Spicy slow cooker chilli con carne

I managed to put this together in the 30 minutes that Sophie napped yesterday - yes!

Preheat slow cooker. Dice an onion. Fry with a little oil and 400-500g minced beef until the beef is browned. Transfer to cooking pot and add a chopped red pepper, four sticks of chopped celery, a tin of chickpeas, a tin of kidney beans, and generous sprinklings of hot chilli powder, ground cumin, ground coriander, and dried basil. Cook for 4-5 hours on high, or 6-7 hours on low. Eat with rice, tortillas, or jacket potatoes.

Christmas 2012 - stuffed turkey leg for two

Christmas 2012 was special for us: it was our first Christmas at home, and our first as a family of three. We had a lovely day of presents, relaxation, food, walking, and remembering the wondrous and amazing truth that Jesus was born as a tiny, vulnerable baby, to save and to rule and to reign.

For our Christmas lunch, we created a delicious and easy stuffed turkey leg. I bought an organic turkey leg from the butcher and had it boned. We chopped a handful of dried apricots, and mixed them with two de-skinned pork and leek sausages to make a stuffing. We placed the stuffing down the centre of the leg, rolled it, tied it with string, and roasted on a roasting rack for 1 hour 45 minutes with lots of thyme on top, covering with foil for the last 30 minutes. It was so juicy and delicious that we did not need gravy. We served it with roasted sweet potato, carrot and parsnip, and brussels sprouts pan-fried with smoky bacon. Yum.

Recently

Sophie's first lunch with mummy and papa in M&S Cafe

Learning to lift my head

This year's Christmas cakes

And our Christmas Day desserts

A hand-knitted present for baby James

Our Christmas reindeer!

Introducing Sophie

It's been a while since my last post. Things took an unexpected turn and we have been somewhat busy since then. Our little girl Sophie was born at 12.06 on Tuesday 4 September, six weeks and two days early, weighing 3lb 14oz at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford. She arrived in a hurry, came out screaming, stayed in hospital for ten days, and has been bringing joy and night wakings to us ever since! We have been overjoyed to see her grow and progress. She's more or less doubled in size since she was born, and she gets more beautiful each and every day. Nick and I absolutely adore her and she is starting to show signs of adoring us, which makes my heart feel like it will burst.

The first few weeks at home with a tiny baby who could not breastfeed consistently were very hard. Sterilising bottles and expressing breast milk on a four-hourly routine was laborious, tiring, time consuming and a bit soul destroying. But seeing our Sophie grow and thrive made it all worthwhile. We have been blessed with amazing help from family, friends, and some wonderful professionals who have made all the difference to us. I am certain that I would have given up breastfeeding had I not had such help and encouragement. Happily Sophie is now fully breastfed and although we don't get it absolutely right each and every time, she is growing and is for the most part a happy baby. Parenthood is easy, broken sleep is hard, but we are getting through it as a team and we are so thankful for our gorgeous girl.

In other news...

In other news...

We went to watch 'The Merchant of Venice' at the Said Business School's rooftop amphitheatre yesterday evening. It was a real treat. The production was very good, had some very funny and some very poignant moments, and we enjoyed a hot chocolate and a brownie in the interval. Plus, the company (my lovely husband) was superb.

I've also been enjoying watching 'The Great British Bake Off' on iPlayer. It's inspired me to want to do some baking, having not really done any since becoming pregnant. Since the coming Bank Holiday weekend is set to be rainy, and since I don't really have the energy for more active pursuits, I hope to do some cake-making very soon!