Hugh and Jamie’s chickens

Just caught up with Jamie’s Foul Dinners, watching Hugh Fernley-Whatsits earlier last week had put me off, not because I didn’t want to see what the battery chickens were going though but because for me HFW wasn’t telling me anything new, I think I got the whole battery farmed / mechanically recovered meat message a long time ago (courtesy of Jamie probably), so HFW’s programme was a little boring. Jamie’s Foul Dinners though was excellent, taking the message one step further to those people out there like me who know the theory but arn’t quite as diligent in their fast food eating / food shopping habits. Currently I only buy organic free range actual chicken and organic free range actual chicken eggs however if it is a ‘chicken product’ aslong as it’s ‘actual’ meat i.e. not mechanically recovered chicken balls I’m ok with it, so the kids eat Birds Eye chicken dippers and yes we do go to McDonalds where we eat more than enough chicken nuggets, I also don’t pay attention to what eggs are in my ready made stuff (although having said that I make most of my own cakes and biscuits (yes I’m sickening) and we’re not big fans of quiche or mayo) but still I don’t check, so it was relief when I checked the back of the package of the Waitrose own brand steamed treacle pudding I was eating at the time to discover that yes the eggs were free range, phew. So what am I going to do? I know I could make my own chicken nuggets but I’ve tried before, several times and the kids don’t like them plus although I buy free range organic chicken  I don’t buy it that often, it’s expensive, we just don’t eat chicken that often, but as Jamie said in his programme it’s only been in the last few decades has chicken been an everyday item, it used to be a once a month, special occasion thing, for the sake of the chickens and the sake of our planet (where we should trying to live a more vegetarian lifestyle anyway) we shouldn’t expect to eat them so often. Maybe there’s shop brought organic chicken nuggets out there, I’d pay more for those.

Dark Fire

Dark Fire by C.J. Sansom initially didn’t impress me but 200 pages in I was hooked, well written, well researched, atmospheric, genuinely exciting, with more depth as the plot progressed, I couldn’t fault it really. Set in Tudor London, it is the second in the series featuring lawyer Matthew Shardlake. It was a little difficult to get a grasp at first of who was who, specially as I was initially confused about all this talk of a Cromwell, ‘wasn’t he in the Revolution?” I thought, but then I realised I was thinking about Oliver Cromwell, whereas the real-life Cromwell in this book was a Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex, King Henry VIII’s left hand man till the king had his head.

Thomas Cromwell – mmm not how I imagined he looked like whilst reading Dark Fire

It might have helped if I’d read the first book in the Shardlake series first, however it wasn’t overly necessary I think. Will I read more of the series now I’ve finished? Well, so many books out there, so little time, so having sampled what Sansom can offer I want to see what other authors can do but I suspect maybe having depleted my mammoth pile of books to read and on a rare moment when I can’t find anything else in the book shop, I may be reading another one.

Monday Mess

Sigh, I hate Mondays, the flat always looks like a pig sty . . .

. . . specially when I’ve been out of the house all weekend (even if Saturday it was only in the garden) and Mr. Lacer has been ‘in charge’. So come Monday morning, Mr. Lacer back at work, the kids suitably occupied, I look at the war-zone, don’t know where to start so come on here instead!

Saturday was spent clearing the pig sty’s very own ready made jungle, i.e. the back garden, prior to suddenly owning a garden 3 1/2 years ago I always thought I might quite like gardening, in theory. Reality though, well one more baby later, a husband who has even less of a clue than I have, no money to spend on it = one jungle of a garden later. We were ‘lucky’ to inherit some mature climbers in the back garden, notably Russian vine which grows so fast you blink for a second and it’s grown another metre.

So I spend most of my very limited gardening time trying to tame that along with the fast growing, neighbour annoying bushes in the front garden and a thorny viney weedy thing that grows from up under our foundations and proceeds to grow everywhere and which we can never completely get rid of. So that’s what I did Saturday, it took all day and I still haven’t finished taming the Russian Vine. Mr. Lacer had a car load of garden rubbish to take to the tip and there’s still a big pile of it on the back lawn, honestly if our garden was big enough I’d have a bonfire instead but if we did we’d likely to set fire to the other five neighbouring gardens in the process. And my arms and shoulders still ache from wielding those shears.

Sunday was more sedate and relaxed with a trip into Central London, leaving Mr. Lacer again in charge of the flat and kids, when I got back it wasn’t exactly spotless.

Today, well I’ve got no excuse but to tidy, although my allergic rhinitis has flared up, I wonder why? (they should invent a sarcastic question mark). We’re getting into the middle of ‘boring January’ and actually the calendar is beginning to look a little more packed now and dare I say it more interesting? Tomorrow we have a tour around a playgroup we’ve already seen, had discounted but now realise it’s the only one we can probably afford, yes the saga of Boy Lacer’s playgroup is continuing and yes it’s pretty horrible that an important decision such as what playgroup Boy Lacer goes to comes down to money. Tomorrow evening I have a new tutoring client and it’s A-level, yipee, much as I like working with my GCSE client the new syllabus is a bit disheartening and it will be nice getting my teeth back into some ‘proper’ biology. Friday is a coffee morning, Monday after that my aunt and various relatives are coming to visit and then the week after that ‘drum-roll’ Boy Lacer has an appointment with the paediatrician on Monday and (postponed) speech therapy on Tuesday. Now the appointment on Monday I’m not exactly sure what it’s for, Boy Lacer has been due a second developmental check now for some time but the NHS in their wisdom decided to get rid of some of the consultants and replace them with registrars and there’s now been a back log. The appointment is not with Boy Lacer’s consultant, I don’t recognise the doctor’s name so I suspect it’s a registrar, I don’t know if they do developmental checks to. Tuesday will be the speech therapy which as I’ve said before on here, Boy Lacer has really come on with, I was on the phone with the lady from portage this morning talking about Boy Lacer’s potty training actually and Boy Lacer started sitting on the floor (in a nappy I hasten to add) going “poo, poo,” and I have to admit I was ignoring him (we haven’t got to the stage yet where he’ll actually go to the toilet on the potty) as I was on the phone and then he looked me in the eye and said “I said POO!”, the way how he can structure sentences constantly surprises me.