Faith and flapjacks

We met Peter Owen-Jones in Waitrose this morning. We shook his hand and said how much we enjoyed his latest programme, about living a simpler life, one without money. The programme really hit home - not least because it was mostly filmed in his parish of Firle, part of our personal stamping ground and Firle Beacon being a favourite windy whippety walk (the Beacon is always windy; the whippet only when he's had sardines for tea).

Neither my husband or I have a standard 9-5 "job" - he is a self-employed copywriter and fledgling poet working from home, and I am a mix of Chief Socks'n'Pants Washer/Caterer/exams invigilator/embroidery teacher and procrastinating textile "artiste". He earns considerably more than I do, but we are not exactly flush with cash and because of the itinerant nature of our work we do not have colleagues. As a result, life can seem to be all about hard work for little reward with nobody else to share it all with; a lonely life. The programme really touched on the notion that we are all so busy trying to earn enough so that we don't need anyone else, we just end up lonely.

Our conclusion from watching the programme was to stop seeking to have more, and being jealous of those who do have more, and just give more instead. We've both never forgotten the stamp-selling lady on the Isle of Bernera who, when we told her we were camping wild, exclaimed "Och, I'll do ye a cheese burger in the microwave!"

I digress. No microwaved cheese burgers for us today, but some date flapjacks:



Not the ultimate flapjack, and not as good as usual because a deficit of oats necessitated a visit to That Supermarket, which resulted in a mistaken purchase of Jumbo Oats. Not the best thing, but I doubt there will be any left this time tomorrow.

Friday night

It has been a long week. I just found myself reading my library book "Pure white and deadly" (about the evils of sugar, written in the early 70s by John Yudkin, mentor to both my mother and my step-mother when they were studying nutrition) whilst drinking a rather nice bottle of fairtrade red and scoffing some (organic) chocolate that I made my husband walk down to That Supermarket to purchase for me....I don't usually crave chocolate, but it just hit the spot this evening.

Now, where was I...ah yes, tooth decay, Eskimos, obesity and coronary heart disease. Did I mention that we had sausages for tea?

Finished something!

I created the embellished background for this sometime before Christmas; it then got stuck in the plaggy "to do" wallet as I wasn't sure if I liked it or not.

Then, with an urgent deadline to produce something "no bigger than A4, don't spend any money on it just use what you have" for a week's time, a deadline I've known about since January, I was suddenly inspired to dig it out and see what could be done. A bit of buzzing up and down with the machine, a few beads to hide the bodged bit, a bit of cable stitch (steady now) and job done. I did spend 60p on the piece of mountboard. Is that allowed?

To be sold at our Guild day with Maggie Grey, June 5. Non-members £15 (includes light lunch, homemade cakes....my job for next Friday), tickets available from the website: Tunbridge Wells Embroiderers' Guild

I also made some oat biscuits, using apple spread instead of sugar. They went in the bin, but only after we ate about three each - we couldn't bring ourselves to believe that they were horrid, and kept trying again. Woe. Think we may have cracked the flapjack recipe though. Needs a repeat performance just to verify, then will post!

So much to do, so little time to blog

A coupla weeks ago when I was under enormous pressure to create, starting a blog was so irresistible I just couldn't wait...since then of course, I haven't posted a thing.

I have finished the invitations:



But I haven't stuck them onto cards yet...

I have also made bread and bread rolls, several times, to my own tweaked recipe. It usually looks a little better than the finished result here, but on this occasion I had left the dough too long on its second rising and it went a bit lopsided:

Here goes then...

Just starting to get my head around how this blog stuff works, getting it set up and so on. Please be patient! (I'm not supposed to be doing this at all, I'm supposed to be embroidering 100 wedding invitations for my sister...)