Jennieworld Today

I was watching BBC Breakfast this morning, when a piece about self-sufficiency came on (This is the website of the guys who were there to promote their greener lifestyles). It was interesting because it reminded me of my teenage years when my mother grew a large proportion of our vegetables in our large back garden. Also, I thought last year about having an allotment myself, but decided that I probably wouldn’t have the time to do all the work which would be required. Maybe when the boys are a little older I’ll think about it again. Or maybe, by then, I’ll have a house with a garden big enough for me to spare some space for a few fruit and veggies.

Yay! As of tomorrow (if all goes according to plan) I will be catching up with the modern age! Yes, that’s right, tomorrow afternoon, a very nice man (don’t know who he is, but I’m sure he’ll be lovely!) will be coming to install broadband and digital TV in my home! And not only will I have broadband, but it will be wireless! Which means that no longer will I have to sit in the coldest part of my flat whenever I want to surf the net or do my e-mails. And no longer will my husband be a laughing stock among his techy friends at work (he’s a techy-geek for an internet insurance company, so it hasn’t been a source of pride for him that we have been several years behind the times with our home IT capabilities). Also, I won’t ever have to miss another episode of Gavin and Stacey again! My best friend Maria introduced me to the first series by giving the box-set of dvds to my husband for Christmas, and now the second series is well underway and I’ve missed all of the episodes shown so far as this time they’re being screened on digital channel BBC3. Boo.

Anyway, I’ve really got to go and clear the way for the engineer to be able to access both the TV and the cable point on the wall, otherwise he may end up suing me for damages after tripping up on a TARDIS or a Big Rig Blaster! Oh, how fun my life is! Oh to be tidy! Oh (even more fervent wish) to have tidy children!

Some of my regular readers will remember that a couple of weeks ago I posted a blog about some council workers in Ceredigion who found a discarded bomb in a hedgerow. Those among you with good memories will also remember that I mentioned a story I remembered hearing from my Dad along similar lines. Well, he e-mailed me the story and has given me permission to post it here for you now.

“During the Second World War your grandfather (an Air Raid Warden at the time) acquired a German incendiary bomb of a type that had been dropped on England in vast numbers. Apparently it had been made safe and he used it as a paperweight on his desk. By the mid-1960s I had inherited the bomb and, on moving into a new flat in Nottingham, decided to get rid of it. Conveniently there was a Police Station on the opposite side of the road so I marched over there and planted the bomb on the desk in front of the Duty Sergeant saying “I have brought you a bomb”. Perhaps it was just as well that your grandmother’s Irish accent had not rubbed off on me or I might have been misunderstood at that point. However, his facial expression hadn’t changed even slightly from the moment that I entered the building. After all, total strangers were handing bombs to him every day weren’t they? It was nothing to get excited about.Instead he said “Right you are Sir, I will just type you a receipt” which he proceeded to do on an ancient upright typewriter. He then announced that he would put the bomb in a bucket of water and we parted company.While opening the door of my flat I began to have a nagging feeling that there was a reason for not putting those bombs in water. Did they contain phosphorus, which would react violently with water? I couldn’t remember but there was no time to lose theorizing. I just caught the sergeant on the phone before he finished filling the bucket. He thanked me and, a couple of minutes later, I saw the car pull out of the Police yard, blue light flashing, my bomb nestling cosily on the back seat. Did they drop it over the side of Trent Bridge I wonder? I will never know.

I’ve read a lot of blogs recently on the subject of infertility and desperately trying (almost) anything to have children. I’ve been blessed with having no problems having my two children, and I have no reason to suspect that I’d be unsuccessful if I were to try to have more babies. I feel for these women so profoundly. Even when my children drive me crazy (which is relatively often given how competitive and argumentative they both are!) I couldn’t imagine being without them. Obviously I can remember life pre-kids in terms of the things I did etc, but I can’t remember having such depth and wide range of emotions as I have now. What I mean by this is, yes they drive me crazy, sometimes make me crosser than I’ve ever been before, but they also provide my happiest moments (I’m sure my husband would agree) as well as helping to create lots of memories which are drawing our extended family even closer together. For example, although my husband was already close to his sister and brother, I’m sure that if we didn’t have our boys and our nephew in the world, we wouldn’t spend anywhere near as much time together. Also, I don’t think that the effect of having her grandchildren around to help my mother in law through her bereavement when we lost my father in law to pancreatic cancer can be written off.

