Skip to main content

Monthly Munch: April

Is that really the end of another month already? Time flies when you're getting no sleep...

Toby
- relates almost everything in life to a Peppa Pig episode.

Peppa Pig Easter egg. (I should have cropped this photo, shouldn't I?)

- loved hunting for small chocolate eggs so much that we had to do it over and over again, until they started melting from so much handling.

Wearing my boots

- will argue about pretty much anything.
Toby: "I don't like curry."
Graham: "You like chicken tikka masala, don't you?   That's curry."
Toby: "Yes, but I don't like all curry.  I don't like... bird poo curry!"
Since this got a laugh, he followed up with dog poo, cat poo, book poo, DVD poo...

- was worried about his baby teeth falling out.
Me: "Don't worry, yours won't fall out for a long time. When they do, it's fun! You put the tooth under the pillow, and in the morning there's a piece of money there instead."
Toby (gives me incredulous look): "What, in my mouth??"

Theo

- weighed 11 lb 14 oz at his 2-month checkup.


- has started sleeping through at nights - although not yet every night, unfortunately!


- loves his monkey mobile

Thankful for:
- a few full nights' sleep, and the promise of more.

- visiting my parents for Easter.  They seem to have an amazingly calming effect on both boys!

- some lovely warm sunny days.

Bluebells!  Toby said they should be called purplebells, really.

Recipe of the Month
I wanted this to be hot cross scones, which my friend Sally linked to and I thought was a brilliant idea.  But I haven't quite got round to making them yet.  This hasn't been a particularly good month for creative cooking.  So here's a recipe I've made a few times.  It's something like a quiche, but with a drier filling.

Rustic Greek Pie


1 large sheet ready-rolled shortcrust pastry, or pastry made with 150g / 6 oz flour
450g / 1 lb frozen spinach, thawed
3 garlic cloves, finely chopped
150g / 6 oz haloumi cheese, grated
120g / 4 oz feta cheese, crumbled
1 tbsp fresh oregano, or 1 tsp dried
2 eggs
3 tbsp cream or milk

Preheat oven to 200°C / 400°F.  If you made your own pastry, roll out to a rectangle.  It doesn't have to be too precise, as you can see from the ragged edges on the picture.  Place on a baking sheet.

Squeeze out as much water as you can from the spinach, and spread over the pastry, leaving a 3cm / 1 1/4 inch border.  Scatter over the garlic, cheeses and oregano.  Fold up the edges of the pastry to form a border.

Beat the eggs with the cream or milk.  Carefully pour over the filling.  Bake 30-40 minutes, until the pastry is golden and the filling is set.

Serves 4.

Comments

Sally Eyre said…
Finally got around to reading the blog. Thanks for the honourable mention. True fame!

Popular posts from this blog

Mr White Watson of Bakewell

Once upon a time, back in 1795 or so, lived a man who was always asking questions.  The kind of questions like, "Why is glass transparent?" or "Why do fruit trees grow better in that place than in this place?" or "What does the earth look like underneath the surface?"  This last question was one that he was particularly interested in, and he went so far as to work out what the rock layers looked like where he lived, and draw little pictures of them.  Now he was a marble sculptor by trade (as well as fossil hunter, mineral seller, and a few other things) so he thought it would be even better to make his little pictures in stone.  That way he could represent the layers using the actual rocks they were composed of.  Over the course of his lifetime he made almost 100 of these tablets, as he called them. Then he died.  And no one else was quite as interested in all those rocks and minerals as he was.  His collection was sold off, bit by bit, and the table...

Growing things

For those of you who are interested in my attempts at balcony gardening, I thought I'd update you a little. For those who aren't, don't skip this post. You may find something else of interest. Apart from the ever-present herbs, tomatoes and cayenne peppers are on the go this year. The peppers are really on the go - we went away for a week and came back to find them twice the size as when we left. Now they're producing fruit which is growing at a similarly rapid rate, though none has ripened to red yet. I realised I should have given you some kind of scale, so I just went out and measured. They're about 22 cm long, or 8 1/2 inches for you non-metric types. I may have to find out how to dry peppers if they all ripen at once. A couple of tomato plants are looking pretty healthy and beginning to flower. A few died; one, apparently, by being eaten whole by a bird, a trouble I've never had before. I had two seedlings left so used those as replacements, b...

The Imitation of Christ: Spiritual Formation Book 2

"This is my hope, my only consolation, to flee unto thee in every tribulation, to trust in thee, to call upon thee from my heart, and to wait patiently for thy consolation." The second of my  four books for spiritual formation  is The Imitation of Christ  by Thomas à Kempis.  The introduction to my copy starts off by saying that 21st century readers may wonder why they are bothering, which hardly seems like a recommendation!  I have to admit I finished it with a certain sense of relief, but there were some hidden gems along the way.  It's rather like reading the book of Proverbs.  There's no story or explanation of a theme, but there are astute observations, honest prayers, the occasional flash of humour, and quite a lot of repetition. Thomas à Kempis was a priest in an Augustinian monastery in the 1400s.  Presumably his life conditions favoured the silence and solitude that he advocates for in  The Imitation of Christ , but also gave him opp...