Souptember: Bacon & Lentil soup

 

I have said it before and I will say it again Autumn is just one of my most favorite times of the year. Mainly because when September arrives so does Souptember.  The weather so far has been very favorable here in the Shire but as the nights start to draw in and you get that chill in the air once the sun has gone to bed there is nothing better than a heart warming soup to get you right. We are big soup eaters in our family, especially when my children were younger and if they were poorly they would always ask for mum's homemade soup.  

One of our favorites is Bacon & Lentil and yes you can get it in a can made by one or two very famous companies but there is nothing better than making your own.  Bacon & Lentil is one of the quicker soups to make and can be ready and steaming hot and ready to serve within  20-30 minutes start to finish depending on how quick you chop your veg or if like me I start and make up soup bags when I am doing the Sunday veg by chopping up a little extra veg for a soup and put them in the freezer so that I can just grab them when needed, this of course will add a little extra time to your cooking time but takes about the same amount of time as it would if you were chopping from fresh. 

The other reason for liking soups is most of the time what is required to make it is sitting in the veg draw of your fridge and soups are especially good for using up veg that won't last too much longer. 

If you would like to try something a little different then you will need

1 Tbsp of butter or oil

4 rashes of smoked bacon or a pack of smoked lardons

1 onion finely chopped

1 red pepper finely chopped

2 litres chicken or vegetable stock

1 small sweet potato peeled and finely diced

1 carrot finely diced

1 stick of celery finely chopped

1 garlic clove

200g of red lentils

1 Tbsp of crème fraiche [optional]

 

• Heat the butter or oil in a large saucepan. Add the bacon, onion, red pepper, celery and carrot. Cook on a low heat for 5 minutes or until the vegetables start to soften.
• Add the sweet potato, garlic and lentils to the bacon and vegetables. Stir for a minute, then pour over the stock.
• Season with salt & pepper. Return to the boil then turn down to a medium heat, cover and cook for 15 – 20 minutes or until the red lentils are tender.
• Blend using a stick blender or processor.
• Add the crème fraiche

 

Serve with crusty bread

This soup is great for freezing and makes great grab and go meals for work as by the time lunchtime arrives your soup will have defrosted and all you will need to do is have access to a  microwave to warm it through. If you don't have access to a microwave at work but you do at home take it out of the freezer the night before as it lends itself to a quick and easy to warm through and put in a flask to keep it warm until you are ready. My dad was a long distance lorry driver and his flask went all over the country with him and if your other half is a keen fisherman soups are always ideal to take with them to keep warm whilst waiting for a bite.  If bacon & Lentil is not to your taste you can also find my other soup favorites here.

Mx

Goodnight Ma'am and thank you for your service

 

For most of us Queen Elizabeth II was the only monarch we have ever known she was our constant and I think most of us thought she was invincible. On Thursday 8th September we came to the realisation that sadly she was no super human after all.  For Charles now our King it has been the day he has been dreading not only because it meant taking on that top job but also meant that intaking on this new role it would mean the loss of his beloved mama. 

The images across our screens  of our Queens last journey I think will stay with us for ever and I do wonder what the Queen herself would think of it all. 

The images of her children especially Princess Anne who is every inch her mothers daughter looking so bereft at Holyrood. For most of us when we loose a loved one we can greave in private but for our royal family every inch of their lives is under the glare of the public eye but they have shown such stoicism and dignity throughout the period of national morning. 

Like the majority of the nation we sat and watched the Queens funeral from 9am on Monday 19th September only moving to make a cup of tea or provisions for lunch when the opportunity arose. The sound of the loan piper will stay with me for the rest of my lifetime.  

The flowers reportedly selected by the King from the gardens of Buckingham Palace, Clarence House and Highgrove containing rosemary for remembrance and myrtle a symbol of love picked from a bush that was originally a sprig from the late Queens wedding bouquet and a very fitting tribute from the family.

Rest well your majesty and thank you for all that you have done. 

Mx

Hampers Part one

 

I have long been a follower of the author Amanda Prowse.  She always comes across as a very genuine person and very down to earth.  Occasionally she will make up one of these hampers as a giveaway which I think is a really lovely idea. So much so that I'm afraid I pinched her idea as Christmas gifts for my girls. I did tell Amanda and showed her  the results and she was very pleased that such a simple idea will encourage others. With this in mind I  thought I would share with you what I did for my girls for Christmas 2021. 

