| Friday, May 22nd, 2009 |
| 9:04 am |
i met a small toad in the swimming pool this morning. i helped him out onto the side. i thought i might move him to one of the ponds but he'd disappeared after i got changed. i hope he's ok. |
| Thursday, April 23rd, 2009 |
| 11:44 am |
growing stuff
i wasn't going to do any growing stuff this year, as a) it's a bit late already, and b) we just don't have any space for planting stuff as it's all taken up by the 3 sheds one of which is such a pile of crap - it has a huge puddle in the middle and some impressive fungus... But then it started to feel like Spring and next thing I know I've scrounged some strawberry plants off Freecycle and I'm cycling back from Aldi with a gigantic bag of compost on my back (that was a challenge)... But I'm going to be a bit sensible and try and only grow stuff that might work in pots / is really 100% worth growing. So I planted the strawberry plants and sowed some rocket / mizuna / lambs lettuce alongside them too. And then I begged spare tomato plants from Yanny (who is an absolute gardening genius these days), and he gave me some coriander and spinach seedlings too. I'm going to sow some more herbs for the kitchen windowsill, and try and keep the salad going. Got to try and figure out the sunniest bits of the garden too, as I think lack of sunshine is tending to hold my plantings back... |
| Thursday, April 16th, 2009 |
| 10:00 am |
Tart
I have decided to try and get good at pastry - I've never really bothered with it but realised that actually I do quite like a nice tart, how hard can it be? To this end, I have invested in a large flan dish (£1.95 from a charity shop), and have been baking. I made a onion and pepper tart with cheesy pastry on tuesday, and today i am attempting a sweet tart for perhaps the first time ever. I am kind of making it up as I go along (perhaps unwise considering the early stage of my piemaking development), so am hereby recording the recipe. Plum Custard Tart For the pastry: 6oz plain flour 1 1/2 oz icing sugar pinch salt 3oz butter 1 egg yolk (egg white kept for brushing) sift icing sugar, flour and salt. make a well and mix the egg yolk, butter and 1 tbsp water in it, gradually incorporating the dry stuff until it makes a good dough. Wrap in a plastic bag and put in the fridge for 1/2 an hour. Then take it out of the fridge, slit the plastic bag and roll out the pastry on it to the right size for the (well-buttered) flan dish. Put it in the dish. Brush the base with the (lightly beaten) egg white. Bake at ~190oC for ~15min. Slice ~3-4 large plums and arrange across the pastry base. Put back in the oven and bake at ~180oC for ~15min. Whisk 1 egg, ~half a cup of sugar, ~1tbsp flour and a few drops vanilla essence. Add ~half a cup of milk / yoghurt mix. Pour this over the plums, sprinkle with demerara sugar, and bake for ~another 15 min. done: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ameliaann/3447366798/ |
| Wednesday, January 7th, 2009 |
| 7:35 am |
I guess i'm halfway through. i think when i get back i'll try and write on here properly about the places i've been to and people i've met... but for now just a list... bangalore mysore kanyakumari varkala alleppey kochi ooty jaipur jodhpur jaisalmer |
| Tuesday, November 18th, 2008 |
| 11:25 am |
the bracelet i've been wearing constantly for ~8 years broke yesterday. i am completely naked under my clothes for the first time since... probably pre-puberty. could this be the beginning of a new phase in my life? |
| Sunday, November 2nd, 2008 |
| 8:26 pm |
pumpkin
carved one small pumpkin in honour of halloween. so far this has provided us with: toasted pumpkin seeds 1x pumpkin bread pumpkin soup roasted pumpkin (with cumin seed, garlic, chickpeas and chestnuts) another, slightly different pumpkin bread. also we had pumpkin-filled pasta on friday night at rico's, although he bought that from waitrose. perhaps enough pumpkin for a while. also over this weekend i made apple crumble and parkin. the parkin is maturing - not allowed to eat it til bonfire night. it will be served during bonfire night themed sauna wednesday, while we set off rockets and light sparklers. i am liking the idea of cooking things in/on the sauna oven, but this is probably a dumb idea. |
| Wednesday, August 20th, 2008 |
| 10:43 am |
Last night was craft club, and I was finishing off making a t-shirt for seb with a dragonfly on it. when i got home seb showed me a big dragonfly that had been flying around the kitchen all evening. it had flown into the light, for a sleep he said. |
| Thursday, August 14th, 2008 |
| 4:22 pm |
i've been dissecting buds and putting them in acetic acid:ethanol solution. now my fingers smell like chips. |
| Tuesday, August 12th, 2008 |
| 8:30 am |
