So yesterday was a difficult day.
When I get get to the end of a day like yesterday, I want a glass of wine or a gin and tonic, but I don’t drink on school nights, so this is my solution. 
t starts with the Strawberry Rhubarb Soda Syrup from Smitten Kitchen, which is delicious. So a good strong measure about 2.5oz into a large wine glass. Fill the glass with ice. Cut a tangerine in half and squeeze them into the glass. Top up with tonic water.
Enjoy…
No week in review this week because, well honestly because I didn’t write it up and today is what Anne Shirley would describe as a ‘jonah day’ where everything goes slightly wrong.The blind fell off the wall, I spilled coffee all over myself, there was signal failure on the way to work today. Work is going a bit manic too!
Having said all of that, the sun is shining and I don’t have a migraine (which was last week’s fun, happy thing) so I’m all good.
Have a good week….
This just makes me happy…
The Wombats – Give Me a Try
Happy Friday! I am not at work today, I took a day off so I could go to the Dr’s and talk about my poor feet, meet Ryan for coffee and bake a cake with the Baxters for Adam’s birthday! I’m calling it a mental health day…
Some things about this week, I’m at the point where I know the General Election is happening because I keep talking back to the radio, mainly shouting, “Just answer the question”. I know I’m in a hotly contested seat because I have received three, yes three letters ‘from’ David Cameron, mostly telling me that Labour is going to ruin the economy for ‘hardworking families’, I really hate that phrase! However, I am also very, very grateful not to live in the US where Hilary has announced that she’s running for an election that doesn’t happen for another 19 months, I know it’s a bigger country, but I would be a nervous wreck!
1) How to survive Henry VIII. Mmm, I see some flaws in this, a nunnery, not the safest place to be during the reign of the man who got rid of them (it wasn’t just the monks!).
2) Gin for the Summer. I think gin is good for all seasons but I do need to buy some more and these are good recommendations.
3) Milliband as Thatcher not Foot. Interesting.
4) The Tory Party also launched its manifesto this week. The plan to extend right to buy to housing association tenants is really stupid. Here’s Owen Jones on why.
Cornbread and chilli is not a comfort food for me. It’s good but culturally, if you want to comfort me with food, boiled chicken and rice or the sausage casserole thing (affectionately called noely poley in our family) is where it’s at. Also for maxium comfort they need to be cooked by my mother (which very rarely happens!)
You may have noticed though that I’ve been spending quite a bit of time with the Baxters, and chilli with cornbread is one of Kathy’s comfort foods (also soup, K is big on soup!)
Anyway, this is the recipe she uses and they are really good with soup and easier to make than bread. 
One of the things I’m really good at is always bringing my lunch to work. This is partly budget, partly health and all greed.
What I have for lunch really varies depending on the season, during winter I tend to take dinner left overs in, with some additional crunchy veg to make sure that I get my five a day. (I have a bit of a carrot problem – I really can’t give them up any time!). As it gets warmer, I tend to make a series of lunches for the week and re-purpose left overs for other dinners.
As Spring finally seems to be here, I wanted to jazz up my lunch a bit.
The basis of most of my summer lunches is chopped vegetables, I like to chop them quite small because then you get a bit of everything in every bite (this week is was celery, carrots, a pepper, some mushrooms, and cucumber which I mostly always have in the fridge), there were some black beans and chickpeas (about 3/4 of a can of each) that needed to be used up, I had originally intended to use them over the weekend but didn’t so they went in too. 
That went into one container, and my plan was to boil some eggs and scoop some of the salad into a lunchbox with an egg and been done. However, I had sprouted some lentils over the weekend (clearly I had salad on my mind!) so I added some of those in too.
I have these very handy pots for putting dressing in. So a basic olive oil and balsamic dressing with plenty of salt and pepper went into one of those.
This type of lunch is endlessly variable and I do vary it. You can add feta, bacon, chicken, falefel, roasted veg, fish or whatever you fancy really to the basic chopped veg. You can used cooked instead of sprouted lentils or another type of grain, quinoa is good. The world is basically your lobster with this type of lunch.
