recipe

Everyone has been blogging about favourite recipes and this is one of mine - it's a really easy, very mild curry and I reckon it's pretty low in fat, because it's yoghurt based. It's a veggie version, but you can probably include chicken if you prefer.

You need:

spinich (half a bag)
potatoes (a couple)
Onion
Pepper
Yoghurt (250g)
creamed coconut (50g)
1 teaspoon of all the following:
Chili powder
Ginger
Garlic pulp
1.5 teaspoons of Garam Masala
quater of teaspoon of tumeric
Grind a few black peppercorns and a few mustard seeds

What you do:

Whisk together the Yoghurt, coconut, garam masala, chili, ginger, tumeric, peppercorn and mustard seeds.
Fry the onion and pepper, add the potatoes and spinich (you can pre-cook the veg a bit if you're in a hurry) and then the yoghurt mixture. Cook until the veg is soft.

Goes great with Naan and rice.

Madge

I'm sitting listening to Madonna whose doing what she does on the telly behind me. When I do turn round it looks to be a pretty amazing show - the dancers are SO good. ACW is playing his mandolin along to 'i've heard it all before', it kinda works - maybe we should suggest it to Madge! ;-)

Just came back from watching 'this is seb clarke' and 'the bees' at the Sugarmill - they were good - fantastic energy. And last night we did a gig at Marston Montgomery, in an old addison hut style village hall. Everyone danced and it was great to watch. And today, I've been scouring Chordie.com (highly recommended) for my fave tunes to play on the guitar. I'm not at all good at playing anything, but I get so much enjoyment from playng music with other people - there is a connection - you forget yourself and nothing seems to matter for those moments - it's like a spell. Sometimes it doesn't happen - but when it does...

William Morris

We were talking about what's important in life. It was sparked by Nat's blog saying that the best things in life really were free and I think they are too. William Morris said that we need something for our head and something for our heart, something to keep our mind ticking over and something we can create, stand back and admire. The sense of achievement I get from making something, even with my bodger attitude towards creating things is enormous in comparison to the momentary satisfaction from buying something.

It's been a strange couple of weeks - few ups and a few downs. I'm aiming for the 2nd week in December in the hope that life will be less of a rush by then.

On my bike

Back cycling in to work. I'm trying to convince myself that I missed it and I think I have. Although, by the time I get home I feel pretty tired. I know it does me good, clears my head and gives me the opportunity to reflect on the day.

Saturday was spent at the Hope Centre in Hanley celebrating Mind's 30th Birthday. It was a great day. There were so many things going on, I would love to have had more time to be able to have a go at everything. I did get a chance to play some African drums though, courtesy of David from Stoke. He was very patient, and by the end it was all coming together producing some slick rhythms - my hands were complaining though.

Sleepless nights...

Really struggled to get to sleep last night. I'm not sure why, maybe it was the French cheese I bought from the continental market in Hanley on Friday (which was delicious). I felt restless, not in a bad frustrated way, but just wanted to get on with things.

So I wondered what other people do to relax or to get to sleep and thought perhaps we could start a tips bit on the home page.

Would you be prepared to share the things that work for you?

Each week we could change the list on the home page and archive the rest so you can still access it.

Top anything would be interesting.

Top feel good tune
Top feel good film
Memorable experience

Ideas most welcome. :-)

Food for thought....

The title summed up the day. The food for thought conference at the Kings Hall in Stoke on Trent was an excellent example of just what can be achieved if you're prepared to be bold. It was an ambitious programme filled with speakers who are leaders in their field. The big theme was how important diet is to your mental health and how much we can do to take better care of our mental well being.

Suggestions included half filling a jar with flax seeds, then topping the rest up with sunflower, sesame and pumpkin seeds. Keep it in the fridge and each morning grind a handful and add it to your cereal - ideally an oat based cereal. Easy - so I've been out and spent £1 on a big bag of mixed seeds and that's what I'm going to do!

Loads of other foody ideas too, which we're hoping to include some of on the web site.

Oh…and the buffet appropriately consisted of the most delicious collection of culinary delights I’ve ever encountered at a conference and of course, it was all healthy and great for your mental well being!

Well done to the magmh team, they deserve rich praise for having the courage to make it happen!

Everlasting love...

Jamie Cullan's version of Everlasting Love has been buzzing in my head all day. I'm hoping that by writing it down, it will some how leave. I do hope however it doesn't prove contagious for anyone reading this.

Mouse guards

I had to go and put the mouse guards on the hives yesterday. It's a little late really, you're supposed to do it before the first frost. They are literally guards against mice moving in to snuggle up with the bees for the winter. They don't bother the bees and rather surprisingly the bees don't bother them, but the mice nibble the stores and the wax so... Anyway there's a shed on the site and I'm fairly sure they'll find that and go and live in there.

The bees were pretty grumpy too and I got stung on the knee. We have to remove the entrance blocks first, which always annoys the bees. These are used late in the season to narrow the entrance of the hives so that the guard bees can defend the colony from robbing by neighbouring colonies and wasps. But in the winter they need ventilation so they are removed and the mouse guards are put in their place. Apparently a mouse can squeeze in to a hole that is just over 1 cm wide!!! There heads are wider than they are tall and they can sort of flatten themselves to squeeze into the gap. Anyway...better get on - my list beckons.

Nature was looking a bit defeated by the frost.

Egg, chips and beans

You cannot beat Egg, Chips and beans paricularly if the chips are 'home made'

That sort of summed up my day. My favourite meal with friends who I don't see often enough and miss a great deal.

The moon is nearly full and the temperature is just above freezing. I love clear days and cold nights.