I cooked a chicken (but forgot to take any photos)

Good evening my lovely readers,
Well I am cream crackered! It's been a busy couple of days and (don't tell the pain management ladies) I haven't been pacing at all. I've managed quite a few things that I'm really proud of. I drove on my own for the first time in months yesterday, I went to yoga, I did a shop, I went to pain management and today I cooked a whole chicken!

Mr Lardshow's parents have come down for the weekend for the first time so I am in a house full of Lardshows and meat eaters, the cats are in heaven! So after much debate about what to cook for them we decided on a roast chicken. Up to this point I have got away with just cooking pieces of meat but today I bit the bullet (not the chicken) and had a go. After trawling through my cookery books I found a nice simple recipe from the voluptuous Nigella. Mr Lardshow was dispatched to a good butchers and bought a high quality free range chicken. Hopefully the chicken had a happy, clucky life.

The happy chuck was popped in the oven with lemon, potatoes, shallots and a whole bulb of garlic sliced in half with some olive oil, thyme, salt and pepper. Lots of mathematical doings were done to calculate how long it needed to be in the oven but in the end I opted for going and having a bath and leaving the responsibility of the chicken to Mr Lardshow. As Baldrick sort of used to say 'I had a cunning plan'!

So, by the time I got out of the bath the chicken was done and all we needed to do was put the Yorkshire puddings in, warm through the mash and steam the veggies. Dinner was done! As is now the norm, I spend all of dinnertime staring at people's plates quizzing them on whether the meat is cooked and hoping it tastes ok. Tonight though I had the added bonus of Mr Lardshow senior constantly offering me random bits of chicken to taste for myself...I declined!

Anyway dinner was a success, our bellies are full and we've collapsed onto the sofa to watch the end of the tennis.

It's nearly bedtime now, I'm really tired and I REALLY want to have the energy to go and see the Olympic Flame in Lichfield. I want to be a part of it in my 'Official Team GB' hoodie in spite of the pain. Cross those fingers! Night Night all xBx

Sun Tea for Miss Adele

I was chatting across the ocean to my lovely Canadian friend Miss Adele and she gave me the inspiration for this post. She said all you needed was a teabag, a jar and some sun. Not a problem you might think but that big, glowing ball in the sky has been rather elsuive of late...

This morning the sun came out! I was out in my garden with my Parentals and I found myself shielding my eyes from the sun, such a surprise and finally a chance to try out Miss Adele's idea.

So the idea is you take any teabag of your choce, the fruitier the better and you pop it in a jar with cold water. You then place the jar outside in the sun. As the sun's beams hit the jar they warm the water and help the tea to stew/brew/mash.

My sun tea is still brewing outside, I'm not sure how warm it's going to be as the sun has gone and all we're left with is a cloudy, muggy day. It was fun taking the photos and watching the water gently change colour. I'm really enjoying developing all my photos.

So what sun tea will you make?

Olympic Dreams

Now I'm not sure if any of you out there are aware but there's something really special happening in this the year, 2012...yes that's right I will be competing in the Olympics! Have you picked yourselves up from the floor? Good, then I shall I continue. A few years ago if you were to have typed in my home town into Wikipedia and scrolled down to the bottom, under 'notable inhabitants' you would have read my name, Olympic hopeful in the 1.2 metre breaststroke. Oh yeah baby I had dreams!

But sometimes dreams change and you have to adapt. Sadly I missed out on the trials for said breaststroke competition and on a very dark day my dearest mother sat me down and said my Olympic dreams were over. I tried not to take this to heart but it was hard, all those years of training, all those swimsuits, all that talcum powder!

Yesterday I decided to believe that maybe my Olympic dreams could be realised again. After a bit of a sad, teary morning I decided to be brave and try and find a local yoga class. Since starting my Pain Management group I really want to get stronger and get out of the house a bit more if I can. The days can be very long in my little white house all on my own with just the two mad cats for company! Anyway, I found a class! I had a lovely chat with the teacher called Jean and she was so lovely, she laughed when I said it might take me longer to get up from the  'Downward Dog' than everyone else.

The lovely Mr Lardshow stopped off on the way home and picked me up a yoga mat (That means I've definitely got to go to the class now!)

And so with much trepdation we contacted the official Olympic commitee and told them I was back in the game. I have to admit, there was pure joy in their voices when they heard the news. afterall, I am a medal prospect and yes i am talking BRONZE here! The post arrived here mid morning and there was something extrememly special all packaged up for me. I am taking this as confirmation that I have got into the official GB Yoga team. 

GO TEAM GB!!!!!!

Baby Bantams

We went back to the farm...

And inside the box of chicken delights there were some bantam eggs! Such excitement, much scrabbling to get enough pennies together to be able to buy the bantam and hen's eggs. Yup we now have enough eggs to keep us going until ooh at least next week. 

There's just something so perfect about the shape and colour of an egg that's come from a happy chicken. I just can't understand why any one would buy caged hen's eggs nowadays. 

I've never eaten bantam eggs before and I assumed that they would be just like mini eggs (not the chocolate ones!). When we cracked them open we were greeted with the sight of the brightest yellow-orange yolk I've ever seen  and when we fried it we realised the yolk was pretty much the same size as a normal egg. There was much less egg white, perfect for me!

