Happy Friday! I am so glad to get to Friday, even if I have to spend today typing up minutes from yesterday’s meeting! This week I lost myself in books so there aren’t many links but they are happy links…
10 Champagne Cocktails. Because it’ll be Christmas before you know it.
The genius of Bake Off. I blame Laura for my current addiction to Bake Off..
Today is National Poetry day and people are posting favourite poems on Facebook and R4 is devoting a whole day to it. I woke up this morning to Piers Plowman on Farming Today.
Andrew Marr is spearheading a day examining ‘We British’ through poetry today (iplayer is your friend if you want to catch up)
As I write this they’ve just finished the Victorians, Tennyson was mentioned. I feel that I should be more fond of Tennyson because we share a birthday, but like me Tennyson can be too much. Having said that sometimes he just nails it. Take a look at the Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington, a poem that you can’t help but feel that the Duke would not have enjoyed. It’s long and overwrought and there’s far to much emphasis on England but at the end he sums up the truth of death and hope of all Christians in a way that the Victorians had….
He is gone who seem’d so great.-
Gone; but nothing can bereave him
Of the force he made his own.
Being here, and we believe him
Something far advanced in State,
And that he wears a truer crown
Than any wreath that man can weave him
Speak no more of his renown,
Lay your earthly fancies down,
And in the vast cathedral leave him,
God accept him, Christ receive him.
Which is why poetry needs a day, because of it’s ability to grab at and express some essential truth of us…
I’m having a bit of a week.
Nothing awful is happening, I’m just overtired and it’s getting darker so I’m a bit more miserable than usual. Last night I found out how Queen Caroline (wife of George II) died and it wasn’t pleasant (not something you want to learn while you’re eating), which also wasn’t very cheerful and can be added to the realisation that I have to get an awful lot done before I go off to have my bunion fixed (don’t Google that operation, trust me on this, I did and it’s not helping matters!).
The ridiculous thing is that everything is fine, I’m hitting all the approved adult milestones, house tidy, clothes clean, eating healthily, sleeping ok, helping friends, getting to work and although busy all the work is getting done, the outbreak of spots on my chin seem to be clearing up and life is not at all bad, so I’m not sure why I’m in the middle of a dark cloud of mood but here I am.
I’m going to blame the weather, it’s dark and wet and that’s never fun.
So the motto for the rest of the week, is ‘think happy thoughts’
And that’s pretty much all that’s happening this week.
1) This boy. Another nephew…
2) Some sunny days and sitting in the park with friends
3) Chocolate cake success, so good I was asked to make it again
4) Lovely breakfasts. Apparently most of my cooking creativity went into breakfasts in September and it was pretty glorious.
If August was the holiday month, September was the back to school month. There was a lot of good stuff in September.
October Plans and Goals
There are two big things happening in October, Ben turns 50 40 and I’m having my foot operated on. I had plans to paint the bedroom, bathroom and kitchen but that’s not going to happen until next year, I’ve cancelled the leave I’d booked in October because it seems wrong to have a week off just before I have 6 weeks off sick! I’ve got three weeks until the operation and I want to deep clean the house so it’s really tidy before I can’t walk for a bit. I think the theme of the month will be getting everything set up so I can have that six weeks without panicking about what needs to be done.
BODY & MIND
For the weeks before the operation, I will be doing 30 squats, 20 sit ups, 20 press ups and 2 30 second planks for the first week. Week 2, I’ll increase to 2 sets. Week 3, 3 sets and Week 4, 4 sets. Week 5 will be a mystery because I’m not sure what I’ll be able to do.
2 body balance classes a week. in the first three weeks, then I’m on leave and then won’t be doing any of that for a while!
2 x 30 minute walks Monday to Friday. At least until the operation..
Yoga before bed every day. As part of having a proper bedtime routine and wind down before lights out, which is 10pm Sunday to Thursday. Again until the operation.
HOME (BOOKS)
This is another more of the same goal, don’t buy any books…
HOME GENERAL
It’s pretty tidy at the moment but there are a couple of things that I need to attend to.
MONEY
This is more of the same, stick to the budget.
Happy Friday! I have the day off which is a good thing because I’ve had a cross and grumpy week! Here are this weeks links.. A Life Beyond ‘Do What You Love‘ I’ve linked to other stuff on this but … Continue reading
It’s good to look back at how I ate and cooked at the end of the month. It does help pinpoint the overall tread of my cooking. This month was good month, I felt more prepared and therefore more inspired. I tried some new things, re-booted some ideas and fell in love with granola again!
Breakfasts this month were Spinach, Feta and Smoked Paprika Muffins, Overnight Oats Breakfast Pots, Rhubarb Compote Granola Breakfast Pots and on the weekend bread rolls with blackberry jam.
I don’t make a lot of jam because I don’t eat a lot of jam but it is worth making some every year just for the joy of homemade breakfasts. I got three small jars out of the brambling we did in August and an apple and blackberry crumble. Ma is already planning going out next year with bigger boxes! It’s easy for breakfast to be the same every week and then I get bored of them and then I find myself eating ham and cheese croissants. So I planned a different breakfast each week to keep myself interested. The rhubarb compote granola pots were the best of the work breakfasts and I’m kicking myself that I didn’t grab more rhubarb, I need an allotment so I can grow loads of my own….one day..
Lunch was mostly leftovers from dinner. When that didn’t happen, there were pastries 
The pastries were good and a useful reminder that sometimes I need to think differently about how to re-use leftovers.
