Weekly meal planning: preparing for chaos

Posted by louisa on Monday 28 March 2011 in cooking, weekly meal plans | 0 comments

Every now and then I refer to being busy with drama or rehearsals but I’m not sure I’ve explained it – I help teach drama to teenagers at a local theatre one evening a week and am involved in other productions there from time to time too. Around Easter each year, the two drama classes (for 12-15 year olds & 16-18 year olds) come together for a big production – which means lots of extra rehearsals and running around. This year’s production runs for three nights the weekend after next with lots of dress/tech rehearsals during that week beforehand – meaning I’ll be out every evening from next Sunday to the following Saturday inclusive. This is going to get in the way of dinners somewhat – I’m going to try to get a good leftover buffer set up this week to cater for next week.

Sunday lunch – provided as part of the breadmaking course we were on (more on that later!)
Sunday dinner – bread from the breadmaking course with cheese & chutneys

Monday lunch – bread & cheese
Monday dinner – (after rehearsal) burgers with salad

Tuesday lunch – bread & egg mayo and salad
Tuesday dinner – beany enchiladas (with leftovers for the freezer)

Wednesday lunch – jacket potato with tuna
Wednesday dinner – some sort of curry cooked by John (probably keema & channa achar), with leftovers for the freezer

Thursday lunch – bread & eggs (we have a lot of bread from the course!)
Thursday dinner – pasta with chorizo, olives & wild garlic (has to be a quick one as John’s out)

Friday lunch – samosas and salad
Friday dinner – sausage & lentil casserole (with leftovers for the freezer)

I’m hoping to get John to make a big vat of his slow cooked pasta sauce on Sunday which should provide us for with at least two dinners, so that’s another couple of nights sorted too. Hopefully all these ready meals will make good eating next week as easy as possible :)

Bloomin’ lovely inspiration

Posted by louisa on Thursday 24 March 2011 in meta | 8 comments

I’ve just been catching up with some blogs in my feed reader and read this wonderful (short) article on Simple Green Frugal by Notes from the Frugal Trenches.

Titled “Bloom where you’re planted”, FT explains she hears a lot of “if only”s (for example, “if only we had a bigger kitchen, we would make jam”) but she’s realised:

in almost any circumstance, you can choose to bloom where you are planted, or choose to stay underground. Listing all the reasons you can’t simplify, or make frugal, green choices, will never let you break through the barrier to a purposeful life.

A great sentiment, very nicely put – especially at this time of year when we’re thinking about stuff sprouting & blooming and starting anew.

By nature, I’m a pessimistic procrastinator but I’ve been trying optimism on for size recently – I’ve become the silver lining girl at drama (two weeks until the first performance and the prompt still has by far the biggest part…) and I’m trying to be a bit more go-getting too – getting on with stuff rather than leave it until the world is perfect and stars are aligned or whatever. I’m going to keep the “bloom where you’re planted” sentiment in mind next time I find myself saying “if only” or “I can’t do x“.

(Speaking of blooms, our across-the-road neighbours bought us a lovely Spring-flowers bouquet for keeping an eye on their house while they were away – tulips, narcissus & daffodils, hyacinth and two types of purple flowers I can’t identify. We have flowers in the house so rarely that we don’t actually own any vases any more: these are in an old nutella jar on the office window sill, with an old pickle jar holding the overflow daffodils on my desk. I’m enjoying the novelty of having them but glad it’s warm enough to have the office door open – those hyacinths are rather aromatic!)

Tiered plant stand made from scrap wood

Posted by louisa on Wednesday 23 March 2011 in Featured, growing, making, wood stuff | 5 comments

Yesterday I mentioned I finished off my latest scrap wood creation – a plant stand thing.

I can’t remember whether I went looking for inspiration or whether I stumbled upon the idea while looking for something else but about a month ago, I got very excited about the idea of making a tiered plant stand thing which would allow me to double, triple or maybe even quadruple the amount of plant pots I could have in any one area.

There are a few different sorts out there, with different supports and shelves, and I collected a range of pictures together to come up with my own design – one that would be versatile (long shelves not just trays for shelves – although that would use a lot less wood) but most critically, easy to make with my less than stellar woodworking skills. And this is what I came up with:

If it looks wonky, it’s because the floor there is uneven, I spent AGES getting everything level! It was a bit of a pain working out all the angles – I had to use MATHS! ;)

It’s pretty sturdy – supported against the wall by both the top shelf supports and the back batten of the top shelf. I made the side bits – from salvaged decking John’s dad brought over and some joiner’s off-cuts from our woodstore – a few weeks ago but couldn’t find any lengths for the shelves. Then I found six 18mmx38mmx1800mm battens in the garage yesterday, which worked perfectly. Since the wood is all a bit mismatched and it’s not all protected, I think I’m going to paint it with some leftover-from-decorating paint.

The shelves are about 90cm/3ft long, so I’ve now got 270m/9ft of linear growing space in less than a metre of ground space – and all of it raised off the ground which will hopefully deter slugs even the tinest bit!

As it was a bit of an experiment, I’m rather happy with it – another freebie for the garden – hurrah for scrap wood! This stand will probably live where it is now – underneath the office window – but I might make another one for the balcony next to the kitchen for easy-grab salad & herbs.

A cracking start to Spring

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 22 March 2011 in chickens, growing, making | 3 comments

Oh what a beautiful day!

I know yesterday was officially the first day of Spring but it was a usual sit-at-computer rush-off-to-rehearsal day for me, whereas I got out in the Spring sunshine today. I’d decided to have a day away, or at least largely away from my computer – and couldn’t have scheduled it better weather-wise.

We had our first breakfast al fresco – sitting on the sun trap of a balcony. The idea of having breakfast on a balcony was one of the things that sold the house to us – the balcony faces into the woods and it’s a gorgeous view, even with the trees still leafless:

(The two horizontal strips of green at the bottom of the photo are just over the stream at the bottom of the garden – it’s wild garlic. There is *so much* wild garlic in the woods – and thankfully plenty in places not often frequented by dogs.)

After breakfast, I cleaned out the chicken coop and since I was working hard, I thought some of the chickens should be busy too – I put Lime & Green to work in the portable run I made the other week, weeding one of the veg beds. They worked like troopers…

Except for when they got distracted by a dried leaf caught in the wire.

(By the way, since it was sunny, both cats wandered down into the garden, saw the girls in the portable run, thought their luck was in so crouched down – then realised the chickens were a. bigger than them b. had sharp beaks and c. had bigger claws so slunk off to continue their sun worship elsewhere. It was funny to watch them go through the exact same actions.)

Chicken, this is nephew; nephew, this is chicken

Posted by louisa on Monday 21 March 2011 in chickens | 5 comments

Our 13-month-old nephew has been eating our chickens’ eggs for a little while but he only met them properly for the first time on Saturday. He took his suddenly-beloved-soon-forgotten spoon along for the introduction.

He’s met Lily/dogs a good number of times before but as well as meeting Lime the chicken, he also met his first up-close cat on Saturday too – he seemed to like Carla-cat a lot and considering she’s a ‘fraidy one, she didn’t seem to mind him either :)