I said never...

Today I did something I  had vowed and declared I would never do! I had made a big thing about not doing it, it was a waste of money because you lost too much, it wasn't what "people like me" did, it was so against what I believed in. What did I do you ask?

Well today I bought a new car, yep that's right a brand new car. It had a whole 13 delivery miles on the clock when I picked it up this afternoon. And I also discovered you can pay for a new car with a bank debit card! I have never ever spent this amount in one hit before, and nor am I likely to do it ever again! My new car is thanks to my Mum and Dad as it was their money that paid for it, and the reason I bought a new one is because it made financial sense! 

But, stuff the financial sense, I really like my new car!It's a Dacia Logan MCV and looks like this......

And getting the new car also took me down memory lane to when my Mum and Dad got their first ever car. I don't remember how old I was, but I'm thinking not very. It was my Dad's works car and was a mini traveller and I even remember the number plate EVL 465E. It looked like this one below (courtesy Google..)

 

I remember going to the seaside, Mablethorpe, in it and it was quite an adventure at the time...

What was the first car you remember?

Until next time

KJ xx 

A recipe or two....

Firstly I'd like to say hi to Frugalmummy and Frugal in Bucks. Thanks for reading and I hope that occasionally I can make you smile. I've followed your good selves for a while, mostly lurking in the background to be fair. 
Now Frugalmummy asked me to give the recipes for the soups which got me thinking about cooking and my relationship with food. I love food and cooking, and watch some cookery programmes on TV. However what I am not is a fan of celebrity chefs per se. For me a chef has to be firstly and primarily a chef and only secondly a celebrity. Back to that in a minute but first a couple of recipes....

Carrot, orange and ginger soup

6 individual portions of  this soup ready to freeze!

 

This is so easy to make and the actual amounts of the constituents can be varied according to what you have in and how you prefer the balance of ingredients, so if you use this recipe feel free to amend it to suit yourself. I'm not sure where I first found the recipe so if anyone recognises it I'm more than happy to give credit for whereever it came from. It's now hand written in a cookery notebook which goes back to Domestic Science lessons at secondary school!

Melt 2 oz butter in a large pan and fry 2 medium sliced onions gently until soft. Add 1 lb diced carrots and fry gently for another couple of minutes. Stir in a pint and a half of home made chicken stock,  half a pint of orange juice, 2 tsp ground ginger and simmer covered until the carrots are very tender (about three quarters of an hour). Liquidise, add salt and pepper to taste and if you have any cream or creme fraiche in the fridge stir in some of that to serve.

Like I said, simple and yet really flavoursome.  

Cauliflower and Taleggio soup

This is my variation on a BBC Cauliflower soup recipe.

Heat a small amount of oil in a large pan, add a chopped onion and 2-3 chopped garlic cloves and fry for 2-3 minutes to soften. Add 1 tsp of both ground cumin and ground coriander and fry gently for a further couple of minutes. Add about 800gm of cauliflower and a litre of chicken stock. I guess you could use home made, bought or vegetable stock according to personal taste.  Bring to the boild and then reduce to simmer until the cauliflower is tender. When I cut the florets off I leave quite a length of stalk on it so for me it has to simmer for probably 30-40 minutes, but if only use the very top of the florets they will soften in 10-15 minutes. Let it cool slightly and then liquidise (or in my case use my stick blender - a fabulous pressie from hubby a couple of years ago for me to make smoothies with!). Then add about 150mls of creme fraiche - again you could use fresh cream but with the cheese as well it becomes a bit too rich - and bring back to full heat. Season to taste but be light handed with the salt as the Taleggio will give it more flavour. Drop cubes of taleggio cheese into the bowls of hot soup to serve and if you are feeling posh add croutons - or cubes of bread which have been dried to a crisp in the oven. 
No photos of this I'm afraid as I got it into the freezer before thinking about pictures!

