Monday morning

. . . and it's back to school after a lovely weekend doing something that I really enjoy - cooking stuff.  Only five days until the next weekend!

First of all, I followed through on my bright idea of little pots of take away style Chinese and Indian meals and re-potted one of the single portions of korma and sweet and sour that were waiting to go into the freezer into three little pots of each.  I found (or rather, it was handed to me on a blog plate) a recipe for a chunky green lentil dahl which I halved and made up (VERY generous portions) so that's more little pots.  I need one more Indian and two more Chinese-y recipes to make up and then I have three different mini-meals to put together.

I remembered that I have called a meeting today so when I made the oat cookies I baked some of them and froze the remainder in single cookie shapes, ready to bake from frozen when needed.  The baked ones, together with a few home made ginger nuts, will make a nice munchy plateful for my colleagues to lighten the load.

The tortilla pizza I made for dinner went down a treat.  It was really nice.  I had dry fried some onion, red pepper and mushroom, I spread some tomato puree over the wrap (a small one), then added the veg, topped with some halved cherry tomatoes, some very thin slices of chorizo and a little finely sliced Parmesan.  Salt and pepper, of course and in a medium oven for about 15 mins, maybe a little less - I wasn't counting.  The tortilla had crisped up and the topping was scrummy.  Most satisfying!

So it's back to school now.  All is ready, I have the comfortable feeling that I left everything neat and tidy and that there will be no nasty surprises waiting when I get there.  PPA for an hour and no playground duty today.  Good-oh!

Thursday morning

. . . and I'm looking forward to going into school!  Yesterday was good - great fun, sunny, not as warm as Tuesday but still very pleasant indeed.  Long may it continue.

I have a new toy - sort of have, anyway.  A local friend is selling her camera and I've got it for a few days to play with it and see if I like it.  I do rather.  I've looked up reviews and they are pretty good, the camera is in good order and it's quite a bit more complicated than a point and click (although I would still want a point and click for those times I'm just snapping away) so I will learn a bit more about photograph stuff.  It seems to do good close ups, although I couldn't get it to focus on a spider, it wanted to focus on the fence behind.  There must be a way to do it manually though, and I will learn!  Looks as if I have made up my mind to buy it, doesn't it?

The poorly camera has gone in for repairs.  Fortunately, it is still under guarantee or whatever it's called, so it should not be expensive.  I do miss it.

I'm finding the sensible eating a lot easier to manage now that there's a very strict routine to my days.  Yesterday went fine again and I'm now planning my next week's eating.   The resolutions are holding out, which is amazing!  Today's nosh is porridge, crispbread with hummus, yogurt and fruit, with chicken casserole from the freezer for dinner tonight.  Amazon should be shipping the Hairy Dieters' book in the next few days, so next week there will be a whole new load of recipes with which to have fun.  Good-oh!

Monday morning and the holiday is over!

It's very strange.  For most of this holiday I have been bouncing out of bed good and early, bright eyed and bushy tailed.  Today I slept through the alarm (which never happens usually as it is very loud and piercing) and had some difficulty getting my eyes open.  Mind over matter, I guess, and we don't have to be in until 8:30 so no problems.

The order of the day is Staff Meeting and then into class to prepare for the invasion tomorrow.  Having worked quite hard last week, I don't have an awful lot more to do today in terms of preparation for tomorrow so I can perhaps sort out another cupboard!

I had what OFSTED call an 'awe and wonder' moment on Saturday, which I forgot to mention yesterday.  I was sitting at one of the children's tables by the window, idly sorting those new found felt tips into groups (they were in boxes of the same colour to start with) when I saw a woodpecker - yes, actually a woodpecker, I checked on Google - merrily pecking away at bugs along the low wall.  He was beautiful.  I think he was a juvenile green woodpecker as he had all the right markings and I cursed my out of action camera as he was very bold and wasn't disturbed by me standing right by the window.  A site found by Google tells me that the green woodpecker can 'often' (yeah, right!) be seen pecking at ants in back gardens.  Well, all I can say is that if he thinks the school field is a garden, he's going to get a shock come Tuesday !!!

Not my photo, unfortunately, but just what my handsome youngster looked like.

