the way to a man’s heart …

If the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach then surely it follows that the way to a man’s inner-nerd heart is through a huge meatcake in the shape of pacman chomping on a tasty dot?

Bliss.

Our Daddy is pretty fab

Jonny took the kids out for the day.

Jon is our resident artisan baker, marmalade my personal poison and tea, surely it goes without saying, is much better when poured from a vessel both short and stout.

An opportunity to show off my new vintage dress!  Though it probably won't see the light of day til things are much less chilly.  And yes, it would seem that my children like to stroke their own reflections with grimy fingers. I wasn't actually trying to disguise my identity.

And my t-shirt is finished! My first ever sewing project that I can wear the result of, though whether or not I will remains to be seen. It is massively over-sized and baggy and I feel like one of those awesome people on patternreview.com who talk about their genius alterations coz I ran a little piece of elastic through the bottom hem and now it looks much better, but still not awesome. At least I have some very fun turquoise shoes and a turquoise cardi to wear it with in case I do end up going in that direction. But WHATEVER! It's FINISHED and I MADE IT!

Now to make some din-dins for the fabulous people who are coming to eat with us this evening. Hope you've all got some goodies ready for the dads and granddads out there!

Raw Materials

So who would have thought that Jon’s much-scoffed-at pre-compost practice of burying vegetable scraps in the backyard would have paid off so brilliantly! Gilbert can’t help himself, he’s back there every five minutes scrubbing about for more of these things that the rest of us seem so excited about. Bless him. He’s all enthusiasm. And it was a TWO EGG day! Our aged chooks are having some kind of revival.

Combined with the world’s most mammoth clove of organic garlic (note peg for scale), some olive oil, flour and natural yoghurt, these little back-yard ‘taters will make a truly magnificent accompaniment to the boneless leg of lamb, slathered in seeded mustard, that’s gradually melting in my slow cooker.

Sylvie lovingly scrubbed and wiped the garden off our potatoes and we thinly sliced and baked them only to eat more than a third before the dough was even ready – apparently, we all lack patience, not just the toddlers in our midst.

The one minor tradgedy of the day has been the total lack of fresh rosemary – we went to two separate grocers with no luck but came home with a bag of my unlikely favourite, Brussels sprouts (to cook like this), and a bag of the cheapest bananas I’ve seen in ages. Actually, most of them got eaten at the park…

And what Wednesday would be complete without a little bit of post-park painting mayhem?

Dinner turned out great!

And as for the 2011 Year of Craft, look at the treasures I uncovered at my new favourite place:

Here’s what I’m hoping to finish off tonight:

We'll see how we go...

Bestest Books Ever

Last Updated: Tuesday 30th August, 2011

Not all the novels I’ve ever read, just all the novels I’ve ever loved (and can remember...)

Erin, this is for you.

Author	Title
Adams, Douglas	1. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy 2. The Restaurant at the End of the Universe 3. Life, the Universe and Everything 4. So Long, and Thanks For All the Fish 5. Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency 6. The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul
Adiga, Aravind	7. The White Tiger
Alcott, Louisa May	8. Little Women 9. Good Wives 10. Little Men
Atwood, Margaret	11. Alias Grace 12. The Handmaid’s Tale 13. The Robber Bride 14. The Blind Assassin
Austen, Jane	15. Pride and Prejudice 16. Northanger Abbey 17. Emma 18. Mansfield Park
Barry, Sebastian	19. The Secret Scripture
Bronte, Charlotte	20. Jane Eyre
Bronte, Emily	21. Wuthering Heights
Burnett, Frances Hodgson	22. The Secret Garden
Byatt, A.S.	23. Possession 24. Angels and Insects
Calvino, Italo	25. If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller
Camus, Albert	26. The Outsider
Capote, Truman	27. Breakfast at Tiffany's
Card, Orson Scott	28. Ender’s Game
Carey, Peter	29. True History of the Kelly Gang 30. My Life as a Fake 31. The Fat Man In History
Carroll, Lewis	32. Alice In Wonderland
Chopin, Kate	33. The Awakening
Conrad, Joseph	34. Heart of Darkness 35. Victory
De Botton, Alain	36. Status Anxiety 37. The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work
Dessaix, Robert	38. Night Letters
Dickens, Charles	39. Great Expectations 40. A Christmas Carol 41. Little Dorrit
Dostoevsky, Fyodor	42. Crime and Punishment
DuMaurier, Daphne	43. Rebecca
Eugenides, Jeffery	44. The Virgin Suicides 45. Middlesex
Faulkner, William	46. As I Lay Dying
Ferris, Joshua	47. The Unnamed
Fitzgerald, F. Scott	48. Tender is the Night 49. The Great Gatsby
Forster, E.M.	50. A Room With A View
Franzen, Joshua	51. Freedom
Gaarder, Jostein	52. Sophie’s World
Golding, William	53. Lord of the Flies
Haddon, Mark	54. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Hamilton, Clive	55. Affluenza
Hardy, Thomas	56. Tess of the D’Urbervilles 57. The Mayor of Casterbridge
Heller, Joseph	58. Catch 22
Hemingway, Ernest	59. The Old Man and The Sea
Hong Kingston, Maxine	60. The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts
Hornby, Nick	61. About A Boy 62. High Fidelity
Ishiguro, Kazuo	63. An Artist of the Floating World 64. Never Let Me Go
James, Henry	65. A Portrait of A Lady
James, P.D.	66. Death In Holy Orders (that’s the favourite out of too many others)
Lawrence, D.H.	67. St Mawr 68. Lady Chatterley’s Lover 69. Aaron’s Rod
LeCarre, John	70. The Spy Who Came In From The Cold
Lee, Harper	71. To Kill A Mockingbird
Lewis, C.S.	72. Until We Have Faces 73. The Great Divorce 74. The Weight of Glory 75. The Four Loves 76. Mere Christianity 77. The Narnia Series
Malouf, David	78. The Great World 79. An Imaginary Life 80. Remembering Babylon 81. Johnno 82. Fly Away Peter 83. Harland's Half-Acre 84. Ransom
Martel, Yann	85. The Life of Pi
Marquez, Gabriel Garcia	86. One Hundred Years of Solitude
Nabokov, Vladimir	87. Lolita
Niffenegger, Audrey	88. The Time Traveller’s Wife
Ondaatje, Michael	89. In The Skin of a Lion 90. Anil’s Ghost 91. The English Patient 92. Running in the Family 93. Divisadero
Orczy, Baroness E.	94. The Scarlet Pimpernel
Orwell, George	95. Animal Farm 96. Nineteen Eighty-Four
Phillips, Caryl	97. Cambridge
Plath, Sylvia	98. The Bell Jar
Rhys, Jean	99. Wide Sargasso Sea
Robinson, Marilynne	100. Gilead
Rowling, J.K.	101. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone 102. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets 103. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkhaban 104. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire 105. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix 106. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince 107. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Salinger, J.D.	108. Franny and Zooey
Smith, Zadie	109. White Teeth: A Novel
Steinbeck, John	110. Of Mice and Men
Süskind, Patrick	111. Perfume
Tolkien, J.R.R.	112. The Fellowship of the Ring 113. The Two Towers 114. The Return of the King 115. The Hobbit
Tolstoy, Leo	116. Anna Karenina
Twain, Mark	117. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
White, Patrick	118. The Tree of Man 119. Riders in the Chariot
Wilde, Oscar	120. The Picture of Dorian Gray
Winton, Tim	121. Dirt Music 122. Cloudstreet
Woolf, Virginia	123. The Waves 124. A Room of One’s Own
Zusak, Marcus	125. The Book Thief