Spring in my step

Wow! is it march already, I always mean to write more on my blog and think often of doing it but then something else comes up, here's just a few things that have happened since my last post....

Making boxes inspired by American artist and sculptor Joseph Cornell, We learnt about surrealism and the artists and movement. Cornell's most characteristic art works were boxed assemblages created from found objects, so the boys had a root around and these are what they came up with. The bottom one tells the story of a man being attacked by a bear, the bear is hiding behind the tinfoil curtain!

Next we had some sad news, our oldest ratty Rexy got very ill and died, we stayed up till gone 3am nursing him but in the end it was no use, he's now in ratty heaven.

Where one life ends another begins, so we was pleased to find a load of frog spawn in the pond, since taking this picture Im sure they have doubled in size!

We had a lovely days bike ride on a warm day - the first I hope of many!, We went to woodland gardens and saw loads of birds, beautiful coloured crocus' and this years first bluebells (for us anyway) it made me realise just how I love the spring.

I came up with a great idea, my youngest is very picky with food and he takes one look at something and goes bleugh! then with the tip of his tongue licks a tiny amount and straight away says "I dont like it". It pees me right off especially if Ive been in the kitchen ages cooking, so the idea is we make our own cookery book, the kids take photos, draw the ingredients and get involed chopping and cooking, we eat it and if its good it goes into a binder. So we made butternut squash coconut curry taken from the use it all cookbook

RECIPE:

you need,

1 butternut squash, 2 cloves of garlic, 1 sweet potato, coconut milk, 1 chilli, onion, 1/2 tsp ginger, juice of a lime, 1/2 tsp tumeric, 30ml oil. You can add lemongrass too but I couldn't find any. In the photo there is a swede but I didn't use it as there was loads, enough for 5 generous helpings.

1. Put onion, garlic, ginger, lemongrass, chilli, tumeric, salt, lime juice and oil in a blender and whizz it up until its smooth (ours still had chunky onion in but we like it like that)

2. Peel the butternut squash, chop off both ends and then peel - this is tedious! chop in half and remove all seeds- kids loved this bit as there are tons, we kept ours to dry out and plant in the veg patch.

3. Peel sweet potato, chop both into cubes

4.Put the paste into a wok and fry for a couple of mins, add veg and stir to coat them in paste

5.Add coconut milk (marks and spencer do a great one 89p) mix well

6.Cook gently uncovered for 15-20 mins until veg is tender, keep stirring now and then to stop it sticking. Add a bit of water if juice is running out before veg are cooked, ours took about half hour but I cut the veg into big cubes.

7.Serve with rice and nann breads, I used home made flat bread.

Guess what it went down a treat but the little one still didn't eat it all!!

Chick, chick chick chicken lay a little egg for me.....

look what we brought home from our home school group meeting! These are one day old and boy do they make a noise! cheep cheep really loudly, once we sorted out they home though they settled down, I am so pleased Im mummy hen!!