Yesterday for lunch I made mini tortilla quiches.  Now, we all know that there's no substitute for a nice crumbly shortcrust shell but, given that they are about a million and one calories per portion, that wasn't an option. 
So I did what I've done before and used a tortilla wrap, pressed into each mini quiche tin and the edges trimmed around before adding the fillings.  No, it's not pastry but it does, it's OK and I can keep the pastry for best!  After chatting to DD, I am going to try baking the trimmings to see if I can turn them into some sort of cracker type thing as there was a lot wasted.

So - today!  Back to routine and timetable.  Back to being a bit pushed for time again.  Back to being surrounded by lots of people again.  And the food planned is the fruit, yogurt and crumpet thing as described previously; crispbread, hummus, orange and apple for lunch; and then, for dinner, a skinny pie using one of the portions of filling from the freezer, with broccoli and maybe some roasted honeybear courgette, which DD tells me is delicious.  As the oven will be on for the pie, I may as well.

So - better go and get started!  New year, new class, new habits?  We will see.

Sunday morning

Isn't it staying dark in the mornings now?  It's light now at 6:20-ish but when I woke it was dark and it wasn't so dreadfully early - not for me anyway!  With it being September and with the new term just over the edge of the cliff, not to mention the very chilly evenings, summer is truly over, what there was of it. 

I popped into school yesterday and I'm jolly glad I did as I now feel much more comfortable about the state of the classroom and, in particular, the state of my cupboards.  I might not feel quite so hypocritical now when I urge the children to keep their table boxes tidy.  And I was highly embarrassed when I started sorting the black hole that is called 'under my table' (as in 'just put it under my table, dear') because out came a box which, upon investigation, turned out to be a box of lovely, shiny felt tip pens.  Ooooops!!  They're in their proper place now and will be used.  I also sorted out my table drawers and chucked an awful lot of old stuff away.  Diaries going back years, old notes, pens that haven't worked for decades, etc.  I now have a drawer in which to put the week's sheets rather than having to keep them on my table where they always get lost!  I've set targets for the children for keeping the classroom tidy and I have now set targets for myself, keeping my area just as tidy.  One can dream . . .
And there's three black bin bags full of rubbish!  The cleaners will have fits wondering what's happened to me!  And there will be more to come, believe me!!

Joan, you will laugh at this.  A few days ago, Joan sent me a link to a checklist for the new school year from Flybaby.  Now, Flybaby is American and, my goodness, couldn't you tell!!!  There's no way that particular list would be much use over here except for a giggle or two but the concept - ah, now that's a different idea altogether.  I now have a checklist for the end of each day and for the end of the week, nicely laminated and blu-tacked on the notice board beside my table.  So many thanks, Joan.  I'll let you know.

For dinner yesterday I had the next portion of Hairy Bikers' cassoulet and, if anything, it was more scrummy.  Perhaps partly because the flavours had developed (the rest is now in the freezer but this portion I kept in the fridge), but also because on Thursday I forgot the very last thing which was to sprinkle over some grated orange zest and chopped parsley.  I'm not sure the parsley did a tremendous amount but the zest - oh, my goodness . . .

So - today.  Very last day of freedom.  End of the holiday.  Nice food planned.  Porridge, tortilla quiche and salad for lunch and then soup and a courgette muffin for tea, plus fruit and yogurt, etc, of course.  Sounds good to me.  I hope yours is too!

Tuesday - and the holiday is over . . .

. . . in practicality, that is.  On the school web site it shows as going on until Friday and it also shows that the children come back on Tuesday.  But, practically speaking, this is it.  It's into school this morning, to try to make sense of the considerable mess I left at the end of last term.  No, that's really not fair, I didn't leave a mess, of course, I didn't, but there were things there was little point in doing because it would be better to wait until after the cleaners had, as usual, been wonderful!  By then I was well into the holiday and then it was Streele Farm and now - now - it's all caught up.

As always, I will walk into my bay, sigh, open the windows to get in some fresh air, raining or not, and then start a list.  For half an hour I will walk round, noting everything that's going to need doing, organising and prioritising. 
And then I start!

A considerable part of today will be getting the stickiness off their trays.  Last year's labels - no, the labels from the year before - didn't come off all that well and, because I was short on time, I made and laminated new labels and just blu-tacked them over.  Today it's the pay-back and I've bought a bottle of Sticky Stuff Remover (yes, that's what it is called) from Lakeland.  Wonderful stuff!

