Handy kitchen image

I'm slightly horrified to realise it's nigh on a month since my last post - oops!  A longer post soon but for now - I came across this super useful image on line that I thought I'd share with you.

I'm adding the link to the sidebar 'Handy Links' as I think this is one worth remembering.  This and the Oven Temperature Conversion Chart must be 2 of the best I have come across for cooking.  :-)

#100HAPPYDAYS Set 2: 18-31

Time for the next batch of images I've taken for my 100 Happy Days challenge.  Starting with a rare appearance of myself - not something I make a habit of on here that's for sure!

Day 18: Loving the amazing voice of Angelina on a drizzly Sunday afternoon. Being captured looking like a muppet enjoying it.

Day 19: Yorkshire pudding w' wild garlic experiment WIN!!  [As seen here.]

Day 20: Walking home in the sun and realising - IT'S SPRING!!! Finally.

Day 21: Catching up with a good friend I haven't seen since January, sat by the river looking at the beautiful evening sky.

Day 22: Spring flowers of Blue (my fave) from the garden. Gorgeous smell from the bluebells. 

Day 23: Nearly got mown down on the bridge on my way home from work, by 7 or 8 little girls, all on matching purple go-karts. Pretty random. Bringing up the rear was one small boy on a big yellow tonka truck style thing, with his dad. Their pure delight made me laugh in the sun.

Day 24: (Before scalding myself with boiling water!) The kids on Easter hols round here have discovered a love for pavement art. These dinosaurs (?!) are a fave on the way back from the shops. 

Day 25: A cider in the sun from my good friend and her somewhat over exuberant pup.

Day 26: Getting home rather later than anticipated to the cat, sofa, warming soup and my current guilty viewing pleasure. Mmm; cosy.

Day 27: It's getting nice enough to sit out on my lunch with a good book and soak up the vitamin D. Aaaahhhh.  

Day 28: Discovering a secret pond on campus on my way home that instantaneously brought back happy memories of a childhood holiday and my dad rowing us across a similarly weed choked lake. I know this pondweed is an invasive git but it's such a GREEN colour in spring!  

Day 29 - Beautiful sunny morning on the way to work today. Blue sky, cherry blossoms bobbing in the breeze, lush fresh spring green grass and burbling river. Last day in work for 11 days. Nice.

Day 30. A man in a bow tie made me smile. Sadly I don't have an actual photo so this will have to do.*

Day 31: Having a cheeky bubble bath in the middle of the day just because you want to, and you have 10 days off so can sacrifice one to the Radox gods.

Now the more observant of you may have noted that I mentioned scalding myself with boiling water in amongst that lot.  Yes - I did.  And it bloody hurt.  All I can say is stick your hand in a pot of cold water for several hours and be glad to have an aloe vera plant at home.  Eeek!

Day 2 after doing it

Today, mostly peeled!

Happy Easter everyone!

*If anyone is a Dr Who fan you can find that T-shirt here.

#100HAPPYDAYS - the first 2 weeks.

Well I did only say I'd post the pics on here weekly-ish, right?  I'm keeping up with the challenge of finding a happy moment to post each day so far.  Mostly these are small things but I think that's part of the ethos behind the challenge; recognising the happiness to be found in everyday moments as well a 'big' events.  More info on the 100 happy days site.
So without further ado, here're my moments so far...

Day 1: Can’t remember the last time I used this when it wasn't absolutely necessary.  My trousers are falling off me. 

Day 2 - Happy Friday! Good night with good friends and fine ales.  

Day 3: I fit back in my fave jeans - whoop!!!! This has made me a happy bunny indeed. 

Day 4: Very early! Bar dancing with my new bar 'family'.

Day 5: This beautiful magnolia stellata is on my route to and from work. I love seeing it each spring. Cheered up my walk home in the cold and rain tonight.

Day 6: Lovely bag full of Ramsons for wild garlic pesto later. Nomalicious!!!

Day 7: Happy guinness at a friend's birthday.

Day 8, which also happens to be my lucky number. Getting home to my furry faced love after what feels like a veeerrrrryyyy loooooonnnnggg couple of days. (PS - like most cats he takes a shit pic though.  )

Day 9: That patch of blue which prisoners call the sky... The sun coming out on a Friday afternoon at work when it seems like the rest of the week it's rained every afternoon / evening.

Day 10: Spending all day in bed because you can and not feeling even a tiny bit guilty about it.

Day 11 - Watching the rather spiffing Aunt Fanny's Handbag laying down some chillaxed Sunday arvo vibes. Oh, and the greatest old couple ever, dancing their hearts out to it - she was being chucked up in the air and everything! 

Day 12 - Playing all the top old tunes you'd forgotten about on an unplanned jukebox marathon. They even had a couple of Ned's tracks!!!! Then I had to educate as to who Ned's were of course...

Day 13: I won free chocolate! Nuff said, right?  Small pleasures.

Day 14

Day 15 - Finding I can fit back in some trousers I haven't worn for 2 years, that are a size smaller than all my current clothes, and evidently I can fit into them without bothering to undo the zip. I believe 'Woot' is the appropriate word at this juncture. 

