Pumpkin madness

We don't really "do" halloween that much here, but there has been a distinct shift towards celebration this year, with the accompanying hustle and bustle you might expect in the kitchen.

I chanced upon an episode of Jamie at home last week. After cooking a few Jamie recipes from Annie's blog recently (sweet and sour squash, sticky carrots), I was keen to watch, it's been ages since I saw him in action. I settled for the "pumpkins and squashes" programme. I'm glad I did, my corner shop had some fine specimens in stock...

I've always liked these beauties...good to eat in so many different ways. Jamie says just to cook the skin. Cool. I'm not sure if this is old hat and everyone else knows this already, but it was news to me and I was very excited! So, I went and got my pumpkin and started with some really easy and absolutely delicious muffins.

Now this is my first foray into blogging about food so forgive me if it's all a bit clunky and messy and my pics aren't great.

Pumpkin Muffins

400g squash or pumpkin, skin on
250g light soft brown sugar (Jamie used 400g but I couldn't bring myself to use that much...)
4 eggs
pinch salt
300g plain flour (I used wholemeal)
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 tsp ground cinnamon
handful of walnuts
175ml oil

Whizz up the squash or pumpkin as finely as possible in the food processor, add all the other ingredients, whizz up again. Fill the muffin tins 3/4 full, bake at 180c for 20 min, until brown. Leave to cool in tins for a few minutes and turn out. Mmmmmmmm! This makes 24 muffins, be warned you may want to eat that many...

Actually these were so good, I baked several batches to sell for charity at Esme's riding school, and to give to friends.

Then i decided to make some soup to take to a friend's Halloween party. Again, very easy but really tasty.

Pumpkin Soup

3kg pumpkin, skin on, cut into wedges
2 carrots, sliced roughly
few cloves garlic
red onion- 1 or 2
fresh rosemary
2 sticks celery
2 litres stock
olive oil

Heat olive oil in a big pan (this makes a lot of soup), add onion, celery....then carrots, garlic, rosemary, salt and pepper. Chuck in the pumpkin. Sweat it for a bit then add stock and simmer for about 45 min until the pumpkin is absolutely obliterated. (About 6 minutes in a pressure cooker. Guess what's on my Christmas list!)

Blend it with a hand blender............

This bit was tricky for me as I managed to blow up my hand blender some time ago ;)

We enjoyed this with cheesy croutons

Fry some sage leave in hot olive oil to infuse it, then remove the sage. Dip some crispy/slightly hard bread in the oil, then grate cheese over it and pat into the bread on both sides. Fry in a dry pan for about 1 min on each side.

I still have the enormous pumpkin (pictured) left over so I'm going to make some more muffins, the sweet and sour dish from Annie and some more soup to freeze. I also fancy having a go at this ...but I still have all those pears from Jodrell Bank waiting to be made into chutney, and looking at that picture, I really need to scrub the grout....blush ;/

Anyway, thanks Jamie Oliver. After a looooooong break from watching TV I am going to be tuning into you more often.

And we had a great time at the party, with friends we haven't seen for ages. It was really good to reconnect. I miss you guys.

Scarcity/Abundance

This past week has been both terrifying and enriching.

We've always been pretty dreadful managing money, but I've really pulled my socks up over the summer and we're now super organised. In theory. However, this month has been a disaster beyond my imagination!...worse than when we tended towards gambling each month, wondering if we'd have enough.

Anyhow, miraculously, we seem to have managed to get by this last week with about £10 for food. I've been using stuff in the freezer and more store cupboard staples than I knew I had, but we've also not been short of fresh food. I find it quite remarkable that we haven't really gone short, in fact, we've eaten really well and it's not felt like we were scrimping and saving at all.

Obviously it's not sustainable! We are now really low on stocks of everything and it was only due to my stockpiling of washing powder and other expensive items that we managed in that respect. But it is heartening to realise that we can probably manage with less than we're used to, as yet another round of belt tightening needs to happen now.....

In sharp contrast to the scarcity of hard cash, we have been overwhelmed with generosity and an abundance of love from a really beautiful friend with a desire to share and give to us in a time when we needed support. This week could have been really stressful and unpleasant for us, but we were blessed with more than money could ever buy and it's really helped keep things in perspective. Thanks so much for everything Sue-Ann, I'm so grateful for your friendship. xx

We went to Jodrell Bank today, (just) to the arboretum. There's so much to see there. It was a repeat trip for us, we visited in the Summer and vowed to go every season to see the changes.

The autumn leaves were magnificent, and there was some interesting fungi about. The girls had a fabulous time climbing trees and pretending to be birds, with ferns for wings, and later, tails.

We had a picnic in the bird hide and just enjoyed being outdoors, it was incredibly mild.

Nature also gave us a treat today, an abundance of pears. We literally stumbled on them...all over the floor. They looked hard and not that appetising but the first bite gave a surprise- they were so soft, sweet and delicious with a fantastic texture. We brought a bagful home, very happy ;)

Tensions

We're still in a time of big changes here, and there are many weird contradictions playing out in my life at the moment.

I'm really interested in the funny mixture of situations and states I'm finding myself in... exhausted/energised, motivated/lethargic, optimist/pessimist, joyous/terrified, clarity/confusion, euphoric/blue.......all these stresses and strains, forces at work. The bizarre physics of my inner life, too much to write about in one post!

I'm trying to be Buddhist about all this, and just notice these things in the moment and not get "stuck". I'm not finding this so hard as I'm a pretty intense person, and something usually comes along that can move me into a different place, be it for better or worse. I find my intensity an unsettling quality at the best of times....again, that's another post.

