Week 26: where did the week go?

I suddenly realised last night that the week was over with another one about to start and I have no idea as to where the time went.

Oh sure, I've been working and there has been a good amount of cooking and baking as well as the usual parenting but I can't really remember any of it. Clearly I have been daydreaming through the week and have completely forgotten to live in the moment. It's so bad that I've barely taken any pictures this week whereas I usually take loads, trying to capture every little moment of my and my daughter's life for posterity.

The realisation that I've let a whole week slip by unnoticed makes me incredibly sad. Where was I? What was it that distracted me so much that I've stopped noticing the little every day wonders that make our lives special? What have I missed out on? I just don't know. And that's a week of my life I will never retrieve, a week I've simply wasted away.

I need to get a grip on this. I know when you're busy surviving, it's not always possible to live life to the fullest. But going through life in a haze is such a waste, every day, every moment is precious and should be cherished. So I'm going to do my darn best to make sure I pay more attention this week. More attention to my surroundings, to my family and most importantly, to me, because it feels like if I don't, I might just lose myself. And that's a pretty scary thought!

Week 25: Welcome summer!

What a gorgeous summer week it's been! The summer solstice came with sunshine and warmth and I for one, have been making the most of it!

That means there's not much to show for this week, simply because if I wasn't working, I was outdoors indulging in the sunny weather.

The week started with a novel concept: a netwalk. I'd read about netwalking a little while ago and was really tempted to try it out. When Bristol Freelance Mum Faye Dicker announced she was organising a walk for other freelance mums with tots, I couldn't not go. So Nimue and I went to Ashton Court on Monday morning and met up, walked and talked with another 10 or so freelance mums and their little ones. It was a hard slog at times - pushchairs and off-roading don't make the best combo - but it was fun and interesting. I'll definitely be doing more of this in the near future. 

Nimue exploring the gardens pre-netwalk

I announced last week I was working on some yarn based projects. Well, I have to confess I have made very little progress on those and thus can't tell you much about them yet other than they include a belt and two cardigans for my daughter.

After last week's competitive baking, I'm all baked out so there has been no cake making this week either. I did cook us an amazing pasta salad which pretty much encapsulated summer in one dish. It contained sweetcorn, roasted peppers, chopped spinach, cherry tomatoes, sun dried tomatoes, mozzarella and red pesto. Let's say it was hugely popular with the family.

We welcomed the summer solstice at Chalice Well in Glastonbury. It has to be my favourite place on earth, the perfect ground to re-charge your batteries and it had been way too long since we'd been there. Nimue enjoyed the water of the sacred red spring very much. I can't say I'm surprised as her name is that of the Lady of the Lake in the legends of Avalon so it seems fitting that she was in her element there.

We rounded off the weekend with a trip to Tynstesfield and had a wander around the estate. Have I ever mentioned how much I love living in Bristol? There's always lots of fun stuff happening and there are so many lovely places to visit just a stone's throw away.

With all this sunshine, we've been lathering on the suncream but I noticed mid-week that it was drying our daughter's skin quite a bit. So I decided to make a whipped body butter, something all natural to nourish that precious, beautiful skin. If you'd like to make some yourself, here's what you need:

50 gr shea butter or cocoa butter or mango butter (I went with a mix of cocoa butter and shea butter)
20 gr of coconut oil
30 gr of sweet almond oil or avocado oil or olive oil (I went with sweet almond)
Up to 20 drops of pure essential oil (I went with 8 drops of mandarin, 6 drops of lavender and 2 drops of chamomile)

Place all your ingredients apart from the essential oil(s) in a heatproof dish and melt them au bain marie. When all the ingredients have melted, keep them on a low heat for 20 minutes.

After that time, remove them from the heat and transfer the dish to the fridge straight away. Leave the mixture to cool and harden completely. This can take a few hours.

