The Little Pieces Of Information In Family History

 Yesterday at my Dad's house we were talking family history research again for a while. We have found out so much information about my Dad's side of the family recently it has really given me a push to keep looking. My Dad's family, from Liverpool were a really interesting mix. His Dad, my Grandad, was one of 12 children, and a butcher like his own Dad (They must be turning in their graves at your vegetarian shenanigans youngest son likes to tell me!) My Grandad, like my Dad won a scholarship to a grammar school and was bright, funny and very political. After he was widowed he would come and stay with us for a week at a time and take himself off on the train and then the bus to explore London. He always had a funny tale to tell us when he returned and I really enjoyed his visits. My Dad tells us he was so ahead of his time believing in equality for all, women's rights and despite being a butcher hated any form of animal cruelty. Apparently he and his five brothers would have long political discussions for hours. 

Rightly or wrongly I have built up a picture in my mind of what each brother must have been like from the conversations I have had with my Dad but in my family tree searching I have come across a few old newspaper reports that have given me so much more of an insight. The third eldest boy was called Francis and Dad told me he was the quietest of the brothers. When he was a child he had been involved in an accident being hit by a tram and nearly died, in adult life he was a French polisher, restoring furniture and Dad said when he came round and restored a table for them and he couldn't believe how beautiful his work was. He kept himself to himself and didn't really get heated in any of the political discussions. I built up a picture in my mind of this quiet, artistic type maybe his injuries from childhood still affecting him. Then I found the newspaper report of a court case.

When Francis was walking home in Liverpool late one evening in 1933 he came across a crowd gathered around two men fighting. One of the men had a knife and had stabbed the other man who was bleeding heavily, Francis went straight into the foray despite the crowd shouting "Look out he has a knife" and the attacker shouting at him "Do you want it too" He disarmed the man, despite being stabbed in the hand himself and wrestled him to the ground. Sadly the man who had been stabbed died later in hospital but Francis was hailed a hero and the attacker was arrested. Suddenly the quiet, artistic young man became a completely different person to me! When I showed my Dad he couldn't believe it he knew nothing of the tale but there it was, with Francis's full name and address in the paper. It has made me realise how important family research is for future generations. Although  finding birth certificates and marriage certificates is so important, it is the little snippets that make up a personality that can be so much more helpful. I really must try and find more time to do more research.

Yesterday I bought another bag of food to be collected on my Too Good To Go app. I'm trying really hard to plan our meals around these £4 bags as it will save so much money, and Marks and Spencer food is really good quality. Tom took the salad and a pastry to work yesterday, and as he normally spends about £5 a day on his lunch in the work canteen that had already saved us money. I made sausage and mash with some steamed courgettes for Tom and youngest son and daughter so all I had to add was a veggie burger from the freezer for me. I  froze the rolls for another day and the salad and hummus I will eat over the next couple of days. I bought another bag last night which I froze the sausages from straight away. There are lunches for Tom and youngest son and daughter today too.  So far I'm finding this a really good money saving exercise. This was last nights bag for £4. 

It's a lovely bright day today and I have planned to plant out some of the young plants in the greenhouse. I hope everyone has a lovely day what ever your plans are. xx

Vegetable Steamers And A Special Day

 We decided yesterday morning we would go back to the garden centre and try and find a little round table to put with our two chairs by the aviary, and use the last of the money on my Christmas garden centre voucher. I had planned to buy a little folding garden table we could put our cups of tea on while we have a sandwich at lunchtimes like my Dad has in his garden. Although my Dad always has a wine cooler and a bottle of wine on his! I was shocked when we saw the prices though, you could only buy them in sets and they were over £200! We did buy a cute little solar bee. It looks enormous in the photo, like something from War Of The Worlds descending on our garden but it's actually only a couple of inches long. I'll take another photo when it's in place. I think I'm going a bit bee crazy! 

We decided we would drive to the charity salesroom and see if we could find a small round table I could paint. Sadly nothing was suitable but I still found an old 1950s steamer. I have been looking for one for a long time but these old ones have always been too expensive. I was so pleased as this was only £3.

