April has been a good month. Spending more time at home has been a welcome change and I’m thankful I no longer have a slow commute to work every day. I thought I’d be getting up early and making trendy things like avo toast for breakfast each day instead — hah, who am I kidding? I like my sleep. And when are avocados ever ripe when you actually want to eat them!? As well as enjoying more hours in bed I’ve also been motoring through our to-do list, trying to reach the point where we are sorted. Here are some of the more blog worthy parts of the month…
Eating
Egg mayo sandwiches. A freshly boiled egg with a tiny bit of mayo and some chives from the garden. It stinks the house out; thankfully it tastes better than it smells. I have to take half the yolk out because I can’t stomach it in big chunks or runny (curse all those nasty runny eggs on Instagram!).
Other things we’ve been enjoying are:
- Banana and linseed cake (my latest recipe).
- Courgette and lemon cake — absolutely lovely. I put the cake in the oven and had a bit of a brown, trouser moment when I thought I’d forgotten to put the butter in! Turns out the cake recipe was dairy free. Hah!
- Peanut satay sauce. We used it as a sauce for noodles and vegetables with a side of pak choi.
- Turmeric milk. I added a couple of cardamom pods; so good.
- Moroccan carrot soup.
Reading
I’ve been reading Yokes by Kate Davies. Yokes isn’t not your typical pattern book; it contains interviews, photos and essays about the history of yokes, as well as eleven patterns. I loved learning about Kirsten Olsson and her amazing colourwork. One day a Blue Flower jumper will be mine!
Derek Jarman’s Garden was a Christmas present but I’ve only recently got around to reading it properly. I say ‘read’ but it was mostly nice photos. Derek created a colourful garden around his fishermans cottage on a shingle beach in Dungeness. Sadly I don’t think it’s open to visitors anymore, so the book is the next best thing.
Watching
- The Walking Dead Season 6 Finale. Sheesh. What an anticlimax! I think it’s unlikely to be Maggie, Rik or Carl but we’ll have to wait and see. In the meantime I need to stop wasting time reading all the theories floating around the internet.
- 13 minutes. A film about a failed assassination attempt on Hitler’s life. Very good!
- Doctor Foster. A series about a woman who plots a way to expose her husbands affair.
- You, Me and the Apocalypse. A lighthearted (yes, really) series about the end of the world.
Growing
All the things! April has been an industrious month and its been nice to get back outdoors. So far I’ve sown: broad beans, butternut squash, borlotti beans, runner beans, marigolds, nasturtiums, basil, little gem lettuces, sunflowers, chillies, onions, sweetcorn, potatoes, peppers, cosmos, sweet peas and wild flowers for the bees. Everything apart from the borlotti beans have germinated.
This sweet pea was grown from seed I saved from the garden last year. I’m proud and amazed they actually grew.
That’s all for April.
It sounds like April was a good month! The baking sounds lovely, I will take a look at the recipes and see if I can make any without sugar. You have sown so many seeds! I think it will be warmer for you down south than ‘up north, it is freezing here!
I think you could probably make the banana cake without sugar — if you try and succeed let me know 🙂 It’s been very mild down here lately although the weather has just turned cold. Most of the veg are on windowsills or in the coldframe at the moment.
You have been very busy well done ? It all looks amazing.
Thank you Tina!
Ooh there’s lot’s going on! My mum has been on a boiled egg kick lately, stinks out the house haha!
Yes! And it doesn’t seem to make any difference if I open the windows…
Those cakes sound so good! There’s no fences in Dungeness so you can still see Derek Jarman’s garden any time.