Steel Kitten

Find another jacket

The cats are being very unsupportive lately. I found Georgie feigning sleep on my smart meeting jacket today.

"I don't care if you need the jacket for an important meeting. Besides if it was that important you wouldn't have left it on the bed while you went to clean your teeth. Find another."

And so I did. And it didn't match my outfit.

The last thing I saw as I left the house was him saunter casually past the front door, but I was running 10 minutes late and the taxi was waiting so I couldn't go back inside to get it and brush the hairs off.

The cat is a git.

 

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Visiting Mr Whoppit and other adventures

As usual, my birthday this weekend was spent away from home, but until we arrived I didn't know where for sure we were going. I started getting a inkling around junction 30-ish of the M6 after Martin eliminated most of my ideas by whizzing past the turn-off for them. As the junctions progressed I started seeing THE LAKES on a lot of signs, but then Martin started making noises about Scotland so he temporarily threw me off the scent. At the last possibly moment he nearly gave me a heart attack by swerving the car off the slip road at junction 36 where Kendal, home of the famous Kendal Mint Cake, then hoved into view.

If you're not family with the area, this is the Lake District where you'll find Lake Windermere, Buttermere and Coniston, along with the most amazing collection of fells and mountain trails. This is the home of one of the UK's highest mountain Scarfell Pike. It's also the home of the teddy bear Mr Whoppit, who in the picture above sits in the helmet of a brass statue of British speed record breaker Donald Campbell. Donald died in a horrific accident on Lake Coniston on January 4th 1967 in his Bluebird K7 while attempting to be the first person to reach 300mph on water. Mr Whoppit was Donald's mascot and was pulled out of the water after the accident. The Ruskin Museum in Coniston is one of two good exhibitions of Donald Campbell's life and water speed record attempts, and will one day house the restored K7, which was only recovered from the Lake in 2001. The other place is the Lakeland Motor Museum, which we didn't have a chance to see on this visit, which has replica Bluebirds.

Lest you think this birthday treat sounds an awful lot like an outing for Martin, prior to visiting the museum mid- aftermoon on Sunday, he spent all of Saturday taking me around every charity shop, bookstore and junk shop in Kendal, Bowness, Windermere, Ambleside and Keswick (with numerous tea and cake stops), plus drove me at an ungodly hour of Sunday morning to an indoor car boot sale in Cockermouth, which was 90 minutes away from our B&B. He planned it all, so I was happy to oblige a request to visit the museum.

He chose this beautiful room in the Balcony House Guest House on the Shap road in Kendal...the place was spotless and inviting with wonderfully friendly hosts who put up with our endless chinwagging...ok Martin's endless chinwagging...

...and in between he drove uncomplainingly around the area so we could take in the most amazing sights of snow and mist capped Cumbrian mountains, driving through sleet and the most torrential rain, and stopping every time I yelped to take photos. By the way, this area has the fattest wettest rain I've ever come across. One drop and you're completely soaked! But we loved it and have decided we're coming back regularly to try walking some of these fells, and maybe Scarfell Pike, in preparation for climbing Ben Nevis in Scotland in August. The waterfall below is just a massive stream of water coming off the mountain by the side of the road, and these waterfalls spring up regularly everywhere as the mountain snow melts. Just these raging little torrents of water that won't be stopped.

Reading back on this post I'm sure you think we're barking mad, driving endless miles through little old towns and visiting secondhand shops and thinking of it as a treat, but that's the way we roll now. We have a our hobbies and our peculiarities, one of which is roving the countryside looking at stuff, eating cornish pasties in the car and returning home late at night with considerably more books, maps, DVDs, fabric, knitting wool and memories than we left the house with.

 

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Stashing food into large freezers

It's been a frustrating week so far.

I've been investigating various job boards and found exactly one job that I could apply for. That's not a lot of return for the amount of time I've put in looking, and the job spec wasn't exactly clear and unambiguous in what it wanted. I smelt an agency harvesting CV's rather than offering real jobs so I phoned up and queried and it was quite clear that's what it was. The recruitment agent didn't want to tell me anything about the job, wasn't sure what job I was referring to anyway but hey! Why don't I send my CV over and she'd see if I was suitable.

Yeh. Why don't you get stuffed lady and stop wasting people's time with fake job ads. Think I might have burnt my bridges there. So from now on I'll apply directly to companies only to cut out these dreadful agencies. In all the years I've been job hunting I haven't had one find me a job. Not one.