Last year, Tom and Seb played a lot of 'cricket' on the strange 'playground' attached to the community centre behind our house: a patch of concrete with a slide and the skeleton of what used to be a swing. Tom has a cricket bat, and S stocked up on tennis balls (less dangerous than the real thing), most of which have long since disappeared into various neighbours' gardens - T+S did go round asking for some back, but realised that a couple of 6 foot something blokes in their twenties with a cricket bat may not be able to get away with asking if they can 'come and get their balls back please' as well as when they were kids. This year the season started late, but they played last week. Last night I went out to check on the garden after I got home (around 7.30pm), and there was the usual bunch of neighbourhood lads (aged around 10, I'd say) hanging around looking bored. They asked me when Tom was next going to play cricket. I told Tom they were asking after him, and he and Lynsey went and started up a game. When Seb came back (after a quick trip to Lidl for supplies) he and I went and joined them. So there were the four of us plus three kids (Dan, Chandler and Brandon) playing 'cricket' (T+S devised their own rules last year re wickets etc). It was fun. I gave myself an awesome blood blister opening the gate on the way in too (don't think I've had a blood blister since I was playing with Gimbo in the garden a lot when I was a kid - I kind of like them), and we checked out the line dancers in the community centre. Now T+S have real kids to go and ask for balls for them - win all round. |
| Wednesday, August 6th, 2008 |
| 12:32 pm |
The swimming pool has been closed due to algae for the last day or 2. So I've been having lie-ins. Last night I went to sleep about 2200 and didn't wake up til 0715. There must be something wrong with me. |
| Friday, August 1st, 2008 |
| 9:11 am |
Am excited about my garden - ate the first beans with Liz last night (only 4 - made them into a salad with sweetcorn, chickpeas and edamame - but still), and some lamb's lettuce too in another salad. And the courgettes are flowering and i'm hopeful some will set. And the first tomatoes are starting to show hints of orange/red... |
| Monday, July 7th, 2008 |
| 7:43 pm |
Peacock butterfly caterpillar
We saw some of these yesterday. They are amazing: not only do they look wild and wonderful; they also eventually become beautiful peacock butterflies AND they eat nettles. I do like caterpillars, and these are particularly good ones.  ( More caterpillars ) |
| Tuesday, June 24th, 2008 |
| 8:47 am |
We switched the light off to go to sleep last night and everything was good and dark (thanks to the new curtains)... I was just drifting off when I heard a quiet, scrabbling, rustling sound, like something nestling in paper. I switched the light on, then there was no sound, so we tried to sleep again. Then it re-started, and this time s heard it too. we lit up and searched around in the direction it was coming from - where our clothes shelves, 2 bags of knitting wool / patchwork material and several piles of books were - all good nesting material? we turned everything out but found nothing disturbed and everything clean and in order. i even moved the bags outside in case there was something in them. then we tried to sleep again. once more, the noise. another time we switched on the lights and started hunting around. I shift around a pile of books and suddenly spot something potentially unusual: a black shape about 2cm long. We shine the light quickly, and i pick it up - it's a big old beetle! We'd heard its beetly legs scratching against papers. I put him out the window and we fell asleep giggling at the silliness of two short-sighted people searching for a little black beetle in the dark. |
| Friday, June 6th, 2008 |
| 9:22 am |
so far this morning i have discovered what a 'truss' is with reference to tomatoes, swam outside in gentle rain, exchanged pre-wedding (not mine) emails and eaten a piece of bread. |
| Wednesday, February 13th, 2008 |
| 9:44 am |
when i'm working at home i sit in front of the window because it's the best light. we're opposite a shop and a side road so there's always lots of comings and goings. but the ones that distract me most are those to the house across the road. an old lady lives there, and she gets picked up by old people ambulances / has nurse or meals on wheels visits sometimes. i always wonder whether i should go over and befriend her. or would she just think me a robber and slam the door in my face? |
| Wednesday, November 14th, 2007 |
| 3:09 pm |
1. I think I can now call myself 'Dr.'. 2. I might join Facebook later, if I can be bothered. |
| Wednesday, October 10th, 2007 |
| 5:14 pm |
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| Monday, September 24th, 2007 |
| 7:18 pm |
yuk, yuk, yuk. 506 pages. now i have to read one more time... |
| Tuesday, August 21st, 2007 |
| 8:24 am |
Can anyone suggest a nice/cheap place to stay in Paris? |
| 8:20 am |
I just found the strangest thing in the corridor at work. It's a lizard. A tiny, dried-up, dead lizard. I guess it's a common / viviparous lizard, but how the hell did it find its way into the corridors of JIC to die?! Saw frogs when walking home in the rain on Sunday. Also saw a happy hedgehog tootling around on the playing fields when we were cycling home on Friday night. Wildlife! |
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lysine's journal