Anyway back to my feelings on celebrity chefs. The chef's I respect and like are those who have truly mastered their craft, who obviously love and enjoy food and who have a full understanding of flavours and who are almost humble in their craft. I really can't stand "celebrity chefs" who rely on either bad behaviour (you can guess who I mean) or some sort of marketing ploy to become popular. My favourites are Raymond Blanc and Michel Roux junior I think. I just wish I could cook like they do!! I also love almost all Nigel Slater recipes!

So who's your favourite chef? Or what's your favourite recipe?

It's funny, but I never thought I would talk food on my blog! Next time something textile relate I think....

KJ x

A list of things to do....

It's been a long few days. The insomnia had returned, combined with a really irritating night time cough, a hubby who snores and my brain in ovedrive! I was beginning to get bogged down with the thoughts of everything I need to do over the next few days and weeks and was finding it really difficult to turn my brain off when I went to bed, so I have been surviving on 3-5 hours sleep a night. I know that when I get tired I get real cranky and decided I had to do something to try to fix it, although from experience also know that that's not necessarily going to help.

So I thought if I could get a list down on paper of all the stuff going round and round in my head it might help my brain to slow down a bit. The list got longer and longer and  included everything from making soups and meals for the freezer, to sorting out car insurance, taking the dog to the vets, sanding and varnishing the lounge window sill, and all sorts of other things. I then decided to rewrite the list dividing these things over a number of days. It's truly amazing how much I've managed to achieve over the last 4 or 5 days with this list to work on. It's also truly amazing how I've managed to do entirely "jobs" and things that are for other people, whilst at the same time managing to put all those "fun" things for me such as creativity right down to the bottom of the list. Think I need to do a reprioritisation of my list or otherwise I'll never get to do any of the fun things.

On the plus side, I've sanded down and put two coats of varnish on the lounge windowsill, touched up the wallpaper paint around the window, started to prepare a small wall at the bottom of the stair for a new coat of paint (why oh why did I choose white emulsion at the bottom of the stairs!),sorted out my car insurance for my new car which I'm collecting on Friday, sold my old car so am now without transport, made three different lots of soup (Carrot orange and ginger, Cauliflower and Taleggio, and Hunter soup with a dash of chilli) which I've frozen so hubby has them ready for lunches at work, done all the washing and ironing, looked after a poorly dog, walked a well dog, emptied, sorted and cleaned/defrosted both the fridge and freezer, cut hubby's hair, and of course all the usual daily jobs like cooking, cleaning, shopping, washing and ironing! But no, not a sewing or knitting needle, artists paintbrush or pencil has been anywhere near my hands. 

So this week I'm going to menu plan, work out the food finances for the rest of the month, and work out how to increase my exercise, and then watch out creativity here I come......

And anyway, I have a few Christmas presents to finish making, and yesterday my brother, who is getting married on April 12th, asked me if I could just knock up 6 mens waistcoats in patchwork please, oh, and he thinks the bride to be might well want a wedding dress making if she can't find exactly what she's looking for.... Eeeek - how on earth am I going to get that all done!

And tomorrow I'll tell you all about my addiction....

Don't get excited, it's a fabric addiction. I have way way way too much!!

Until next time remember....

If you can't stand the heat, don't tickle the dragon.....

KJ xx

 

Simple things...

What simple things make you happy? I've been thinking about this a lot lately, although I'm not really sure why if I'm honest. Maybe it's because Christmas is nearly upon us and these days it seems to be more about greed and consumerism than about family and things that matter. Anyway that brings me to my thoughts for today, a list of some of the simple things that make me smile...

1. Walking through fallen leaves and kicking them around, the sound is amazing
2. The first cup of tea in a morning
3. That half an hour of quiet in a morning when I'm the only one up
4. The smell of freshly cut grass
5. The sound of the sea
6. A hug from someone who loves me
7. A cuddle from my dog
8. A baby's smile
9. Home made lemon curd - well, there had to be food in here somewhere
10.  Listening to my favourite music
11. Toast - even better when served with the above mentioned lemon curd
12. Walking the dogs on a bright, sunny winter morning, all wrapped up against the cold
13. Enjoying a cup of coffee with a friend
14. Snowflakes 
15. The first snowdrops pushing through the earth 

I'm sure this list could go on for ages, but I'm going to stop there. I might revisit it in the spring to see if things have changed or what else has been added. So what simple things make you smile? I've decided to try really hard to notice these simple things when they happen so that I can appreciate them more. Why don't you join me?