Another item I just couldn't resist was this Snowman ceramic money box. I thought it would be lovely to use as a Christmas decoration. He's so sweet I think I will leave him out until Christmas, Scarlett will love him. He was only 50p! I also managed to buy another Ladybird book for my collection of old matt covered books. 

I used my steamer last night and we had sweet potatoes and steamed broccoli with our salmon, accompanied by the  second bottle of wine our youngest son bought us after our disastrous evening the other day. It was lovely and I'm already planning all the other meals I can have now with my new steamer. 

Today is a really special day. It's Scarlett's 4th birthday and we are meeting up at my Dad's later. We are hoping to be in the garden but Tom and I are going a bit earlier to get my Dad's conservatory ready so we can sit with the doors open if we need to dodge the showers. I hope everyone has a lovely day and you manage to enjoy some nice weather after this rain stops. xx

Too Good To Use

 Tom took the five boxes of cleared out items back down to the charity salesroom yesterday morning before he went to work so they are finally all gone. I resisted taking items out so everything went and I'm going to get a few more boxes from the loft this week and try and get some more ready for next week. Anything not useful enough to keep, good enough to take to the charity salesroom or to recycle into another use will  be taken to the dump. I'm hoping to keep the latter items down to the minimum. There is another category that I think everyone probably has which is "Too good to use!" You see them everyhere at car boot sales, charity shops and even jumble sales (remember them! sigh) . Those perfect little boxed items or pretty things that have quite clearly never been used. Pastry forks in little presentation boxes, cutlery sets, best linen table cloths and napkins or even sets of soaps and bath salts. Put away too good to use and in the end given away when the person dies to another person who thinks "too good to use". We talk about saving the worlds resources if everyone used everything they had put away for best we could probably avoid manufacturing another item for a year!

I have so many of these items and as I get older I keep thinking what on earth am I doing keeping these? I may as well use them. I have a beautiful little art deco sandwich plate wrapped in bubble wrap in a cupboard. I had thought to put it on a wall but have never really found a place for it. I decided I may as well give it to the charity salesroom next time but it seems silly to give it away becuase it is so perfect I don't want to chip it. I'm going to get it out and use it everyday for my lunch. It is so pretty I'm sure it will make me smile and isn't that what life is all about? If it gets chipped or broken too bad, at least it was used not kept in a cupboard. Several years ago I bought this pack of soaps at a jumble sale for 10p. I have no ides why I bought them just to put them away. Much as I would love one I haven't got a guest room with a guest en suite to put them in, so they just sit in a drawer with the box getting more and more damaged, the same as they have been for probably fifty years. I doubt Tom and youngest son would be grateful if suddenly dainty little lavender soaps appeared in the bathroom so I may as well just hang on to them for now, at least they make my dressing table drawer smell nice. William Morris, the well known 19th century British arts and crafts designer, famously said "Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful." Well why shouldn't it be both. I'm going to try and think like this more and more!

On the subject of using things, yesterday when I got to my Dad's, my lovely sister after reading yesterday's blog post bought this round for me.

I am so thrilled with it. I spent most of yesterday evening reading it. I have been reminded by a lot of people in the comments about some of the problems with fondues I had forgotten about, such as taking an age for the oil to warm up and being quite unsafe really, espcially in a caravan!  After reading this, I think chocolate fondue may be the way forward. If that doesn't win Tom over nothing will! There are lots of other 1970s recipes that I can't wait to try like Flaming Cherries marinated in rum. When the cherries come out on our tree later this year, I know what I'll be making!

It looks like a nice bright day today. I still have some seeds I want to get planted in the greenhouse so I think I will try and get out to do that. I'm going to give the aviary a bit of a sweep round too in preparation for the doves going in later in the week and see if I can set up a platform for them as doves seem to like that not perches. I hope everyone has a lovely day how ever you plan to spend it. xx

Growing From Collected Seeds

 Everything went smoothly yesterday for youngest son and daughter with all the children they look after back at school. Although youngest daughter did comment that she found all the crowds of people at the school almost overwhelming after all this time of it being so quiet. It did make me realise that life is going to be quite hard for lots of people as we gradually get back to normal. In many ways maybe it is just as well that it is gradual and not an overnight letting out. 