Phew, now I have that off my chest on to other things to do with chests...freezers of course. Namely A reorganisation of mine after an pack of peas was pulled up without realising it was split. It was my 'knee' peas rather than eating peas, that is it was the pack I keep to ice my poorly knee so it is frequently defrosted and refrozen. Don't worry, I had a label on it so I never got confused.

Would you like to see some of my chest freezer stash? ;-)

Sliced apples and plums

Chopped pears

Blackberries

Rhubarb and sliced greengages

Sliced peppers, leeks and sweetcorn

Hmmm...caught with ready meals. They are standbys when I'm feeling grotty or in danger of ordering an expensive takeaway. To give you some idea of how long they have been in there, the ones on the right are dated September 2013 and not been touched yet.

Portioned out butter. Found it on a very special offer.

Beaten eggs packaged by four and six eggs depending on whether I'm doing a cake or an omelette.

Bread products. Slightly obsessed with this. All on either BOGOF or reduced. Plain bagels, quartered cottage loaves, flatbreads, plain white and wholewheat sandwich loaves...

...more bread products with some cake stuff too. Quartered tri-olive paves, sundried tomato and olive bloomer, raisin bread, more bagels (this time special raisin and oat ones) potato cakes, scones, a lump of madeira (good for trifles) and hot cross buns.

Odds and sods - chicken stock, blackcurrant chutney and two baggies of crumble mixture.

Comfort food. I was very sick recently you know. The kind of sick only pizza and ice-cream makes better.

All fits in here.

You'll notice there is no meat or fish at all. All of that along with veggies and fruit actively being consumed is in the other freezer that's under my fridge. That is what I call my working freezer. The one above is my stash. Stash is re-packaged into the working freezer when needed.

I didn't want you to think I ate veggies and ready meals all day. I cook from scratch every day, 99 times out if 100.

Look - we had steak and onion pie on Monday (from Sunday's leftover roast dinner)

And very nice it was too.

Anyone else out there obsessed with stashing food into large freezers?

 

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Living off the garden and cupboard

Spinach soup with wholewheat chapatis

Been endeavouring to live off the cupboards and the garden this week, mainly because I have stuff either going off in the fridge or going out of date in the cupboards this month plus I want to get maximum nutrition out of the garden before the really cold weather hits - which it will do at some point - and harvest some homegrown winter greenery.

So every lunch this week has been soup.

Monday was spinach (from the garden plus a handful of leaves from the bottom of the fridge crisper drawer), Tuesday was butternut squash (leftover from new year, not from the garden) , and Wednesday was leek, potato and parsley (only the potatoes were shop bought). All three were served with homemade chapatis from a bag of wholemeal flour going out of date this month.

Out of all of them the spinach was the most amazing one. I always thought spinach soup would be over poweringly...well...spinachy so I never made it. How wrong can you be. I based my recipe on this one from the BBC Good food archives, but I used what I had available rather than staying absolutely faithful to the recipe.

Which bascially means I changed a few things ( my changes in italics):

• 50g butter
• 1 medium onion, finely chopped 1/2 medium onion leftover in the fridge roughly chopped
• 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped A whacking sliver of garlic paste that's been in my fridge yonks
• 1 medium potato, peeled and chopped into chunks
• 450ml750ml chicken or vegetable stock
  
• 600ml 300ml milk, I don't possess my own cow so I don't splash over a pint in a bit of soup
• 450g fresh spinach, washed if necessary and roughly chopped
• Six vine tomatoes found dying in the salad crisper
• Finely grated zest of half a lemon didn't have fresh lemons, just juice, so a quick splash of that
• Freshly grated nutmeg, to taste I just used normal dried nutmeg I had in the spice rack
  
• 3 tbsp double cream, to serve Leftover cornish clotted cream. It had to be used up so no attractive swirly patterns to impress. Just dump it in and stir until it melted.
  

The chapatis don't get much simpler.

For four chapatis:

 

• 100g flour
• Good pinch of salt
• 10ml of olive oil
• 70ml of water

 

Mix together to form a dough and kneed on a floured surface until smooth. Split the dough into four pieces and roll each one out thinly. Heat a frying pan until smoking hot and wipe some grease around the pan with kitchen roll. Add the chapati for around 30 seconds until it starts to puff up, then flip it over and do the other side...once the chapatis are starting to puff up, take the pan off the heat and put the chapati on the nakied flame to puff up even more. If the chapati is very pliable and you can't get a spatula underneath you might have to hoick it off the flame with your fingers.

And that's it...one down, three more to go.

