Moog's meanderings

In all that’s been going on I have omitted to let you all know that Hubby has had his PhD Viva and it went very well indeed. He has been granted his PhD pending some minor amendments which he has a few weeks to complete. Hooray!! He is very relieved (and we are all very proud). Since that happened we have spent a week in Northumberland at a cottage near Bamburgh with my parents. It was really nice to get away properly without Hubby having to worry about being contacted about work (which always happens when he’s having time off but is at home) or working on the PhD. Pumpkin has started smiling a lot and gurgling and chatting back when he’s given the attention so it was great timing for my parents to spend some time getting to know him a bit. It also meant Hubby and I had the extra pairs of hands and eyes to help out! Mum and Dad took Munchkin out a few times and once took over for a full day so Hubby and I could visit Lindisfarne (Holy Island). Obviously we took the little one with us but he is very happy strapped to one of us in the sling so we were able to take our time reading the information about the Priory and Castle and soaking everything up rather than running around after the boisterous Munchkin!!

Both Pictures are of Lindisfarne Priory.

The last couple of weeks we have been having new potatoes from our allotment. They’re lovely! We’ve just started on the Charlotte variety which I am really enjoying (can’t remember what the other types are off hand). We are also just starting to get a few courgettes and hubby tells me that both the runner and french bean plants are flowering. I haven’t managed to get down to help or have a look since before we went away – timing it right with both kids is apparently more of a challenge than I can handle at the moment!

I have an appointment back at the rheumatology clinic tomorrow morning. Hubby will take Munchkin out to a picnic held by our regular ’stay and play’ group while I go along with Pumpkin. I don’t expect them to change any of my medication or anything. Healthwise things are going pretty well – just the odd blip here and there. I am so lucky to have (a very proactive and helpful) hubby working at home for the most part meaning that he’s available to help out at mealtimes (which for me are the most difficult bit of having to deal with both of them together next to bath/bedtime). I do wonder how my illness would be affected if I had to cope with him being away more on business. He does travel a bit, and generally is off on site about one day a week. I cope, but it’s obviously harder. When he does go away for a few days then I start to see things deteriorating. Lupus is affected by hormones and tiredness/worry/stress sends ones hormones off doing funny things, setting off the Lupus (apart from chronic fatigue being one of it’s big symptoms in the first place). So by the time he gets back I find myself wound up and tired suffering from a short temper from being worn down as well as the familiar arthritic problems in various joints making it hard to do lots of things including picking up/supporting the children. Anyway – I seem to have gone off on a whinge so I apologise!!

Both of the boys are doing well. Munckin will be 2 years old in less than a fortnight! It seems to have crept up on us so fast! He’s such a lovely little boy and he’s just hilarious at the moment as he’s learning to talk. He often stands there for ages looking at me and repeating the same word over and over and over, while I try in vain to decipher what it means. I often don’t manage and it either ends in tears or a very odd kind of lopsided look before he wanders off to do something else! Pumpkin is really getting interactive and smiles a lot. It’s a really nice stage when they get to chuckling and gurgling at your attempts to keep them amused! He is also quite often only waking up in the night once, which is a relief. Although not last night (so I am feeling rather tired especially as Hubby got up to disappear down South for the day at 6am). Isn’t it typical that as I ended up getting up that early having not had a great night anyway the other two boys carried on sleeping until 7.30am!!!

On the (gluten free) baking front I recently made some cheese, corn and bacon muffins (I found the recipe in Coeliac UK’s ‘Crossed Grain’ Summer 2009 Magazine but I can’t seem to find it on their website) and they were really good. A great savoury snack for when you’re on the go. I also made an enormous batch of chicken nuggets a few weeks ago (Most of them are now in the freezer). These were a variation on a recipe I found in How to Feed Your Whole Family a Healthy Balanced Diet, with Very Little Money and Hardly Any Time, Even If You Have a Tiny Kitchen, Only Three Saucepans (One with An Ill Fitting Lid) and No Fancy Gadgets – Unless You Count the Garlic Crusher… and they’re fab! I used coarse polenta to coat them and they’re really good. The apple and carrot in them gives them a very distinctive (good) flavour and it means that I can have chicken nuggets and chips without it costing the earth or being particularly unhealthy. Ironically, now that I have got around to making my own, Sainsbury’s have finally got their gluten free chicken nuggets back on the shelves again (it’s only take about a year since the scare about lactose that made them take them off).