Of course there are things which in an ideal world I’d change about my life since having the boys. I’d like it if I could spend more time with adults during my ‘working’ week, and sometimes I feel (as I said in my ‘about me’ section) as if my brain is underused and may be stagnating a little. However, the former has more to do with the fact that I was comparitively young when I had my first child and none of my friends were anywhere near to starting their own families to provide me with company. The latter I have begun to deal with by taking on this blog, a second job which I can do from home and also the charity work for Cancer Research UK. My father thinks I’m doing too much, bless him! But then he’s always looked after me, I’ll always be his little girl and it’s nice to have people obviously caring about you so much!

However, I’ve (as usual) veered off topic. When we decided to have our second baby, I geared myself up for the mental pain of four or five months of negative pregnancy tests before I managed to conceive. In reality, we had our positive test within three weeks of making the decision - talk about being lucky and blessed! I can’t imagine waiting months and years, watching friends and family bringing children into the world, dealing with all the child-targeting adverts and products which surround us, and still not knowing when, if ever, I’d be bringing home a happy and healthy child from the hospital. My heart goes out to all these thousands of women (and their partners) who so desperately want to be mothers and who are putting themselves through so much to get there. I’m not going to link to any of the blogs I’ve been reading while writing this post, because I think that if I were in their position and I saw a trackback to this post on their own blog, I’d not want to read about someone who had their children with so few problems. All I’ll say is that if anyone reading this blog is going through any of this right now, know that you are in my thoughts and prayers and that, even though I can’t know quite how you’re feeling, I really do sympathise with you, and hope that you have a happy outcome, and soon.

I’ve added a new widget (it’s in the sidebar under large websites) to make it easier for any of you who wish to subscribe to my blog via a feedreader. It’s by Feedburner, and it seems really good. If you click on it, it gives you the choice as to which feedreader you want to use to subscribe. If you use it, I’d really appreciate some feedback. Or if you know of better ways to subscribe, let me know about them, and I’ll do my best to add them to my blog. I’m interested in anything which makes my website more accessible to my readers.

A couple of weeks ago I promised my husband that I would make cake for him ready for Easter Day, so that he could celebrate the end of Lent in style! I’d forgotten all about it until I came home from work on Saturday and he reminded me, so these were my last-minute baking efforts (which went down very well, I might add!)

I made the cupcakes first, as I think the desire for chocolate was getting to my husband after six weeks! But then, as I always have lots of icing left after making these cakes, I decided to make some viennese sandwich biscuits as well, so that it wouldn’t be wasted!

I added the mini eggs to the chocolate cakes to make them fit in with the Easter season a bit better, and to make sure that he got the full and maximum chocolatey effect!

I usually use a piping bag to pipe the biscuit mixture onto baking sheets, but on Saturday I just put teaspoons of the mixture in slightly flattened small heaps, which gave this less symmetrical, ‘rustic’ appearance!

If anyone is interested in getting the recipe for these cakes, let me know and I’ll post it at a later date. It’s a really good recipe, producing cakes with a texture somewhere between sponge and madeira, and has never failed me!

As promised, here I am, even though I’m showing up a bit earlier than I expected. My Easter weekend hasn’t been quite so frantic with activity as I thought it would be. I managed to get a last-minute half day holiday from work on Saturday, which was really nice. Then I had a lovely lazy day, with my only gainful activity being some baking in the evening (I’ll tell you about that later). Yesterday (Easter Day) was another good day, spent visiting all the local branches of the family and eating cake and chocolate for the first time in six weeks or more! Anyway, here’s the recipe I promised…

Gnocchi in a Mediterranean sauce

Ingredients
Packet of gnocchi (readily available vacuum packed in supermarkets or there are numerous simple recipes on the internet)
1 small red onion and one small white onion
1 large red pepper
handful of cherry tomatoes
tin (400g) of chopped tomatoes (or equivalent amount of passata)
packet of low fat mozzarella (think I used about 150g)
approx. 12 fresh basil leaves, torn
1 clove of garlic, crushed, or 1 tsp garlic puree
Worcestershire sauce
freshly ground black pepper
spray oil