Despite all this turmoil I'm feeling pretty content, so I guess I must be getting better at letting go of my attachments. ;)

The Badman and the Balls up

The consultation on the Badman Review of Home Education is still running until 19th October. As all the questions are leading ones, beginning "Do you agree.." all you have to do is say NO to all 11 if you don't feel up to commenting or ranting. Please add your voice and help Home Edders stay free!

Complete online at www.dcsf.gov.uk/consultations or download a response form and email it to
homeeducation.consultation@dcsf.gsi.gov.uk  Children can complete one each.


I attended a meeting last week with the Deputy Director of the Dept for Children Schools and Families, and I feel more worried about all this now than I did reading it all on paper...

The times they are a'changin'....

Busy busy busy here: we've started our first forays into home education. Most of Esme's friends disappeared off to school at the start of September so we have been out and about getting into a new autonomous learning groove. I'm sometimes slightly resistant to change, but this transition is bringing a lot of excitement, fun and growth for us all. It's cool, as well as being unnerving and a bit scary for me at times.... The kids are loving it!

We had always considered home education as an option but it's still far from a mainstream choice here and it's tricky to go against the flow with something as "big" as education. Everyone seems to have an opinion about it, and their views are stronger when it concerns alternatives to conventional schooling. For most folks it seems to be a step too far along the continuum of "weird". Far "worse" than a baby peeing and pooing in a pot...hehe ;)

As the time for Esme to go to school was looming closer the (very good) Community Primary School here was looking fairly attractive, an easy option if I'm honest. Despite being less than half a mile from all the schools we applied to there were no places locally, all schools are oversubscribed and have massive waiting lists. A gross failure on the part of our Local Education Authority. The school we were eventually offered was a 2 hour round trip walking from our home, and it was only an OK school. Plus it was still a school, which was always something questionable in our minds. So our hand was forced really. I'm pleased it's worked out this way for now, I'm not sure we would've had the balls to try home education if a "decent" school place had been offered.

".....And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should"

Desiderata, Max Ehrmann

It's feeling like all this is a definite move away from the baby stage of my children's lives. They really aren't babies any more. This new phase is making us branch out into a new community and become part of other groups away from our established "tribe"....who we found through La Leche League. Our snuggly, cosy babywearing days are feeling distant, toddler-lugging is a more accurate description of me carrying Magnus now. Breastfeeding in public can be hair raising as my shirt gets lifted and my little gymnast writhes at the nipple. ECing seems to have become potty trained. Just like that.

We are still ECing but it's so normal, so much part of life, and so similar now to completely potty trained that I can't really think of things to write about it now without it seeming slightly absurd.

I am so pleased to be meeting people who are aware of and interested in EC, and new ECers with tiny babies. It really does seem to be a growing trend. I feel so privileged to be able to talk about my experiences with people who get what it's all about. I love spreading the word generally, but there's something super satisfying about being really understood and being a guide.

So, a while back I said I was thinking about blogging on a more general theme, and I think the time has come for this to happen. Watch this space!......

Save the Mother Magazine

I am devastated to hear that the Mother Magazine is to go out of print on Monday, due to low subscription rates.

It's such an inspirational read, it's a joy to receive every time it plops onto the doormat. There might still be time to save it if people susbscribe now.

www.themothermagazine.co.uk

poco a poco

Well, my world did stop. In fact I sort of stopped it myself... I've been floored by a series of illnesses and minor ailments that have really made me take stock of how I have been living and the pressure I've been putting on myself. My body, it seems, is far more intelligent than my conscious mind. It'd had enough of me flogging it day after day and made me rest before I collapsed, or imploded, or something!

Over the last 6 weeks I've had a total spasm of my jaw- caused by night time tooth grinding or bruxism, a nasty lethargy "bug" thing, followed by sensitised nerves in my face and HORRIFIC moan and wince inducing toothache, also linked to tooth grinding. I'd go so far as to say it was the worst pain I've ever known, and I'm no wuss. This was followed by another dreadful cold/flu mucous fest and a general overwhelming sense of malaise. Now, I'm well aware it could be so, so much worse, but it's not been the greatest couple of months of my life....

I've been reflecting a lot about my sudden physical decline, and where I'm at generally. I've come to the conclusion that it's all mind over matter, and my mind was too darn strong. Despite me *thinking* I've been fairly relaxed and easy going I've actually been really stressed out and running on adrenaline for the last goodness knows how long, probably since Mags was born. I can see now that there have been a loads of stressful events piling up to trigger this physical anxiety. I saw an osteopath to deal with the acute jaw spasm who said "your whole system is very low, I'll give you a really deep treatment next time". Until then in my head I was completely robust, healthy and strong. In many ways I'm really grateful that she kicked that thought out of my head, or I'd have ended up really conking out sooner or later. I really hope I can find a spare £30 to go back for the follow up treatment soon ;(

Emotionally, I can also see that my confidence has taken a bit of a knock since M was born. Again, I hadn't really thought about it but now I look back I can see that despite being uber-assured in the ways I wanted to mother the new baby, I was, and still am in many respects, unsure of how to operate with the big one. My lack of corporeal zest since Magnus' arrival has undermined all the little "systems" I had going with Esme. I was never really aware of how much energy it took for things to be easy with her before M was born, which I suppose, is the same thing as not recognising what a bloomin good job I was doing. Typical.

Anyway, all these ruminations aside, things are getting better little by little. I am still absolutely knackered and recovering, and it doesn't take much for my internal alarm to register that I need to slow down at the moment. I can feel my strength, energy and confidence returning and I guess I just need to keep a lid on it and stop myself burning out again.

It's actually quite funny looking at my previous posts in the context of what I've just written. I can't believe I couldn't see this coming.....