It's been a while....

I was reading an article the other week about women bloggers.  A surprisingly mean-spirited article written, not so surprisingly, sadly, by a female columnist.  The article focused on former working women, now mothers and with no need to work thanks to their husbands salaries, who litter the interweb with their musings and, even worse it would seem, earn money from their ramblings.  The given examples were all successful, witty, interesting, beautiful blogs with hundreds (even thousands) of readers which had also, in some cases, spawned successful businesses.  

I would be delighted if my musings could one day grow into something as successful as some of those sites, but more so the article made me think about how much I have missed lately having the time to sit and write.  More important to me, than anything else with this blog, is that it is my potted history of my life today, my journal.

I have been tinkering with a couple of posts the last few days, a scrapbook of photos and words; we've had such a lovely time of late. A weekend away with friends, an afternoon of cupcakes and Aussie Masterchef (we are addicted) with the 11yr old and the lovely Mr S, an evening spent causing chaos with a plastic moustache!, lunch with my family and gorgeous goddaughter, veg shopping at our local garden centre (beautiful veg and half the price of the supermarket) and last, but not least, our first ever real Christmas tree.  

It should have been so easy but I have struggled, there is just too much going on to focus on what I want to write.  The only time that I truly have to myself at the moment is when I walk the dogs in the evening:  sadly, sliding round a field in the dark and mud is not the best time to email, catch up on FB or blog!  It does, however, give me plenty of time to think and watch the stars; both of which put me in good stead with the Selena project.  

I love looking at the night sky thanks to my beloved Great Uncle who taught me two "very important" things; the Whyte Notation and to recognise the constellations.  Neither I remember perfectly, but as I looked up tonight and spotted the Pleiades (our sky is seldom bright enough to see them) I felt a frisson of excitement and wonder at what sits in the heavens above us.  The night sky is truly beautiful and if I can translate any of that beauty into stitches on canvas I will be very pleased with myself and my project.

In the meantime, as I write this, there are presents to wrap (though the buying is all done); cards to finish making and writing; the little man is in need of a stocking to match the ones that I made for myself, Megs and Rascal last year; I have my imapiece to make, though I'm saving that as a Christmas to New Year project; and then there's the day job and the four Christmas cards that I was asked to design today, which then need to be printed and ready for posting by next week... I tried not to look too spooked, or repeat "but it's the 10th December" any more than a half dozen times.  That would just have been gibbering... :o)

Veg Everyday! by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall

As some of you may know, for health (rather than ethical, an important distinction, as I've come to find out) reasons I became a vegan/vegetarian last year; trying to keep to a ratio of approx 80/20.  I have vegan breakfasts and lunches and then dinner is at the very least vegetarian, sometimes vegan-able for me, and sometimes pure vegan. 

I think that I would, in all honesty be happiest as a vegetarian, but, as it turns out, I have huge ethical objections to dairy production know that I know what really goes on.  Don't talk to me about the poor dancing Anchor cows in the latest advert; it makes my blood boil!  Our milk consumption, I am delighted to say, is less than a quarter of what it was and I drink no milk at all, it's just that old demon cheese that we are all struggling with!  And when I say that "we" are struggling, I mean me: I am strict with myself, but have discovered that cheese is like a dangerous lover, you know it's not good for you, but you can't resist the odd flirt!  As for the boyf and the 10yr old, if I suggested a ban on cheese, they would disown me!  Again, however, consumption is way down and those lovely cheese board, bread and wine dinners are definitely a thing of the past.

The boyf and the 10yr old have gamely stuck with me all these months but I was starting to feel a little as though I was letting them down as, more and more, our dinners were coming out of a box!  Vegan food in particular seems to take an age to cook and we don't have that long in the evenings, but long before I gave up meat, I was giving up on packaging.  Now, in doing one good I was failing in my attempts to do another - why has eating well, both tastefully and ethically, become so complicated!  

Good vegetarian cookbooks seemed to be hard to find, I went through all the libraries offerings and found not one I would buy.  Online vegan websites are particularly good, as is The Kind Diet by Alicia Silverstone, but being primarily American in origin, there were often ingredients that are hard to track down in the UK and I have terrible trouble accurately converting measurements.  Dry good in particular, a half cup can vary by nearly 100gms depending on the "good" - it lead to some pretty funky eating!

