Just a few of the remaining pics of home life from January, that I haven’t blogged yet.
Moo frying homemade doughnuts
After having a bit of a mini food meltdown a couple of weeks ago, I’m back on track with being a bit more organised. I’m not a natural menu-planner (mostly because I can find it a bit more challenging when we have a veg box delivery, because there are some things that although you can ask for them to be substituted, you don’t know what they’ll be substituted for… this isn’t helpful when I keep having random allergic reactions to various food), so for sanity’s sake I’m currently having Ocado deliveries instead in order to better plan in advance. The deliveries are supplemented by the odd heavily reduced regular thing (such as bananas – if it has a reasonable peel I’m a little more confident about it not being organic) and I’m feeling a little better about food again. Part of the problem is as I get larger and more tired, cooking becomes more challenging and I’d like to get better organised in advance of having to look after a newborn in a couple of months. As part of said organisation I’ve been making batches of small ‘bread pasties’ for lunch boxes and also some sugar-free ‘breakfast cake’, for those grab and go breakfasts.
We’ve finally got around to starting to use the dehydrated tomatoes from last year’s crop – the taste is amazing, far better than I expected!
Our peppers are still going strong in our unheated conservatory. I never expected them to continue to produce all winter, but there are still peppers reddening on the plants!
We’ve had some wood delivered ready for building a dividing low fence to keep the dog from part of the garden (essentially off the vegetable and fruit beds). The plan is to build an open pergola-sort-of-thing over what will be the patio and grow some grapes up as part of the dividing fence. However, a couple of days after delivery it snowed, so we haven’t been able to make a start yet!
January brought Ted’s 9th birthday (and this time, no cake failure as was seen with Moo’s cake!) Layers of chocolate sponge with buttercream and apricot jam, covered in a chocolate ganache made for happy faces all round!
idesgarden 
So much loveliness in your month. I know what you mean about trying to plan a menu based on a veg box that has many substitutes luckily at this time of year we don’t have many in the summer it is much more difficult!
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