Other lunch ideas;
Sprouted Lentil and Mackrel Salad
I feel like I’ve been really busy this week, my sleep has got all erratic again, it’s the busiest week of my work month and I was packing it into 4 days, so it was pretty busy. Also Spring was mostly springing this week, so I felt a compulsion to wash all the things. I’ll get over it. Highlights of the week (or more to the point, stuff that I took photos of..
Lunch in the park with the girls from work.
Friday Night Pizza.
I spent some time on Saturday with the Baxter babies and how cool is the print on this dress?
Ma and I watched our favourite films (points if you know what it is!)
I made a perfect poached egg for breakfast on Sunday
Took a long walk through the parks to get to and from the library
Not pictured, Oxford won the Boat Race, Chelsea beat QPR (we did get lucky but Ben probably won’t speak to me for a week!), I made this, I picked up my reserved books at the library, caught up with Ryan, cleaned the fridge and am on a clear all the surfaces kick at home (it’s Spring!).
How was your week?
The godchildren have been going through their dad’s things and music.
This was knocking around and it’s been going through my head since, although I want it on record that I was 10 or 11 and that is probably why I thought it was daze not days..Also this on the slightly horrifying lyrics is fun…
People fall into lots of categories, tea or coffee, beer or wine, people who take their makeup off before bed and those that don’t bother. We could divide and sub divide ourselves in to endless little groups.
Here’s another. I’m a bed maker. It’s one of the few housework things that I didn’t have to train myself to do and one that I do every day. It’s not a chore, it’s just what I do.
I get out of bed, I make it. Even as a messy teenager, I made my bed. I don’t ever remember being told to make my bed as a kid but I do remember the process of straightening it out and then arranging the many cuddly toys in the right order.
Why? Because messy beds are not places you want to sleep and an unmade bed makes the whole room look messy. Also I move about a lot in my sleep, it’s not unusual for me to wake up having turned my duvet upside down or for pillows to have found their way to the bottom of the bed or the floor, so fixing that is required.
I read somewhere that you should make your bed each morning because it’s the first task of the day and sets you up for success. Then, if the day turns into a nightmare and you don’t accomplish anything else, you at least made your bed AND you have a welcoming bed to get into at the end of the day. I didn’t need the encouragement to make my bed, but I completely agree with the point.
The first thing I did when I moved into the flat was (literally) make my bed. When Ma moved last year, her bed was the first thing I put back together and made*. That day I took apart and put back together; the bed, the bookshelves and the kitchen unit thingie** but I made the bed first because there is nothing worse than spending the day moving and unpacking, to realise at midnight, you have to sort out where you’re sleeping.
We live in a age of duvet covers and fitted sheets, so making the bed is simple. Organise the pillows and shake the duvet out. It takes less that 5 minutes and it really does make a difference to how feel about the state of my house.
I may hardly ever hoover but my bed is made!
______________________
*yes I did notice at the time that Ma I have have very similar taste in duvet covers
**I am the queen of disassembling Ikea furniture
Happy Friday! It’s been a busy four day week for me and today all I have to do is some post meeting tasks and minutes (I hate writing minutes and now I have to do it every month – I’m being punished for something!) but it is Friday and after 5pm today I can relax!
This weeks links…
1) TBR Time. This came via Kate’s website. Horrifying and wonderful all at the same time. A year and 5 months, that’s not too bad!
2) Condoms and why they aren’t designed differently. Or 100 things you didn’t know about condoms (lambskin condoms, yep they exist!)
4) Even Simon Jenkins thinks that non-dom status should be abolished
The consequent attraction of London for the very rich is much cited by non-dom apologists as “good for Britain”. This is wholly unproved. It has certainly led to price inflation for London houses, schools, hospitals and football clubs, but how much trickles down into the economy is moot. New York, with a far more severe tax regime, is not noticeably short of super-rich.
5) Mediocre Failures. This is worth reading
Failure is an adult who, through ignorance, stupidity, laziness or a simple callous lack of empathy, happily labels the most vulnerable, disadvantaged children in the country as “mediocre failures” simply because you haven’t the wit or humanity to care about the impact on them of a policy which will make their educational experience narrower, less useful, more soul-destroying. And for what ? A cheap headline in a propaganda rag.
Nic Dempsey 