Notable dinners were black bean and corn tacos, soup, braised lentils, black bean burgers, pasta pesto, Friday Night Pizza and mushrooms on toast. Mushrooms on toast became my “I can’t be bothered to cook, but I really want to eat something tasty” midweek dinner this month.
Other cooking in September. I baked 3 cakes, two chocolate ones for various Baxters and a carrot cake for Jess at work. Also worth pointing out that I finally make a cream cheese frosting that didn’t have icing sugar lumps in it by making it in the magimix, only took me about 10 years to work that one out!
Also I re-learned or remembered that little bit of food prep goes a long way, so I made myself spend some time doing that on a Sunday. Preparing greens for cooking when I got home from shopping, so they fit in the fridge better and were ready to cook when I got home (wash them, dry them, chop them, place in a bag with a couple of paper towels, squeeze all the air you can out of the bag, store in fridge). Making soup from dying vegetables also came back with a vengance, no wasted vegetables and I have soup in the freezer for my 6 weeks of being an invalid! I baked 2 loaves of potato bread and a batch of these bread rolls and stashed in the freezer, which was useful to and have cooked chickpeas, black beans and white beans in the freezer for when I need them.
September’s reading list. Not as much reading done this month, I had less days off work!
What has everyone else been reading?
Pale Kings and Princes – Cassandra Clare and Robin Wasserman (borrowed)
Bitter of Tongue – Cassandra Clare and Sarah Rees Brennan (borrowed)
The Fiery Trial – Cassandra Clare and Maureen Johnson (borrowed)
I’ve been working my way through these with Helene because she loves them and we will be reading Clare’s new series (H tells me!) which comes out next year. These short stories (Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy) are fleshing out the world and the ending of the Mortal Instruments series and leading towards the new books. Fun and I like things I can read in a hour (if that!)
Paris in Love – Eloisa James (library ebook)
This was perfect for my first week back at work, short and sweet updates about the year James and her family spent in Paris.
The Weaver Takes a Wife – Sheri Cobb South (Kindle TBR list)
Just lovely. The hero is a mill owner, who is decidedly not genteel, a regency anti hero if you will. I did have a problem with how he spoke, generic common working class English wasn’t quite right, enough with dropping his ‘aitches. But fun and lovely.
Archangel’s Enigma – Nalini Singh (bought)
More Nalini Singh book crack. Read it in a day, I will at some point buy the new Psy-Changling book but I’m not going to pay £12.99 for it!
Some Kind of Wonderful – Sarah Morgan (library ebook)
This is the fifth Sarah Morgan book, I’ve read and I still love them. Easy with a happy ending.
The Captive – Grace Burrowes (library ebook)
Back with the Grace Burrowes regency. I was about 2 chapters in and I’d already reserved the next two of the trilogy!
The Traitor – Grace Burrowes (library ebook)
Of the three books, this was my favourite although it was completely far fetched. I couldn’t really buy any of it, but I am amazed that she managed to pull off making Sebastian a good man with really bad choices so well.
The Laird – Grace Burrowes (library ebook)
I was least enamoured of this book, I still read it in a day! Again with Burrowes, I liked the nuance, the ‘villian’ was a bad man but the book was realistic about not everything about him being awful and also about how you can can about someone who does bad things. I also likes that we got some more Sebastian and Milly!
The Arrangement – Mary Balogh (library book)
The Mary Balogh love-in continues, this is part of the Survivor’s Club series and I love the entire series so far. What I love best is the way that neither of the issues the hero and heroine are insurmountable, it the way they learn to deal with them together, they learn to think about each other and make life brighter. No one is cured, mean people don’t come round or apologise but the couple learns to be happy and whole despite that and with help.
The Ant Colony – Jenny Valentine (library book)
I loved Finding Violet Park (although I still think the US title – Me, the Missing and the Dead was better!) and Broken Soup. I liked this one too, but I sort of fear for the future of everyone in this book…
The Return of Captain John Emmett – Elizabeth Speller (actual TBR pile)
Bought the last time I was in Alnwick (Barter Books is my happy place) so it was past time I got around to it. I really enjoyed it even the mystery element of it. We have a set view of how the veterans of WWI behaved after the war. The poppies, the tomb of the unknown soldier and we imagine that it wasn’t talked about because it was so horrific. It was interesting to imagine a different response and look at how people heal and so on.
When A Scot Ties the Knot – Tessa Dare (library ebook)
This is the third book in the Castles Ever After series and they are so silly and lots of fun. When they come out, I add them to my hold list and then forget about them and it’s always fun when the reminder pops up to tell me the book is available and I get to spend the day in Dare’s delightful, slightly mad world. This features a grumpy yet manly Scot (the only flavour Scots in historicals come in!) and a heroine who likes to draw, there are also a pair of mating (or not) lobsters. It’s mad but lots of fun…
The Duke’s Disaster – Grace Burrowes (library ebook)
More Burrowes crack.
The big family news this week is that Oli is one tooth down. The tooth fairy visited and deposited £2 (apparently it’s £2 for the first tooth and £1 for each one after) the price of teeth has risen in the last 30 years, it was 10p for each tooth and that was your lot!
It was cold enough in the evenings that I had to pull out a woolly jumper, this one used to be my Grandad’s, I will love it to bits until it falls to bits!
Cold at night, but sunny during the day at least. It’s darker earlier so some sunshine is helping!
Friday Night Pizza as usual 
Sunday Morning breakfast with Ma and a walk through the parks to enjoy the sunny day…
Nic Dempsey 