A cold garden

I'm getting over a cold. Husband's getting over a cold. Visited home: Father has a cold. Youngest goes back to school tomorrow, she's had a particularly exciting half-term!

The sun is shining today so I've had some fresh air and done some gardening. The garden is waking up: all sorts of things are in bud and some are flowering.

Recipe for success

We've been in Dorset.
It was a bit damp but a welcome break despite the lack of Eldest. We walked, pub lunched, ate fish and chips, entertained friends for the day, went to the seaside, did a spot of gardening, looked at Daniel Craig, let Husband win at Scrabble, fought over the puzzles in The Times, and enjoyed the view from the top of the ridge.
Meanwhile I've been asked to post the recipe for Prize Pumpkin. So, in the hope that it's not too late (and pumpkins might be on offer now of course), here it is:

7cm fresh ginger, thinly sliced
Seeds extracted from 8 cardamom pods, ground
1-2 fresh green chillies finely chopped
8 skinless chicken breasts cut into 1cm slices
125g butter
625-750g onions, thinly sliced
6-8 cloves of garlic, thinly sliced
125g button mushrooms
50g plain flour
450ml milk
1 large pumpkin (3.25- 3.50kg)
Sunflower oil
Melt ¾ of the butter in a large pan, add onions and cook over a low heat until soft. Add the ginger, cardamom, chillies and garlic then stir. Add the remaining butter and then the chicken and mushrooms once it’s melted and stir to coat. Stir in the flour then gradually add the milk and season with salt. Bring to the boil, stirring all the time until very thick. Remove from the heat.
Cut a circular hole in the top of the pumpkin and scoop out the seeds and all the stringy interior leaving only the firm flesh.
Spoon the chicken mixture into the pumpkin and replace the ‘lid’. Smear the outside with sunflower oil and place in a roasting tin. Place in oven at 240°C for 25-30 minutes. Now turn it down to 180°C for about 1 ¼ hours.
To serve, scoop out the flesh of the pumpkin with the chicken mixture. Serves 8.

Josceline Dimbleby tells you to move the cooked pumpkin onto a serving dish. In my experience you need to be able to serve it in whatever you cooked it in! Also, it tends to ‘leak’ pumpkin juices so don’t use anything too shallow! Any leftovers make really flavoursome soup.

Half-term report

This is as far as I’ve got. The amount of work involved in something so small seems ridiculous, however I think it will be pretty and it has the sentiment of having belonged to Granny. I have yet to work out how to put the bag part underneath it but I have every faith in my teacher’s ability to help me come up with a plan!
I’ve been to a matinee performance of The Calendar Girls in Bath this week: good fun; and held the first fete meeting – it’s in June…


If the weather allows we are traveling east tomorrow for a few days to catch up with my family.

Relief not panic

Youngest will go to Madrid, Spain this afternoon. It’s an exchange through school: we will have a Spanish girl to stay in March. There ought to be worry and perhaps panic; instead there is only relief!


We had an active half-term and did nothing you could call useful: a blustery walk to Old Harry’s Rocks, a trip to see a ridiculous film (The Three Musketeers, at which Youngest cheered and the rest of us laughed derisively), trawled the charity shops for items to be turned into three costumes for the school play, read the newspaper, fought over the puzzles, tidied the garden after the builders and before the greenhouse turns up…
And this week has been busy: school, tidying for Swedish visitors, altering aforementioned garments to make a day dress, beachwear and an evening gown that look vaguely 1920s, a coffee morning spent filling Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes, upholstery (still taking out staples!), and finding suitably British presents to send to Spain. Not to mention that ballet is back of course and Youngest has been out babysitting two nights, had two after school rehearsals for said school play (The Boyfriend) and been to Rangers – a bonfire party last night.


Let’s face it: the family has been through two French Exchanges, went to Madrid earlier this year and Youngest went to Switzerland in the summer. Sending Youngest to Spain to an unknown family in somewhat of a rush is just a relief all round that she’s off! Except that this is Youngest: when we got in the car to go to school this morning she burst into tears, and again when I left her there. She managed some watery laughter in between, and she will be fine, she will love the experience and get on with the Spanish family regardless. She is good at making friends.


When she went to France Husband had to actually go to put her on the bus (as opposed to them leaving from school). Stood waiting to wave her off the mummies around him were discussing the poor girl in bits on the coach and how they wouldn’t be sending her, they’d be whisking her home at once, it was just too cruel… I told her this story on the way this morning, it made her laugh because she’d had a wonderful time. She’ll be fine, and she’s back in a week, hardly worth tidying her room!

What are you up to?

I have no time for posting so I don’t know what I think I’m doing here!

