100 Happy Days #7

The seventh instalment of my attempt to catalogue 100 Happy Days... :-)

 

 

Wednesday 12th March

It's rather sad when two lovely work colleagues and friends leave the office for pastures new but on the plus side, we did manage to wangle closing our office over lunchtime for a slap up meal at Gourmet Burger Kitchen!


 

Thursday 13th March

Two types of chocolate brownies freshly baked for a suprise 'leaving' tea party for the two people leaving our office.

Friday 14th March

We've been meaning to buy a new sofa for ages and finally, we got round to doing the last few measurements and deciding (for certain this time!) what we're going to buy.

Saturday 15th March

After a day of cleaning and tidying, we made proper hot chocolate (just real chocolate and hot milk) and topped it off with some marshmallows.


 

Sunday 16th March

I really am getting old because having my kitchen this clean and tidy pleases me no end.

Monday 17th March

It's Monday. Pasta bolognese is about all we could manage to make. The combination of carbs, tomato and cheese though? Delicious.

Tuesday 18th March

Along with the whole feeling old thing, managing to get 3 weeks worth of shopping for less than £60 makes me very happy indeed (and also very sad).


 

Wednesday 19th March

The Book People arrived at work! The man delivers them safely to our shared kitchen next to the office and then it's a mad dash to oooh and ahhh over what suprises he's left this time.


 

Thursday 20th March

My copy of Pretty Nostalgic magazine arrived today and coupled with an evening meal of Spaghetti Carbonara, that made for a pretty good evening!

Friday 21st March

 

We ate our lunch outside today and some feathered friends arrived to join us. :-)

 

 

Previous instalments can be found here...

Part One

Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Part Six
 

The Knack

As well as Down's Syndrome Awareness Week, it's also National Science and Engineering Week - two themes which resonate fairly close to me.

Andrew is an engineer - or to be a bit more precise (haha), a precision engineer. He spent 17 years of his life creating intricate measuring equipment for the car and helicopter industries and then moved to the local Uni (to be with his darling wife...) where he now works as a Mechanical Engineering Technician.

This is the sort of thing he does nowadays - turns large lumps of metal into very precise looking things!

 

From my point of view, he's a dab hand at fixing things when they go wrong and has quite a mechanical mind so can easily work out how something is designed or put together.

 

From a social point of view, this Dilbert video sums up the life of an engineer perfectly...

From what my in-laws say this was other half as a young boy and anyone who knows an engineer will recognise how much the video rings true!

I know my sister-in-law still hasn't forgiven Andrew for "investigating" her squeaky elephant toy when they were kids; Andrew's reasoning was that he just wanted to see where the noise came from -needless to say it didn't squeak any more once he'd got there with a screwdriver...

 

Anyway, for National Science and Engineering Week there's lots of events happening all across the country and quite a few schools and colleges are putting on special events to celebrate. Take a look and see it there's one near you - and if you've got a young child, watch out for The Knack...

Sunday Sunshine and Garden Centres (aka. I am turning into my mother)

So last weekend was gorgeous wasn't it?  Beautiful sunshine, clear blue skies and at one point I even had sunglasses on and the car windows down - hopefully spring is now actually on it's way.

 

 

We headed out around 9am to go to a local garden centre. Yes, an actual garden centre. With plants. And sheds. And a darn good cafe on the side.
(21 year old me is laughing hysterically in the corner - or possibly crying...)

 

Whitehall Garden Centre is pretty much a giant in the local gardening scene. They have two centres, one just outside Whitchurch on the south side of Bristol and one on the Lacock bypass in Wiltshire.

Every spring, they make the very clever marketing decision to mailshot what seems like everyone in the South West with a free magazine complete with money off vouchers for various plants in the garden centre and various foodie bits in the cafe.

 

Ours arrived on Saturday morning; so along with the rest of Somerset and Wiltshire we drove across to the large centre near Lacock in the spring sunshine. The Whitchurch branch is marginally closer to us but we actually had the discussion of going to the larger branch and "making a day of it".