So as you can probably tell I've been having a go at taking more photos using Mr Lardshow's camera, he says it's now my camera but I fear that if I say it's my camera he'll make me carry it and it weighs a bloomin ton! Much better to say I'm borrowing it... I've never really been that creative or arty (More of a home economics girl, me) but I'm trying to use different colours and textures to make my pictures more interesting. I'm now starting to look at everything with a camera's lense. The good thing is you can add shadow, depth and texture after you've taken a really bad photo!

Little Candles

Last night I cleared away the bits and bobs that we'd piled high and filled the table room with candles.

I love the way the light has made rays coming out of the holders, like little rays of sun in our rain filled summer.

I'm tired today. I went to pain management this morning from 9:30 til 1:00 but I didn't get home til 2:00. It was really good today but the sessions are so long and it's excruciating sitting on a chair for that long. We had 2 speakers today who had done the course before and had come along to tell us how the course had changed their lives. It's very hard, only 2 weeks in, to imagine how it'll be able to make that much of a difference but I am remaining positive.
The best thing I'm getting out of the course so far is leaving the house and getting to spend time with other people. People like me, who understand why I sit in funny positions with a hot water bottle constantly attached to me! We did exercise today (I know, deep breaths!) and apparently we'll be doing that every week! Every time the course leader said the word 'exercise' I just kept on thinking 'CAKE'. I had a lovely giggle with one of the other girls on the course and it was lovely to feel equal with others.
So no cooking tonight, friends are coming over for curry. Nom! I can feel a nap calling me to bed, I've done too much, i clearly didn't pay any attention to the lecture we had on 'pacing'. I hope you enjoy the candles. xBx

Strawberry Cupcake

I did it, I baked, I jammed, I iced, I plopped a strawberry on the top, I got Mr Lardshow's camera and I had a go at taking some fancy, arty photos, I ate the cake, I rubbed my tummy, I went to sleep. It was good it made me happy.

Throw It All In Pasta

Hello my loves,
I'm still amazed every time someone says they've read my posts. It's truly doing wonders for my spirit. Thank you for continuing to read my ramblings (I fear this post may be very rambly)
So I'm struggling with my pain today, I've just taken some extra painkillers, I don't know why it takes me so long to take extra ones when I'm feeling worse. Silly. Stubborn. Girl. Yesterday's cooking was difficult too. Pain was bad and I found doing everything really heavy and hard. At one point I tried to empty the dishwasher sitting down...it didn't go well...
Anyway to the point of this post. As I was cooking tea last night it dawned in me that I really do cook like the three amazing ladies that inspired and taught me how to cook and bake. These wonderful women were my two great aunts; Aunty Topsy and Aunty Lena and of course my Mum. We were and are 'chuck it in cooks', we look at our food, we work out what will go together, what needs using up and then we add a good pinch of hope for the best! I can still remember shelling peas and slicing runner beans at the breakfast bar with them, I can still only peel potatoes with a knife, just like they taught me to.
Since allowing a meat eater into my home and his meat onto a shelf in the fridge (I know, GASP!) I have had to start working out what goes best with the meat that he likes to eat and also what we can eat together to make my cooking days easier. So far so good, according to Mr Lardshow who is always very complimentary (He's not daft, he knows the correct things to say) but I do struggle with not being able to taste what I'm cooking for him. As he eats his dinner, I sit there waiting for him to say it tastes horrid, or that I've put lavender in it instead of rosemary...I did do that once with Cath, Jo and some new potatoes.
And so to last night's offerings, chuck it in pasta. I like my pasta nice and simple. Tomatoes, basil, cheese and wholewheat spaghetti. That's it. (There are no pics of mine being cooked sorry, I was struggling to cook at that point of the evening and couldn't cope with doing photos too) Mr Lardshow likes his pasta a bit spicier and with MEAT! So I started his off by frying some chorizo and then adding some beef meatballs, the smell of this was not pleasant to me but it sent Finn into an outstanding display of excitedness, I do wish he had a volume switch sometimes!

Next I gradually added the veg, got to get those 5-a-day's into him somehow. I love chopping up veg, sometimes the knife has to be taken off me when I get a little bit too excited while chopping up the veg scraps for the compost bin.

Once all the veg has softened I add some tomato paste, cook it out and then I add a good splosh of passata. Once this has come to a nice simmer I turn all the hob rings off and go and collapse on the sofa until Mr Lardshow comes home. I try to get everything cooked and ready early in the day when I'm feeling 'good'.

And here's the final dish, nice and simple and gone in under 10 minutes!

Is anyone still reading? I'm cream crackered today, hope I feel a bit more awake tomorrow as it's Pain management course day and I really want to get the most out of it. I'm wondering if it would be acceptable to lie on one of the beds as soon as I walk in...

Ooh just as I was about to post this the phone rang, I stupidly answered it! Another bloomin cold caller, this one is offering me a grant. Does he want me to go back to university? Sadly I can't ask him as I've put him on hold under Finn. I've just checked, he's still on the line after 3 mins 43 seconds...I wonder if I can do better than my personal best which was just over 9 minutes! OOF cold callers leave me alone!