Having a cooking and crafting day today. This morning, whilst Mr. Lacer painted a gate, Girl Lacer tended to an outbreak of something highly contagious amongst her dolls and Boy Lacer went on the computer, I grated a lot of carrots and made Tana Ramsay’s Red Lentil Sauce, a lot of red lentil sauce, so if anyone wants any, most of it has gone in the freezer, I’ve made it before, it is very nice with chicken and rice. Whilst that was bubbling away on the stove, I made my bastardised version of a Nigel Slater tart for lunch and offended Girl Lacer because it had vegetables in it.
This afternoon Mr. Lacer and the kids have gone to *ah hem*, do ‘something’ in town, which most definitely does not require my presence. And in this giddying amount of weekend freedom, I’ve made Bill Granger’s Melt and Mix Banana Bread (which is not as straightforward as the title sounds, but still fairly straightforward, it’s another one of his recipes where you have to add bicarbonate of soda to the sour cream, can anyone tell me what the reasoning behind that is?) again from his new book. Anyway it’s very nice.
It should have had an almond and sugar topping, put I didn’t have any almonds (and not too keen on them anyway) and then I forgot to sprinkle the sugar on anyway.
Whilst that was in the oven I made this
Inspired by this how-to from Design*Sponge, I have to admit I sort of made it up as I went along and that absolutely no measuring was involved. It’s something to keep my keys and phone in (would have put my phone in the hanger for the picture except I was taking the picture with the phone), I was originally thinking wallet as well but I figured if I’m going out with my wallet, it’ll be in a bag, so I just have to remember which bag I used last and where I put it. Whereas with my keys and phone, specially my keys, I’m liable to just pick them up and stuff them in a pocket and then put them down somewhere when I come back in again and then panic like mad when I have to go out again and can’t find them (a far too common school run scenario), so I needed something like this. I’ve hung it on the door before the front door, if that makes sense, so it’s one of the last / first things I see when going in and out of the house. It’s turned out to be a bit of a prototype though, it’s a bit too floppy for my liking. I used bonding stuff between the two main layers of felt but I think I probably used the wrong type and I think actually something more lo-tech like cardboard sandwiched between the two layers would be better. I was also umming and ahhing about whether to machine sew it, I was going to, but then I worried about breaking my needle on the four layers of felt and so I decided to go for a more home spun look, I think actually machine sewn would have been better. Still, if it stops me loosing my keys!
