Leaving London and downshifting to become a full-time parent and rural homemaker
I’ve just been given a calendar for 2007 which has lots of nice pictures and quotes about motherhood. Here are some of the less cheesey ones.
‘Children should be educated and instructed in the principals of freedom.’
- John Adams
‘My mother had a great deal of trouble with me but I think she enjoyed it.‘
- Mark Twain
‘Thou [...]
A sobering story of how deadly meningitis can be
Today I was in the supermarket checkout queue with my twins after their first ever swimming lesson. We were all tired and grumpy and my daughter was pulling her brother’s hair and wouldn’t let go. The woman in front of me said to my girl ‘Oooooh [...]
We keep a towelling covered cold compress (bought from Tescos about two years ago for £4) in the top drawer of our freezer.
It is worth its weight in gold when it comes to soothing a poor howling child who has whacked or grazed their head/face/eyebrow/knee/elbow/ankle bone/nose/finger on something hard/sharp/pointy/stony/concretey/car-doory.
Usually my kids will manage to get [...]
Whoops. Deary me I think I may be awarded this week’s Amateur Parent award for not knowing/thinking/guessing that all other parents send their kids off to school with a frozen ice-pack inside the children’s lunch boxes.
So far this term my two have had ham, tuna and yohurts all left to brew at room temperature (it [...]
Janet (my legendary new aquaintance) tells me that when I pick the apples from our tree (Cox’s apparently according to Janet) or the tomatoes & chillis from our plants we should keep a bit of stalk attached which will help the fruit to keep.
Removing the stalk when picking creates a wound in the fruit and [...]
When living the high life in London Darren and I discovered that Tesco’s sold frozen rice in portion sized bags to be heated in the microwave and served at a moments notice (usually with a chilled curry). We’d be horrifed when we didn’t have any in as the thought of COOKING some rice (and draining [...]
I am not a big fan of spiders. In fact they paralyse me with fear or send me into a screaming loon. When the children were 18 months old I ran screaming from their room leaving them alone with a huge great big hairy one. Nice work mummy.
Since moving to the country I am less [...]
I tend to make these to have in the house instead of biscuits as my son and I both have a slight wheat intolerance. They are utterly scrummy and take about 5 minutes to make, 16 minutes to bake. They are also the thing I always take to someone’s house as will usually have forgotten [...]
Found this from Allotment Growing
Ingredients
4 lb courgettes
2lb 8oz onions
2lb 8oz brown sugar
Large piece of fresh ginger
1/2 tspn pepper
2 pints malt vinegar
2 heads of garlic
2lb 8oz tomatoes
1 tspn cayenne pepper
2 tspn salt
Method
Chop all the vegetables, add vinegar, sugar and spices and bring slowly to the boil, stirring now and again. If the courgettes have [...]
It’s not even funny how much stuff I have piled up in this room behind me waiting to be sold on eBay - it looks like at least 20 of those huge blue Ikea bags mainly filled with outgrown children’s clothes but also a lot of things we no longer want fetched down from our [...]