Nibbling...

I don't know who said the cold burns extra calories but that's not what my jeans tell me!

The need for carbs though is stronger for ever as comfort eating becomes the only way to survive as I look out on endless whiteness; snow, freezing fog, ice - not much to inspire the eyes so the tongue has to be tantalised instead!!

So this morning I made Cheese Pastry Sticks from Cooking for Coco by Sian Blunos.

100g cream cheese
100g butter
100g plain flour

She says mix the ingredients together until it resembles course bread crumbs then bring them together into a ball and chill over night or for a few hours at least.

Although 100g of flour should have been enough to cope with the cheese and butter, mine was very wet and bread crumb effect was far off. I put a load of extra flour in (after scrounging some from the neighbour) and it became a slightly sticky, quite solid ball.

Unperturbed I put it in the fridge overnight and rolled it out successfully, cutting it into little stars before egg-washing it and baking on 230C for 10 mins.

They are lovely, though could do with seasoning. Sian also suggests poppy, carraway (yuk) or seasame seeds which would be delicious but not so good for blossom at this stage. However I think some grain mustard or maybe even flavoured cream cheese might work too.

First time I've done some baking for ages, and it worked, brilliant!

Poetry please...

"Poetry is the music of being human"

So says Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy in last Sunday's Songs Of Praise. I just love that description, it ties in to my ongoing fascination with the ordinary being a dwelling place of something 'other'.

For words are indeed musical and also magical and it's the enchanting that is often beautifully brought alive in poems.

Carol Ann's poem Prayer (echoing that by George Herbert) does just that for me, it's the perfect explanation of God being in the very fabric of our existance, again it's the mystical in the everyday...

Prayer (1993)

Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer
utters itself. So, a woman will lift
her head from the sieve of her hands and stare
at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift.

Some nights, although we are faithless, the truth
enters our hearts, that small familiar pain;
then a man will stand stock-still, hearing his youth
in the distant Latin chanting of a train.

Pray for us now. Grade I piano scales
console the lodger looking out across
a Midlands town. Then dusk, and someone calls
a child's name as though they named their loss.

Darkness outside. Inside, the radio's prayer -
Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre.

I wonder what are the unformed prayers of our days, what sounds make up the music of our humanness?

Maybe that's something to attend to for another post...

Something 'extra'...

11 months ago I did something extraordinary, I gave birth to a baby girl. What followed has undoubtedly been an incredible adventure, filled with almost-daily miracles but at the same time the ordinary is larger than ever and how to deal with it is a big question for this year, and my sanity.

The routine of motherhood, of living in windows of free time is challenging. Like writing this blog post, I can only do it now because Blossom has finally on the third attempt gone to sleep. How do I make those windows count, without exhausting myself and with still achieving all the hum drum must-do's like cleaning, washing etc. How do I handle the guilt I put on myself if I spend my small parcel of free time reading a magazine or online as it doesn't seem a substantial achievement for my day?

Thinking about this as the snow pours out of the sky is also interesting, here is extraordinary weather which results in us being stuck inside the house, stuck with the ordinary.

I wonder if this collocation always follows? Perhaps that's a clue to the answer to this question.

Perhaps the extraordinary is closer to the ordinary than we think?