Knitting Olympics

My goodness, but I'm excited about the Olympics.  Last week, I was entranced by the shooting - can you believe how precise their shots are? - and this week it's lovely Laura Trott and her cycling.  On Super Saturday, when we were holed up in Hay on Wye, eating chocolate orange as the kitchen stopped serving pudding shortly before we wished to order pudding, I fell head over heels in love with her and her infectious giggle.

The three girls were so over-joyed and excited to have won, and, despite not giving a bugger about cycling competitively, or indeed by any sport, I was entranced by them and the whole 6 gold medals in one evening thing.  Hurrah for us Brits, says the half South African, quarter French woman.

And now it looks as if we have surpassed Beijing, and produced 21 gold medals, which is extraordinary.  I am inspired to push one or both of my daughters to the peak of human endurance and encourage them to be Olympians in 2028; Lucy is already showing great promise in the cycling, she greatly enjoys being pulled along by me on the tag-a-long, and Harriet is a keen swimmer, flinging herself around in the water like a baby seal, entirely without any concern for her or my wellbeing.  Their mother, alas, was always the least competitive, least bothered of all Miss Chambers' pupils, and it is too late for me in all events, except, of course, in knitting.

I may have mentioned knitting before, and the knitting Olympics in particular, or Ravellenic Games as the lawyers would have it.  (spoilsports)  I have chosen a particularly easy discipline, the Mitten Medley.  My mitten is this one, which is easier than it looks but going slower than I'd hoped.  I should have finished the first one by the end of tonight, and then I have four days to make the other in order to win a gold.

The problem I have is that I am too easily distracted and keep on wanting to do other things, like watch canoeing at Eton Dorney or sit in the car, where I can knit, but can't do colourwork as it involves looking down and concentrating too hard, and of course, my baby gro empire is growing fast, so I have to sew like mad most evenings.  Also, ironically enough, the Olympics is so exciting that I really have to WATCH, rather than watch and knit; normally I can multitask in front of the television, but not at the moment.

Oh and news just in - Chris Hoye has just won his sixth gold, so now we're on 22 golds, which is extraordinarily exciting, even for a non-competitive, non-goal focussed, lazy sod like me.

5 years

Five years ago, this happened.

This weekend, we went to Hay on Wye to celebrate the fact that we haven't managed to kill each other in that time, despite bike related arguments and other traumas, and two adorable if rather exhausting small girls.  We've had a lovely five years, and I hope that we'll have many more.  It doesn't really seem fair that we can marry and celebrate being husband and wife when other people don't have that right.  My friend Jon wrote this about equal marriage and Scotland calling civil partnerships, marriages. 

Does what happened to me 5 years ago count for less if two men can get married and call each other husband?  Is my marriage any less stable and happy if two women can marry each other in a registry office or a church?  Of course it isn't, and anyone who says that it is being ridiculous.  The church in which we were married is fairly liberal and accepting - one of the church wardens is in a long partnership with another man and the curate's son is gay.  I haven't yet asked the vicar about the his views, but I'm pretty sure that they are not in line with the hierarchy; I know he has mellowed greatly during the last 20 years or so as Rector of Hanwell. 

In any case, marriage is a deep and meaningful thing, and why should I be allowed to marry when others aren't?  It's not just for the procreation of children, it's not just about promoting faith, it's about two people's public declaration of a private intention.

So happy anniversary darling, and here's to the next 5 years.

 

Food crush #2

As well as making a wonderful pea soup on Thursday, I had my father's birthday meal to cook.  It was his actual birthday on the 2nd, then I was semi-expecting my brother and his wife to come round on Friday and for us to celebrate then, with him having the meal of his choosing.  So I'd planned to make something interesting and new on the Thursday after the Olympic heroes had returned from the top of the billing Russia vs Tunisia volleyball match at Earls' Court.

