Skip to main content

Monthly Munch: March 2017

We've had some lovely warm sunny days (interspersed with hail and rain!) and the clocks have changed, so it's feeling like spring.  We seized the chance to attempt a "proper" walk on a beautiful cloudless Sunday, and successfully ascended Win Hill in the Peak District.  It was a lovely climb up through woods by a little stream.  We had a grand panorama to eat our lunch by, and a ramble along little lanes and through fields to return to the car.




Toby



- lost his first two teeth!  Actually he went to the dentist and she said, "get those wobbly ones out", so they weren't so much lost as well and truly yanked.


 - finally got Charlie and the Chocolate Factory from the library, and devoured it.

- bounded up Win Hill ahead of us all.  He still had energy left at the end!



- was proud of his rocket booster for a "Bling a Bottle" project at school.


- has had a story he wrote at school highly commended.  His teacher showed it to the headteacher and the Year 6 class!

Theo



- got the chickenpox.  It seems like every kid in the village has had it, so it was hardly a surprise.  Fortunately he only had a couple of days of being properly miserable.



- loves a book called Chocolate Mousse for Greedy Goose, and can recite it (complete with funny voices).

- made it round the whole of the Win Hill walk with no complaints.  Fortunately the last bit was muddy which got him excited again (although you should have seen both boys' shoes...)


- now that the weather's warmer, is rocking the hat, mittens and T-shirt look.


Thankful for:


- our boiler managing to break on the warmest days of the year so far!  It was an issue we've had before, so a quick fix - for now, anyway.



- lovely cards and presents from my boys on Mother's Day.


Recipe of the Month: Fish in tomato sauce



I'm rather enjoying Alex Mackay's Cookbook for Everybody Everyday - a library find that I may have to pay actual money for at some point.  This is a much-simplified version of a recipe which you are supposed to make with a home-made tomato compote.  That'll be a jar of pasta sauce then.  Plus, when I assured the boys that yes, it was exactly the same stuff which I put on their pasta, they were much more motivated to eat it.  It's a doddle to make and you can even leave the breadcrumbs off if you want to make it easier (or gluten-free).

500g jar of chunky pasta sauce
4 frozen (or fresh) white fish fillets (pollock, cod or similar)
20-30g butter
breadcrumbs from a slice of bread (roughly)

Preheat the oven to 180C.  Get a baking dish big enough to hold all your fish fillets in a layer.  Tip the jar of pasta sauce into it, and spread it out evenly.  Put the fish on top.

In a small frying pan, melt the butter and then stir in the breadcrumbs.  Keep stirring till they're just golden.  Spoon them on top of the fish, trying to keep them mostly out of the sauce (that just makes them go soggy).  Put the dish in the oven for about 30-35 minutes for frozen fish, maybe 15 for fresh.

We ate ours with mashed potato and peas.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Models of Contextual Theology: Spiritual Formation Book 7

"A theology that neither issues forth in action nor takes account of the way one lives one's life can hardly be theology that is worth very much." Models of Contextual Theology looks like the most boring book in the world. Dry academic title, weird geometric cover design - you'd definitely only pick this up if you were required to write an essay on it, wouldn't you? Well, I wish the outside did it justice, because the contents are much more exciting than the cover. It asks some very interesting and important questions about how our faith relates to the world around us. Is culture mostly good or bad? Is there such a thing as the "naked gospel", free of context? Do you have to be a trained academic to theologize, or can anyone do it? How much does theology from one culture transfer to a different culture? Bevans describes six models of theology which offer different answers to these questions. All are valid, he says, but they all understand the gospel an

Unto us a son is given...

Did I mention something about life getting back to normal in October? Oh yes, I was just finishing work and looking forward to at least two weeks off to organise the house, stock up the freezer and buy baby stuff. Then little Toby threw a spanner in the works by turning up five weeks early! Which would put his birthday in... let's see... October. So much for normal! For those who would like the gory details, here goes. If you are a mother who had a long and protracted labour, I advise you to skip the next bit - or if you don't, please don't start sending me hate mail. You have been warned. You see, we'd been to all the childbirth classes (yes, just about managed to finish them) and learned all about the different stages of labour, and how many hours each lasted. We learned some relaxation techniques and various things Graham could do to help coach me through long periods of contractions. And then we turned out not to need any of them, because the entire thing

A birthday weekend in York

We were surprised to discover that York is only a 90 minute drive from our house. It's somewhere we'd been thinking of going for a few years, but I'd assumed it was much further away. So when we wanted to go away for the weekend to celebrate my birthday in January, York was the obvious choice. The city did not disappoint us. I'd been to York years ago, and my only clear memory was of a tower on top of a grassy mound. That was Clifford's Tower, owned by English Heritage, and recently updated with a rather snazzy series of platforms and staircases inside. We saw a 13th century toilet which had been inaccessible for 400 years (I think I was more excited about this than the boys) and got a great view of York from the rooftop viewing platform. View from the top of Clifford's Tower Most people's memories of York probably involve the Shambles - an ancient street of shops - and York Minster. Apparently there isn't a clear difference between a minster and a cathe