To report on the skinny pie:  yes, it was pretty good.  It wasn't *real* pastry, of course, it couldn't be, but it held its shape, came out of the foil dish easily (I was worried about that without any oil around the dish), it looked right and the filling was really scrummy.  Deeply savoury and spicy but with a hint of sweetness from the ketchup and brown sauce and very satisfying.  Definitely one to do again - well, I have to as I have five little pots of pie filling to freeze!  With it I had a carrot pulled from the garden (is there ever anything that tastes quite as good as a garden carrot?) and some broccoli.  I have this lovely steamer pot, acquired molto cheapo from Matalan.  It's not huge as many steamer pans are but it's not tiny either and I often use it to gook all my vegetables using just the one ring.  Today it was carrots in the water and broccoli on one of  the steamer sections.  After some serious efforts I have become accustomed to eating my veg without any salt, either in the cooking or the eating, and I think I prefer them that way now, so steaming is ideal.
Anyway, it was a delicious meal.  And I need to start taking photos!

Today it has to be something that won't take long when I get home so I'm having a go at the Korma-lite (that's what the Hairy Bikers called it!) because I can make the sauce this morning, set the chicken to marinade and then basically just heat it up this evening and simmer to cook the chicken bits, which won't take long at all.  I'm intrigued - korma without almonds or coconut milk or cream?  Well, actually, I lie - you do put a tiny bit of cream in right at the end.  I like korma, but I like the deeply savoury ones, not the ones you buy in the supermarket or even from takeaways which are becoming increasingly sweet and sickly.  So - there's half a teaspoon of caster sugar per portion in this recipe and we will see . . .
Here is the recipe.

I wanted a photo to lighten things up a bit so here's an old one from Streele Farm, as this year's efforts are still on the laptop.

Monday morning

Guess what!  It's raining - what a surprise!  A wonderful start to the second half of the so-called summer term!  Yesterday morning was so lovely but it didn't last beyond early evening.  I'm going to be grateful and agree that as the experts tell us we still need a lot more rain, it has to be a good thing.  I doubt those caught up in the floods in Wales will agree with me though.

Yesterday was a day of paperwork.  I had a few breaks - I find I cannot keep going as I used to be able to.  After a while my brain gives up and I find myself writing total rubbish which is a sign for a break!  I had intended to do a bit of refreshing gardening in the evening.  On Saturday I went to Wyvale and found dahlias at three for a tenner.  I like dahlias and these were very pretty shades of pink and just right to fit in a space in my middle bed where the bulbs are now dying back.  So I dug some whitebells up, cleared away some leaves and made a nice space.  Ah, well, it won't go away and at least the ground will be well soaked when I do get round to planting them.  I also found some trailing geraniums which will soften the bricks around the beds and a yellow tomato which looks as if it is a tumbling variety from the way it is growing.  I think I will treat it as a tumbler and place it on a few blocks to raise it up - or no, I know, I will plant it in a big pot (for watering) and put the pot in one of my raised planters.  It will make a nice display as well as being useful!

The vegetables in the willow planter are growing like fury and I have had some radishes.  The mini gem lettuces are thickening out nicely and the carrots are also sending up nice green growth.  But, if you remember, I was trying seed tape.  Never again.  Given that some of the seeds didn't germinate, it has made for very sparse lines of shoots and the most recent rows I sowed have been sprinkled seed, not from the tape.  You live and learn!  The other thing I have now done is planted some salad leaves seeds in another pot, so in three weeks or so I should be starting to harvest them (given some warm sun).

And today.  Back to school.  It will be lovely to see the children again and I can hardly believe that the school year will be over in six months!  Amazing!!!

Tuesday

It was so cold in my bedroom this morning.  I like to sleep with the window open a little bit (they're tilt and turns so it's quite safe) and close the window if it's going to be very chilly, but although there's no frost, it felt really cold.  The forecast isn't good - rain, rain and more rain today, so I am prepared for indoor playtimes.

The first day back went well.  No-one cried - and nor did the children!!  The children wrote a good diary, their maths was good and generally we had a very positive time.  Nice!  And so on to today . . .

I hope my regular readers like the colour change.  Now that the so-called 'warmer' weather is here and it is certainly a lot brighter, I wanted something to match and I did like the freshness of that background.