Kitchen Vim & Vigour: A Lack Of.

Dear Amazing Bloggers & Readers,

I need your help.

I have a lovely foody blog which is still a bit of a newborn - beautiful, if a little bit wrinkly, but rather underdeveloped - but I just can't seem to get back into the swing of things & I'm struggling to nurture it. There's been a lot on but now I'm devoid of all enthusiasm & vigour. I'm supposed to be chronicling my adventures in the kitchen but to tell you the whole truth, I've been eating crappily & with no zeal. The kitchen is also literally falling apart. We rent & so there's not much we can do about it. It makes me sad. When will my energy return?

Has anyone any tips?

Would anyone just like to feed me & be done with it?

Would anyone buy me a house with a beautiful kitchen?

Or just a beautiful kitchen?

Or just a load of money?

Help!

Sincerely,

Sad, Desperate & Poor Non-Cook.

Adventures in Peas & Meatballs

The children are tucked up but the sun is yet to set. I find myself in limbo - waiting for darkness in order to feel cosy & have my desire to curl up & do nothing justified. I've cooked a rather unimaginative but satisfying dinner - meatballs, plain & peas. Nothing else whatsoever - & as I sit down to eat, on the sofa, one leg tucked beneath my bottom, a mug of hot chocolate sits on a side table, conspicuously out of reach & waiting patiently for me to finish my meal. Hallo, H.C. I see you. Tasty.

I take look down at my meal, by now I'm half way through & enjoying it's simplicity adequately. I look down at the rather large meatball, & pause before biting half of it away. I am left with half a meatball staring at me with a strangely large green stem poking out of it. I contemplate for a while what this stalk could be. I'm sure it's meant to be there, but I briefly acknowledge that it may be rogue. I think about going to fish the packet from the bin to peruse the ingredients, but where's the fun in that?

I delicately remove the stem from its captor & attempt to taste it. If it's rogue, it could possibly kill me, or at east taste a bit naff. I'm living life on the edge. Hmm. What is it? Mint? In a beef meatball? No. Basil? Can't tell. After a tense moment it is gone. Flavourless. I will never know of it's origins, purposes or journey to the meatball. Ah, the mysteries of life.

I finish my meal. Goodbye peas.

I walk slowly toward the mug of warm chocolate drink. I sit, laptop atop lap & mug in hand. The D key is sticky. It's probably food of some sort, but I cannot recall what it would be. I think back to my adventurousness while dining & with a devilish flick of my left index finger I scratch the unknown sticky stuff & taste it. Flavourless. Hmm.

The risks I take. Today I have been truly bold & daring. Bow down as you will, cowards.

Pea Green Pantry

Dear readers,

I love that I have readers - especially ones who are always generous with the advice & support they offer. Today I am looking for some feedback regarding a new blog that I am hoping to set up soon.

I love food & though I can't profess to being a great connoisseur or magnificent gastronome I do enjoy cooking & even more so I enjoy eating! It is an area that I enjoy experimenting in (saucy!) & something I'd like to get better at.

As a mum of two children - one who is not terribly fussy but has her moments of stubbornness & another who is only just coming up to the age of guzzling mush - & a dutiful wifey to my OH (if you can call avoiding housework dutiful) I often find myself cooking the same things over & over. I do not need another boring thing in my life & so I made a promise to myself that in the weeks to come I would make the effort to devise a menu for the weeks ahead. Not only to spice up the dinner table a little but to enable us to buy only what we need, food wise. I thought that a great way to get started & to stick to this would be to create a blog & share with you my experiences as I attempt to avoid disasters & not poison my family.

I hate waste & like to live as economically & as ethically as I can. I believe strongly that organic farming & eating is the way forward, both for the planet & for our health, but I am also not rolling in it & understand just how difficult it is to be 'green' when you have to watch the pennies. I think it will be something a bit like River Cottage on a budget & with more mess (oh how I love Hugh, but I haven't got a garden or a TV deal).

All in all, I am looking to create a new, separate blog based around my adventures in food which will include:

• Ideas for recipes, family friendly, speedy, special or anything else
• Tips for green living on a budget (or not, if you're that lucky!) & eating with the seasons
• Linkies with other foody families & people
• Experiments & disasters in my kitchen
• My journal of how I am getting on with my personal mission in food!

So what I'd like to know from you lovelies is if I am just being a lunatic & this is actually pretty boring or whether there are any other ideas you'd like to see on the blog.
The big question is what should I name the blog, there is a choice of three:

Pea Green Pantry
Our Pea Green Pantry
The Pea Green Pantry

Thank you for your eyes, readers!

UPDATE: You can now follow @PeaGreenPantry on twitter & find us at http://PeaGreenPantry.blogspot.com - I shall hopefully have everything fully operational before the end of Feb... How exciting!!

Yours, toastily, Chloe.

I bloody love Christmas me - though not usually in October!

Today, after three hours of travelling on trains (more on that & the rude commuters of Britain later), I finally have got round to making some Christmas bits & bobs. I have spent the last hour or so snipping & sewing & it feels good! (With the exception of an aching back - so blog & dinner break happening now!)

Here's a quick sneak peek at what kind of things I'll be making. Goodness knows if I'll sell anything - craft fair tomorrow & I plan on popping some of these lovelies on the Little Pea Green Etsy Shop - but if not it'll save me making more for our own tree!

Last week I was sat in our living room, minding my own business when I suddenly got a subtle sniff of something like a pine scent. I think it was the faint aroma coming from a little lavender bag which Daughter had found & claimed as her own for a while but was now stuffed down the back of the sofa & forgotten, but my brain was obviously in a jovial mood & so interpreted this as a whiff of festivity. I became overwhelmingly excited about the impending arrival of winter & the festive season. I cannot wait to see the living room transformed with bunting & decorations (I am quite the traditionalist so lots of rustic reds, greens & golds); for the scent of the tree & the excitement as the presents build up beneath it; for the cursing every time someone kneels down & gets pine needles angrily poked into their knees; for an open fire roaring during the day & then it's embers gently roasting chestnuts on an evening; to buy pointless & rich foods & to gorge on them with absolutely no shame, just pure revelry, swilling it all down with a slug of Irish cream liqueur or a hot coffee cheekily spiked with a shot of brandy, whatever the time of day.

I could go on forever & ever about the best bits of Christmas but, this year, the thing I cannot wait to have our brand new family in the midst of all this toasty-warmth & cosiness.

I bloody love Christmas, me. Even the cheesy songs.

P.S. - apologies for getting so excited so soon, I don't usually do such silly things but I am due to have a baby in one month & as I am prescribing myself one month of focusing on nothing but the baby & sleep everything like this is getting pushed forward one month, so I am living as though it were the 17th November! Therefore I find this festive fanaticism is entirely justified!