Anyway – as both boys are asleep and the other one’s at work, I might see if I can make the most of it and go for a short rest or even a nap.

Been a bit quiet lately on my blog. Sorry about that! I have been trying to figure out how it is possible to look after a very busy and boisterous toddler as well as a newborn (although he’s now over 8 weeks – I can’t believe it!!). It’s not easy as I am sure all of you who have been/are there will vouch for. Thankfully my Lupus is behaving itself and so are the boys (most of the time). I do find that having them both 24hours a day means that the more mundane things such as coming up with food for hubby and I to eat in the evening can become difficult to achieve. But we’re managing and we do somehow eat and haven’t had a single takeaway since Pumpkin was born(*).

Hubby brought the first broad beans of the season home from the allotment yesterday – hurrah! I absolutely love broad beans. I made bacon & tomato risotto with them (I know it’s not on the recipe, but this recipe is fab if you like risotto but can’t be bothered to stand stirring it for ages so I just modify it to suit my mood/the contents of my fridge). Yum!

Hubby’s PhD update: the Viva is happening very soon so we should know how it all turned out in the next couple of weeks. So far he doesn’t seem very worried about it but I guess he’s had a lot of work to do since the manic weeks getting the PhD finalised and handed in and paternity leave.

(*) Somehow that sounds very good of us, but it’s really that due to my gluten intolerance there’s only one takeaway place that I trust and it’s Indian food. I remember having a curry when Munchkin was tiny and he was really sicky the following day – apparently it’s quite common for spices (and citrus) to affect breast milk in that way – and I don’t want that to happen with Pumpkin as well.

I keep having things to blog about but then not really having a chance to blog them. So I suppose this could be a long post. Or maybe there’s not much to say when the original desire to write about something has passed.

My parents-in-law have just gone on to see some more family. They’ve been with us since Friday evening and we’ve had a lovely weekend. The weather has been fantastic. Sunny spring weather which was really quite warm. Yesterday we took a picnic to Coughton Court. Unfortunately I didn’t manage to take any pictures to share with you. The grounds are lovely as is the house. On this occasion we didn’t go inside the house (probably a good thing – I keep knocking into things with my bump!) but had a good walk around the play area and some of the grounds. Munchkin had a great time and very much enjoyed going on the climbing frame and slide repeatedly as well as looking at chickens and sheep.

This morning we all went to a very busy Palm Sunday service at our church. It was a really nice service and I wasn’t quite prepared for it to be so packed! It was very well organised too. We all met at the front of church and had the first bit outside (in the beautiful sunshine) before parading into the church with our palm crosses after the choir and the ‘uniformed groups’ (Guides, Scouts, etc.). Munchkin enjoyed waving his palm cross around and was really well behaved considering he woke up with a cold and a nose running like a tap. Poor little thing – he was shattered by lunchtime. He’s enjoying a nice nap now – I hope that it does him some good..

We’ve been enjoying some really wonderful tasting purple sprouting from our allotment. The recent sunny weather (we’ve had some fantastic days over the last couple of weeks) has brought things on well. The broad bean plants are growing up well and will need supporting soon and the shallots and garlic that hubby planted a few weeks ago are starting to shoot. He also sowed lettuces and planted out some seedlings that are further on as well as sowing radishes and leeks. All of which are coming up and seem to be doing quite well. Our spring cabbages and leeks (which we should be having about now) are all on the small weedy side because we planted them later than we ought to have done last year. Ah well – maybe next time we’ll get it right.

I went to the clinic just over a week ago and saw my obstetric consultant and my rheumatology consultant. They’re very happy and my scan showed that things are all progressing well and as they should be. The thing with Lupus however, is that in the case of people with anti-phospholipid antibodies (which I have), there is a risk of miscarriage up to 24 weeks and stillbirth after 24 weeks and which is even greater at then end. So I, like many other Lupus patients, will go in to hospital to have the baby induced at around 38 weeks if it doesn’t put in an appearance before then. That’s the week after Easter. I am very much hoping that this one decides to show up naturally before that happens – as Munchkin did.