Once you've reached that stage, take an electric whisk to it. At first it feels quite hard and it looks a mess but within a couple of minutes, the mixture looks like whipped cream. When you start thinking it looks good enough to eat, add the essential oils and whisk some more (and don't eat it!). 

And that's it, your body butter is done. All you have left to do is transfer it to a nice clean jar and you're good to go. If the weather is really hot, you might want to keep some of your body butter in the fridge but that's not an absolute necessity. 

I'm glad to report that Nimue's skin looked instantly better after applying the butter on her. There's just nothing quite like natural beauty products.

I hope you all enjoyed the sunshine too. Until next week! x

Week 23 & 24: Baking for the win

I wasn't able to post last week as we had friends over for the weekend and I didn't want to be a poor hostess, spending more time behind my laptop than talking to my guests. To be fair, it would have been a short update anyway as work took up a lot of my time so it works out well having this update covering two weeks. 

Among our visiting friends was a birthday girl, so naturally we had to bake her a cake. One of my favourite cakes ever is the traditional red velvet. I know it's wrong, all that colouring just can't be good for you, but I really like the taste of it and the dramatic effect when you cut through it. The weekend before, Simon Rimmer was presenting his version of the red velvet cake on Sunday Brunch (Channel 4) so I thought I'd try his recipe. As I was making it, I couldn't help but feel the proportions were all wrong. The cake came out looking ok but when I tasted it, I was quite disappointed. It was quite dense and quite dry, not at all what I'd want from a red velvet. In saying that, it was perfectly edible and our birthday girl loved it but in our household, baking is a skill and we're pretty critical. I certainly won't be using this recipe again. 

While I was baking a cake, hubby did what he does best and baked a bread, but not just any bread, a "Fries Suikerbrood" otherwise known in English as a Frisian sugar bread. I used to have a craving for these during pregnancy but we hadn't made any since. As you can imagine, this is loaded with calories but it is oh so moorish and delicious! Especially when made by the master baker himself.

I mentioned in my previous update that I was preparing for a baking competition. Well, the time came this week. I can't remember if I've said before that I'm a member of the WI but this was our local WI's bake off. I'd planned to put in two entries: red velvet cake pops in the shape of apples and the rhubarb and custard cake I'd been practising. As there was a category for jams and chutneys, I made the last minute decision to enter a pot of the grapefruit marmalade I made a few weeks back.

The baking prep actually started with some... painting. I knew how I wanted to present my cake pops and I'd gotten these flower pot shaped holders online but they needed a touch of colour so I spent an entire evening experimenting with watercolours then building up the layers until I had the result I wanted.

The following day/evening, I baked and decorated my cake pops. As experimenting with a new recipe hadn't paid off, I went back to my old and trusted red velvet recipe. I reduced the cocoa content and increased the red colouring slightly for effect and everything turned out perfectly. It was a hot day however and the candy melt coating gave me an awful lot of grief. I'd planned on making red and green apples but I messed up the red candy melt so badly it became unworkable and I was left with just the green. Looking back, it probably wasn't such a bad thing, the effect of biting in an apple green pop to discover a bright red cake inside was really quite dramatic.

On the day of the competition, I bought a load of organic rhubarb, the pinkest, prettiest one I could find and set to work making custard and baking my best ever cake. After I'd finished, I was left with quite a lot of the pink stuff and just enough time to spare to bake another entry, so a rhubarb crumble traybake made it into the oven.

As I displayed my entries and looked at what I was up against, I hoped I'd get at least one prize (runner up was good enough) and that none of my entries qualified for the "epic fail" (good effort but didn't quite hit the mark) prize.

But I didn't win just one prize, I won three! OK, so clearly the jury wasn't as enamoured as I am with rhubarb because none of my rhubarb bakes got a mention. My cake pops however hit the home run. Not only were they best in their category (Small but Perfectly Formed), they also raked in the "Showstopper" prize which was picked by the jury out of all the entries. I think I did quite a few leaps of joy when my name was called out. The biggest surprise for me though was that my marmalade won the runner up prize. Considering this is only the second time ever that I've tried my hand at jam making and that I didn't actually follow a recipe, that's a fab result and one I'm still pretty chuffed about!