It began with finding hamper baskets that were a reasonable size and a reasonable price. It soon became apparent that those you find in hobby stores are way too small and way too expensive. Those on internet sites don't always give the size of the basket they just say large and if you message the seller to ask how big they are they generally come back with large....  I then happened to go past a charity shop in our local town and there sitting in the window was a hamper basket £10 and of course it had take me home written all over it.  After that trawling around the local charity shops looking for hamper baskets became a new pass time.  This did at one point become a new obsession as I ended up with more hampers than I actually needed each one costing around £10-£12, but never fear the extra's have been put to good use and hold a lot of yarn, fabric and even Christmas decorations.  

The baskets measured approximately 20 x 10 inches which I thought was a really good size for what I wanted, and don't be put off if you find one and it no longer has it's straps as you can purchase these from Amazon as well as other internet retailers for around £5 a pair. 

Now you don't have to make a lining for them but as my new learnt skill was using a sewing machine and I still needed all the practice I could get making a lining for the baskets was a good way of getting some more sewing time and pushed me to learn something new. 

Now for the fun part

Picking the items for your basket.  I knew I wanted to give them a copy of the The Boy, The Mole. The Fox and The Horse by Charlie Mackesy as it is such a lovely book and as neither of my girls are big readers I wanted something that was more an open at any page and find a beautiful drawing and verse and this book provided both of those things. I also discovered the book Big Panda and Tiny Dragon by James Norbury a beautifully written book and illustrations of friendship and hope so obviously that one had to be added.  From there I visited The Works and found a diary and mindfulness journals, as both the girls are journal writers. For my daughter I added her favorite hand lotions and candles and finished off with some foody treats and a winnie the poo mug full of chocolates and for my daughter in law foody treats which included a musical tin of biscuits with a Christmas scene and a gnome mug that has Mumma Gnome on the front and I filled it with chocolates and wrapped both  the mugs in cellophane. 

I knew I wasn't going to be able to wrap the baskets and I knew they wouldn't fit within cellophane wrapping so I decided upon some Christmas themed ribbon and a rather large bow and Scandinavian patterned bells which from memory were also from The Works but any bells or decoration would finish them off beautifully.

In fact at this point I was waiting on a new set of straps for my daughters hamper and they did also have a home made Christmas decoration added to the handle by the time we had our Christmas get together. 

All in all I think the hampers cost around £40-£50 to put together and the most expensive part was the basket but at £10 each I considered them to be a bargain and both the girls have gone on to put them to use within their homes so they have been repurposed and not sitting collecting dust in the attic. 

I chose to make the girls book hampers but to be honest you could use all sorts of items and not just for Christmas, one lady from the crafting group made a pamper basket for her daughter who was due to have a baby.  Another lady made a baby shower gift for a friend. Another made up a date night hamper for her son and his wife who had recently had a new baby so staying in was the new norm. To be honest the possibilities are endless with just a touch of imagination and I have to say that they both commented on what a fabulous gift. Which is lovely the only trouble is how do I match it again this year. Any ideas gratefully received😏

Mx

So many projects so little time

 

Over the summer I have really tried to complete some of my on going projects but yet the pile continues to grow.   My mother was a superb machinist and I know I have said this before but she was only 4ft 10 inches tall and in the 50's we didn't have stores that catered for the smaller person but that didn't stop my mother oh no.  She made herself suits and dresses all in the latest styles and for every box jacket suit she made there was always a matching handbag and shoes, I know this as there were boxes full of them when we cleared her house out back in 1990.  Machine sewing was the one thing that had always eluded me until we got to lock down and after borrowing a machine from a friend to do my bit and make scrubs bags I was hooked.  Since then I have gone from strength to strength but I still hadn't had ago at making myself anything.  Around the same time my daughter decided she wanted to learn how to make herself clothes but obviously with lockdown we were not able to be together, but she would show me all the beautiful things she had made for herself and I would show her my latest cushion cover 😀  anyway I finally decided I would take the bull by the horn and have ago at something reasonably simple.

I chose the  Tilly & Button Cleo pinafore dress  and I fell in love with this pattern from the start.  It has really clear instructions and I was able to trace the pattern so that I could preserve the original pattern. It also means if I want to make a smaller or bigger size then I can just trace the pattern again to the size that I want. 