My second food crush is the rather wonderful Esther Walker who is the wife of Giles Coren and writes very amusingly about food and motherhood and other trivial matters like that.  One of her recipes from ages ago was for Quinoa Risotto, and I thought that making that would be a delicious surprise for everyone.  The moaning!  The complaining!  The sulking!  The back-tracking when they tasted it and realised that it was utterly, utterly delicious!  The apologies!

It's a really easy recipe and much quicker than a normal risotto, and the only problem I have with it was that Esther Walker is considerably less greedy than my husband and family as they felt distinctly short changed by the portion size.  I felt that it was a perfect amount personally.  Have a look and have a go at it, all the ingredients are available from Waitrose.

Pea soup

Pea soup
Originally uploaded by JuliaCroyden
Well, this appears to be the only way to share the poor quality photograph, so there we go. You can see the pea pods and all sorts. Smells wonderful, hopefully tastes the same.

Cooking the perfect pea soup

Harriet is definitely NOT WELL, and is sleeping peacefully in her bedroom, and the double trap shooting is too tense for words, so I've popped into the kitchen to do some cooking.  I picked up some lovely (cut price) peas in their pods from Waitrose earlier, and I'm trying out Felicity Cloake's Perfect Pea Soup. 

For a start, I don't have streaky bacon, just back bacon, so I'm using that.  I also have a mixture of chicken stock and garlic olive oil that I used to cook little gem lettuces (a novel idea, but it works, look in this book), and Ms Cloake recommends plain water or vegetable stock.  Even perfection can be improved on, however, so in they go and now the soup is boiling away behind me, ignored like my children's whines.  It smells wonderful, and is a delicious green colour.  Unfortunately, the cheap peas were cheap for a reason; they are really quite large and there weren't that many of them, so I have had to add a large quantity of frozen petit pois to the soup, and of course they have cooked very quickly and are now done and ready to be blended.

Live blogging cooking soup is the most exciting thing I'm doing today.

Courgette jumble

Of course, the first thing my husband asks in the morning is always "What about dinner?", and, as usual, I ignored him this morning.  Even though we don't have the ingredients for a proper meal in the fridge, and I haven't bothered defrosting anything useful like mince or salmon, I know I can make a meal in a matter of minutes.

Hence, courgette jumble.  Courgettes, onions, garlic, roughly chopped and fried with bacon and chilli, adding toasted pine nuts half way through cooking.  When I made it on Friday for mine and Hattie's suppers I used pesto and raisins, and cooked some penne, which was all Hat would eat, along with all the raisins and discarding the courgettes and everything that wasn't bacon.  This evening's accompaniment will be spaghetti, and if Simon doesn't like it, I will punch him.  He turned his nose up at adding raisins to a savoury dish - evidently he is not entirely on board with my South African heritage, where fruit and meat are frequently paired.

I currently have a foodie crush on the rather marvellous Esther Walker, and as she is shortly to be publishing a "Best of" blog, I am reading through her back posts, and have found this rather wonderful sounding recipe for quinoa risotto, which again, his nibs has turned his nose up at, although he will be having it for supper on Sunday.  I have SPOKEN. 

My other foodie crush is on Felicity Cloake, and tomorrow I will have a bash at making her Perfect Pea Soup, but with normal bacon, not streaky, as that is what I have in the fridge.  Yum.

Gosh, a blog post about cooking rather than knitting or sewing.  Anyone would think I was some sort of non-criminal Martha Stewart type.

Ravelry, Olympics, Opening Ceremonies and other topical things

We are desperately trying to leave the house today; yesterday was spent inside watching CBeebies all day long, and I am slowly going berserk.  Hattie has bronchiolitis again - well, it's a holiday, what else is she going to do, and Lucy technically has chicken pox, although I think as her spots have faded, and were never that bad really, it was a very mild dose.  Today, however, I have decided that we are going out - to Hobbycraft, to Costa, to Ealing Town Hall, to the library, to the garden centre and to somewhere else desperately exciting like Sainsburys.  Unfortunately, my plans have been derailed by Mr Tumble, who is our current hero, but at least it means I get 10 minutes to myself to witter on about the Olympics.