KJ x

Time for a change....

Well another two months has rushed past. I'm sure the days and weeks get shorter as I get older but maybe it's more because I am always trying to pack more into a day than there is day to pack it into!

The title of this post is "Time for a change" and I'm guessing if anybody is actually reading this they may well be wondering why. I've had a stay in hospital since my last post, and although I thought I was dying at the time(well, certainly felt like I was anyway!), trust me I wasn't. Now I'm a nurse by trade and have worked in the NHS for most of my working life, so feel I have the knowledge and understanding to comment on some of the things I saw and heard while I was residing in one of our NHS "centres of excellence". To be honest I'm not sure that it would deserve that title. Now when I hear on the news about yet another incident where there has been a lack of care in a hospital somewhere I get very cross and frustrated as it is always the nursing staff who are perceived to be the responsible party for this lack of care, and as a nurse of 30+ years standing I had hoped, nay believed, that the nursing staff were being used as the scapegoats for whatever had happened. Rarely do you hear that the doctors have failed, and even more rarely do you hear that the managers were responsible for that little lady in the corner who was dehydrated and starving because she was not being helped with her meals. Now at this point I need to admit to not having worked on a hospital ward for a very long time, having specialised in other areas of the nursing profession over the years so it is fair to say that my judgements on this subject were primarily coloured by how it used to be. Well believe me it is no longer "how it used to be", but despite that I saw nurses who cared, worked damn hard, were professional at all times and desperately wanted to do not just a good job, but the best job, and went over and above their duty to ensure that patients were well cared for. However I also saw nurses who were overworked, over stretched, and stressed. These were the same nurses described above. The Hospital's answer to short staffing (due primarily in my opinion, to good nurses leaving as they were no longer being able to cope with what was being asked of them) was to use Agency nurses. It would be easy to use the agency nurses as a scapegoat and blame them for some of the things I saw and heard, and again this was not true of all the agency nurses, however what it would be fair and reasonable to say was that the lack of continuity due to it being a different agency nurse every day, did indeed impact on the care provided. The attitude of a fair proportion of the agency nurses also impacted on the care provided, as a lot of them did not appear to want to work very hard, did not appear to know what they were doing a lot of the time, and even when they were hard working and knowledgeable, were unable to fulfil parts of their role as they were not hospital staff and therefore were not allowed to undertake certain tasks. Again I need to say that I have been an agency nurse myself in the past, usually when we moved with hubby's job for short time, so again I do understand how being an agency nurse can feel, and how that can affect their work.

Now I am not using this post to expand on the things I saw and heard for a variety of reasons. Firstly I have written to the Chief Executive at the hospital asking for an appointment to see them to discuss the issues that concerned me. Secondly taken out of context of the big hospital picture this again could be seen as another dig at the nursing profession which it is not, and thirdly because I don't want to put any details in here that might allow someone to identify the hospital concerned, certainly not at this point anyway.

But don't think I'm going to sit back and do nothing, because I'm not! I might have done in the past in case it affected my job in some untoward way or other, or in case I'm seen as a trouble maker. In the past nurses who have said things have found themselves out of a job and unable to get employment in their local area, but I have decided that unless something is said nothing improves. Nothing I saw immediately put anyone's life at risk, but there were things I saw that shouldn't be happening. However I intend to go to see the Chief Exec NOT to complain, but to explain things from a patients perspective, and to make some simple suggestions that would help, but more importantly to make some observations and suggestions from a health professional's perspective to improve the care received. 

Of course I still could be out of a job after this, so if you see me begging on a street corner, be kind and give generously...... 

Well, I've been away from Blogland for an absolute age! And it seems even longer.

Life has a way of getting in the way, at least that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it!

