Skip to main content

Monthly Munch: October 2016

It's been feeling more and more autumnal, with chilly mornings and drifts of yellow leaves underfoot.  We celebrated Toby's birthday (and several of his friends' birthdays - it's been party season!).  The whole of his school somehow squeezed into our small village church for harvest festival, and we've been collecting conkers, sweet chestnuts, apples and quinces.  Theo is still chatting away and trying to help with everything, sometimes more successfully than others!  And we welcomed all the grandparents for what seems to be becoming the traditional joint October half term visit.


Toby


- celebrated his 6th birthday with a long-awaited party at Jangala soft play.  He's been asking for his party to be there since June at least!



- really enjoyed the Winnie-the-Pooh books for bedtime stories, and we've now moved on to a Paddington omnibus.  After that I'm thinking Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, perhaps.

- collected lots of conkers!



- kept asking to go rock climbing, so we went to High Tor near Matlock Bath.  The interesting bits were all fenced off, but it was still a nice walk.

The big drop was NOT fenced off!


Theo

 

- walked almost all the way around the High Tor loop we did.  We didn't even take the pushchair, and we were so proud of how well he did.

- is obsessed with a game called Shopping List, and will happily play it six times a day.

- likes the playdough at preschool.

- has picked up the phrase, "Dat's dust howwible!"

Dressing up at Sudbury Hall
 
- loves helping to cook.  He's getting pretty good at peeling carrots.

Inspecting pepper plants

Thankful for:

- some beautiful autumn walks.


- extra family members around to play Shopping List!

- in keeping with the harvest theme: good food and plenty of it.

Recipe of the Month: all those cakes

I've already posted recipes for cakes and more cakes this month, and I don't seem to have taken photos of anything else, so that will have to do. 

The quinces I mentioned earlier were a freebie from Graham's work; I tried poaching some but put too many cloves in, so they tasted very clove-y and were a bit overcooked.  They are hard work to cut up too!  But it was interesting to try a traditional but unusual fruit.

Chopping quinces


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Three Mile an Hour God: Spiritual Formation Book 10

"The affirmed life must not become either a lazy life or a happy-ever-after, easy life. The affirmed life is not a life of the power of positive thinking. To be affirmed by God means to live with danger and promise."   Kosuke Koyama's book Three Mile an Hour God was written out of the experience of the Second World War and its aftermath in Japan. As Koyama says in his preface, it is "a collection of biblical reflections by one who is seeking the source of healing from the wounds... inflicted by the destructive power of idolatry." The title speaks of a God who moves at walking pace - three miles an hour - and even, in Jesus, comes to a "full stop" - nailed to a cross. If we try to move faster than the love of God, says Koyama, we fall into idolatry. What is the book about? Three Mile an Hour God has 45 chapters, each a separate short reflection headed by a Bible verse. Some deal specifically with Japan, considering her role in WWII, the damage inflicte

National Forest Way: Ellistown, Bagworth, Nailstone

You may well say, "Where?" I'd never heard of any of these three villages before I planned to walk through them. Back in the 1970s, it would have been possible to travel between them underground. All three had collieries producing exceptional amounts of coal (Bagworth set a Guinness World Record). Nailstone and Bagworth collieries were connected in 1967, and Ellistown was merged with the other two in 1971. All the mines are long closed now. The railway lines have been taken up, the winding wheels turned into civic sculptures, and the pit sites transformed into country parks. It was a beautiful sunny day, but we'd had a lot of rain recently. Within five minutes of leaving Ellistown, I was glad I'd worn my wellies.   The way took me alongside a quarry site and then into a collection of woods: Common Hill Wood, Workmans Wood, Battram Wood. The colours of the trees in the November sunshine were beautiful. The path was a muddy mess. At Battram village I crossed a newly

National Forest Way: Normanton le Heath to Ellistown

This 9-mile walk took me through the Queen Elizabeth Jubilee Woods and Sence Valley Forest Park, and into the heavily-quarried countryside south of Coalville (no prizes for guessing what was mined there!) I originally planned to walk from Normanton le Heath to Donington le Heath, which had a pleasing symmetry. But I decided to go a bit further, to the hamlet of Ellistown.   It was a cold morning. I'd been in shorts the previous weekend, but today there was a frost. I added a flask of coffee, a scarf and gloves to my kit, and set off. For a small village, Normanton le Heath has a surprisingly wide road. I parked there rather than using the car park for the Jubilee Woods. That meant I was at my starting point straight away. I followed a road past some rather nice houses, crossed a field, and entered the Queen Elizabeth Jubilee Woods. The NFW leaflet told me that I was on the route of the Via Devana, a Roman road from Colchester to Chester. There isn't much left of it. a mosaic,