Random Midweek Loveliness

It's Wednesday, it's raining and I am tired as Angus did not have a very good night's sleep, so consequently neither did I. I find myself wishing it was Monday just so that I could possibly fit in everything I hoped I would have achieved by today. Does anyone else wish there were just a few more hours in every day? Are we all unrelentingly busy, unable to say "no" to people, or is that just me?

So here are some random lovely things which are making me smile and have enriched my week enormously:

My granny blanket. I am nearly there, only seven rounds to go. It's currently only 90 cm by 100 cm so still a little too small. I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with it at the moment; on the one hand I am enjoying the soothing repetitive rounds of trebles, but on the other I just want it be finished right now so that I can do something else.

A delightful and unexpected package of treats, sent by my best friend Abigail, just "because" and containing - among other things - this frankly stunning print...

...some Liberty print washi tape (could anything be more perfect? I am torn between wanting to use it on everything and wanting to save it for something special)...

...a new book...

...and this gorgeous brooch.

Abigail: one day we will live near each other, near enough to meet for coffee or lunch, for our children to play together, and not always be at opposite ends of the country. One day!

I bought some stocks. They smell heavenly but were not doing it for me in this vase.

So I put them in lots of little glass bottles. Divide and conquer. 

Yesterday I made couscous with coriander, pomegranate seeds and flaked almonds. The combination of textures and flavours is a winning one. The tart pop on the tongue of the pomegranate with the gentle crunch of the nuts and herby, soft couscous is good.

We ate it with chicken breasts which had been marinated in yogurt and harissa paste then butterflied and pan fried. 

If you have any left over chicken or couscous (you may have to cook extra for that to happen!) they are very good mixed together with some salad leaves and a yogurty dressing for lunch. That's what I'll be having today.

Wildflowers On The Dinner Table

My favourite part about having friends over for dinner is making the table look pretty. Not in a themed, party planner way, but just taking care with flowers and candles and colours, trying to aim for something seasonal without spending too much money. I'd rather spend that on the food and drink.

Yesterday morning Bella and I walked up to the shops. On our way home we picked cow parsley and buttercups, what you might call hedgerow flowers. Except hedgerows are few round here so we made do with the footpath at the top of our road and the grass verges outside the houses. I added to this with chive flowers from the back garden and put them in some half litre carafes which have small necks, making them ideal for holding the flimsy, wiry stems.

I'm still not tired of cow parsley, even if it does shed tiny little white petals over everything.

These posies set a soft, summery tone for the table, along with a pink table runner I've had for years, some tea lights, and my Grandma's silver cutlery.

I made a big jug of Pimms. We drank it in the garden even though it was really a bit too cold.

We ate salads, breads, smoked meats and dips to begin with, followed by a great big beef chilli that John made, with rice, tacos, guacamole, sour cream. 

Then for dessert John made an orange and almond cake, which he served with an orange syrup and marscapone. He's made it before and it's amazing. 

Good times with good friends. Although we were greeted by fuzzy heads and a frankly unfriendly amount of washing up when we came down this morning. How did we manage to use every glass, plate and chopping board in the house? But at least there is left over orange cake.

Joining in, a little late, with Lou's Nature in the Home series at her blog littlegreenshed.

52 Weeks of Happy...34/52

The happiest people don't have the best of everything, they just make the best of everything.

What a lovely week it's been. We've spent most of our time outside enjoying the sun and warm weather. It's very easy to find things to be happy about when I'm greeted by blue skies upon opening the curtains every morning. So, joining in with the lovely Jen at little birdie, here are this week's happies:

1. Peonies. I love their pale colour and layers of delicate, frilly, silky soft petals. I bought these but I'd love to grow some.

2. Time spent with Bella and Angus last weekend in my in-law's garden. Bella practised her skipping and coloured. Angus spent every moment outside playing with their dog. Being away from home makes me sit still and just watch them play.

3. Weekend market find number one: four very kitsch corn-on-the-cob dishes. I've wanted some of these for ages. Now I just need some of those little fork-prong things you stick in either end so you don't get butter all over your fingers.

4. Market find number two: a screen print by a local artist, printed onto a page from a vintage atlas. It makes me think of jumping on a plane, freedom, unknown destinations, going exploring; basically a spontaneity and lack of responsibility that is impossible with children but ever so appealing. Also, I love old maps.

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Thanks for all your brilliant suggestions for gifts for teachers. So many good ideas! Edibles seem to be the most popular and the most practical. I will give jam with either some fresh bread or cake of some kind, maybe some fruit or a plant from the garden if we have something, and make sure I find a way to involve the children in the whole process. I know that gifts for teachers is a relatively new thing but honestly, I really like to do it. I think both Angus and Bella's teachers are pretty fantastic and have made this last year a very happy time for them both.

