Thursday 21 June 2012

10 things

  • This weekend, Graham will be racing in Trail Marathon Wales - a marathon through the stunning forests of Snowdonia National Park.
  • This part of Wales is one of my absolute favourites, and I am very envious of his three-day trip.  I am staying behind in London with the children, but in a few years I'd love to go with him (not to run - but to walk the course beforehand if I'm allowed).
  • We've been eating a great deal of pasta this week.
  • Cam has been eating bigger portions than Graham - teenage boys' appetites really are extraordinary.
  • As part of his training, Graham has been running home from work semi-regularly.  This is a 22km run from West London to East London, passing all sorts of fantastic sights.  He took photos the other day and has annotated them and put them into a Flickr set which you can see here.
  • I went on a little spending spree at Abe Books last week, and picked up four cookery books for under a tenner (including postage).  Goodness, I love this website.  Most of the books were Elizabeth David ones that I somehow didn't have in my collection - she published more than I realised.
  • Each day this week I've been into the garden, very early in the morning, and picked all the snails off the clematis, the rhubarb and the tomatoes - and then given them to the hens who shriek with excitement at this bonus breakfast.
  • Breakfast for the hens
  • My clematis is looking better than it has done for years.
  • I just finished reading The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh, which I loved.  I might have to go an rummage on Abe now for an illustrated guide to the language of flowers - there is a Kate Greenaway one out there, which would be excellent.
  • I loved this wonderfully written article about roast chicken.  I often roast chicken in a similar way to this - covering it with herbs and spices in butter, and then serving it with a heavily scented rice.

6 comments:

  1. Ugh at picking off the snails, you're a braver woman than me! And thanks for the Abe Books tip - I'd never really thought of looking on there for things like secondhand cookery books, I always thought of it as more of an antique books sort of place.

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  2. I've been doing the snail-pick as well but alas, no hens, so we feed ours to the green bin (the bin men must think we're mad!) Isn't Abe wonderful- but oh so tempting too...

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  3. Loved my run home with Graham - thanks for that! And we don't seem to be having too much of a snail problem this year (yet - touch wood).

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  4. yeah... no snails here either... but perhaps is because the boys throw them all over the fence to the 'nasty' neighbours!! Shhhh.

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  5. Mmmm, roast chicken and scented rice sounds heavenly.

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  6. love that picture of the slug...

    just found your blog; wonderful!
    nancy

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