I have been sorting out plants in my greenhouse that are growing from seeds I collected last autumn. Monty Don on Gardeners World said to plant perennial seeds in the autumn and although they won't do much over the winter it will give you a good start for the spring. I think he may be right as lots of them are doing quite well although it is mixed.

My sister gave me some Hollyhock seeds and they have done ever so well. I am promising hollyhocks to everyone!

Sadly quite a few of my perennial poppy plants died when I repotted them but I'm keeping my fingers crossed for the remaining ones. The echinops I collected from seeds in my Dad's garden have done well and I'm going to repot them in the next few days, so I hope I don't finish them off too!

The Meadowsweet I collected the seeds from last autumn when we were out walking the dogs through local woods have just started to appear. 

One of the trays of seed growing I'm very pleased with are the perennial  salad leaves Red Veined Sorrel. We had some growing in our garden when we moved in and I have really become a fan. The plants regrow every year if you cut them back low at the beginning of the winter, and last autumn I left some to go to seed so I could grow some more. I treat them like spinach and cut the baby leaves as they grow to eat in salads and leave some plants to get bigger and use those leaves for cooking adding them to stir fries or in the vegetable bakes I make. They are packed with nutrients and have quite a distinctive tangy taste  which I really like but best of all they are so hardy. I have grown them for years without managing to kill them and slugs and snails seem to just ignore them.

Today seems to be the last nice day before a few days of wet and windy weather so I think I will get out and try to do a bit more repotting in the fresh air. I hope everyone has a lovely day and the sun shines on you for a while at least! xx

Preserving Roast Vegetables In Olive Oil And Consulting Books

 I decided, as the promise of warmer weather is on the way, I wouldn't bother struggling in the garden in the cold, I would wait a bit longer. After I saw the pile of gardening books my Dad had out the other day to give him ideas in his garden in the spring, I realised it was a long time since I looked at my gardening books. Years ago I loved browsing these books for ideas for plants, flowerbeds and little design features like arches or paths. Now I tend to look online and the books have been neglected. I have hundreds and hundreds of books, sometimes I think I need to contact books anonymous (if there was such a thing!)  As I have been running out of space books I haven't looked at for a long time have been put away in boxes under our bed. Yesterday I got out some of these boxes and it was really enjoyable to look through them again. This was one of my favourite gardening books in the 1980s and I have decided I really must leave it out to browse through all the time. It gives ideas on plants and shrubs that flower in all four seasons, in four different sizes and the care they need. It's wonderful you would have to browse for hours on the internet for this information.

I found cookery books , books on how to trace your family tree, cross stitch, embroidery, dog care, cat care even caring for your hamster! Some I have put in my charity saleroom boxes which are lovely and full now, I have even had to add two extra boxes, but some I am going to make space for somewhere as it made me realise that it is not necessarily always easier to look on google! 

A thing I have been doing at the moment, in my quest to have zero food waste each week, is roasting larger trays of roast vegetables which I love and storing them in an oil marinade. I always shied away from the word marinade as it conjures up in my mind something quite time consuming to make. This however only takes a few minutes. My favourite vegetables to roast in the oven at the moment are butternut squash, fennel, red peppers, tomatoes and mushrooms I add the extra roast vegetables to an air tight jar that I have sterilised in the oven for 15 minutes, then poor over warmed olive oil. I add garlic and and some rosemary to the olive oil, dried if I don't have any fresh, but you could add anything you like or nothing if you like it plain. 

As long as all the vegetables are covered they will keep lovely and fresh for about a week in the fridge and they can be added to wraps, salads or at the side of meals to brighten up the plate! The oil does solidify a bit in the fridge but soon liquifies again at room temperature. The olive oil, which absorbs all the flavours of the vegetables can then be used as dressing in salads. Apparently if you add a third vinegar and two thirds olive oil the vegetables can be preserved for months, but they never last that long in our house!  I have always been interested in the nutrition of food and try really hard to have the all the right nutrients in a day but I am well aware it is hard, even for someone like me, who loves vegetables but roast vegetables make it a little easier.