Then a dear friend gave me a copy of  Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's, Veg Everyday! and my cooking is transformed!  Everything about this book makes me smile, from the forward, to the photos, to the beautiful illustrations, and the wealth of easy to cook and delicious recipes.  My friend recommended that I read the forward, he thought that I'd like it and he was right.  HFW has such a good way about him and his journey to eating more veg is very similar to mine; you start of just eating, then you think about what you are eating, then you think harder about where it comes from and how it gets to your plate, then you think about the impact of all of that on our beautiful planet, and yes, suddenly, you want to eat more veg!  Plus, you don't really want to eat stuff that looks and tastes kinda like meat, because what's the point?  If you have got to the place where you know that you need to eat more veg, then you eat more veg!  A third of the recipes are vegan and he says that another third are adaptable to vegans (who "will know what to do"!)  I would disagree, the majority of the recipes can be made vegan, without too great an adjustment.

Looking for dinners that I could get used to and thus knock up quickly once we were all back at work/school, over the holiday I picked 4-5 recipes a week, shopped for them and jumped right in.  Shopping is a treat, mounds of veg piling up the basket and so little else; cooking is (always) good fun; and the dishes have been without fail interesting and delicious.  I love picking next weeks recipes and now have some new favourites that can be rotated in.  Of particular note have been the Macaroni Peas (very good), the Kale and Mushroom Lasagne (as events transpired I ended up eating the whole 6 portion lot over a couple of days!), the "fiery" bean Chilli, stuffed peppers, Fennel and Lemon Linguine, various risottos (especially the Mushoom and Chestnut one) and tonight I have high hopes for the Swede Speltotto...  We're all eating veg that we normally wouldn't too, it's lovely to test the taste buds again, and I am slowly working up to the Beetroot Tarte Tatin (pictured) as it would be my idea of heaven if, currently, no-one else's!

 

So, I'm back

from the sunny South of France and I'm wondering if I should be worried...

It seems, that somewhere in that glorious haze of heat and food, swimming and books, that I have lost my voice.  Though not literally, of course.  But, I have been back since Friday, laptop at the ready, and the sharing voice that I have enjoyed writing with these past few months is staying resolutely silent.  It's not as if I don't have anything to say either.  I have had a glorious two weeks, full of wonderful shared times (no TV, internet, radio, news: instead, games, reading, exploring, silly hats, an epic battle of Monopoly as the rain fell, the nightly game of Scrabble, the joy of watching the 10 yr old experience ET for the first time!), great friends, good food and drink shared at a table in the sun, and nature at its most beautiful best.  Somewhere in all of that, I also made some serious decisions about how I want to live my life, what I want to do, the people I want in it.  Decisions that would normally leave me with plenty to say: but, just as these decisions have been made without the usual noisy, messy, internal cogitations; so too the results sit quietly, calm and resolute.

In the meantime, however, I am abuzz with things to make and do.  I am drawing again and working on a seagull, in charcoal, for the dining room.  I have dolly to make right... my Victorian Jacket to sew... ideas for a stitching project... a thousand ideas for Halloween.  My mind is overflowing and it just doesn't feel like there are enough hours in the day!  It is wonderful to feel this alive with possibilities.

The stronger pull

"Let yourself be silently drawn by the stronger pull of what you really love." ~ Rumi

Thank you Leyla (http://manifestingwithleyla.blogspot.com/) for reminding me again of what is important.  This cold and rainy weekend, I am going to be drawn by the stronger pull...

Another new look...

I have been busy at work (and at home, it gets addictive...) building a new website and writing the code for some applications in it.   I like websites, I like code.  I like how lines of text come alive with images and movement and colour; I am a true geek, I know!  And, as the creative IT juices flowed, I couldn't resist a little sideline project for my blog and a new, lighter background; I hope you like it, thoughts appreciated.

It's based on a couple of pictures that I made when the boyf was travelling on business a few months back.  The first was a little ode to our family:

The second was based on the Keep Calm and Carry On posters that are becoming so popular again... and was a small hint, following a week of lots of dog walking on my part, that he may like to catch up a bit once he was back!

The arrival, and now successful integration of the new chook, has had me thinking that I need to update our family snap; I love the image from the Keep Calm poster and wanted that feel of  sheer joy incorporated into the background.  And I was walking megs through the fields one morning I started looking at all the Cow Parsley.  It is such a beautiful plant, I often take photographs of it.  Last autumn, I took a series of shots of some seed heads in front of a pylon. I love pylons, in and of themselves, and particularly liked the juxtaposition of two very different, structural qualities. 

So, there is was, all the elements that I wanted to bring together to create a new background.  My thanks to Susan Libertiny (http://www.brushportfolio.com) for the beautiful free brushes; work like hers makes beautiful possible.