Over the summer I made two of these pinafores one in denim and one in velvet neither of which I had sewn with before.  They are so comfortable to wear and as patterns are not cheap to buy I like to feel I am getting my monies worth and to that end  I have already brought more fabric to make myself some more for over the autumn/winter months as they will look great with my big woolly tights and my boots.

At the beginning of the summer we said goodbye to one of my work colleagues who had always admired my crafting especially anything to do with crochet as she was learning herself.  I wanted to make her something that would remind her of her time with us every time she looks at it and then I remembered I had the machine embroidery pattern for a reading pillow which also covers both her crochet and reading hobbies.  The pattern is from Memories in Thread and stitches out beautifully. 

August also saw my little grandson turn four, I mean how can he be four years old already? Any one with a small child will know how important Paw Patrol is in a small boys life.  In fact he is pretty much obsessed with anything Paw Patrol related.  Always one for promoting reading in the young I knew just the gift for this young man and together with Paw Patrol books to pop in side it made the perfect gift and I am told he uses it every night for his bedtime story, although his parents do insist it's sometimes a good idea to pick another bed time story other than one involving, Rocky, Chase or Marshall (ok I confess that's the only names I know of the characters😊)

Also over the summer friends of mine showed me the merits of charity shop finds.  We had, had a conversation where upon I said I would love to try my hand at machine embroidery onto clothes, but as I still class myself as a relative newby to this hobby I didn't want to spend a small fortune on an item of clothing only for it to all go badly wrong.  Oh you need a charity shop day said a friend. I had given to charity shops many times but must confess it had been a rarity that I would have the time to actually look in them to buy anything unless I spotted something in passing the shop door. 

A day was arranged and after a hearty breakfast to get us started  I not only found a denim jacket that now adorns a beautiful dragon machine embroidery pattern from Urban Threads  but also a denim shirt which now adorns one of my favorite flowers and also bees. 

I have to confess that charity shop hunting has now become a new thing and I might just have picked up two more denim jackets that are now waiting patiently to be upcycled. 

At the beginning of the summer my niece had a baby girl and of course where there is a new baby coming there has to be a baby blanket doesn't there.  I was recently asked how many baby blankets have I made for family, friends and work colleagues and I have to confess I have lost count but I know I have a thank you card or  photograph of most of them on my thank you wall with the new arrival insitu.  

Someone in the office did suggest that when I come to retire that all those I have made baby blankets for over the years should bring their now not so small child into work with their blanket and get a photograph of them all together.  Sounds like a fabulous idea but people do move on and whether we could all get together to pull off such a project would be another thing but I have a few years yet in which to work out the logistics. 

One thing I have failed at this year was my sock challenge.  In 2017 I set myself a challenge to make a pair of sock each month for the 12 months and I really enjoyed doing it at that time, so much so I decided to do it again this year.  I was keep up with it until covid came to our door and I just found for weeks afterwards that I just didn't have the energy to pick up my needles when I got home from work.  This was the pair that I had started in April that did finally get completed in around June.  I have however subsequently cast on another pair with one down and one to go so I am finally getting my knitting mojo back again.

And my final project this summer was to make a retirement cake for a surprise get together for a friend who has just retired from the NHS after 30+ years.  She is my long suffering partner in crime at all things crafty and we have been referred to as Thelma and Louise by our other halves when we set off for our next road trip. She didn't want a big fuss but we couldn't let her go without doing something so another colleague invited her around for lunch under the auspices that they hadn't seen each other before she officially retired and guess who was there when she arrived😀and a great afternoon was had by all🎈🎈🎈  There is a slight back story to this cake as the week before the get together I had been in Cornwall visiting a friend and her dad who at 95 has not been very well of late.  This particular friend is a superb baker so much so that she made my wedding cake nearly 40 years ago. Thankfully the friendship has lasted longer than the marriage did.   She knows I can bake a cake but I know my limitations when it comes to decorating one.  The cake was therefore a joint effort of my baking and her decorating skills.  I think what made it taste as good as it did was the Cornish free range eggs courtesy of the GP who lives next door and good old Cornish butter.  Nobody could believe that the cake had travelled for 8 hours in searing heat all the way back from Cornwall up to the East Midlands and survived. 

As we are now approaching Autumn and hunker down time I had a good tidy up of my sewing room and a look through all my on going projects.  I am not going to confess just how many there are but you will get to know as I share the completed projects here in my little blog space. It's going to be a busy time a head is all I am going to say😍

Mx