For Dinner Tonight:

Lemon Roast Lamb

Boiled Potatoes

Carrots

Hot Chocolate

Potatoes from the allotment (it may have been a bad year for everything else - but we have an amazing number of potatoes), organic carrots from Lidl (and Rob was heartened to find that they were no bigger than the ones we lifted from the pots outside) and a frozen leg of lamb from Iceland (a frozen food store). Rob boned the lamb for me and I marinaded it in a mixture of garlic, olive oil, dried oregano and lots of lemon juice. It turned out very tender and really very nice. A shivery evening here, and failing a good hot pudding, hot chocolate is just what we need.

For Dinner Tonight:

Frozen Pizza

Blackberries & Russet Apples

Well, it is Thursday. The apples are the first (ever) of our eaters. Very, very nice - and I am not really an apple fan.

For Dinner Tonight:

A day late again ...

Pork Chops with Lemon Sauce

Boiled Potatoes

Green Beans

Nothing fancy - the sauce was just the juices from the pan with some vegetable stock, cream and lemon juice. The chops were from Lidl (of course) as were the frozen green beans, which I highly recommend

For Dinner Tonight:

Roast Chicken

Boiled Potatoes

Courgettes & Tomatoes

Homemade Raspberry Ice-Cream

A very simple and easy to prepare dinner. The potatoes were ours, so too the courgettes, tomatoes and raspberries. The chicken was from Lidl, perfectly okay but with, no doubt, a sad provenance. I would like to be able to buy free-range organic but they are hard to come by round here and horribly expensive when you can find one. It is an ongoing guilt inducing dilemma for us. We try to make our meat go as far as possible but that still leaves organic meat about three times as expensive per meal portion as non-organic. Yet maybe with a little creative budgeting I could manage it. I hope so.

For Dinner Tonight:

Or rather last night:

Jacket Potatoes

Leftover Sandwich Fillings

Homemade Raspberry Ice-Cream & Blackberries

A busy day today (it was a Bank Holiday here, so Rob was off - hurrah!). The afternoon was spent blackberrying and elderberry picking in a nearby field, with a picnic under the big oak tree. The place was deserted - I had expected to see lots of people about enjoying the warm day, but I guess most people around here decided to go off in their cars somewhere. Not that I am complaining, it was a beautiful afternoon. We spent the evening bottling blackberries and pickling onions in spiced vinegar. Treasures for the winter.

For Dinner Tonight:

Mr Wolf's Tea Party

Ever since we got our paws on a copy of Mr. Wolf and the Three Bears , the boys have been agitating for a proper tea party. What better occasion then than a visit from Rob's brother and sister in law and their two little girls. The menu was:

Sandwiches - egg mayonnaise, chicken mayonnaise, cheese and relish, and smoked ham with cream cheese.
Cakes - Chocolate and Banana Bread, Lushious Lemon Squares and Quark Cake with Lemon Icing and Chocolate Raisins.
Grapes, Plums and Chocolate Dipped Bananas
Homemade Raspberry Ice-Cream Cones

The Quark cake was from Lidl, and I just prettied it up with some icing and cholcolate raisins (ick, can't stand them myself). It is most certainly true that sandwiches taste better with the crusts cut off and sliced into little fingers but I am now left with enough crusts to make 3 bread puddings! But much fun was had by all - and there was no need to bake anyone into a pie at the end of the afternoon!

For Dinner Tonight:

Sausages

Garlic Chicken

Mashed Potatoes

Green Beans

Grapes and Bananas

At last, a warm and sunny day! A busy one too - shopping at Lidl this morning (almost all of their vegetables were half price today!), then lunch and off on a short bus trip (a visit to a new supermarket and charity shop). Hot and tired, we settled for something simple and quick. I didn't think we had enough sausages to go around, so I added the chicken (just some pieces dusted with some seasoning mix). As it turned out the boys didn't like the sausages - too peppery and they weren't too keen on the chicken either. Ho hum. Mashed potatoes always go down well though.

For Dinner Tonight:

Lamb Kebab

Vegetable Soup

Plums

Rob had the delicious kebab - made by the ever friendly Ali, who runs our local fish and chip/kebab shop. I finished up some vegetable soup I had made this morning. The children had sandwiches and yoghurts, watching a dvd on the computer. Bad, bad Mummy. It was a Beatrix Potter story, though and not something with mutant space aliens or brightly coloured blobs, honest. Can you tell I'm carrying mummy-guilt?