The builders have been in making alterations to our garden. The plan was pretty much made when we moved in, but it has only just reached the top of the list of ‘things to do when we’ve saved some cash’. They started two weeks ago and have now done their bit of it though we await the delivery of some iron railings to replace the wall, and a greenhouse, which Husband is going to put up… I am thinking of, but not rushing into, planting plans. Part of me thinks it would be nice to have a flat piece of grass: the whole garden slopes down to the house; it’s not a major slope as we had in a quarter once, but nevertheless it presents challenges. There’ll be plants to move and places to beautify even if we do go for lawn.

And look what I’ve made!

Very pleased with this revived chair: it is functional rather than beautiful, but always useful to have an extra chair to hand and it will sit happily in our bedroom draped with clothes in the meantime.

I hosted the village coffee morning on Wednesday (mentioned last week). It provides a vital push to make me clean and tidy the house (or at least the bits that show) and we’ve got visitors for Sunday lunch too so it needed doing.
Produce from the plot is slowing down, but the apples on our tree are still coming down faster than we can pick them, never mind use them: I really must make some chutney!
And half-term starts tonight for the girls; Husband has to wait another week.

Half-term treats

Deepest Dorset

Flowery garden, Dorset

 Flowery garden, by my pond

Avebury

And it’s still not finished!

But the classes have, so I'm on my own until September...

Pictures!

You will remember that the family computer and Husband’s camera have been failing to speak to one another with the resultant lack of pictures on my blog of late, but as you can see I have news! No, it’s not that the new computer is up and running and that I am now the sole owner of the old one, but that my camera (a gift from Father) thought it would interface, and waiting for my computer seemed endless. So, herewith a quick catch-up:

The present state of the upholstery project:

Corfe Castle, our half-term walk’s end, and Youngest’s idea of heaven:

Graduating success:

We’ve just had a weekend visiting family in London. A walk on Hampstead Heath with their new and exuberant dog, a wander around Camden Lock soaking up the atmosphere (with grumpy teens who “haven’t any money”) and the British Museum. We all found something to enjoy:

A shop that seemed to be more of a style statement! They were shooing people away who tried to take photos, the shop assistants/bouncers had their faces made up as cybermen (think modern Dr.Who)… I wonder if the BBC knows?

Eldest and I loved the jewelry and cigarette boxes, these are diamond and ruby buttons - what's not to like?

               

Husband loved the Elgin marbles (they’re not called that, presumably in the hope that all the foreign visitors won’t notice, though reading about them you wonder if they’d exist at all if he, Elgin, hadn’t ‘pinched’ them).

Half-term

Half-term is over and normal life resumes. It felt quite long, my week.

We spent a few days in Dorset and had one beautiful day on which we walked along the ridge to Corfe Castle for lunch in The Greyhound (only OK) and home with a smackerel stop fuelled by the bakers with a cake of choice. Time slows on the Isle of Purbeck regardless of the weather - which is very much its own.
We returned for a special day on Wednesday: Husband graduated as a Master of Research in Statistics watched by his proud wife and father. I hadn’t been to a graduation before so, in case you too have yet to take part in such a ceremony, may I say it is much like a prize-giving? Our graduand’s name was read out, he walked onto the stage for no more than a few seconds, had a brief private exchange with the Chancellor and left the stage to collect his certificate a graduate. I clapped everyone, listened to the two speeches and sang the National Anthem. I was brought up with a sense of duty which I cannot abandon. You will not be surprised to hear therefore that I was not impressed by the number of people who took pictures and clapped only their own student and failed to sing. Gosh I’m stuffy!
We met the girls and esteemed step-m-in-law at the Bath Priory for a very smart celebratory lunch afterwards. Both girls were fascinated by the fine dining experience having watched endless Masterchef, but Eldest thought it pretentious! An indulgence, but it seemed like the right thing to do.
Visitors-from-abroad over Friday night, and not-seen-for-a-while godparents to lunch yesterday, and then it was all over.
Time to tidy the house, catch up with the washing and think about meals – except that I realise I’ve now spent the morning catching up with everybody else in the blogosphere…

Boarding school updated

We were visited at the weekend by Youngest’s friend who has just started at boarding school. Her parents had moved to yet another foreign posting and the international school she was attending there for the last year was proving unsuitable. She is happy to be at the boarding school, settling in well and loving being with her big sister who’s been there a couple of years – to do GCSEs and now A levels. The food is only OK, the work stimulating, the children friendly and the pace pretty relentless… while they’re there. They work longer days than my girls in their comprehensive school, Monday to Saturday lunchtime, but have much longer holidays.

