life lately - a silent month

I didn't mean for the last month to be such a quiet one. I put the blog on hiatus while I was concentrating on a job application and three interviews to follow. After that Hugo's been poorly and I haven't had much time or brain capacity!

Blogging is a funny thing. I'm generally an all or nothing kind of person, doing things half arsed doesn't work for me. But to blog properly takes time, and a real investment. Not just time when you think about it, but time while you're thinking about other things, in order to be able to document it.

It's a fine balance between living life and writing about it or capturing it in film or photo. 

I'm struggling to find that balance. I see and read other beautifully crafted blogs (notably my friend Freya's who inspired me to start blogging) and I really dream of having an online space like that. But it's such a commitment! 

So for now, this will have to do! Here's a dozen highlights from the last month (and I'll try not to leave it so long next time):

1. Vegan baking! I made a second attempt at vegan choc-chip banana bread and it was definitely better than my first. I considerably reduced the quantity of cinnamon, but it was still a little powerful. I then made my mums recipe chocolate chip cookies and managed to adapt them for a vegan batch. To me the vegan ones tasted awful, but they were eaten, so can't have been too bad to someone only able to eat vegan!

2. Hugo's first girly sleepover down in St Albans with the Brooke girls. It was also his first stay somewhere other than our house or his second home at my parents. Considering he was in a house full of (not the quietest) girls he was so good! Although he was amazing, I could tell he wasn't his normal self and I think the car journey was a bit too long with not enough breaks. I've realised that while I can continue to enjoy the things I enjoyed before, I do need to consider Hugo a little more and adapt for him. If only I lived closer to the girls...

3. Typically while down south I wanted to fit in as much as possible, so I headed to a friends on the Saturday to see her new house. In hindsight, turning up slightly hungover with a baby in tow wasn't the kindest to my friend, but it was great to stop by and laze about all the same!

4. Film nights with Adi. My favourites have been In Time and Wolf of Wall Street. One of Adi's favourite things to do is plan our future lottery win. I usually refrain, but I'd make damn sure I was more wise than Jordan Belfort.

5. A walk to our friends local and a leisurely Sunday lunch by the river. I think this is pretty much my ideal Sunday - light exercise, chat, good food and drink in a pretty setting. Next Sunday anyone?

6. Late night chats with Adi. We always talk the most in bed, but quite often we'll leave it too late to go to bed to have a proper chat. While he enjoyed a few days off there was less pressure for me to get a good nights sleep, so we've enjoyed chatting about all sorts. 

7. Mid-week BBQ with some of our friends, apparently a very middle class thing to do. Our farm shop does a family BBQ deal so I ended up cooking things I wouldn't have normally. I definitely need to try some fish next time.

8. Job application and interviews. Okay, this wouldn't have fit in to the good bits of the last month if it was for securing the role and getting a really good vibe from my soon to be colleagues, more of that in another post.

9. Catching up with a friend from college, although sadly not seeing her little man as it was his nap time!

10. Introducing Hugo to my friends mum and sister. Living in different countries means it isn't very often I see her, so I thought I'd at least introduce Hugo to her family. He was on good behaviour right up until we were leaving when he peed everywhere, which made us all squeal, in turn making him cry! It sort of put an abrupt end to the afternoon!

11. Hugo having naked time on his great-grandfather. I'd so have loved for it to end up the way we feared, but miraculously he was naked for about an hour and didn't pee!

12. Hugo taking a handful of my chilli while having Sunday lunch with mum, Joe and Sophie. I decided to save my white top rather than capture the moment, but it was impressive all the same.

This takes us up to the day before Hugo got ill, which should really lead to another post.

birthday baking

For Adi's last two birthdays I baked him these chocolate cakes:

This year I didn't really feel up to baking and his mum kindly brought over a chocolate cake earlier in the week, so I decided to try and do a Monica. Adi loves flapjack, or in his words 'crunch'. His gran used to make crunchy flapjack, whereas I've been brought up on the chewy variety. I've always kept to my ways and made it how my mum does and how I like it, but being his birthday, I thought I'd try to work out how to make a crispy version more like his gran's, who is sadly no longer here to pass on her recipe and cooking wisdom.

A quick Google search suggested that it wasn't rocket science. All I had to do was use a shallow tray, put it on the top shelf rather than in the middle of the oven and bake for a bit longer. The cooling process should also be done in the tin rather than on the cooling rack.

I used the recipe from the Stork cookery book - a book that both my mum and nanna use and the way baking is done in our family - with margarine rather than butter and an extra dollop of golden syrup for good measure.


I was pleasantly surprised with the outcome from my first attempt. I came downstairs today and Adi had already sneakily tried a bit and said that it was great and a better attempt than his mum's (sorry Bev). He even insisted I leave the crumbly bits from the tin that he was picking at.

I'm not going to leave it there and will try to work out how to get it even closer to his gran's, I'm thinking she probably used butter so that may be a start. If you have any suggestions or recipes let me know!

*If you're thinking of trying crispy flapjack a word of advice, ensure the tray is very well greased and that you cut well around the sides before cooling. I had to resort to a pizza cutter to get it out of the tin at the sides which I don't think my tray is best pleased about.