Store Stumping

Hello, pookies!

Well, it's most of the way through autumn and, for me, that means store stumping! Or, in other animal-fiction-based terms, I'm filling the log all the way to the top.
Basically, I'm making lots of delicious food for freezing.

So this weekend, I've been cooking. Oh yes.
(It's a shame you can't see my grin right now, because I am totally enjoying this.)

So!
I've made pasta - specifically, raviolis stuffed with Double Gloucester and ham - from scratch, using my fancy-pants pasta roller (which is actually a complete pain in the arse, but it's still easier than trying to make ravioli-thin pasta by hand).

I've made garlic cheesy buttery breadsticks. They were pretty good, but not garlicky enough for us, so for the second batch, I finely diced four cloves of garlic and chucked them in with the butter, rather than relying on garlic powder. Yum! I'm also planning to make the sweet kind with sugar and cinnamon. The garlic ones go very well with the two batches of the best bolognaise sauce ever that I made.

I've made honey granola . It was pretty much the easiest thing ever to make, and it tastes amazing. I put some blueberries in some of it, for Matt to take to work as a snack.


I've made enchilada lasagne.

We had it for lunch, and there's still plenty left for us to take to work tomorrow.

I've made sausage patties. Basically, I had a pack of cheap sausages about to go out of date, so I squeezed the sausage meat out of the skins, then mixed it up with some chopped spring onion and dried garlic powder. I split the mixture into two, then added smoked paprika to one half and chilli flakes and dried parmesan to the other. Then I split it into patties (two of each type) and grilled them. They go deliciously in a roll with some garlic sauce.

And I've made dark chocolate ganache truffles. Matt, being a very helpful sous chef, got to roll them in the grated white chocolate.

Although the sauce is already in the freezer, it's nice to see all your hard work come together, isn't it?

Holiday 2009, Part 2

How rubbish am I? I completely forgot to post the second set of holiday pictures. So here they are, just a few months late...

On the last day in Criccieth, it was, of course, gorgeous weather. We went up to the castle and along the bay. So. Pretty.




Don't blink. Blink and you're dead. Don't turn your back. Don't look away. And don't blink. Good luck.



We have always had pictures taken at this spot in the castle, ever since Huw was tiny. So that's about 20 years worth of photos. There used to be a little cannon in front of this wall, but we couldn't fit on it these days anyway. And yeah, it was quite windy that day.


This is Clem. He lives with my gran. He lost his one true love this last year (RIP, Tiddles) but he's doing quite well, still.

This was at the shark exhibition at the museum in Kettering.

Part three of my "Matt, Huw and Kirsty Murdering Each Other" series.

Boo!

Dave is revelling in having non-buzzed hair for the first time in years. This picture makes me laugh.

Playing on a lovely day. The assault course pictures were taken just before Matt broke his finger.







There were some awesome cloud formations.

'Hilarious' graffiti.


The big re-enactment we went to.

Fish Pie!

I thought I should post something a little lighter after last time...
I have bled today, but that's due to stepping on a shard of glass from a lightbulb that shattered (not my fault, honestly.)

So earlier Matt and I were taking a nap, and before we dozed off, I was lying in bed, talking about what I might make for dinner. I was considering doing a meatloaf, but we don't have much in the way of mince, so I was pondering making a fishloaf.
In the end, I pretty much made a fish pie. I didn't have a recipe, so I just made it up as I went along.

I sauteed some green beans, a yellow pepper, a red onion, some mushrooms and a few cloves of garlic, and then put them into a ceramic dish.

I baked three fillets of basic white fish, and defrosted a small bag of mixed seafood (smoked salmon, prawns and mussels) that I had in the freezer. I added this and the flaked fish into the mixture.

I then boiled and mashed some potato, and made a cheese sauce with a couple of teaspoons of sweet smoked paprika mixed in. I mixed the sauce into the fish and veggies, then topped it off with the potato and a bit of grated cheese and pepper. And then I baked it at 180 for 40 minutes.

It tasted awesome.

Cutting out the self-harm.

Like most of those who self-harm, I started hurting myself as a teenager. I would use whatever sharp object I could find to cut myself. It started off as minor cuts, then rapidly escalated towards the end of my teen years.

Why did I start self-harming? Well, to be honest, I couldn't, and can't, pinpoint a reason. I had the usual teenage angst, the usual problems, the usual neuroses, but mixed with a great big helping of self-hatred and (then undiagnosed) clinical depression.

A lot of people remember exactly when they started self-harming, and what it felt like. I cannot. I just remember realising how it seemed to help. I used sharp items to scratch and cut. I never burned myself, or bruised myself - the cutting was the focus. My left arm was the site of most of my cutting, as it was easiest to cut, and easy to hide.

I didn't enjoy the pain of the cutting, per se, but the adrenaline rush was amazing, and the aftermath was really the point of it. I liked the blood, and the scarring. I'd run my fingers over the scabbing, secretly, and it would reassure me. I'd feel like I had something I could concentrate on. Something that was mine.

Forgive me if I seem to romanticise it a little. Like alcoholism and eating disorders, self-harm is something that most people never truly recover from. It lurks there in the back of your mind, whispering to you.

When I met Matt, ten years ago, I was pretty much at my worst. My arm was cross-hatched with deep scars and fresh cuts. Matt hated it. When I ended up in hospital after a suicide attempt, the doctors were horrified by the state of my arm.
I was totally blindsided by their reaction. My arm wasn't abnormal, was it?

So, gradually, I started self-harming less. Matt was unbelievably supportive, and he didn't chide me if I relapsed. And I have relapsed, multiple times. Mostly when I'm in the midst of another wave of depression. But it happens less and less often, the more years pass. I haven't cut myself in 2009. I'm not going to pretend that I'm cured, that I'll never do it again. But I have to take one day at a time.

My arm is permanently scarred. The upper arm, where I cut myself deepest, has quite obvious scars, and the lower arm is criss-crossed with hundreds of thin white lines. I have a five-inch-long scar on my thigh which is, thankfully, fading. I have to live with this.

Do you know what prompted me to write this? Jokes.

I am sick of self-harm being a 'hilarious' punchline. I am sick of people being labelled 'emo' or 'attention-seekers' for self-harming.

It's not a laugh. It's not a punchline. It's a horrible, dangerous, miserable condition. I should know.