This win means I'm now a bona fide baker in our house and I no longer have to hide in my husband's shadow. We're officially a baking power couple :-)

In other news, I've been playing with plastic beads these past two weeks. I'd seen somewhere that by baking cheap plastic beads for a relatively short time, you can melt them and create accessories. I had a first go and it really worked. I chose to glue the little flowers to hairbands for my daughter but you could easily turn them into rings, brooches or hairclips.

I also had my nails re-done and opted for a 3D design. I'd been oggling those for a while so it was time to give it a go. I was worried I wouldn't be able to stop picking at it but so far I've been really good and a week in, they're still intact.

I'm currently working on a number of yarn based projects but you'll have to wait until next week to find out more. Have a lovely week folks!

Week 22: rhubarb how I love thee!

I'm happy to report that week 22 was not "blah" like its predecessor but rather... tangy! Tangy like beautiful, delicious, pink rhubarb.

I love spring/early summer, the sun comes out to play, flowers and trees are blooming and my favourite fruits come into season. I also love that it's the season of rhubarb. And this week I've made the most of it, cooking rhubarb in a number of ways. 

First we had rhubarb fools, a quick and easy recipe stolen from Weight Watchers. 

To make these you'll need 450g rhubarb, 1 bag (24g) of raspberry jelly crystals, 200ml of boiling water, 200g of greek yoghurt, 4tbsp of sugar (or sweetener) and a couple of handfuls of porridge oats. Chop the rhubarb. Pour the crystals and water in a pan, once the crystals are dissolved, add the rhubarb. Cover and leave to simmer for 10 minutes, until the rhubarb is tender. Transfer the contents of the pan to a food processor and blitz the whole thing. Leave to cool for a while then add the sugar to taste and the greek yoghurt. Blitz again. Pour in glasses and leave to set. Just before serving, put the oats in a pre-heated oven at 180ºC for about 10 minutes to toast them. Sprinkle on top of the rhubarb fools and enjoy. 

After the fools came the classic combination of rhubarb and custard in the form of a cake. It was a baking experiment, one which I plan to enter in an upcoming baking competition so I won't be sharing my recipe just yet, or much about the cake for that matter. All I'll say is that it's a really good looking cake and it was truly delicious. Hubby and his colleagues got to be the judges of my first attempt. 

Finally, we ended the week with a luscious crumble. I used a James Martin recipe and it turned out perfectly. I only used about half the sugar in the rhubarb mix as I like it tangy and I also used a half flour/half oats mix for the topping. I served it with a dollop of clotted cream ice cream but double cream or custard would have done the trick just fine.

Outside my rhubarb obsession, I have been experimenting with cheap crafts this week. Inspired by a post I saw on Pinterest, I came up with two activities for my toddler.

First I recycled a cardboard box, strengthened it with Duck tape then made a series of holes in it with the help of a scalpel and a knitting needle. Add a (dirt cheap) bag of pipe cleaners and hey presto, hours of fun for the little person, arranging and re-arranging the pipe cleaners in the different holes. Although I must admit, I'm still not sure who had the most fun playing with it, our daughter or her parents.

Next I chopped a cardboard tube in bits of different size and stuck them to the side of a cupboard then I gave our daughter a bowl full of (again, cheap) pompons. She loved chucking the pompons through the tubes and delighted in the watching them fall back in the container. It really doesn't take much to entertain a small person, does it?

I've also explored the latest teenage craze this week, rainbow loom bands. A bag of these bands costs less than £2 at our local store. I've used my knitting loom to make single band bracelets, which was pretty easy. Now I need to find more designs to challenge myself or I'm at risk of quickly losing interest.

That's it from me for this week. Enjoy the sunshine folks x