 

Gaining perspective

Fleagle craning over her shoulder to see if Martin is filling the food bowls

Regular blogging can take a sizeable chunk of your life, and I've been doing it for nearly six years now. My recent six months break from blogging gave me some much needed perspective in my life. It made me realise it has played a sizeble role in my life over the years but sometimes not always as a force for good. The are things I have and haven't done becuase of the blog. Sounds odd I know but hear me out.

I had stopped focusing on my goals and projects

I didn't realise until I stopped posting that blogging was becoming an obstacle to maintaining my focus on my own goals and projects. A few months ago there was a thought that would run parallel to everything I did, which was "Could that go on the blog?" I was never fully immersed or focused on what I was doing because suddenly I would think "Woah there. Stop and take a picture of that for the blog." I'd be constructing the post in my head rather than paying attention to what I was doing. In short, the blog was running me instead of me running the blog.

Blogging was time consuming even when I wasn't blogging

I reclaimed several hours a week besides the actual time I spent blogging. Why? Because I was doing things to put on the blog instead of allowing the blog to reflect my life's journey. I was doing things I thought you guys would want to read, instead of doing them for myself. Once I stopped publishing posts and started getting immersed in projects I wanted to do, I wasn't sure what to say or how to say it, hence the 43 unfinished and unpublished posts.

It occupied a surprising amount of brain space

Without my daily thoughts about blogging, my mind was much clearer and more focused. I got up and just got on with things. I didn't feel I had to write a blog analysing it to the nth degree or explaining why I did something/was going to do something. I didn't stop and think "how will that come across?"

When I took a picture, it was always for the blog

Self explanatory really. Photography had ceased to be satisfying unless it was going to be used for blogging. Now I have a bank of pictures separate to the blog that are my personal memories and a record of things I've experienced since June, and they are for enjoyment, not blogging.

I always felt under scrutiny

Silly really, as a blog is a place where you invite everyone into your life. When you put yourself out there on the internet, you will attract scrutiny. From your choice of words in the post to the background decor in your images, everything seems to attracts scrutiny and judgement, and it's unpleasant.

I once read a post on a blog where a reader commented that the blogger's choice of lightshade to complete a newly furnished bedroom "hideous". I'll admit, I thought the lightshade a bit odd, but then each to their own and it's none of my business. However, I would never, ever comment on someone's blog that I thought something they owned was hideous.

Anyway, the point is I always felt I was hovering at DEFCON 4 - a higher state of readiness - for something I hadn't spotted to be pointed out and be judged on, and it's exhausting maintaining that readiness. That's why I don't have a Facebook or Twitter account. I couldn't take the pressure - I'd reach DEFCON 2 within seconds and spontaneously combust.

So that's what I learnt about blogging and how it affects me. I flirted with the idea of not coming back. I also flirted with the idea of starting a new anonymous blog where I wasn't known. Why? Because I could be honest. When people you know are reading your blog you don't write what you really want to. I think I made a mistake many years ago telling people I knew about this place. Instead of being somewhere I can freely put myself on a page, it's become somewhere a shadow of me puts a constrained version of herself on a page and that's not very fulfilling. I've reached the point in my life where I want to be known and understood for who I really am without worrying about what people think of me, yet when I think about doing it here - on this blog -the worry is there and very strong.

Maybe I'm not the person you all think I am.

 

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In the wee small hours of the morning...

...when the whole wide world is fast asleep.

I've been sitting here suffering with an infected wisdom tooth for the last three hours praying for the cold fingers of dawn to filter through my curtains. It's one thing to actively set your alarm clock for early rising like Rhonda over at the Down to Earth blog (I think she's up at about 4am and hits the sack at 7 or 8pm) but another to be mooching around 3 hours before you should be up wishing you were still asleep but not able to be.

There's something that feels a bit soulless being up at this time of night and to be honest I don't like it. Staying up until say 1am to watch a good film I'm fine with. Getting up at early 5:30am I do almost as a matter of routine now, although occasionally I go back to bed with a cup of tea, think about things and watch the dawn until about 7am. But those hours between about 2-5am feel cold, eerie and too quiet. It's dead time, the time when you're up because you have to be, because something has gone awry, rather than wanting to be.

The kids are unwell during the night, you're unwell during the night, it's a long walk home and you don't have the taxi fare, the phone has rung with bad news, you have insommnia, you stayed well past the time you should have...whatever it is there's a wish it wasn't. You wish all was well and that you were warm and snoozy.

Anyway, enough. I've off to get my throbbing jaw down a manageable level of pain without my four hourly doses of painkillers - I've temporarily stopped them to give my liver a rest for 24 hours. Then I pack Martin off to work and plan what I want to achieve this year. Wisdom tooth extraction is likely to be on the list!

Take it easy and have a good day.

 

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