We enjoyed a lively discussion driving home on Friday evening about how much boarding had changed, and how much had stayed the same. Although hers is a mixed school the boys and girls live in separate houses. They sleep 3 to a room in bunk-style with their own colourful sheets and duvets, use the washing machines and tumble dryers in house, choose from a buffet style selection of food in a whole school dining-room and do oodles of sport. They can be full boarders or part-time, and they can be away from school every weekend – assuming they have somewhere to go. (Last weekend her Mum was still here so she was out with her, this weekend to us, next one to Granny, the one after on a French trip and then half-term when she and her sister will fly home for a fortnight.) Eldersister has only visited us once in three years, she prefers to stay in school with the other children who live abroad. I wonder if this is her way of coping? 
At my boarding school we slept in dormitories on iron beds with hospital-cornered, crisp, white sheets and blankets. Our laundry went to a laundrette once a week in a little box tied with string: mending and sewing on nametapes were an important Saturday morning activity if you wanted to see your stuff again.  School meals were not chosen but served at the table and we ate what we were given. I learnt to drink tea and eat pretty much anything because otherwise you went hungry (and famously got into trouble for not eating cold pilchards and coleslaw, a Sunday night delight.) It was largely traditional fare, but curry in the early 1970s was a revelation, and kippers a shock! (Apparently I had to eat all the bones; I like kippers now, but as an 11 year-old...) We had the half-term break plus two weekends, one in each half term, and a couple of days. When my parents were in the UK I went to them, if not to my Granny, usually taking a friend who lived abroad.


I rescued Friendabroad, and mother of Youngest’s friend, last Monday. She rang in bits having said good-bye to her girls the night before. Together we finished the tasks she needed to complete before she flew home, and then I cosseted her here and took her to the airport on Tuesday. She and her daughter had a long phone call yesterday. They text one another too. And e-mail, and skype. Mother and I wrote once a week without fail.


They are a demonstrative family: emotion is expressed in word and hug. With them we do the same. And we have other friends with whom likewise. But not with them all! Schoolfriend and I have to make a real decision to hug: it just wasn’t what we did when we were 14. Ditto with Mother. She and I developed, from the word go, the walk-away-and-get-on-with-it mode of parting. (I tease her to this day about the promised cream tea in town with her on my first evening in boarding school that turned into beans on bread and margarine with the other girls!)
It is lovely to show you care, but there are times when it is much easier to cope if you don’t.

Home thoughts

Half-term beckons and we are off to the smoke to stay with my parents.

There will be dark mutterings afoot regarding the large piles of paper Father cannot throw away. When asked to sort them they move, but they never get any smaller. Mother is no more interested in cleaning than her daughter, but she’d like to present a tidy front.
Father’s complete failure to do any household chores has long been a bone of contention. As a teenager I was very aware, when I was home from boarding school, of just how rebellious Mother was feeling. Married in the late 1950s, and to an Army Officer, she gave up paid work to follow the drum. By the early 70s, with her children away at school, stuck in Germany expected to help run the wives club and entertain all and sundry, she was understandably kicking against her world. Her reading material reflected the times, I remember, and I’ll confess now to some concern for their marriage (they’ve done over 50 years now). She and I muttered about men in general – my brothers were equally lax in their contribution to household chores, despite pocket money incentives and tick charts. (Not surprising really when their bossy big sister made the charts and did most of the nagging.) What a goody goody they must have thought me taking on cleaning jobs, the family ironing and, the one I actually enjoyed, helping with the cooking. I have a vivid memory of piping cooked mashed egg yoke mixed with tomato ketchup into the halved hard boiled whites to serve at a buffet supper party – we had very sophisticated tastes in 1972.
There’ll be fish pie for supper when we get home, it’s tradition. My Granny made it with fresh coley. Mother makes it with fish in parsley sauce. I use frozen cod and make my own sauce. But the result is pretty similar.


It is ironic that it is only now, as I contemplate how the time I have with my girls will come to an end of sorts when they fly the nest, that I realise how my parents might feel. Do they mind that we’ve all gone, or are they proud that they managed it… of course they might just be glad to be rid of us and be pretty grumpy because they (well, Mother) feel bound to tidy up and make fish pie.

Half-term break

That's half-term over for another term then. The girls and I have been to our favorite other place: the Isle of Purbeck in Dorset. We've had glorious weather, enjoyed a number of fine walks, eaten a scrumptious cream tea (well, strictly speaking only I ate a scrumptious cream tea. For some unknown reason Eldest doesn't like clotted cream, and Youngest prefers a toasted teacake. Foolishly they dared me to eat both portions of clotted cream, something that I'm able to report I had no difficulty in achieving.), read several novels, did lots of Times puzzles and generally chilled out. The cottage is petite and there is no TV so it is a great place for quality family time.

But the best laid plans can go awry! Husband came down after uni on Tuesday night and joined us for a walk and pub lunch the next day. I put him back on the train on Thursday at 6.20am and he stayed in a hotel overnight. Got a call on Friday saying he was on his way. The train broke down: it took him 2 1/2 hours to get from Bristol to Bath where he gave up and cadged a bed off the in-laws. On reflection it didn't seem worth his while to come south on Saturday since we needed to get back early on Sunday for Eldest's inevitable ballet. So we came home on Saturday afternoon so he wouldn't be alone and we wouldn't be under pressure on Sunday morning.

The girls are convinced I kiboshed British Rail so we could be home for Strictly......