word of the week

A fairly alliterative word of the week post, brought to you by the letter W it would seem, although the overriding word has to be waiting. Today brings us to six days after our due date and the baby is still content to stay put. I keep reminding myself that anything up to 42 weeks is normal, but it has been such an odd week, such a strange feeling.

Each night I go to bed wondering if tomorrow will bring news, waking overnight and lying there trying to guess whether anything has changed, whether anything feels different, getting up each morning and accepting that things are just the same. It is hard not to watch every twinge, every tightening, hoping that it might possibly be the start of something. It is hard not to worry, which is generally my way, trying to reassure myself that the baby is safe and not focus on concerns that something might go wrong.

I have been doing lots of walking (and eating pineapple, making increasingly spicy curries, bouncing on a birthing ball, and following midwife advice trying acupressure and aromatherapy oils). We had a trip to the beach yesterday, and I took Millie and some music on a long walk across the fields on Friday (can you spot her in the above picture?!). It is tricky not to succumb to the sense that there is something I could, or should, be doing, and I am trying, but mostly failing, to not get frustrated at the inquiries from people pointing out that the baby has not arrived yet.

It has been wonderful to have my mum so close, to accompany me to appointments, take me out on spontaneous trips when it becomes clear that another empty day stretches ahead, and to give fabulous foot rubs too. Soon enough things will change, although I am trying to adjust to the idea that it may not happen spontaneously! Hopefully, this time next week I will have different news to share, but for now I wait, and wish, and wonder when we will finally meet our baby.

Project 52: Week 32

Yesterday we ventured out for a trip with Millie and headed for the beach. One of our nearest beaches, although still a bit of a distance away, is home to Antony Gormley's Another Place. It is somewhere we go once or twice a year, having taken Millie there on her first journey out as a puppy, and I love being by the sea. We timed it well, arriving to blue skies and a gentle breeze, as the tide was ebbing. We spent a happy hour gently chasing it out along the sand. The statues are always eye-catching, and this barnacled one had emerged from the water.

Project 52: Week 31

This week I spent a lovely few hours with my mum and Grandad, wandering around a local art exhibition and going for lunch. The entrance to the building includes a reconstructed industrial tower, and this was the view upwards as we left.

word of the week

It has been a week of contrasts, seven days spent in an odd limbo. Tomorrow is our due date, so the week has been a bizarre blend of getting on with life as normal, whilst waiting (impatiently!) for something that has not yet happened.

The days have been restful, plenty of relaxing, yet with an underlying restlessness that finds me pacing the house in the early hours. Looking back, it has been a nicely busy week. I have done lots of cooking, had days out with my mum and Grandad, coffees, lunches, an art exhibition, shopping with a friend, walks with Millie. Yet there is that sense of not having achieved the biggest thing, of waking up each morning and wondering what the day might have in store.

I feel ready, each evening I say to The Husband that I feel we are as prepared as we can be, I just want to meet our baby. Yet we both know that we can never truly be ready for the change that is coming, that it is beyond what we can imagine, and when things eventually start happening I expect the calm confidence I have currently will quickly disappear!

The weekend has been gentle, but with an undercurrent, perhaps more for The Husband, who has not known whether he will be going back into work tomorrow or starting the week on paternity leave. For now, there is no suggestion that the baby is on the way imminently, the alarms are set, and Monday will bring the start of another normal week, much like the last. And yet, there is the promise of this being an extraordinary week indeed.

Cookery Calendar Challenge: July

I'm afraid that in the great phone calamity I lost the pictures of the meals that I made for this month, and, typically, I hadn't instagrammed them or sent them to my mum! So, you shall have to believe that I did make the dishes, and accept an attempt at some artfully arranged herbs, that I still have leftover from the recipes.

Excuses out of the way, I decided to venture back to Jamie Oliver, and after my experience of the 15 minute meals, give the 30 minute meal book a try. I suspected that the recipes would take longer than 30 minutes, if the previous experience was anything to go by, and having long wanted to use this book I thought it might be realistic to do so before the baby arrives!

While both of the recipes took longer, between 45-60 minutes, I was really impressed with them both. The recipes are not without their downsides, they require lots of ingredients, and the cost mounted up. They also require more time than I would usually spend, and many more dishes and utensils, to the extent that when I was making the second recipe, The Husband came and cleared up after me as I was cooking just to try and get a head start! The book is clear at the outset about the equipment needed, and my long-neglected food processor was hoisted out, which again felt like excessive effort for saving time slicing a few vegetables instead of using a knife. 

