Seed to Pie

I am so glad I started this feature. Every day when I get home from work I walk past the vegetable patch, look at my pumpkins and think "why aren't they growing?!"

But these posts remind me that they are and that come the autumn, I won't be pumpkinless. I just need to be more patient!

Bread and Butter Pudding

We have the best neighbours. They own a grocery shop and they regularly give us the bread that has just past it's sell by date for the chickens. Sometimes though, we have more than they can eat so we have to throw some out. This always seemed like such a waste until I remembered that just as old bananas are perfect for banana bread, slightly stale bread is perfect for bread and butter pudding! And seeing as the weather has been far from summery this past week or so it felt like the perfect time to make some stodgy, comfort food.

It tasted sooo good! It was also easy to make and cheap as chips too. I would highly recommend it. So if you fancy a go, here's what you will need..

Bread, enough to layer your pudding bowl with two layers

Butter

Icing sugar

2 x eggs, beaten

Milk, enough to cover both layers

Raisins

Nutmeg

1. Butter the bread and arrange in the bowl, butter side up. Sprinkle half the sugar and some raisins on the top.

2. Arrange another layer of buttered bread and again sprinkle with the remaining sugar and raisins.

3. Heat the milk until almost boiling and add the beaten egg. Stir it all up and add to the pudding. Leave for 10 minutes to let the bread soak up the milk/egg mixture.

4. Sprinkle with nutmeg, stick in the oven on gas mark 5 for 45 minutes and eat.

Also note how, unlike my banana bread (here and here), this isn't burnt! I put that down to the fact that I was drinking tea instead of wine this time. Drinking alcohol whilst baking = burnt stuff. Who woulda thunk it?

Return of the Mac or I need you!

Back in March I (temporarily) shelved a feature which I had hoped would become a regular one. It was called Project Wednesday and as the name would suggest I chose some projects and posted about my progress each Wednesday. However, it was slightly flawed in that I had bitten off more than I could chew project wise, I never seemed to have enough spare time and as a result never had much to post about each week.

So, only slightly flawed then.

Any hoo, skip forward three months and I think I'm ready to pick this feature up again, only with a few tweaks this time around. Like the name..and the projects..and when I update about my progress.
I'll be tweaking the entire thing basically.

So I know that much, but what I don't know is what the project will be. You see this is why I ended up juggling three projects last time, I couldn't settle on one so I figured I'd just to do them all. And look how that turned out.
So here's what I'm thinking, I make a list of small, practical and 'doable' projects, and you guys choose for me! If there's no outright winner then I'll just let the cats chose for me instead. I'm not really sure how that will work though..

So anyway, the projects I'm thinking of are:

1) Make a curtain for our bedroom (we're currently using a bed throw - not great).
2) Take apart a shapeless and  over sized pair of trousers and try to sew them back together again into a pair that fits.
3) Fix the kitchen wall (see here)

Ok, so it's not the most inspiring list of ideas I'll grant you. But each of those are things that I need to do and people I'm procrastinating like a pro here. Help me!

My Sunday in pictures

Ok so I realise it's not Sunday any more, but I was rained in yesterday so I thought it would be kind of fun to take photos of my day. Here's what I got up to..

Got up and went outside to let the chickens out. You can't really tell from the photo, but it was raining heavily. Bang went my plans of car boot sales and elderflower picking.

Looking at the photo above, did anyone notice my poor girls sheltering from the rain? Winter is going to be interesting that's all I'm going to say..

Whenever we get heavy rain, the chickens tend to only lay one egg or none at all. Today was a good day.

One of my favourite things about Sunday mornings. The Cerys Matthews show on 6 Music.

Enjoying my Sunday ritual of drinking coffee, reading blogs and listening to 6 Music.

After a while of enjoying that, I got a clean for little Miss Meeko, which told me that it was time to stop mooching online and have a shower. No photos of that though.

 After I was all cleaned up I went upstairs to the den and spent a large amount of time taking photos of my latest makes..

..and then stopped because I got hungry.

Then it was back to work, this time to edit the photographs.

Finally then to add them to Etsy. There were only four pieces! I can't believe it took me the best part of the day to do all that!

 By this time it was time to feed the chickens again. And yes, I am all too aware what an absolute tip the side of the house looks like. I even thought about not posting this photo! The truth is, the chickens loved scrabbling around the old tree branches so we decided to just leave them there. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

One of the best parts of the day. Choosing which music festival to go to!

And this was the one we went for. I bought the tickets today. I can't wait!

At this point I put the camera down to enjoy dinner and a film with the bloke. So there you have it folks, not such a bad Sunday if I do say so myself.