Menu Planning

Let me talk about food.

I love food, but I am lazy about preparing it and about organising it. This is a common theme in our household. We want to eat healthily and we want to live within our means. We really do!

So, how do you think we do? On a Wednesday evening, after a frustrating day of work or whatever, we are all grumpy, tired, and generally at least one of us has low blood sugar into the bargain. There is no plan, motivation is low, and someone will say "Should we just get takeaway?" and, man, does it take a lot for the response to be "No. We'll cook."

Alternative scenario: there is a plan, but it is far more effort than we are able to cope with or we lack some key ingredient.

You see where this is going. Yes, once more we are taking a foray into menu planning! Earlier this week we sat down and made a plan, and politely requested that the nice people from Sainsbury's bring us the means to execute said plan.

The big goal was realism. There is absolutely no point in planning a spinach and ricotta quiche with roasted peppers and a salad (yum!) because there is no way it will happen. None. Not least because I only have a theoretical knowledge of quiche making. Mainly, though, because it is not basic enough to meet the requirements of our laziness and limited motivation. Basically, it needs to be as little work (or only slightly more) than driving to McDonald's. Let's take this one step at a time! First we get into the habit of cooking each night, then we can talk about the quiche.

Here, as an exercise in accountability is our dinner plans for this week:

Friday: pasta with bacon and courgette sauce

Saturday: roast chicken and veg

Sunday: chicken curry

Monday: fish cakes with veggies

Tuesday: pizza and salad

Wednesday: soup and salad

Thursday: leftovers

So, actually, during the week we are barely cooking at all. The fish cakes and pizza are in the freezer waiting to be ovened, vegetables can be quickly steamed, soup is ready made in the fridge... 

I wish it was better, but I also know that if I aim for better we will waste food, spend money we cannot afford, and eat mostly deep-fried food.

Wish us luck!

Sewing Again

In the glow of my peg bag successes, I have been looking for a new sewing project.

I chose the Plantain t-shirt from Deer and Doe. It looks like a simple garment, and I've heard excellent things about the patterns from knitting podcasts, particularly Fluffy Fibers. I've even ordered some fabric. Printing the pattern needs to wait until our printer is no longer hungry.

I wonder a little if there is something easier I could have chosen, but I have decided to just go with it, do my best, and see what happens. Worst case scenario, I'll wear the shirt at home and under woolly jumpers in winter.

Also on my sewing-one-day list is pyjama bottoms (which may have been a more sensible place to start, but to that notion I give a metaphorical shrug of the shoulders and make an "eh!" sound). In my experience, one wash is all you need to take a lovely and well fitting pair of pyjama bottoms to a place where they are flapping about at half mast, leaving me feeling silly and cold of ankle. This always makes me sad and ruins my pleasure in my new tartan/penguin print/dotty pyjamas, and so this seems an excellent place to build up my handmade wardrobe!

However, in order to avoid building a fabric stash to rival my yarn stash, the pyjama bottoms will need to wait until I have had a stab at this whole t-shirt scenario!

My First Peg Bag

This weekend it has been the late May bank holiday in the UK. May is an excellent month as there are two bank holidays. Typically, it has been raining. In my household we are fairly unbothered by rain. The family member least in favour of it is the dog who does not like to go out in the rain; walk on wet grass; or sit on wet concrete. The rest of us, having less need to interact with the wet ground, capitalise on the opportunity to stay in the house and do nice things. Punctuated by rounds of tea, crisp eating, and the occasional load of laundry which, due to the rain, will have to dry slowly indoors.

When the weather is dry our washing gets to hang on a washing line. This is a recent acquisition, and one that I, at least, am disproportionately pleased with. With the acquisition of said washing line came the acquisition of pegs, followed by the realisation that we needed a peg bag. We could have continued to store them in a plastic carrier bag, but where is the fun in that!?

Some time ago, before pay day, I did research and we chose some fabric, and then we waited. I should point out at this stage that my sewing skills are at a fledgling stage. I had Textiles lessons at school many years ago, but they stopped when I was about fourteen. Since then my sewing has been limited to sewing up knitting projects and hand stitching trousers when the hem inevitably drops.

Last Christmas I made some basic Christmas stockings, which were very pretty, but varying in the quality of their construction. So, deciding to make a peg bag was a bit of an adventure!

I found a tutorial I liked the look of, this one from Tales from a Happy House. I sourced some fabric, which came from Oh Sew Crafty (although I used their eBay store). I decided the peg bag should be at least semi-waterproof, so we chose this lovely ripstop fabric decorated with birds. I also bought ribbon for the trim, but decided not to use it in the end. This is the result:

I love it! I had some challenging moments with it, primarily around the fact that ripstop is quite stiff and there were things it didn't want to do or that seemed inadvisable. Like pressing. There was also the fact that I casually forgot to try to make the bag symmetrical. I don't care though! The bottom line is that it is finished, beautiful, and ready to go whenever the sun chooses to shine again!

Once upon a time...

Once upon a time I was a knitter. I knit in every spare moment: trains; waiting rooms; park benches. In fact, I still am and I still do. Over the last year or so, something changed. I could tell you neither when nor how, but it did.

I started to develop other interests! I started to explore new and uncharted (to me) waters, and to do new things. Often poorly. I was asking for a much broader range of items come Christmas and my birthday. I was liking it.

So here I am, still a knitter, of course but also: a runner; a weaver; a sewist (I don't know if this is a real word, but it seems preferable to being a sewer!); a bike riding learner; a player with poly clay; a spinner; and an amateur doer if whatever makes me feel all "ooh shiny!" this week. Therefore I am seeking a way to document my new adventures in a way that does not make my Facebook friends roll their eyes with irritation each time I get over excited about some new activity or spam their timelines with six photos of the same pair of socks. This blog is my solution.

All I can say for now is: watch this space, adventures are pending!