Day 16 - Leaving the office on a Friday in the SUN to be greeted by this display of beauty by nature. *breathe*

Day 17: You lot. Yes YOU. Realising I have some truly wonderful friends both new and old who care and seem to know just the right things to say when I need it. I thank you, you wonderful people you.

So that's as far as I am, tune in next week(ish) for the next thrilling installment...

Picture test

Some pictures, apropos of nothing, just to test the layout functions.  Which means I need a sight more text than this.  What can I treat you to...

"In his best-known work, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Adams explained the supreme utility of the towel in intergalactic travel:

“…it has great practical value – you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head 

to ward off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you – daft as a bush, but very, very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.”

Adams’ artistic sensibility is both specific and elusive. He can go from distraught to delighted in the space of a modifier. He combines Gary Larson’s irony, Bill Watterson’s wistful idealism, Oscar Wilde’s keen social observation, and Dorothy Parker’s mischievousness. But set in space. In short, he is a genre all to himself."

Excerpt from bookriot.com

Frankly you can never fault a bit of Hitchhikers to keep you amused and educate.  :-)  Ok - I'm just a tad of a geek about Douglas Adams...  :-)

Random Recipes - 'Dare to Bare'

Well there went chrimble - I've been so disorganised (and also quite busy) that I totally failed to get a post
up before the day.  Hey ho, hope we all had fun anyway.  :-)
I've also been super slack at getting any blog challenge posts done but thankfully lovely Dom at Belleau Kitchen, instead of the normal Random Recipe gave us the task of 'Daring to Bare' and photographing our larder / pantry / food cupboards.  I'm still a day late with this but I'm sure he's used to it by now!
My 'pantry-in-potentia' has yet to be built into the space under the stairs so at the moment I have two very disorganised and messy cupboards.  Don't say I didn't warn you...

This is the kitchen cupboard, note most of a whole shelf devoted to herbs / spices / vinegars etc!

Two things I always have - soy sauce and mushroom ketchup.  The latter gives the depth you miss when not using meat.  I generally have quite a few oriental options in stock.  Different noodles, pickled turnip (nicer than it sounds), random tins of braised eel - because I loved the packaging.  ;-)

This is the other cupboard.  For overflow / multibuys.

Multiple packs of pasta, stuffing, jars of curry pastes.  The left side is full of cds which is why I haven't pictured it.  Not a lot of free space though as you can see and the best bit of this is - I have an Approved Food order arriving on Tuesday.  Now where am I going to put that lot...

Pics, seaside and graffiti

Once more there’s been a little while between my last post and this one.  Here in the UK it’s hot hot hot at present.  I'm sure you’ll be well aware of that though so there’s really no point me utilising extraneous words to portray the nastiness of an office that’s 27⁰ at 8.30am and has climbed to 29+⁰ by lunchtime, or the unpleasant feeling when you get up and know your skirt has stuck to the backs of your legs in some sort of nasty take on the embarrassing tucking it into your knickers theme, or the constant watering needed of any plant in a pot or, or or…&c &c.

 In fact I like watering the plants as it enforces a little reflective time and the cool water in the warm evening is very pleasant when accidentally spilt on your feet.  J

Anyway, no particular thing to post but thought I’d share a few pics taken recently of things I found interesting.  Excuse the quality of some; they came from my (very old) 2mp phone.

Shortly after the last post I saw the cygnets out of the water, grazing up on the banks.  Here they are looking lovely.  They’re a fair bit bigger than this now!

Speaking about the plants (I was you know – do try and pay attention…) you can see our flourishing fig here, this was just a 3” high twig when we got this from the Eden project 2 years ago.  Not doing too badly huh?  You can see one of the chillies in the window behind.  We have 3 others in the plastic plant house thing out the back having cheated and got 4 plants from the food fest in April as we (I) were a bit late with the seed planting this year.  All this hot weather is doing them wonders too.

As the Chap has been working continuously it seems like – or all days, every evening and mostly all weekends, my friend took pity on me last Saturday and invited me along to the beach with her, her husband, his sister and her husband and their 2 kids.  We took the train to Teignmouth – a great piece of line that runs right along the sea, then the little ferry boat across the estuary to Shaldon on the opposite side.  I had a lovely paddle – here’s your proof!  This is looking back over to the ‘back beach’ at Teignmouth, with the harbour entrance on the right.  As previously mentioned, apols for the quality but I took this on my phone to send it to the Chap.  Show him what he was missing!  (Was that mean?)

Over the last few months I've noticed a rash of graffiti around that all seems to be done by the same hand.  Now I'm not averse to writings that make you pause for thought or well executed street art but this person is starting to annoy me.  You see their idealistic anarchy 'A' symbols all over the place including where it really does detract from the environs.  And I'm sorry my child, but anarchy would never work as unfortunately someone has to make sure the bins are emptied and the water keeps running &c.  

Anyway - see what you think of this little lot.  I'm not entirely sure what Brian Eno has to do with anything though...  :-)

Cygnets

There doesn't seem to be very many this year.  :-(   These two are delightful though!