Muddling Through Motherhood

And if not, why not? Do they eat the same thing as you? Have they always?
Rowan is a toddler that doesn’t want to sit down. As I understand it this is pretty common for toddlers and nothing to panic about. We’ve decided not to try to make him (unless we’re in [...]

This week we’ve enjoyed our no-meat challenge, with 2 days left to go. I, of course, cheated and had a steak when I went out for dinner with friends on Wednesday but I’m not counting that as I still cooked bean chilli for David and Rowan. It was such a success that we’ve [...]

As per this week’s challenge, I have been converting my lovely blackberries, collected from our garden and from ‘foraging’ expeditions near our home, into JAM!
I used this recipe to make my jam. I had 5lb (2.3kg) of blackberries and added about 1700g of sugar. Its a bit too sweet so I would cut [...]

Lots of good reasons to do this – save money, expand my cooking repertoire, eat less fat (if I don’t go overboard on the cheese dishes). I’m going to keep to some staples (mushroom risotto, cauli cheese, lentil curry, bean chilli) and pull out some old favourites that haven’t been aired in a while [...]

… and that’s always a dangerous thing.
Lots of general musings about life and the world and how I would ideally like things to be.
Having Rowan has really really made me consider things that had previously been unimportant to me, or ignorable. You can see evidence of this in my new interest in environmentally friendly [...]

Or ‘A bit of blackberry picking’
This afternoon, after Rowan’s epic nap and a hearty snack (he fell asleep before his lunch!) I decided the time was ripe (!) to go and investigate our local ‘fields’ and hedges for some blackberries, with Rowan in tow.
He got very excited when I suggested he might like to [...]

I’ve been reading a bit lately about peak oil and climate change and that sort of thing. This is because I’ve found that having Rowan has made me worry about the future, and because we have friends who have managed to effectively (and not deliberately) make me sit up and notice. I’m a bit [...]

When I get frustrated with David, or Rowan, or life in general, as we all do at times, it is hard to focus on how lucky I really am. But I do know it, and today I am reminded that for every hard moment or tough day there are five (at least!) good ones. [...]

I’ve just watched a nice cooking program on iplayer called ‘economy gastronomy’. As some typical voyeuristic BBC lifestyle rubbish, combined with some nice simple cookery, I enjoyed it. However as a comment on the people they found to go on it, I just want to say WTF!!?
This family (and I am afraid they are [...]

I’m currently in the process of making sure all our CDs are ripped so we can put them somewhere out of the way (and out of reach of little fingers) as we never use them directly. I’m wishing it were sensible to do the same with all those unwatched DVDs but I guess there would [...]