Three random things

1. Girl Lacer split her gum open recently on our newly acquired trampoline, honestly since the occupational therapist recommended that trampoline, it’s done nothing but injure my children. Anyway, her mouth was rather sore and she had trouble eating hard food, so she wanted soup, but I didn’t have any, so one quick search through my cookbooks later, I found the recipe for Roasted Butternut Squash soup from Tana Ramsay’s Family Kitchen. I adapted it slightly, I didn’t have any fresh butternut squash, however I did have some frozen, so sorry to go all Delia on you, but it turned out to be a fantastic recipe straight from the freezer (the butternut squash and the onion) / fridge (gruyere cheese) / store cupboard (stock cubes) and although it took a little while to first roast the butternut squash and then cook it in the stock and onions, it required hardly any preparation time. I should have taken a photo but it was honestly so delicious I wolfed it all down before I could get my camera out. I was a little dubious about the addition of little cubes of gruyere in the bottom of the soup bowl (before you add the soup) but actually it worked wonderfully, the soup was quite thick (so a good soup to start children on) and the little molten nuggets of cheese at the bottom were a lovely surprise.
2. My veg garden is still doing reasonably well, I noticed this morning that my salad is now going to seed, whoops (must eat more salad), although I’m now curious, can I save the seed and use it? If so how? My seeding salad is mainly my Mizuna and Rocket, the Mizuna in particular is sweet (or is it Golden Mustard, I can’t remember) as it’s producing seeds in tiny little pea like pods. My chillies are also doing reasonably well, the chillies that are growing are growing at an enormous rate, however not all the flowers are producing chillies, some are just shrivelling up and dying, any ideas on that anyone? Whereas my cucumbers are starting to flower more profusely and are now invading my final top shelf of my little greenhouse. Talking of things getting too big for my greenhouse, so are my peppers, I really need to think about getting another greenhouse and finding space for it. Finally after seemingly weeks of anticipation about what my much snail munched aubergines were going to do, they are actually now flowering, photo here, on my photoblog.
3. Finally, finally, does anyone else regularly dream in the same place? I do, for a long long time (since a teenager) it was mountains, I’d dream I was faced by a mountain (usually straight out of a childhood Austrian holiday) and it’d seem really daunting and I wouldn’t want to go up and do whatever I had to do up there, but I’d make myself do it (mountain walking or skiing normally) and I’d get up there and have a whale of a time. I’ve realised though today that I seem to have stopped dreaming about mountains (I do dream about other things to, I dreamt I brought my local pub the other day and I was going to run it as a ‘sideline’ lol). Instead of mountains, I’m now seeing a recurring theme of dreams about Canary Wharf and tube stations. I’ll stick a Canary Wharf photo below for those who don’t know it but basically it’s London’s new financial district out in the Docklands, very modern and futuristic (and possibly a link with my mountains in that they’re both high places?). I know Canary Wharf quite well, as I used to live nearby. In my dreams I’m normally running round chasing ‘bad guys’ in and out of the buildings, however last night I dreamt I was in Canary Wharf but they’d knocked half of it down to mine ore so that they could use the ore to build a new Canary Wharf. So half of Canary Wharf literally looked like a holely red martian landscape, very weird. I can think of a reason why I dreamt that, it’s linked with my writing, at the moment I’m in the process of going back to the bones of my writing, demolishing what I’ve done before, to build something better next time. As for dreaming about tube stations (there’s a tube station at Canary Wharf and I go through there in my dreams), that’s quite simple, the tube is my favourite place for writing inspiration.

No to Age Banding

On my reading around the blogs the last few days, notably Fidra Books, here and here and Table Talk, here and here, I’ve been reading a lot about the No to Age Banding Campaign. Basically publishers are proposing to put an age recommendation on their children’s books, I can’t think of anything more likely to put children off reading certain books that may actually be perfect for them. You take one 7 year old, with their reading ability they may actually be suited to a book for a 5 year old but they won’t want to read that if it’s got for 5 year olds on the cover, will they? Diverting them to the 7 year old books, which they won’t yet be ready for and putting them off the joy that is reading. Take another 7 year old, they may be better suited to a 9 year old book, but would their parents buy it for them? Thus boring the child and also putting them off reading. Also some books just defy classification, what age would you classify Harry Potter?

I remember when I was still in primary school reading Agatha Christie, everyone in my class did, there was quite a craze, now that wouldn’t have had an age classification, would it?

So, if you would like to see the lengthy list of authors (including Phillip Pullman, who is being very vocal about this), illustrators and concerned general public (including me as a parent), that’s already signed up to the no to age banding petition, see here and if you believe in their cause, please sign up.