Martha's Marvellous Munchies

Looking back, it seems like lots of nice things have happened this month.  My diary records sunny afternoons with friends; discussions about 'what is poetry?' and 'what if Jesus hadn't been raised to life?'; visits to and from parents; a stop-off at Stratford-upon-Avon (nice town, even if you don't do anything Shakespearean); Easter bonnets, Easter biscuits, Easter church; parks, plants, parties; and my first attempt at ten-pin bowling in a long time.  (Since you ask: No.  I was awful.  But we had fun.) Helping with a lock gate on the Stratford Canal In the interests of keeping it real, this month has also included tantrums, whinging, fights, bleeding from the head, food on the floor, a screw in a car tyre, and me failing to get a job I interviewed for.  You didn't really think we had it that easy, did you? Life goes up and down... Toby - got his silver award for achieving 600 Dojo [award] points. - learned to do Sudoku puzzles with Gr...

As homework for the writing group I've joined, we each drew three cards from an envelope: a person, a place and a thing.  Our task then was to link these three randomly chosen items together to form a short story. I picked an angel , a guard's van and a whip .  What would you have made of that?  This is where my creative juices took me... [For those of you who didn't grow up in the UK in the late 20th century, you may need to know that the names mentioned in the final paragraph are brands of instant pudding mix.] Visions of Delight In the guard’s van, Ted relaxed back in his chair.  His duties done for the evening, there was nothing more to worry about until the train reached Carlisle in two hours’ time.  Usually he’d pick up a newspaper to pass the time.  Tonight, though, he was tired.  His eyes settled on the dark night swishing past the window, as his mind vaguely toyed with the options for his midnight snack.  The train wheels rumb...

Sometimes it seems frivolous to write about recipes and the small events of my own life, when in other parts of the world, awful things are happening and other people's families are being ripped apart.  Sometimes the knowing seems to demand a response, or even a responsibility, to look up from my own affairs for a moment, to say yes, I see this, however powerless I feel to do anything about it. And I wrote that paragraph yesterday, thinking of the chemical attacks in Syria.  But now there's Stockholm.  And whichever day you read this, there will be something else.  The task of making peace seems too enormous to contemplate. Maybe we should make cheese instead.  Many years ago, I stayed with a family in Romania who became my friends.  I spoke very little Romanian, though some of them spoke English, and many things in their house were very different to mine.  Welcoming as they were, it was hard to feel at home until the evening we made a cake....

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 show...

When I saw that Maltesers was donating £5 to Comic Relief for every cake made in their #bakeamillion challenge, it seemed like a better than usual reason to make a chocolate cake!  The devil's food cake I'd tried for Theo's birthday was so good that I didn't need much persuasion to bake it again.  The original recipe made a BIG cake.  So in the interests of all our waistlines, I halved the quantities this time.  And of course, adorned it with Maltesers. Devil's Food Cake Recipe adapted from Green and Black's Chocolate Recipes .  Apart from halving it, I reduced the amount of sugar and avoided mixing the cocoa with the cold water.  In my experience, all this does is give you a brown sludge which is hard to get out of the measuring jug.  I don't see how that improves the quality of the cake. 175g plain flour 1/2 tsp baking powder 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda pinch of salt 50g cocoa powder 200ml cold water 125g margarine or shortening 200g...

Day 1: We stopped at Rufford Old Hall for a lunch break on the drive up.  We enjoyed the drifts of snowdrops, the very friendly volunteers, and the binoculars!  When we arrived at Grange-over-Sands, we went for an evening walk along the promenade. Day 2: We went on the Windermere Lake Cruise, starting off on the top deck and retreating to underneath the seats, and ultimately the covered lower deck when it began to rain. Day 3: We spent the morning at the very well-stocked Lakeland Motor Museum, packed with cars, bikes, motorbikes, toy cars and much more.  Then we drove up to Skelwith Bridge for lunch (the cafe we had hoped to go to was packed out, so we had a picnic instead) and walked along the River Brathay.  There was a small but fierce waterfall, and the boys enthusiastically dissected a rotting tree. It took so long to drive back down the M6 that we were forced to stop at McDonalds for tea.

Most of the photos this month were either of Theo's birthday or our short break in the Lake District, which I will tell you about soon, I promise.  We also went for a walk up Streatley Hill with my parents (last time we did that, Toby was in a baby sling!) and ate both British and American pancakes on Shrove Tuesday.  And finally, the spring flowers are starting to appear!  My favourite time of year. Toby - has become very interested in big numbers, especially googolplex .  He wanted to know whether googolplex was larger than infinity. - is getting quite good at an app called Cute Munchies, a logic puzzle where you navigate small creatures round a kind of maze. - enjoyed looking at VERY EXPENSIVE cars with Graham, on a recent visit to my parents'.  (No, we haven't suddenly got rich.) - can ride one-handed on his bike. - found the biggest tyre ever at Lakeland Motor Museum. Theo - is getting going on his balance bike pretty well ...