 

The day did start though with two bumper big breakfasts from the cafe, bought with our '2 for £9.99' voucher (usually £6.99 each so we made a saving of 4 squid). We chose to sit near the window overlooking the plants which was lovely albeit rather warm towards the end of our meal.

 

 

After stuffing ourselves we attempted to walk off the eggs and bacon by browsing the gardens. Whitehall doesn't just have plants for sale, it also has sheds, patios, greenhouses, family pets, fish, activity weekends (last week it was 'Potato Weekend'), a farm shop, gift shop, a kids adventure playground, picnic areas and plenty of colourful things to buy.

 

 

 

Andrew strayed into the sheds section and started pacing them out inside. He's got his eye on a large shed to go down the side of our house so he can have his mechanical workshop in the garage and his carpentry workshop outside. I did point out that most men would be lucky to have one very small man-cave let alone two, but needless to say that didn't go down very well...

 

After an hour of so of mooching about we picked up what we had actually come for - hanging baskets usually priced £16.99 reduced to £7.99 with a money off coupon. We usually buy a couple of nice ones for the front of the house and then I make up some of our own for the back garden (mainly because the ones I make never last as long as the garden centre ones!).

 

I tried to make Andrew hang about long enough to let our breakfast settle so we could nip back for some elevenses involving the amazing cakes on display but we didn't have time - it'll just have to be another trip on another day!

 

Have you done anything recently that's made you feel middle-aged?

Or perhaps you've already realised you're turning into your mother?

 

 

The Midweek Hop - Alchemy

Three music videos on a theme...

(inspired by Desmond Carrington's 'The Music Goes Round')

'Wurlitzer 1500' 1952 Jukebox

 

 

This weeks theme is...Alchemy

Inspired by National Science and Engineering Week (14th to 23rd March)



1. Robot Man by Connie Francis


Doesn't every girl sometimes wish she had a robot man?
'Robot Man' was a double-A side with 'Mama' which entered the chart on 19th May 1960 reaching Number 2.


2. Up in a Puff of Smoke by Polly Brown


Something which I hope Andrew *won't* be doing in his workshop anytime soon!
'Up in a Puff of Smoke' entered the chart on 14th September 1974 reaching Number 43.


3. Gonna Be An Engineer by Peggy Seeger

Unfortunately, I think that's a tale which is all too true sometimes!

'Gonna Be An Engineer' is from 1970 but we can't find out much info about this one.

 

 

Happy listening!
 

Down's Syndrome Awareness Week

This week happens to be Down's Syndrome Awareness Week; something which I don't actually need to be aware of as (with the exception of the first 2 years and 10 months after I was born) it's something that's been in my life for almost the previous 30 years.


My brother has Down's Syndrome. He's 28 and still lives at home with my mum and dad. He's hasn't got the sort of Down's where you might be able to stack shelves in a supermarket or live in a supported housing shelter; he's always going to need looking after all his life.

 

My first memory is going to to visit him in hospital in Bath just after he was born. I remember my gran and grandad taking me there and buying me sweets on the way in; and I remember seeing my brother in an incubator and asking the nurse "how do they change his nappies?"

 

Growing up, people used to ask me, "don't you wish you had a normal brother?" and I always used to reply that this was normal. I'd never known anything different so to me, that was normality.

 

He can be a pain, the same as any sibling can - he's moody and stubborn and uses his own language so often struggles to make himself understood. It helps if you know what he's been up to recently so you can make a good guess at what he's trying to say but the majority of the time, he's funny, lovable, playful and inquisitive.

 

I don't really have anything deep and meaningful to say about Down's Syndrome Awareness Week (I'm sure you're all absolutely fine with people with Down's or other learning disabilities) but if you want to get involved in any way, hop on over to the Down's Sydrome Association site to help with this year's campaign - Better health care for adults with Down's Syndrome.

