Back to Work

Eid Mubarak!

I went back to the office today. I'm feeling loads better, and my appetite is back even if my ability to consume as usual isn't. I only managed a piece of toast for breakfast and half a salad... but did nibble a couple of small pieces of pistachio barfi which someone had brought into the office to celebrate Eid.

I flipping love barfi! So sweet, so pretty!

Anyway, I weighed myself this morning and I have lost a full half stone! Obviously this is too fast and not good at all, but I'm a little bit delighted as I'm now no longer in the red zone. I'm not even in the horrible orange zone. Look at the stars, look how they shine for me, and all the things I wee... cause it is all yellooo!

Well let's see how I go.

I made a healthy sweet treat yesterday. The NHS website said bananas are a good bland food if you're recovering from food poisoning. Really, I thought. So I made banana and raspberry ice cream with crushed strawberries and a square of gingerbread chocolate I was given as a gift.

Honestly, tasted better than it looked, and my belly liked it. We ended up watching Bad Teacher. Oh yeah, it's awful, but in a good way.

Going Rogue

End of the weekend, and I am shattered!

I've been working on my editing today and then I popped to the allotment again. I didn't have a lot of energy as I didn't eat very much yesterday apart from a small bowl of pasta and allotment herb pesto, so fuelled up this morning on an egg sandwich.

So this is what it looks like today:

First raspberries appearing

A glut of blackcurrants, redcurrants and some gooseberries... as much as I could picked, prepped and frozen

The coriander is now all in flower, which means...

coriander seeds!

Planted out and sowed some runners.

I am not sure my aubergines worked, so there's a sneaky pinstripe plant on the end of the row, procured from Asda so at least I'll get some. Our neighbours gave us a load of comfrey today to make plant food, so that's prepped and will be ready in a few weeks.

We have a lot of potatoes growing, but I thought I'd go an find all the rogues... the little bibbly potatoes that sneaked into odd places round the plot and started growing. I got some rogue potatoes for our tea!

Not all of them were good, but hey, free food!

Tonight, I'm planning to relax and watch a film... I recorded Identity Thief and Bad Teacher. Two brainless comedies, just what the doctor ordered. But first I will whip up a quick banana and raspberry ripple ice cream. Need movie snacks!

My crazy year

So this is my first blog post since pretty much a year ago. We've had more elections than that. Yep, let that one sink in.

Unfortunately I wasn't up to blogging much last year. I wanted this blog to be about positivity, and for a while I felt that if I was going to be writing anything it would sound like I was documenting the opposite. I tried to stay chipper through things, hence the two or three spaced out blogs from the year before, but it wasn't really working. That sounds like a repeat of what I might have written before.  Well, yes...

I think we jumped in a bit early with trying to start a new business for OH. He did try, and his friends and I tried to help him, but overall... big loss. I've pretty much felt like I was spinning plates trying to keep things going, and as well, there was all the stress of my dad's TBI.

Now, we are kind of scraping along and are playing catch up with bills and things, but work is going well, OH has a new job and that's also going well.

Time to start finding me again.

So, this is where we are: soon to be a duo-earning household, with a few more debts to chase down, no working vehicles at the moment, no washing machine (!!!) -  my friend is being an angel and taking our big loads while I'm doing a few hand washes between times.

...And my I take a moment here to praise the virtues of Savon de Marseilles - proper French laundry soap, smells lushly clean and is excellent for working on the bits of your clothes that need the most work, you know... pits, collars, crotches 😂. Try to find it online, I bet you'll only find the rustic-looking green and off-white cube-shaped bars, oh so vintage and swanky and expensive. I picked mine up in a French supermarket for about €1. Soap!

Right, Stepford Wife moment over.

I was planning to make my first blog de retour about the journey I was going to be making this weekend. I was off to a friend's 50th party in Gloucestershire, and found that the best way of getting here from Northampton with no vehicle turned out to be your normal bus. Bus! It was going to be quite an adventure... however, I've had a touch of food poisoning this week which has put paid to me travelling anywhere. I put being ill down to: a) the heatwave this week b) my inability to turn down free food. I think it was down to some slightly warm sandwiches I had at my writers group meeting this week.

The irony, this week I said I would go back to being veggie apart from where I had been catered for as a non-veggie. I thought it was ham. Turns out, may have been very wrong prawn...

Instead, I can share with you some progress pics from the allotment. Enjoy!

What a mess!

Herbs in May, looking weedy

The darling spuds of May.

A little bit neater as I plant the peas and aubergines

Strawberries, rhubarb, redcurrants and blackcurrants and some of the herbs. Those spuds look nearly ready too!

A bit less crazy.... still loads to do.