A great weekend

This has been a really good weekend. We decided to stay at home and 'get things done', which is usually code for doing absolutely nothing, but not this time! We were woken at 7am by the delivery of our new tumble drier, which occasioned the removal of a lot of rubbish from our conservatory to make room for it. I've always resisted the idea of a tumble drier, but dh finally managed to persuade me that with a child in cloth nappies, it really does make sense. He has spent the weekend washing (and drying) everything in sight!

Meanwhile, I have gone through all of Daniel's outgrown clothes and boxed them up according to size ready to go in the loft/got rid of. As he's now in size 6-9 months (and not for much longer, it seems), that was three sizes of clothes to be sorted - a big job that I'm glad to have out of the way. 

That led me to our third (smallest) bedroom, which has been used as a dumping ground pretty much since we moved in. After several sessions in there over the past two days we now have all the bedding, towels, etc neatly sorted onto shelves and you can actually see the floor! Still a bit more to do, but the end is in sight. Once it's cleared we can move in my old futon, which my mum turned up with last week (they were also clearing out), and which is currently getting in everyone's way in the dining room. 

Now for my real achievement of the past few days - the veg patch. When I started on Thursday, it looked like this:

After approximately 6 hours of work over three days, it now looks like this:

Even dh was impressed, and he doesn't really 'get' gardening beyond pretty flowers. When I started, the brambles and nettles reached just past the nearest tree (it's a pear; the other is an apple). I started to dig the whole lot over this afternoon but only got about half an hour as dh had a tennis match. Not sure when I'll get out there again as the weather forecast for this week looks really yucky, and while I don't mind being out in inclement weather, Daniel feels strongly that he does mind and tells me in no uncertain terms. I can't blame him, really - I wouldn't want to be sitting on a blanket with some toys either! It's not a huge problem anyway, as I won't be planting anything for another 6-8 weeks at least, so I can wait.

It's funny, I remember as a very small child going with my parents to pick up a brand new set of garden tools and a wheelbarrow, and 'helping' my dad build a greenhouse for my mum in our new-ish garden. She would have been about the same age as I am now, settling into being a stay-at-home mum, and she still loves gardening to this day. Nice to feel I'm following in her footsteps, and also in the tradition of my paternal grandfather, who died when I was 9, and my mum's grandfather, who died when I was two, who were both great vegetable growers. I don't remember my great-grandfather, but I do remember my grandad's garden with the huge veg patch all neatly laid out in rows behind the greenhouse. 

In other news, I have made granola (very yummy, best with fresh banana added) and two loaves of bread. I burned one loaf, but I have now established I can get two onto one tray, which will solve the problem of the top one burning every time I forget to switch them round halfway through the cooking time. The weekly menu has gone well so far. Mary Berry is my new guru, and her book is definitely the best recipe book I've ever bought (and I have a lot of them!). It seems to have just about everything you can think of, and I haven't tried a single recipe from it that hasn't worked so far. The steak and kidney pie on Friday night was gorgeous - dh said "this makes kidneys taste good!", which is praise indeed! Eve's pudding afterwards also went down well. Yesterday I made a triumph of a leftovers-lunch with mushrooms and spinach on challah toast with a poached duck egg, and the quiche for dinner was followed by bread and butter pudding (Mary Berry again), using up the last of the challah. I added some apple sauce left over from Chanukah, and that worked very well. There may also have been rather a lot of clotted cream involved...

Here's the mushrooms on toast recipe, before I forget what I did:

Mushrooms & Spinach on Toast

Mushrooms, roughly chopped (I used chestnut, but any kind will do)

1 shallot, finely chopped

2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped

A few handfuls of spinach, chopped

3 tbsp cream cheese

2 tsp herbs, fresh or dried (mixed herbs, thyme, tarragon...)

Olive oil and/or butter, for frying

Melt the butter in a saucepan with some olive oil, then add the mushrooms, shallot and garlic and cook very gently until soft (about 5 mins). Add the spinach and cook until wilted, then stir in the herbs and cream cheese. Continue to cook, stirring regularly, until the cream cheese has melted. Season well with plenty of salt and a little black pepper.

Serve on toast, with poached eggs if wanted.

Daniel has now very much got the hang of moving from one place to another, though I can't really call it crawling since he uses a variety of techniques! He was rather surprised yesterday when he turned around and found himself on the other side of the room to me, when I clearly hadn't moved :-D He also discovered that a transparent plastic box was...well, transparent, and spent about quarter of an hour with his head inside it, grinning at me and shouting every time I stopped paying attention! He pulled his old baby bath over on top of himself (it was empty, waiting to go up in the loft) and had us both in stitches moving around like a large white turtle, before an enquiring sort of squeak suggested to us that he might like to come out now, please!

It's good to remind myself that we are still having these fun times, because our little man is going through a bit of a challenging phase, wanting to be carried all the time. It's frustrating when I'm trying to get things done, but that's clearly what he needs right now, so I'm taking lots of deep breaths, rearranging my priorities, and trying to just enjoy the extra cuddles. Dh has been wonderful this weekend, taking him off so I can get a bit of time to myself, but I can't say I'm completely relishing the thought of this week when he's at work. However, we will just take it one day at a time and see how we go. 

It struck me this afternoon that we are rapidly approaching the end of an era, as my NCT group tried to arrange to meet for coffee, as we have done nearly every week for the past 9 months. So many of the mums are going back to work over the next couple of weeks, and are starting to settle their little ones into nursery. The time will soon come when no one is free at all during the week, except me. On the other hand, I've just had a lovely email from Julia at Classroom Free, which I hope will be the beginning of finding some friends in the HE community. 

Must sign off, as we're due at my parents' for dinner. I'm bringing my knitting to take full advantage of an evening with people who are quite happy to keep Daniel entertained for as long as he needs it!