I watched the Opening Ceremony, half expecting it to be, well, a bit rubbish.  And bits of it were, especially the whole green and pleasant land nostalgia for something that never existed anyway at the beginning.  Then Ken as Brunel, portraying him as a fat cat industrialist, when he was more that annoyed me.  But then the rings were forged and rose in the air, and I decided that this was generally a great experience and I was going to stop huffing and enjoy it.  Of course, Daniel Craig, the Queen, blah blah, sense of humour and all that, Gawd bless yer NHS, GOSH, and I could have done without the commentary, but by the time I worked out how to turn it off, it was the athletes parade and I needed it for that. 

Interesting what they chose to celebrate - I think Danny Boyle's vision was the way that the left would like to portray Britishness - diverse, interesting, tolerant and religious in a non-specific way.  There was a lot of God in the ceremony, what with Jerusalem, Bread of Heaven and Abide with Me, but it wasn't specifically the Christian God, just "God", someone who everyone could relate to; this non-denominational faith based approach is rare, unfortunately.  I think the majority of the country has some form of faith, and we should celebrate it sometimes; it should unite us more than tear us apart.

Well, what with all that deep thought and provocative tweeting and twitter reading, I managed to cast on 64 stitches for my mitten three times, each time getting a different number.  The Ravellenic Games are taking place along with the other Olympics, and I am making a pair of mittens with tiny blue hippos on.  So far, so good, although I found the ribbing tedious, and I need to make the mittens longer than lovely Spilly Jane's teeny hands.

The arrival of my children indicates that Mr Tumble has gone back to Tumbleland, so I'd better go and be a mummy properly.  *sigh*

Buy baby gros!

Green tomato chutney and spots

We tried growing tomatoes this year, but they've been a total washout.  The seeds took ages to germinate, and were then totally drowned by all the rain.  Such a disappointment, especially as the packet was something daft like £3 for 6 seeds.  Of course, Lucy was very upset about this, so last weekend we went to the garden centre to buy a tomato plant as a replacement.  £8 later, and a rosemary and a lavender, and an ice cream, we were the proud owners of a yellow tomato plant. 

Alas, the course of true love etc, and it developed some form of blight, involving the leaves turning yellow and curling up but the fruit being unaffected.  We decided to cut our loses and make green tomato chutney, loosely based on a recipe in Beryl Wood's book Let's Preserve It, which has over 500 really great ideas in.  It's currently doing its thing, and the whole kitchen smells of vinegar.  It should be cooked in about an hour, and ready to eat by Christmas.  Most expensive chutney ever though.

In other news, Lucy now has chicken pox; she is covered in spots and very sad and sorry for herself.  She understands that she mustn't scratch, and is dosed up on a cocktail of Piriton and Calpol, and is hopefully sleeping it off.  It's a bit of a pain, as we're supposed to be running a playgroup on Monday, but that's impossible now.

I want to write about the Olympics Opening Ceremony, but I need to think a bit first.  I've not done that since about 2005, so wish me luck.

entrepreneurship

Golly gosh, the power of advertising.  My last post was about the baby gro "business" and since then, I've had 117 people read the post and a whole bunch more look at the flickr page, and a couple of what I can only call pre-orders, as in people saying that they will be ordering one in a few days once they've been paid/had the baby/found a baby who needs more clothes.   It's all rather exciting really, and I think I'm going to need some more stock this week.

Let's hope that I can make £100 this year; that would be a wonderful thing.

Just in case: Baby gros

Bespoke Babies

I've been making baby gros for a couple of months now, and had some minor successes - an Indiana Jones one, a Chewbacca one and, my favourite, the kissing elephants.

Ideally, I would like to sell these and want to set up a website.  What a pain in the bum that is;  it takes such a long time, and I have to actually think about the text, and I've realised that my photos are super rubbish, and moan moan.  Anyway.  If you want a baby gro, send me a message via this or Facebook, or Twitter and it's only a tenner.

Here is the flickr site with all the photos on.

babygros

I can draw most things, given enough time and gin.