. Everyone else is getting laid tonight."

But this is the rarest and most wonderus of weekends. A weekend off.

So Friday night looms. I have exfoliated, shaved, buffed and moisturised. I plan on feeding my child fish fingers and waffles and incurring her wrath as I wrestle her into bed early. Then I will light a couple of tea lights, whip something I've prepared earlier out of the oven and seduce my darling husband. By falling asleep on the sofa, snoring and dribbling on my own shoulder.

A Day in the Life

So a day in the life. I should probably be keeping the words to a minimum but I never have mastered brevity so this might be a long one...

7am strong black coffee, still too nuclear hot to drink and I'm in the kitchen straining brambles to make a bramble and elderflower jelly to top a cheesecake. I should have had the coffee first. I used a stupidly fine sieve and it took ages.

There is no picture for 8am because at this time on a school day I am running around trying to wash and dress whilst persuading smudge that she does actually need to wear pants every day and trying to find where the sodding hairbrush is this time. This morning it was in the drawer where it should live, which is why it took so long to find it.  Neither of us thought to look there.

9am smudge is at school the dog has been walked and I've got the washing on the line. Am ignoring the big black clouds and going with the metcheck weather app on my phone and crossed fingers.

10am No this wouldn't be me procrastinating. This is me downloading audiobooks so that I can expand my mind whilst I cook.

11am Have escaped the clutches of the computer and made some pastry. Yep I am watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer on the ipad while I cook. If you have a problem with that I can show you the moves I've learned...

12 noon After a bit of a panic when I realised I forgot to buy or order the ribs I was trying to marinade I'm back from a fast cycle to the butchers with ribs.

1pm Pasty rolled and resting in the fridge again ready for blind baking and becoming a Mississippi mud pie. Yes that is the bottom of my ipad and yes I'm watching another Buffy the Vampire Slayer. No I didn't actually listen to any of the books I downloaded. I watched Buffy and danced to cheesy Friday radio.

2pm Online shop has been delivered and the kitchen is a riot. Check out the amount of fresh ginger I managed to order - rather relieved that fresh ginger freezes well.

3pm Sitting on a wall in the sunshine with an old, tired and smelly mutt waiting for smudge to come out of school.

4pm Smudge is off trying her damnedest to kill herself on roller skates so I'm back in the kitchen again. Marinating a shoulder of pork. I'm slow roasting it overnight for dinner with friends on Saturday.

5pm Still in the kitchen, have probably made enough coleslaw for the entire internet. But with homemade mayonnaise and a special top secret recipe (yeah I'll probably blog about it another day) I'm sure I'll manage to palm it off somehow.

6pm Had of course made way too much pastry so made g and smudge a mince pie for their tea. I'm being angelic so no pastry for me.

There are no photos for 7pm, 8pm and 9pm because I was eating, drinking coffee, bathing a small smelly person and then enjoying sitting down way to much to go find a phone to take a picture of me sitting down. 

10pm Chocolate cupcakes out of the oven. Lined up neatly so that the 12 vanilla cupcakes in the oven can cool beside them.

11pm Pig going into the oven. Night night pig, sleep tight, I know I'm going to!

A whole new world, well a whole new me at least

I've been keeping very busy the last couple of days. I need distractions. I've decided that enough is enough and that I need to stop ignoring it and do something about my sugar addiction.

I don't use the term addiction lightly. I am not being flippant or glib. I have a huge issue with needing sugar to get through the hour let alone the day. On top of this I binge and secret eat. Not healthy, not clever and not anymore.

So without any real planning I stopped yesterday. I'm on a big health kick, cutting out all sugary things, so my carb intake will hit the floor and I'll probably end up loosing a few pounds. But while fitting into some smaller clothes will be nice this isn't about what I'm going to loose. I'm focusing on all the energy I'll have when I stop using sugar as a crutch. How awesome I'm going to feel when I don't have to beat myself up every time I reach the bottom of a sharing bag on my own. 

There are loads of ways of looking at what I'm gaining. I might go and list them now and hope that it stops me craving cake!

Cinco de Mayo

Hooray today has a name. This is a good thing. Days with names are celebrations and celebrations have accompanying food. I do like days where you have to eat.

So despite having no connections whatsoever to Mexico, even tenuous ones I really have wracked my brain, today we celebrated Cinco de Mayo.

We celebrated with a BBC Good Food Chicken Mole. Partially because I like it but more because the ancho chillies were in a big packet and Chicken Mole is the only recipe I have managed to find which uses them - so far...

I should at this point apologise for using the BBC Good Food website picture. I'm not ashamed to admit that after I've been cooking for what seems like weeks the idea of delaying my dinner longer to take a picture does not compute so I'd eaten most of my tea before the thought even occurred to me - sorry. I've linked the pic so getting clicking if you want the recipe.

It takes a bit of making what with long stewing times and shredding chicken etc. but is well worth the wait and left us with very festive feeling tummies. Even though I am still at a bit of a loss as to what Cinco de Mayo is a celebration of.

5 Favourite Posts - errrm

Well this is awkward. How do I choose my five favourite blog posts when I only have five previous blog posts? So I'm going to go slightly off topic for todays #BEDM.  

Writing yesterday about what my blog is about got me thinking about what I want to write about and in a genuine coincidence I came up with five. So in no particular order:-

My daughter is adopted. We're in the process of adopting number 2. I'm passionate about my daughter and the sad stories that make us a family. I'm pretty sure that there will be times when I use this blog to vent about the inadequacies and failings of our system for protecting vulnerable children. But I also want to shout about what a great thing adoption is and how grateful I am that I get to be a Mum.

As a chaotic, disorganised mess of a person it is of no surprise that I am chaotic, disorganised mess of a parent. Very occasionally I manage to get something right and you'd better believe that I'm going to shout about that. I am also more than willing to share tales of woe and disaster. Expect many more of the latter than the former!

I am evangelical about the restorative powers of a bit of fiction and the escape a good book can offer. It will be a minor miracle if this doesn't creep into the blog. Also expect to find reviews of book shops. I have just worked out that this is a flawless way of justifying hours spent amongst the shelves. Although I'm not sure how I'll justify the bags of books I will doubtless bring home, will work that one out when I get to it.

I'm lucky enough to be living in a house we plan to be in for a good wee while. When we bought it we believed that nothing needed doing and that a wee lick of paint every now and again would be all it needed. Don't worry we weren't under that illusion for long. In the two years we've lived here the garden has been redesigned, a bedroom has been added and my list of projects just keeps getting longer. The only issue is cashflow. Even with g being a guru of DIY and doing everything himself it is going to be interesting working out how we get the place looking the way we want it to with the money we don't have.

I started cooking aged 11 during a decade long foray into vegetarianism and have been playing in the kitchen ever since. I'm a feeder and love entertaining family and friends. When I became a stay-home-Mum I started baking a lot more, it was a brilliant way of making the other Mummy's like me and encourage them and their little darlings to come and keep me and smudge company. Baking to mask massive insecurity and social anxiety, hell yeah!