Martha's Marvellous Munchies

Maria thought of plants at school - beans in jam jars... and mustard and cress on bits of flannel.  But what I like, she thought, is not all that but the names of things.  And every single kind of thing having a different name.  Holm oak and turkey oak and the sessile and pedunculate oak.  Sessile and pedunculate... 'What?' said Mrs Foster. 'Nothing.' Holm oak - quercus ilex I have on my bookshelf a faded paperback in a cracked plastic cover.  On the front cover, a girl with windblown hair gazes into the distance; below her, small silhouetted characters in top hats and Victorian dresses parade on a beach; and under them are grey stones with swirly ammonite fossils etched on them in white.  The title, in block capitals, is A STITCH IN TIME by PENELOPE LIVELY. I had never given much thought to the author until I happened upon a book in the library called Ammonites and Leaping Fish: A Life in Time , also by Penelope Lively.  Despite the referen...

Well.  This has been a spring, hasn't it?  In less than two months we've gone from this: to this: via a LOT of rain. It feels like a long time since I wrote a general family update, so here are a few highlights for March and April. Easter Toby and Theo both needed Easter bonnets this year.  I was dreading the whole thing, but to my surprise, both boys were enthusiastic about making them, and it turned into an enjoyable experience.  They didn't win any prizes, but they were very proud of their hats. We also baked and decorated biscuits, and took them to my parents' for the Easter service at their church.   Car We parted with our aging and decrepit Rover and traded it in for a shiny new vehicle.  Graham did all the hard work finding the new car, but it was well worth it.  The gears work.  The windows roll down.  The doors open without falling off.  It even has a voice control system which tells the boys to "...

A book can't last several thousand years unless it contains some properly good stories, can it?  And the Bible has plenty of them, from the inspiring to the gory to the downright odd.  We meet people that we would like to be, people we wish we weren't, and people who we would like to ask a lot of questions. But when I was asked to write a tabloid version of any Bible story for my writing group, there was only one character who really stood out.  Larger than life, always getting into trouble (and then getting into more trouble to cover it up), and with a thunderous end: Samson is prime tabloid fodder. [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons The original version of Samson's story is in Judges, chapters 14-16.  It is not the kind of nice improving story that you might hope to find in a sacred text.  Samson falls for a girl who is an enemy Philistine, and orders his parents to get her for him. (Nice and polite, then.)  They oblige, and on the way to meet...

So you know that to help the planet, your health, and your wallet, it's best not to have meat for dinner every day.  But you have a family to feed.  And it just gets complicated trying to find vegetarian recipes that your kids will actually eat. Well, I know your kids will probably have a completely different set of preferences to mine.  Occasionally I read one of those family recipe books where they will say, "This dish disappears in a flash in our house," and I read it and think, "My children wouldn't touch that!".  They don't like most beans, soup, or tomato sauces, and Toby doesn't like eggs.  They do like things with lots of toppings that they can add, baked beans, refried beans, and cheese. So I don't present this as the complete answer to your dinnertime woes.  But here are some of the veggie dishes that work best for us. (Most of the links are to Monthly Munch posts; scroll down to find the recipe at the end) 1. Black bean burrito...

I don't know why, but I just did not twig that Theo's birthday was coming up and we might actually want to celebrate, until about two weeks before.  So then I hurriedly scribbled some invitations ("who are your friends at preschool?  Oh yes, I think I remember you mentioning that name at least once before.") and bought cake ingredients. Theo, somewhat surprisingly, wanted gingerbread cake this year.  I'd seen one once with gingerbread men around the edge, which was cute, so that was easy enough for decoration.  It didn't really lend itself to a theme, though. Flipping through the craft catalogue, the best I could come up with was a kind of "funny faces" idea, so I ordered a bunch of stuff.  When the box arrived... it was full of someone else's stuff!  They'd sent me the wrong order, and it was too late to send the right one. So the craft consisted of some bits I found in a drawer, the party bags contained a few things from some...

One thing I've really enjoyed about working in a cafe again is having a good reason to make cakes.  I've dusted off some of my old recipes and tried out a few new ones too.  Carrot cake and sweet-topped fairy cakes are reliable favourites; a crumble-topped apple cake (with slices of apple pushed into the cake batter) and gingerbread cupcakes have gone down well. However, I haven't always found much time for baking at home.  This week's been an exception.  Three different bakes have gone in the oven, though you'll have to wait a little longer to hear about the third. Firstly, I'd had my eye on a recipe for parsnip and pecan loaf for a while.  Yes, parsnip.  Same principle as carrot cake, as in you mostly taste the spices, not the root veg.  Besides, I like cakes with funny ingredients - I've got an aubergine brownie recipe tucked away to see if I ever dare to make it! Like carrot cake, it uses oil instead of butter, so except for the bit of peelin...

We're almost halfway there! Halfway, that is, between the dark and the light.  Halfway between the shortest day and the spring equinox.  Halfway through winter, and heading towards spring. There has been a festival around this date since ancient times.  If you're in America (or remember the film) you might know February 2nd as Groundhog Day.  According to legend, if a groundhog (or bear, or badger) emerges from its burrow and can see its shadow in the sunlight, there will be six more weeks of winter weather.  If the day is cloudy, the forthcoming weather will be mild instead. via Wikimedia Commons On the Christian calendar, however, the 2nd of February is Candlemas.  It's a rather forgotten festival - we don't get a day off or anything - but I found out a little more about it recently. Candlemas is forty days after Christmas and, technically, the end of the Christmas season.  The festival commemorates the baby Jesus being taken to the temp...