All of this meant that I partially expected the recipes to be a let-down, I thought they would have to be really successful to feel that all of that had been worth it. I was, however, proved wrong, and was really impressed with the outcome of both. In fact, I went to the lengths of ordering some replacement parts for my food processor that have been lost at some point, which I think is clearly a sign that I was converted.

So, on to the actual recipes. The first was super-fast beef hash, with jacket potatoes, goddess salad, and butter beans and bacon. A few people have blogged the recipe previously. This was a serve it in lots of big dishes recipe, like most in the book, and it was a real success. Microwaving the baked potatoes then crisping them up on a hot baking tray in the oven worked really well, the hash was lovely (although the absence of the right attachment meant my veg were chopped much more finely - hence the new purchase for future attempts!), and The Husband has discovered a love of butter beans too, although I couldn't convince him to try the avocado dressing or salad.

The second recipe was the mustard chicken, quick dauphinoise, greens and black forest affogato. I will confess to leaving out the anchovies, and also knowing The Husband would not want cherries in the affogato, I replaced them with some frozen raspberries in mine that I already had in. This was a great dish, all of the parts were beautifully flavoured, and the dessert was simple but something a little different. 

What I really liked about both recipes was that they felt like complete meals, with plenty of vegetables, making them well balanced. I also found that there was a good amount of food, with the dishes that served four feeding us both well with more than enough for a second meal for two for the freezer. I enjoyed the salad for lunches for a few days after too. The recipes do require lots of ingredients, but the different condiments and herbs do seem to bring the flavours together well, and using the shortcuts such as the food processor and the microwave does make it possible to have dishes that would normally take a lot longer. I still don't think they are realistic for everyday cooking, or for week nights, but I do think, with time, they wouldn't be far off the 30 minute mark, and the results are well worth the effort.

It might be a little while before I get around to picking this book up again, as I guess our weekends might be somewhat different in the coming months, but I do look forward to trying some of the other recipes, and have already bookmarked a few that really appeal. I have picked a book for August, and for now am hoping to make the recipes, but watch this space! In the meantime, do follow the link below to Penny's blog and see what everyone else has been up to this month.

first things first

The first of August.

Which also means it is the first day of the August Break, the photo project organised by Susannah Conway. I have joined in on the blog in previous years, but this year I will do the daily posts on instagram, as I anticipate my capacity to take part might reduce over the coming weeks! The first prompt was Morning Light, and above is a version of the photo I chose.

This month should also be our first as parents, which is an unbelievably exciting thought. Although, with my fondness for firsts, I had liked the idea of our baby arriving today on the first day of the week, and the month, the midwife has assured me this morning that it is showing no signs of making an early arrival just yet! It is exactly a week until the due date now, though I am anticipating we may go past that point. It is strange to think that the next time I do one of these posts, our family will have expanded, and our much longed for baby will be here.

This is the first Monday in a while that we don't have an antenatal class too. The sessions covered all sorts, although there was no sitting on the floor practicing breathing and panting, which disappointed The Husband a little as he had been fully expecting it to go down that route. Instead we have had a myriad of things, including fabric babies with a placenta attached by a press stud, knitted boobs, relaxation exercises involving magic carpets, and a tour of the various delivery rooms, which made everything feel rather real. It has, in the most part, been reassuring, though having booked on to the classes many months ago, it is strange to feel that we have now attended them all, and that the baby could arrive any day.

As tonight will be gentler than recent weeks, where we had to dash out as soon as The Husband got home, and try to squeeze in a meal somewhere along the way, I am planning to make gnocchi for the first time today, as well as homemade pesto. I think my nesting instinct has been mostly focussed on the kitchen (unsurprisingly) as I am getting the urge to batch cook, and try new recipes, which unfortunately tends to have the opposite effect of making the place messier rather than the typical approach of intense cleaning!

Right now, I have a dog snoring gently beside me, flowers in front of me, and a wriggling baby in my belly. I think I shall have my first cup of tea of the day, and enjoy the peace while I can. Whatever August may bring us I am sure it will be full of incredible firsts, and for now I am excitedly anticipating each and every one.