This Weekend at the Duckpond

We have mostly been...

 

 

Cleaning - the kitchen. Yep, it sounds like an incredibly boring task but it's funny how something so mundane can make you so happy!

Pruning - the rather large and over-mature apple tree in our back garden. We now have plenty of firewood for our chimenea!

 

 
 

Feeling - decidedly middle-aged by starting our Sunday by a visit to a local garden centre to buy some hanging baskets.

 

Creating - a Facebook page for this little blog. Something I've been meaning to do since I went to Blognix last June and inspired by the lovely Angela and Michelle's Facebook pages, I thought I'd better get round to it!

 

 

What did you get up to at the weekend?

Cooking Crimes - In Defence of Spam

Somewhere out there in the last however many years, there's been plenty of foods that've fallen out of fashion; stuff that's ended up being ridiculed and things you'd almost be ashamed to admit you actually ate (and enjoyed).

So for want of a better cliche (and it is a terrible one), let's smash those myths apart - those apparent 'cooking crimes' in society and I'll be the first to hold my hand up high and admit that yep, we do eat things like Spam, Fray Bentos pies, value products and yes, when I make bread, 99% of the time I do use a breadmaker.

 

This month, I'm going to have a go at defending good old-fashioned Spam...

The offending item...
 

To start with, what actually is it? A quick once over at a tin of the stuff tells you it's 'chopped pork and ham' and legend says that the name supposed to stand for 'spiced pork and ham' (although I don't think it tastes particularly spicy). Interestingly enough it's actually gluten free and contains more meat than your average fancy sausage from your local supermarket - 90% meat in one tin whereas most sausages only contain around 70% meat (and even then, that's if you're lucky).

 

Spam was first launched in the late 1930's over in America and quickly caught on over here during the Second World War (more than likely arriving with the GI's along with nylons, Coca Cola and the Jitterbug). My Grandad always liked Spam sandwiches, Spam fritters and Scrambled Eggs and Spam which I'm sure stems back to World War II - he went out to Germany in 1945 to help with the recovery effort and somewhere along the line in the 40s, he obviously developed a love for it.

 

Spam kind of fell out of fashion in later years though (who can forget Monty Python's infamous Spam cafe sketch?) although over the last 10 years or so it's had a bit of a renaissance. Spam fritters are back on the menu and the company which owns Spam (Hormel Foods) even sponsored the launch of the Python musical, Spamalot.

 

We like Spam for it's versatility; if you keep a tin or two in your cupboard, you can use it in all sorts of dishes or in place of ham in recipes. Plus the tins keep for absolutely ages (the date on the ones in the shops now say Jan 2017) so you never have to worry about it going off and if we have some kind of major civil emergency, you always got Spam to hand! :-)

 

Our three favourite recipes using Spam are...

 

 

For breakfast - Scrambled Eggs and Spam

 

I used to cook this for my Grandad; my Grandma used to help me crack the eggs and mix it all together before I very proudly carried the tray in to serve him his breakfast.

 

 

For lunch - Spam Fritters

 

 You can't beat a good old Spam fritter; throw in some waffles and some baked beans and you've got yourself a darn good midday meal.

 

 

For dinner - Chicken and Ham Pie

 

This originally came from a Good Housekeeping recipe book but we just substitute the ham for Spam and it's still absolutely delicious. It makes six portions so you can easily stash some away in the freezer for a rainy day.

 

So there you have it, that's why we love Spam. Oh and please don't let the fat on the meat put you off - all you need to do is take the meat out of the tin and wash it off under running water. Then just dab it dry it with a bit of kitchen tissue and use however you wish!

 

All together now..."spam, spam, spam, spammity spam, spam, spam...."

 

Ps. this post isn't sponsored by Spam or anything, we just thought it was high time we came clean and admitted we're happy to eat almost anything! :-)