Today the man and I went "foraging", as I believe that's the latest "thing to do". Actually what we did was pick brambles (blackberries to some people) and scrumped some apples from an apple tree or two on the side of a country road. Since when did that become "de rigeur"? I've done it since I was a child, way before the likes of Kirsty Allsop, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, or (I'm sorry this is going to upset a lot of people!) Frugal Queen. I grew up the 3rd of 4 children of a wonderful set of parents who had a limited income, lived in a rented house in a village in the country and who topped up the food they bought with free bounties from the hedgerows around us. Blackberries were one of the most available free bounties, and was cooked in various ways. My Dad was lucky enough to be a keen gardener and to have enough space to garden a lot. He grew everything from potatoes to salad stuff to raspberries, and we even had an apple tree at the bottom of the garden. When I was a child the apple tree was for climbing, swinging from and jumping off, but for my parents it was a way to eke out our main meal with apple pies. I know this sounds idyllic and people might read this and think we were lucky. Well, we were. We learnt about seasons and nature, about where food comes from and about the value of things. We kept chickens and had fresh eggs and it was a treat to be allowed to collect the eggs from the hen house while they were still warm. I  helped my Dad to plant things and understood exactly where my food came from. I spent time in the garden learning about worms and slugs, greenfly and ladybirds. It sounds idyllic doesn't it? The down side is we lived in a house with no central heating or modern day "wood burners" and had one open fire which it was my job to empty the ashes out and light in the morning when I got up with newspapers and sticks. I remember when Jack Frost came to visit and painted beautiful ice pictures on the window glass - the inside of the window glass that is. But I used to love getting up and looking at the beauty of those patterns after a lovely warm night tucked up under blankets and an eiderdown. As a child life was so simple then, and I appreciated everything I had, and that included the natural world around me. We ate rabbit that Dad caught with a snare, pheasants from the local shoot (Dad used to go beating with the shoot and was paid with pheasants), sausages made from a single pig that we kept in a pigsty at the bottom of the garden and was shot and butchered at home, and very occasionally we would have trout but we knew never to ask Dad where it came from.

So I hear you ask, how old am I? Well actually I'm not in my 80's, nor my 70's, and not even in my 60's. In fact I'm 2 days off being 53 years old so this wasn't actually that long ago. And I hear you ask, why am I reminiscing about these times? Well today we were out walking our dogs in a local country park, along the edge of a river and we came across a father with two children, a boy of about 4 or 5 and a girl of about 6 or 7. The Dad and the little girl were studying something the little boy had in his hand and Dad was obviously instilling excitement about the natural world and all it's wonders. What was it? A simple earthworm. The boy and girl were fascinated and giggling and interested and wanted to know more. And I thought that was absolutely brilliant! Good for you that Dad. I wonder how many other parents would have allowed their child to hold a worm in the palm of their hands without getting all "Health and Safety"!! And if I've upset anyone who is "all Health and Safety" then as far as I am concerned you have my full permission to never read my blog again!!!

And tomorrow I'll post pictures of my foraged fruit - and maybe what I've done with it too. But don't start to file me as a frugal person, because that suggests that this is a new thing. It's not, I've always made jams, chutneys, wine, soups and food from scratch, because that's what I learnt was the right thing to do. And yes I sew, knit, recycle stuff and keep things in as usable form as I am able to do - although crocheting is currently beyond my abilities!!

But again don't think that you now know who I am. Don't pigeon hole me. I own a very expensive, top of the range digital camera with a range of lenses, spent my holiday this year in New York (okay with my wonderful son and equally wonderful daughter in law and her family) and have just ordered a new car (Thanks Mum!) but I know what is important to me and you know what is important to you, so let's just leave it there shall we....

Now this blog is supposed to be about my creative development and learning to make cloth dolls. They will still crop up from time to time, but my creativity refuses to be chained down and pinned into such a small area, so you'll see much more than that, and as it's my blog I'll write about whatever catches my attention whenever it catches my attention.

Until the next time
KJ xxx

This week...

 This week's been a real mix of highs and lows.The Valentino couture exhibition at Somerset House in London was definitely a high, work was definitely mostly lows, and then today I found this saying....

So I'm going to try really hard to believe that this is true....