The other thing that happened to me over the last week is that I had an adverse reaction to something I ate. I am absolutely certain that it was gluten from bits of batter in a portion of chips I had from the local chippie. I have had chips from there before and it’s been fine – never found anything in them and to be honest I have always considered my gluten thing to be an intolerance rather than an allergy so I don’t bother too much about things that ‘may contain traces of gluten’. So I didn’t worry too much about it and hubby picked out the bits when giving me my chips. However, I didn’t sleep well and my digestive system spent the next 24-36 hours rather unhappy. I wasn’t able to eat anything all day Tuesday because I felt rotten (and Hubby was away with work from before Munchkin was up until after he went to bed – which didn’t help). It made me get to thinking about whether I should try to get myself tested for coeliac disease/gluten sensitivity. I also did a lot of searching on the internet about links between Lupus and gluten sensitivity – with interesting results. But as it’s really time I should get Munchkin up I am going to save that discussion for another day.

Today I have: accidentally pulled down the end of the curtain rail in the front room, half sorted my desk, cooked and eaten breakfast, made chocolate chip cookies*, made Rosemary Chicken with tomato sauce for later (we’re having my grandad and my brother and sister-in-law over for supper tonight). I still have to finish tidying my desk, make a cake for pudding tonight, make sausage rolls to freeze ready for when I am in hospital to have Pumpkin (they provide gluten free for lunch and supper, but not breakfast as I discovered last time around. I need a substantial breakfast otherwise my Lupus medication makes me feel VERY sick), rest and read the paper.

Hubby has verified that the transformer for one of the kitchen lights was duff (had to go under munchkin’s bedroom floorboards to get it first), been to buy a new one, fitted the new one, fitted a new dimmer switch, mended the curtain rail in the front room, done all my washing up (quite a feat considering the cooking I have been doing), had a long telephone conversation with his sister about his thesis and her dissertation. He’s currently on making modifications to Chapter 6 of his PhD based on the comments I made yesterday after reviewing it. Other things he has to do are go to the allotment and pick veg for tonight and help me with the crossword. And probably some more washing up

Munchkin is not here otherwise very little of the above would be possible! He’s with his grandparents having a holiday while we work on the PhD (and I make sure that Hubby gets breaks and properly fed) and catch up on a few proper nights of sleep.
So far so good…

* This recipe I made up and it worked a treat:
Gluten free choc chip cookies (not the gooey kind):
125g butter
125g caster sugar
1 egg
~1 tsp vanilla essence
150g Doves Farm gluten free plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
chocolate chips (I forgot to measure but I guess about 30g??)

Cream butter and sugar.  Add egg & vanilla essence and beat. Mix flour and baking powder together then add to the bowl and mix thoroughly.  Add and mix in choc chips.  Put teaspoon dollops on a baking sheet (well spaced – they spread!!) and cook on gas 4 for ~ 15 minutes until golden.

Today’s nap time is sitting with laptop.  Definitely a good chance to be ‘resting’!  I am now 32 weeks pregnant and am Big and Tired.  The dining room is out of bounds because of a new cupboard being built around the boiler – ready for decorating next week.  It’s involving drilling and banging so I am currently not washing up, cooking dinner, baking or any of those things I often (need to) fill nap time with.  I am also not in the conservatory as it’s kind of a ’staging area’ for the work in the dining room (bits of wood and stuff piled up).  It’s nice being in the living room actually.  It’s quiet (apart from the drilling next door) and as it’s south facing it’s currently very warm and sun-filled.

Munchkin appears to be having a good nap in spite of his room only being separated from the spare room (the decorator is currently in there – with radio) by plasterboard.  Long may it last!

Hubby is due back this evening.  It would be lovely if he made it back in time to see Munchkin before bed, but it’s a bit of a trek home so I am not really expecting him by then.  I usually go to a pregnancy yoga class on Thursday evenings so I suspect I won’t be going to that tonight.  On the one hand I’d like to go if Hubby is back.  On the other hand, I haven’t seen him since Monday so it’d be nice to just sit down and eat together and get an early night rather than rushing off out as soon as he walks in.