Wishing you all a lovely weekend. The weather forecast here is for more good weather so we will be pottering at home, gardening, cooking, preparing for some friends coming over for dinner tomorrow night. There might even be a jug of Pimms! 

Rhubarb and Vanilla Jam

This was one of those joyful kitchen moments when I had an idea of what something should be and it all turned out just as I had hoped. I am very much an everyday cook, learning as I go, and not given to moments of culinary genius. But oh this jam is good. I don't mean to blow my own trumpet, but really it is. 

My father in law gave me 2 kg of rhubarb from his allotment (it was just going to waste!) and so my first thought was jam and my second was pie. I've made rhubarb and ginger jam before, and rhubarb and strawberry but wanted something different. Then I remembered how well custard goes with rhubarb and thought about adding some vanilla to the fruit. The sweet vanilla, which can be a little sickly when paired with other less sharp fruits, is perfect with the rhubarb's tartness. It's a very happy mixture of flavours. I used 1 kg of the fruit to make the jam (my stock pot won't really hold more - I think I need to invest in a proper jam making pan) and chopped and froze the other half for future pies and crumbles. I love to see lots of little bags of fruit in my freezer, all lined up, labelled and ready to go.

To make the jam I used:

1 kg rhubarb

1 kg preserving or jam sugar

2 vanilla pods or two generous teaspoons of vanilla paste

I prefer to use jam or preserving sugar - which is just white sugar with added pectin - but you might prefer to use ordinary sugar and add your own pectin, or not add the pectin at all. I have had too many cross moments in the kitchen with jam that refuses to set so I like to use jam sugar. Also, I found vanilla paste much easier to use than fresh vanilla pods as the liquid surrounding the seeds helped them distribute more evenly throughout the fruit.

This amount of fruit filled about five standard size 275 ml or half pint jam jars.

To make:

• Make sure your jars are sterilised and ready to go.*
• Put a saucer in the freezer.
• If you are using vanilla pods, split them and scrape out the seeds and put to one side.
• Wash and chop the rhubarb into 2 cm or 1 inch pieces. 
• Put the fruit, sugar and vanilla into the jam pan and stir it really well so that all the rhubarb is covered in sugar and vanilla. Ideally you want to leave this for a few hours so that all the flavours have a chance to get to know each other, but you could just start cooking if you have less time.
• Slowly bring the mixture to the boil then let it bubble away. 
• After 15 or 20 minutes, start to check for setting point. Take your saucer from the freezer and put a small dollop of jam on the saucer. Give it a few moments to cool and set, then push your finger through it. If it wrinkles, then it's ready. If it's still runny then it needs longer.
• When you are satisfied that your jam is ready, remove it from the heat and leave it to cool slightly, say 10 minutes. Skim off any scum and then pour into your waiting jars. A jam funnel helps enormously here!

It's pleasing to look at too, a soft pinky-peach colour with tiny black flecks. Then my favourite bit - jam tops and labels. The fabric jar toppers let me indulge my country kitchen fantasies of AGAs and Welsh dressers. I experimented with a butterfly hole punch here - it would be great if I could find a fruity themed hole punch, I wonder if you can buy them.

I was also hoping to pick your brains; I want to make a gift each for Angus and Bella' s teachers. We have seven weeks until the end of term so I think I've got time. They are both women, in their early thirties I would guess, and I don't think the whole country/granny chic thing would really be to their taste. What could I make them that they would like and wouldn't go in the crazy handmade parent gift pile for the charity shop? Edibles like jam, fudge, cakes? Something crocheted or knitted? Something sewn? Any ideas would be very gratefully received. Thank you!

* I wrote about sterilising your jars here should you want more information.

A Holiday in a Day

We spent the last weekend of the half term holidays in Durham staying with my in-laws. It was John's birthday and he had a few days off work; that combined with the children being off school yesterday meant it felt like an extra bank holiday weekend for us all. 

On Sunday we all went to Tynemouth for the day, a pretty seaside town up on the coast. It was like a perfect little holiday all in one day. The weather was clear and sunny. (It was also quite cold but you take what you can get here.) We explored Tynemouth Market first, a wonderful and unpretentious weekly market that is held in the train station. It's a mixture of local produce, stalls selling what can only kindly be called "bric a brac" and some real gems by local craftspeople. We bought a few treasures including a little screen print, which I'll show you later on. 