I was relieved to see the hose pipe had unfrozen yesterday but sadly the connection has split and the hose is still unusable so it will be buckets of water in the garden today again for me but at least it will be in the warm as it is much milder. Apparently it is going to be 17° by next weekend. That is really something to look forward to. Youngest son and daughter are both at home as they are off work for half term, so I'll have some company too. I hope everyone has a lovely day and has a bit warmer weather to enjoy. xx

Keeping Warm And A Vegetable Crumble

 It was another really cold day yesterday, but the sun was shining which always makes me feel more productive, so I set about cleaning the kitchen from top to bottom. I cleaned all the cupboards, the fridge, the floor, the windows even the walls. It was gleaming when I finished. It certainly kept me warm. I had to turn off the heater and take off my cardigan. It reminded me of a story my Dad would tell us when we complained about the cold. Years ago, in the early 1960s, no one really had central heating, then one Welsh chap he worked with in the office had central heating fitted. The fact he was Welsh has no real bearing on the story other than the fact my Dad is very good at accents and always told the story in a Welsh one! He was impressing them all with tales of how wonderful central heating was as they all listened enviously. "Your wife must love it being warm all day." said my Dad "Oh no" said the man "I'm not keeping it on for her all day." "That's very mean." said my Dad and his Welsh colleague replied "It's better they are cold, keeps them on the move boyo!" When ever my Dad used to tell this tale we would all gasp at the unkindness of this man! If ever we complained about being cold Dad would tell us in a Welsh accent to "Keep on the move!" Looking back as an adult maybe the Welsh chap was worried about the cost of the heating and it may not have been quite so unkind as it sounded. Anyway as I cleaned today I thought of his wife and it certainly worked as despite freezing temperatures I felt quite warm most of the day! 

I'm starting to get into a routine filling the ducks pond and water with buckets. My family always laugh I could make a routine on a desert island and I think they may be right. I've worked out four buckets fill the aviary water, the ducks water bowl and pond and the bird bath. There are a few more cold days forecast and then things are set to warm up a bit so I'll have to adjust my routine again! 

Tom was working until nine yesterday evening so I made turkey burgers and chips for youngest son and daughter and used half of the vegetables that I cooked in the  slow cooker yesterday and saved for today for mine. I mixed them with some kidney beans in this small Masons dish, as I'm always very mindful my diet could be low in protein. I put a layer of breadcrumbs and grated cheese on the top and put it in the oven for 30 minutes. It was delicious and I couldn't resist some of the chips I had made for youngest son and daughter.

Several people have asked me to share some quick basic veggie recipes. I would love to, all the recipes I make are quick and basic as that is all I can do! I have several old recipe books from the 1930s to the 1970s and often adapt recipes from them. I'm also a bit of a nutrient nerd and am always checking I'm getting the right amount of nutrients which would be lovely to share with someone who is interested as my family definitely aren't! 

I am looking after Scarlett today so it will be busy but always fun. I hope everyone has a lovely day what ever you are doing. xx

Pre-Preparing Vegetables For Quick Warm Veggie Meals

I stopped eating meat 12 years ago. We decided, after years of keeping quail, we wanted to start keeping chickens. We read up about all they needed, set up our chicken coop and run and drove to get our ex battery rescue chickens. It was so exciting we couldn't wait. We drove to a big barn on a farm miles away, where the charity had put hundreds of chickens to be chosen from, with our boxes and donation money. We walked into the barn and I looked around at these poor creatures and the state they were in and I said "I am never eating meat again" and I haven't, not a mouthful. I never criticise anyone for eating meat it is entirely their choice but I knew at that moment it was not for me. 

I used to eat fish a lot but a few years ago had to go on an iodine free diet in preparation for treatment for thyroid cancer. I wasn't allowed fish, dairy, eggs, any type of prepared processed meal, take aways or even chocolate. I could have two pieces of dark 70% cocoa chocolate a day, it was hardly worth the effort! I moaned and moaned and practically went into withdrawal, but then strangely after two weeks I suddenly realised I had got used to it and on this diet of vegetables, beans, pulses and rice I was feeling incredibly well. I haven't kept it up strictly, and I admire committed vegans who are able to, but I have drastically altered the main staples in my diet since then and feel all the better for it.

