My Lucky Dip Life!

Yesterday the girls were off sick with a cold, and I can't say I was feeling 100% either.  My energy was low and when my eldest asked for soup for lunch, I admit, I did an internal sigh. I went to the cupboard and grabbed a couple of potatoes and an onion.. and that is when it happened.  That is when I began to channel my Italian Granny!  Seeing the potatoes and onions and thinking.. what else? What other something could I add to the soup to make it, well, soup. It was then I had a recollection from my childhood, a flash of an image, a forgotten smell, of a soup made up of the lowliest ingredients, that tasted so good, was warm and comforting and embodied everything a soup should be. My Granny's rice soup. By some twist of good fortune I had some left over rice in the fridge.  And as I searched through my memory the tantalising images came flooding back of Swiss Chard and perhaps, celery? So I set out to make it.. and as an afterthought, grabbed my camera to photog

Last year I made some Gingerbread houses for my girls to take in to school as a Christmas treat.  Well it seems I may have started something because they both "demanded" a gingerbread house each this year and of course I had to indulge them! Thank goodness I'd saved the templates and recipe I used from last year as that saved me a lot of time!  I'm not usually that organised...  well if you call said recipe and template stuffed into a plastic packet gathering dust at the back of my baking cupboard, organised! I'll let the pictures speak for themselves here.. I don't think there's much I can add except to say I made the biscuits on the Thursday, glued it all together on the Friday and decorated the WHOLE of Saturday and Sunday.. well you know, like from lunch till evening time (read midnight!). People have asked me how much patience I have... honestly, I didn't even notice doing it as what better excuse than to have a Christmas movie marathon at the