Mud & Mischief

Never pick your nose when you’ve been chopping chillis.

Sweet and sour chicken with rice (from scratch)

Take one free range chicken from fridge. Realise that there’s no way that’s going to cook in time to feed the four starving children that are climbing the walls after swimming lessons.

Cast around for inspiration, and then get told by Myf that she wants sweet and sour chicken with pineapple.

Roughly butcher chicken into bite sized pieces. Whip up impromptu batter of flour, egg and a splash of soy milk. Add a touch of salt and a sprinkle of garlic powder. Dump chicken into batter. Find frying pan. Swear when recalling yesterday’s forgotten shopping list and today’s subsequent lack of sunflower oil. Retrieve olive oil and peanut oil from condiments cupboard and pour half an inch into frying pan. Plop chunks of battery chicken into oil to start frying.

Put large pan of water onto boil to cook rice.

Remove chicken from frypan, put on baking sheet in low oven, add more chicken to pan. Try not to splash oil over ones hand - it hurts.

Google for sweet and sour chicken with pineapple and feel momentarily panicky at the sheer quantities of recipes available. Jot down approximate measures from three different recipes and assemble ingredients.

Repeat chicken removal and addition.

In a small pan, combine the juice and about half the chunks from a large (400+g) tin of pineapple. Add a liberal glug of soy sauce (1.5 tbsp). Add 1/3 c. ketchup, 1/3c. brown sugar and 1/3 vinegar. (decide to add sugar first next time as that doesn’t make the cup or sugar so messy - then ketchup then rinse with vinegar). Stir over med heat until simmering, then thicken with a heaped spoon of cornflour mixed to a thin paste with water. Simmer whilst draining rice.

Assemble large platefuls of rice, add chicken, pour over generous dollop of sauce. Instruct offspring not to flick pineapple at each other if it displeases them, but to pass it to Myf who would eat the entire tin given half a chance.

Watch in amazement as plates are cleared in record time, followed by seconds. Even RJ approved.

Finally, I’ve planted my early spuds. In spite of the fact that the maincrop went in nearly three weeks ago up at the lottie, I’d not done anything about getting the earlies in.

But now, in neat rows of six from the patio we have Witchhill, Winton and organic Premiere (all first earlies) and a line of Wilja (second early) after that.

And if I could find the rake, I’d put the onions in, but I can’t so it’ll just have to wait until tomorrow.

I’m going to be a self-employed business type person. At least, I will if I can ever get to grips with building the damned website

www.ecoknits.co.uk is where it is. At least, it’s where it’s going to be.

People born in 1990 will be 18 this year.

Now doesn’t that make you feel old?

Have a happy weekend. xxx

Ok, time for a catch up I think. I’ve been posting nonsense for far too long and really need to jot down all that’s been happening.

To start with, there’s been the health issues. I’ve had a few health niggles lately, but I think I’ve finally sussed the last of them. Yesterday, I went for a colonoscopy, where there do things with cameras that really don’t bear thinking about. However, it was essential and most informative (have you ever seen your appendix?). Upshot is, I have ulcerative colitis. At least it’s only a small c and not the big C we were worrying about.

Did lots of googling last night and found I have to adjust my diet a little, but that’s ok. Protein is good, but not too much red meat. Dairy is bad, but I can have a little every so often. Brown is out and white is in - how bizarre, eh? And lots of soluble fibre, ie oats and fruit and veg (without the peel). I’ve ordered some supplements, Artichoke, Aloe Vera and Zinc, as they’re all indicated as useful. So with those on top of the MSM and glucosamine I’m taking for my back, I’ll be fairly rattling. But my brother suffers from the same thing, so we’re both going to take the same supplements and compare notes on their efficacy.

Also, the back problem. Which isn’t a problem at the mo. The miracle of acupuncture, eh? I’ve been for three sessions with a lovely chap called Noah and the difference is incredible. I can walk, and even did a bit of light gardening without turning myself into a crooked vegetable.

I’ve been somewhat distracted lately with all the knitting I’ve been doing. Talk about obsessed. I’ve joined a couple of international swaps too, and sent and received fun packages of yarn and candy and craft stuff. Which is good as far as James is concerned as I’m packing up some of the excessive yarn stash to send. He doesn’t, however, see the packages coming into the house…. I’m on Ravelry as Kris WW so have a look at my rapidly growing yarn stash on there. It’s lurvely.

And then there’s the writing - one of the things I’ve promised myself I’ll do this year is get something published. So to that end, I’m concentrating on one manuscript, instead of working on about 8 at the same time, and have 43000 unedited words so far. This one is a Mills & Boon, because they’re fun to write, but I’m going to need some hapless folk to proof it for me…

There’s also a house move in the wings. We went and viewed a couple of houses in a village about 6 miles from here - you get a lot more house for your money there, so we could sell our three bed (extended) semi and buy a decently sized 4 bed detached out there. The one we like has a good sized garden too, a double garage and scope to expand the relatively small kitchen. Ahh, more building work. However, now we have a good builder to hand, that shouldn’t be quite so bad.

And now, the part you’ve all been waiting for - the pictures.

Mom took this one of the girls when they stayed with her at Easter. It’s so lovely with the daffies and the sunshine.

And one of them at Mom’s party back in January.

Robin at Easter - action shot! Note the filthy face. As this is what it looked like earlier:

So, that’s a brief over view of the last little while. I’m bound to have forgotten something, so shall no doubt check in later and add a few bits.