Method

1. Finely dice the onions and red pepper. Quarter the cherry tomatoes. Dice the piece of mozzarella.
2. Using a few squirts of the spray oil, fry the onion on a medium heat, adding the garlic once the onion is getting softer.
3. Add the red pepper and the cherry tomatoes, cooking briefly before adding the tin of tomatoes, freshly ground black pepper and dash of worcester sauce. Stir well and then leave to cook on a low heat to allow the sauce to reduce and the flavours to all combine. This shouldn’t take too long, maybe ten to fifteen minutes.
4. Bring a large pan of lightly salted water to the boil and then add the gnocchi, cooking according to the instructions on the packet (or until they float to the surface and don’t sink again). Don’t leave them in the water or they will be overcooked. Drain immediately.
5. When the sauce and the gnocchi are both ready, add the mozzarella and basil to the sauce and stir gently for a few seconds to allow the cheese to start to melt.
6. Serve immediately, garnishing with a couple of extra leaves of basil.

I like this recipe because it’s simple and quick to make and doesn’t involve lots of expensive ingredients which I would use once and then bury at the back of a cupboard. Not only that, but it’s vegetarian (nice to have a couple of meat free meals every week) and quite healthy, with a couple of portions of vegetables in it. I hope you give this recipe a go and enjoy it. If you do make it, please let me know how it went. Similarly, if you modify the recipe and it goes well, or if you have alternative gnocchi recipes, post them as comments. I’m always on the lookout for new recipes to try on my family, so all suggestions gratefully received!

How do you go about making a ‘butch’ Easter bonnet for boys? Answers on a postcard please, to the usual address…or a comment would be fine! I really should have taken some time to do some internet research, but instead I spent all my time trawling round Cardiff’s shops trying to find anything which would look remotely Easter-y and boy-y! And as you can see, I didn’t have the greatest amount of luck. Clinton Cards were selling yellow straw cowboy hats, so a few feathers and a chick on that and my eldest was happy.

However, I didn’t realise that my younger boy would also need a ‘hat’ until the day before he had to take it to school, so a little more innovation was called for! I made him a crown with yellow card, lined with green tissue paper and decorated with feathers and a chick (as you can see above). And remarkably enough, both children were happy with my efforts!

As a reward then for my hard(ish) work, my elder son brought this home for me - an everlasting bouquet of flowers! Much better than a 99p bunch of carnations from the garage, and not so fattening as an Easter Egg - Mum’s very happy, thank you!

I’ll be back soon with a recipe blogpost, for gnocci with a mediterranean sauce which I made last week and thoroughly enjoyed! Also, it was very easy, inexpensive and quick to make - ticks all the boxes really!

(p.s. Sorry the photos aren’t up to my usual standard - I took them in a bit of a rush yesterday evening so that I’d be able to share them with you before Easter.)

As it’s a bank holiday weekend and I have my family around me, I’m not sure how much time I’ll have for blogging, so I thought I’d hop on and write a short post for you now. It’s been a strange week. I feel as if I’ve been busy, but can’t remember actually getting very much done! Of course, I’ve done the stuff which needs doing, like school runs (can’t leave the kids in school overnight!) and making meals, but I genuinely can’t remember what I did in between times. Does anyone else have that problem?

This is a picture of one of the flowers grown from bulbs given to me by my mother for Christmas - it has certainly taken its time in blooming! And I can’t for the life of me remember what it’s called - any help, anyone? I’ll ask her when I next see her.

These are roses given to me by my lovely husband - after I enjoyed my Valentine roses so much, on a day when I wasn’t feeling very happy he went and bought me these to cheer me up. In fact, it was on the day when I had my car bumped in the supermarket car park, so it was very good timing on his part! I know that the white rose, at least, is a little past its best in this photo, but I thought it looked pretty nonetheless.

So, only three more school days before my children break up for the Easter holiday. I’m going to be on the look out for places to take them, and activities to do. I’m really hoping that the weather improves, although my father tells me that the weather is due to get colder over the weekend. So we’ll have to wrap up warmly! Something which is a possibility this weekend is a trip to Cosmeston Mediaeval Village, which is hosting a re-enactment again, like the one we went to last year. We all had such a good time there before, so that’s a strong possibility. Another option is the Heath Park Miniature Railway, which usually has an open day or two at Easter time. Anyone else got any good ideas to pass on to me?

Something else that I plan to do is to make a great big chocolate cake for Sunday, to celebrate the end of Lent. We’ve both done really well in keeping away from chocolate, sweets, biscuits and cake since Shrove Tuesday, so we’re both looking forward to ‘breaking our fast’ on Easter Day.