We ate fish and chips for lunch - with a cup of tea of course, this is the North - then went to the beach. The children and I took our shoes off as soon as we could and ran down to the see to paddle in the (absolutely freezing) water. As soon as I am near the water I become ridiculously happy and I was even happier than usual watching Bella and Angus. They paddled, ran back and forth chasing waves, collected stones, buried their feet in the sand, built sandcastles, did all the things children do on the beach. Where did they learn these things? I didn't show them. Is it instinctive I wonder? They were so occupied and busy, calling to each other and showing each other things like dead crabs and sea glass. Everything was fascinating to them. It was a glimpse of a different kind of childhood. I was sorry to drag them away when everyone else tired of the beach and I wish I could take them to the beach more regularly.

We ate ice creams on the cliff top over looking Tynemouth harbour then walked out to the lighthouse you see on the left in the last picture. I taught the children the "do you like butter?" trick with buttercups. When we got back I brushed the sand off their feet and shook it from bags and clothes. My skin felt all tight, like it does after a day in the sun and wind, and we'd all caught the sun a little. Everyone was so tired after all that fresh air. We drank beers in the garden in the evening sun.

A day well spent.

Pin It Forward

A while back Pinterest emailed me about their new Pin It Forward UK campaign, the aim of which is for bloggers to help spread the word about Pinterest from blog to blog and increase interest in Pinterest in the UK.

I agreed as, despite a rocky start, I've come to love Pinterest. 

Someone once said to me that Pinterest was like fantasy football for women; very enjoyable, time consuming, something that involved a great deal of tinkering and time online but didn't actually serve any real purpose...and I suppose I agreed with them. I was put off by so many things - there was a rumour for a long time that you had to be "invited" by a friend to join, so I though it was pretty elitist, and I am always wary of anything with follower numbers as it can become competitive. I've had a Pinterest account for a long time now, at least 18 months, and I hardly ever used it until recently. I couldn't really see the point of it.

But then something (pretty obvious) occurred to me. Whenever I used to see something that caught my eye - a recipe, craft project or book - I used to bookmark it on my laptop so that I could find it later. It would get muddled in with so many other things and I'd forget all about it. "I need some kind of electronic notice board", I thought to myself. "Someone should make one." And then I thought - "Oh, hang on, I do have one and it's called Pinterest!" It occurred to me that as well of filling my boards with random images of pretty things (which is fine) I could use them for practical things too, like craft ideas, recipes - things that I don't want to do straight away but I know that sometime in the next few months I will think "Now, where is that brilliant idea I saw for how to make a paper feather" or some such essential piece of information.

So that's what I've started to do. My boards are few and my pins little but they'll grow. It's quality not quanity, I tell myself! It's a mixture of things I've made that I'm proud of, ideas for things I want to make, inspiration for the home. I can indulge my love of all things yellow, of russian dolls and apple motifs, and some boards are more visual eye candy, like feathers and flowers. 

And, as part of the Pin It Foward campaign I'd like to introduce Jessica from Yiskah Knits - do pop over and say hello! You can see her pins here.

Pinning is enjoyable, addictive and, best of all, the most amazingly inspiring place. 

52 Weeks of Happy...33/52

The happiest people don't have the best of everything, they just make the best of everything.

The weather has been so mixed this last week, glorious blue skies to begin with followed by four days of cold, rainy weather, then more sun yesterday. A mixed bag, and the wet days have dragged. But, as always, when you look for the happy things they are there - sometimes hiding but always there - so, joining in with Jen at little birdie, here are this weeks four happy things.*

1. A rather fab day out with my friend and her six year old son on Wednesday at RHS Harlow Carr, a beautiful area of planting, woodland and gardens in Yorkshire. The children followed nature trails, explored woods, played in huge tree houses, walked rope bridges, ran around and got very dirty. The grown ups enjoyed coffee in Betty's and had aluim envy and said things like "Wow! Look at those rhododendrons! Amazing!"

2. The weather last weekend. The time in the garden, the sun, the barbecues, the paddling pool, all of it. Just perfect.

3. Meeting up with old university friends on Thursday and remembering just how much we make each other laugh and hatching plans for getaways together.

4. Relaxed mornings. Even if I'm still up with the kids at 7 am, even if it's raining, it's nice to wander downstairs and make a cup of tea and drink it leisurely then think, I'll make another. And another. And finally get dressed at 10 am. It's always refreshing to have that break from the monotony of the school run.

I hope you are all enjoying your weekend. 

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*All photos this week are from our day out Harlow Carr gardnes because, what with the gloom and total lack of light, there haven't been many photo opportunities.