We cleaned out the refrigerator tonight, Rob and I. I wish I had taken a before photograph but it really would not have been pleasant viewing. Threw away an embarrassing amount of rotting veg and various jars of stock that had been mouldering in there for goodness knows how long. Rob washed down the shelves and baskets. We've had a problem for sometime now with water pooling at the bottom of the fridge and then freezing. Tonight we discovered that the drain hole at the back was blocked with a horrid, quivery white substance. No idea what it might be (or might have been). We cleaned it out, fervently hoping it was not some lubricating substance vital to the running of the machine. Now we have a sparkling clean but very empty fridge. Shopping tomorrow!

For Dinner Tonight:

Pizza

Chicken and Courgette Stir Fry

Plums

The pizza was for Rob, the low carb chicken for me. Well, okay, I had some plums as well. Just too delicious to pass up.

Paddington Bear

Paddington Bear is a great favourite in our household. Both Rob and I are old enough to remember the wonderful television version of the stories, narrated by Sir Michael Hordern (not the dire cartoon version that appeared much later, no, no, no). The books are so much better even than this - but make sure you get the original, unabridged versions (sigh). The audio book CD, read by Stephen Fry, is delightful and just right for long journeys and wet afternoons.

This week The Sunday Telegraph published this interesting interview with Paddington's author, Michael Bond. I do so enjoy reading biographical articles about children's authors, although so often they turn out to be far from jolly individuals. Michael Bond seems a sweetie - but the article is, I think, one for adult eyes. Don't let this put you off his books though. I knew about his Olga da Polga stories but didn't know about his gastronomic detective Monsieur Pamplemousse. An addition for the library wish list, I think.

For Dinner Tonight:

Sweet Corn

Frankfurters with Courgettes and Tomatoes

Jacket Potatoes

Plums

You can tell we have never grown sweet corn before - it is such a novelty and we can't eat enough of it. I'm going to try and freeze some tomorrow but freezer space is pretty limited so we'll just have to munch our way through most of it. The courgettes are our own which we are very thankful to have; for a few weeks we thought we would have none at all which would have meant no courgette relish to brighten our winter! The tomatoes are ours too - but they are a sad story. We should be swimming in them by now and off-loading them left, right and centre, but the dreaded blight struck both varieties. We have had a couple of pounds of 'Sungolds' (a cherry) and about 12 'Romas' (plum). Ho hum. Tonight we are being adventurous and bottling plums. We might try pickling some too.

For Dinner Tonight:

Sweet Corn (lots of it)

Leftover Stew

Homemade Bread

Plums

Last night, after a frightening encounter with our set of bathroom scales, I decided to start low-carb eating again. Today my husband brought home the first of our sweet corn and plum harvest. Ah well. I did pass on the bread, so that's a start I guess.

For Dinner Tonight:

Beef & Vegetable Stew

Green Beans

French Bread

Flapjacks

When is something a casserole and when is it a stew? I must google this - I think it is something to do with the kind of pot it is cooked in, or at least it was originally. Casserole sounds more genteel and as there was nothing genteel about this meal, stew it is. I made enough for lovely leftovers tomorrow. The flapjacks were the oaty, not the pancakey, kind, made from my sister's recipe. The panful disappeared in a flash!

Back Again

Hello everyone! I'm hoping to get back to regular blogging after my break. Thank you once again, everyone who sent such kind messages and for all your prayers. Healthwise, I am fine (as is the rest of the family). We have been so comforted by God's Word and the Holy Spirit over this period. We continue to seek His guidance for the future, in all things of course, but especially with regard to our family.

We've had a busy weekend here. Along with the usual activities a weekend brings, I visited a quilt show on Saturday (and was gone for the whole day) and Rob put in a huge amount of work on one of the allotments (stripping out all the dead stuff and failed crops - not a good year this). Plus we are thinking ahead to next month when Isaac starts homeschooling 'officially'. More on all this later, I hope .......

Update

Thank you so much Laura and everyone else who has been praying for us. It has not been an easy week for us by any means. My trip to the hospital confirmed that we had, indeed, lost our precious baby; when, they could not say. Our hearts have been very heavy coming to terms with the news. Others have written far more eloquently than I ever could about the pain of miscarriage and of the hope that our faith in Christ Jesus affords. I can say this, however, the knowledge that our little one is safely home in heaven, along with our daughter Esther, is an immeasurable comfort.

I'll be back to regular blogging soon: at the moment I'm feeling a bit muddly and just need to concentrate on the 'home essentials'.