Commonplace Iris

I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that if I'm going to keep up with posting to this blog I have to spend a little less time at the Bloglines website. The problem is I just keep coming across more and more blogs and flikr groups and adding them until I could spend the whole day just trying to keep up. After all, I think part of the point of the exercise here is to interact more with the blogging world rather than continue just sitting and staring at it.

My daughter has been teething for the last month also (4th of 4 top teeth hopefully making its appearance soon and then giving us all a break). This makes sleeping hard work for the little girl and at night time she won't fall asleep and stay down without being in bed with me. Consequently I have to go to bed with her instead of grabbing a few hours of time when I can actually focus on anything for more than a minute (which is the kind of time I find useful for writing among other things). You'd think this would have the advantage of me feeling more rested, being forced to go to bed and all, but unfortunately it doesn't seem to be working that way.

The arrival of warm, even hot, weather has also been keeping me away from the computer. I've taken the girl out in the stroller for walks on a lot of days over the last week. Often she'll take a nap, sometimes we'll eat together. One day I met another mother and daughter who we chatted with. Sometimes I've managed to get some rippling in while we've been out.

I have been making slow progress on my ripple-along blanket, on my fourth colour. I'm making it wide enough to fit on our queen sized bed so one row takes a long time, and there are two rows of each colour so I don't think I'm doing too badly. I can't get too far before acquiring more yarn anyway since I want at least one more colour than I already have (I'm using greens, blue, purples, an off-white and I think I want some yellow and a dark brown which may just be for around the edge when it's done).

Much of the "free" time that I have had recently I've spent on being a bit more creative in the kitchen (since I have to cook it's somehow a more legitimate use of time than sewing). Last night I made pizza (ever popular) with fresh mozzarella, tomato sauce, kale and mushrooms (having made dough on Monday to rise overnight in the fridge). The night before I was more experimental having bought tilapia which I'd never cooked before. I did what I often do in such situations and searched at various websites for interesting looking recipes and then used them to make my own. So we ended up with this baked fish and vegetable dish with roasted (red-skinned and sweet) potatoes. Here's what I did, for future reference:

• Heat oven to about 375


• Roughly chop 1 large tomato and mix with crushed garlic (2 cloves), lemon juice (tbsp), herbs (basil & oregano) and a little salt and pepper


• Put a knob of butter in baking dish big enough to hold fish, set in oven to melt. Meanwhile wilt 8oz spinach in steamer.


• Spread spinach in bottom of baking pan on the melted butter. Place fish on top of spinach, then tomato mixture on top of the fish.


• Bake in oven for 15 minutes or so


• Serve and enjoy!
  

You will notice that there is also corn. I served up the food and then put some frozen corn in the juices to warm through and added it to the top (as per husband's request). There was quite a bit of liquid in the baking dish after I'd served out the food which I put into a jug -- I ended up using most of it on my potatoes. I think we'll be having this again.

Since I really love to bake (and eat the results) I've also been making cookies. I discovered this recipe for Flourless Nut-Butter Cookies at Baking Bites a while ago.
I really like it because it's really quick and easy to throw together. The first time I made it the cookies spread more than I was expecting, either because I pressed the balls down too much, or because of the nut butter combination perhaps (peanut, almond and homemade cashew). This picture is of my second batch of dough (made with peanut and almond butter) which if you clicked on the recipe link you will note looks nothing like the picture there. This is because I added some cocoa powder for extra chocolaty goodness, and used chocolate chips instead of Hershey's Kisses. (I don't really like Hershey's chocolate, particularly their milk chocolate, probably because I grew up in England and ate Cadbury's which I still bring from England and horde. Also these days I like darker chocolate.) I think they came out pretty tasty this way, husband agreed.