In other news:  We had our first purple sprouting on Sunday night!  It was really tasty.  It’s one particular vegetable that makes having an allotment really worthwhile.  The broad beans are coming up well because of the various sunny days we’ve had.  Hubby made it down on Sunday afternoon to do some bits and pieces while Munchkin was napping and he planted shallots and garlic as well as doing some tidying up.  the spring cabbages are looking a bit small and sad (ah – speaking of which I think I meant to feed them…  something for the weekend?!) and so are our leeks.  I think we’ll end up having them as baby leeks…

This season hasn’t been good for parsnips. We sowed two or three lots (can’t remember) and from the last lot a single seedling appeared. My dad reckons that parsnips aren’t all that easy to grow although the first year we had the allotment we sowed a batch and had lots of lovely parsnips as a result. Beginner’s luck apparently!! The other puzzling things is that once they’re there they seem to just appear everywhere you don’t want them. When we took on the allotment there were parsnips growing all over the place. When we were digging over the plot making it into beds and pathways we were constantly coming across rogue parsnips (and potatoes, for that matter). For supper last night with our roast chicken we had the lone parsnip that we had grown roasted (alongside our roast potatoes, roast sweet potatoes, carrots and broccoli). It was truly yummy.
Hopefully we’ll have better luck growing them next winter.

The other day we all went to the allotment. There’s a lot to do so Hubby went off in the car with Equipment while I took Munchkin via the playground in the pushchair. We had a lot of fun climbing on the climbing frame, going down the big slide together and going on the swings. Then we went to help Hubby. He was digging. Fortunately I had remembered to put in a small for as I anticipated that Munckin would want Daddy’s Big Fork and to join in. He still wanted the Big Fork but eventually was placated with the small one and proceeded to help. Not sure whether he was very successful at removing weeds though..!

Has it really been two weeks since I posted? Well, our visit to see Munchkin’s godmother went very well. We had a lovely afternoon and thoroughly enjoyed meeting her little girl. I know it’s something that everyone says but you forget how tiny there are once yours grow bigger! Munchkin is quite a heavy bundle these days (I don’t carry him in the sling very often anymore!!). We spend the Sunday of that weekend at Hanbury Hall. We had a fab day just the three of us. They had a good little playground and munchkin had lots of fun climbing and on the swings. We also did a tour of the walled garden which was really fascinating. It’s a kitchen garden and the variety of veg they were growing was fantastic. We’re planning to go back there on Saturday because they’re having an ‘apple day’.

This last weekend we went to another National Trust place – Attingham Park – to meet up with the in-laws for the day. Again we had a wonderful day. The weather was lovely and Munchkin was very pleased at the presence of lots of cows (one of his current favourite things) and a very friendly labrador (his new favourite thing!!). There was a food fayre going on and we re-discovered something we came across once a few years ago. Blackcurrant Gin. This particular one is made by Tipsy Fruit Gins, Ltd and I had not been able to get hold of it since that one time. I made a 250ml bottle last well over a year but never was able to replace it. Now I have!!! If anyone is into that kind of thing I can very much recommend this.

The allotment is doing well and getting out of hand at the same time. The runner beans are finally slowing down considerably and will soon need cutting down. The courgettes are practically over. The peppers are still trying to produce – there are loads of tiny ones coming – but I really think that it’s too cold now for much more to happen. Next year’s purple sprouting is going crazy, the leeks seem to be doing ok too. The kale is nearly ready for picking. Not sure about the spring cabbage we planted for autumn (or for spring) because I didn’t really look when I was down there earlier. There’s loads of weeding and digging to be done otherwise the veg will get strangled and we won’t be able to plant the over-winter broad beans. So much to do and so little spare time during fine weather spells!!

Ok, so here’s the subject of this post. Last night I made Banana Muffins. The recipe is courtesy of Ginger Lemon Girl. I made a couple of substitutions (golden granulated sugar for agave nectar, sultanas for nuts – to remove choking hazard for Munchkin – and sunflower oil for healthy heart oil) but they worked out really well. Munchkin ate a whole one for breakfast (as well as half a banana, half a pear and a bowl of cereal!). Sorry I didn’t take any pictures but take my word for it that they are lovely!