As my diet has such a high fresh vegetable content, the best bit of advice I read was to prepare the food in advance. If I have some spare time at the beginning of the week I wash and prepare all the vegetables for several days and I store them in plastic containers in the fridge ready for use. How many times did I used to plan to have butternut squash or the like and then at the end of a busy day at 6 o'clock faced with a pile of vegetables to work through think I can't be bothered I'll have something else, always less healthy. Once they are prepared in the fridge it is no bother at all just to put them on. On these cold days, it's so much nicer to eat something hot for my lunch and nice for them to be already prepared. I usually have omelette and roast veg or often just roast veg with some bread. There's nothing nicer than mopping up the warm olive oil and garlic at the end with a chunk of bread.

At the same time I add more prepared vegetables in the slow cooker so they are ready to make another veggie meal in the evening.  I have a large slow cooker for the rest of the family to have their meat meals in and this little one for my vegetables. I have so many quick vegetarian meals I make once the vegetables are all cooked. Sometimes if I tell people I am a vegetarian they say, that sounds like too much hard work! I always think to myself it's the meat meals I make for the rest of the family that are hard work!

If ever there was a day I needed hot meals it was yesterday. It was freezing! I spent so much time walking around with buckets of warm water. I will be glad when the hose pipe defrosts and I'm already planning setting up some sort of new system, running the hose along the edge of the garden and lagging it to try and stop this happening in the future. It was so cold last night apparently the coldest night for 15 years. I'm just grateful for my warm house and feel so much for the people who haven't got one. Have a lovely day everyone and I hope you can keep warm. xx

Basic Meals And The First Stirrings Of Spring

 Tom and I have been watching the old TV series  Minder on Britbox. We decided to watch it as a compromise. I wanted to watch Lark Rise To Candleford which I used to enjoy and Tom wanted to watch Minder. We agreed to watch an episode alternately to keep us both happy. I used to like Minder years ago but felt it would seem really dated now. Well it is, but I am surprised how much I have been enjoying it. The first series was filmed in 1979 and it could be the olden days! All around London, the places we know, with barely a car on the road. The accents have completely changed too, it happens so gradually you aren't aware of it while it's happening. We loved watching it when we were first going out together and it led us to a have really nostalgic conversation about things from those days we miss. One of the main things Tom decided was really simple little meals. Over the years meals have changed so much too.

When we were first married Tom's favourites were rissoles or bubble and squeak. I learned to make them in Home Economics lessons at school and they were so cheap and easy to make. We promised ourselves we would have these each week again starting yesterday with bubble and squeak for our lunch. I'd saved some mash and vegetables from the previous evening and it was an absolute treat. I used to eat meat back in the 1980s but haven't done for a long time so I'll have to adapt the rissole recipe when I make them but the bubble and squeak was a real trip down memory lane.

Bubble And Squeak For Lunch

In the afternoon I re-potted some poppy seedlings I have grown from seeds that I collected from my Dad's garden last autumn. I have grown lots of seeds I collected in the greenhouse but I was worried these were starting to look a bit sickly. So I brought them inside and put them in larger pots. Perennial poppies are quite expensive to buy so I'm hoping as many survive as possible. I thought  of ordering a UV light to give them a boost. When I told my eldest daughter she said "You'll get the police raiding your house, they'll think you're growing cannabis! " I don't know, a police suspicious mind! 

Perennial Poppy Seedlings

I also got my tax return submitted yesterday (why do I always leave it until the last minute!) so that's that out of the way for another year. Onward into a new month, one closer to everything finally getting back to some normality. Apparently the 1st February is the Gaelic feast of Imbloc. This day is mid way between the winter solstice and the spring equinox and traditionally marks the first stirrings of spring and the worst being behind us. It is a time for purification and spring cleaning in anticipation of the year's new life. If ever we needed the first stirrings of spring and the feeling the worst is behind us. it was this year!  I hope everyone has a lovely day however you are spending it. xx