Highlights February

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Snowdrops for spring

 More blue sky mornings are appearing for the season bringing warmer weather with it making spring bulbs pop their blooms and one of the first on the scene are the delicate blooms of the snowdrop.







Our big flower bed

 So exciting having a new garden no one has touched for us to do as we please with, so we decided to carve up a part of the lawn to make a flower bed.
After stealing the kids purple sand which was perfect for outlining the wavy shape in the lawn, our buddy Nev helped us take all the turf off the lawn. I bought a 50 meter hose pipe to help drain water from the house water butts down to the meadow and our flower bed was the same length, what a huge flower bed, i can only imagine how long the weeding is going to take.


It was back breaking work rotavating the bed, raking and picking out stones and house bricks.  Not that you would know it from the picture, but this is the sunny side of the garden, prime location for all my peonies and irises which i was over the moon to release from their pots along with the fatsia and lavenders i got from Hitchin lavender farm.  I am really looking forward to spending time choosing plants i like to fill this big boarder.
As it was half term i had a helper on hand to give me help putting together a little plastic house that has shelving inside, which we plan to use to help bring on seeds in, i think she did a good job.





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Review Jamie Oliver's Restaurant Norwich YUK!!!!!



I hate a ranty rant but we had a crappy lunch and i need to vent

As parents we don't get to spend time together as a couple most of the time we get are snatched lunches at a restaurant. Yo sushi is a nice hang out good honest food clean on the pallet tasty and fresh and the ever moving plates of food are a distraction and nice balence of theater for the kids so that we get a brief chat and focus on each other and the hub bub stops the kids squiddling on our laps or getting off their chairs and the endless loo stops.

So a Stop in Norwich and a rare chance for a lunch and an attempt to look lovingly at each other and remember when we had the youth and romance in our relationship, we  choose to step outside the Yo sushi habit and went to Jamie Oliver's restaurant.

Nice setting upstairs, a little theme like downstairs, but ok, we got a table right away which was great even with our push chair. Great service, fast service, even better when you have two kids who have not learnt patience and want their lunch right now.

Starters were 50/50 i had squid which was nice, Ali had mozzarella balls which squirted water when we bite into them, very odd, and we can only think they were frozen before, we have made deep fried cheese at home before and never had squirty cheese balls.  The kids had no starter as they eat slow and went straight to mains.

lamb ravioli my choice after the waiter said i would not be disappointed. The plate turned up looking like some one had thrown up in my bowl and chucked a few fried sage leaves on top,  it tasted mono chrome, dull and boring and i found 1 mushroom, the slow cooked lamb ravioli was a lamb paste in a pasta and which was disappointing and i had to force myself to eat it as we skipped breakfast for the special treat.  I felt a bit ill after eating it too, until later that evening. I left feeling unsatisfied and pissed off that our experience had been ruined.

Sophie choose  hot dogs and spat them out as the skin and fat was more than she liked and i had to peel her second hot dog which was thick in skin, her chips on the side were soggy but her greens were interesting for her to eat, lettuces sliced and pepper cubes.

Ella refused to eat her sliders, so unlike Ella to leave any food on her plate. she ate the buns and left everything else which was soggy chips again of which she had 4.  I tasted her sliders they were charred, which i think was supposed to be but they were too charred and made them dry and taste of burnt. Both the kids dinners were served on wooden boards unpractical for kids really.

Ali had an impressive looking 3 lamb chops, impressive as the long rib bone was left on and it came with lots of little pots of stuff  the lamb chops like Ella's sliders were all burnt and which tainted all the meat making them taste bitter. Again served on a long board on top of 2 food cans is this some kinda fancy pant rusticness, just give me the food normally please its about the food !!

The girls had chocolate ice cream for pudding, which had the coco taste but no substance to the cream part and tasted like iced coco powder in very skimmed milk.  Both adults opted out of pudding as Ali couldn't face any more food however i was hungry after leaving my main but didn't want to eat a pudding alone.

we left feeling disappointing and sad that our adult time was ruined by crappy food presented nicely, pissed off we paid £63 for awful food and pissed off our kids were asking for food when we left and saying please don't take us back to Jamie's restaurant again it was yuk!

I love kids, they say it how it is!

Motivating rotavating


the last few days has seen the temperature rise to 5 degrees and we feel the promise of spring in the air especially as their are snow drops popping up all over the place.  Last year we had a lovely red tractor come visit our meadow and turn it over making some proper farmer style farrows which we had to leave over the winter to let all the hard frost in to kill the bad bacteria and give the worms a chance to do their job.   

Now with spring motivating us to go out more to the garden and giving us hope and promises of good life dreams we are able to rotavate  those giant farrows down into crumbly manageable soil, and what wonderful soil we have too i cant wait to get my hands into it.  Above is a picture of Nev and his lovely bigger red Massey Ferguson tractor with a farming rotavator attached.  With the promise of spring and the new land being turned over we cant help feeling excited and very motivated about being out doors in the garden.


Breakfast Martini



We really love this martini and for a while we wouldnt drink any other as the fresh and citrus flavours were a wonderful wake up for the taste buds being so tasty i was asking for another before i finished drinking the first one.

Ingredients 
1 spoon orange marmalade
2 shots gin
1/2 shot triple sec
1/2 shot squeezed lemon juice

Lemon and thyme cakes


I love the fresh and zinginess of lemon cake, and thyme is a great herb that works really well with the lemon, adding a fragrant edge and interest to the sponge as you bite your way through it. The sponge in this cake has a little more to it by adding ground almond the sponge has more depth, moistness and a bit firmer than your normal poofy fairy cake. Also the use of golden sugar lends itself nicely to the colouring of the sponge and fitting perfectly with the lemon theme.

200g butter
200g golden caster sugar
100g plain flour
100g ground almonds
1tsp baking powder
4 eggs
1 zested lemon
3 tsp thyme leaves

Cream the sugar and butter together.
Add the whisked egg a little at a time with a spoonful of flour
Stir in the rest of the flour, baking powder add the almonds, zest and thyme
cook at 160 for 15 to 20 mins until you get a clean pull from the skewer test.

The topping is a cream cheese frosting laced with lemon curd... rude not to really.

125g cream cheese
300g icing sugar
50g butter 

be careful not to over whisk as this can easy collapse and go runny, in one side of a piping bag place lemon curd and the other the icing and pipe away on top of the cakes.