Busyknitter

07:30 - 08:45. Wave delightful children off to school [clue, organise your day off in term time]

09:30 Relaxing swim followed by sauna

11:30 Vacuum inside of car [doesn’t really count as leisure, I know. But it wasn’t going to get done any other time and the car had started to evolve its own lifeforms].

12:15 Go out for lunch with husband at the New Continental Pub. Eat very scrummy meal. Allow husband to pay.

13:30 Put feet up to read a book

16:00 Wake up just a few minutes before delightful children return home.

16:01 Normal life reboots.

What can I say, we had a completely awesome time. Huge thanks to my good friend who came to help out with T; couldn’t have done it without you. It was also great to spend some time with my brother, who is a Greenbelt old lag (compared to me that is)

As for the little fella, he loved it! Quite the little autistic party animal he was. He especially enjoyed any event with music.

As Greenbelt newbie, it took me a day or so to work out what was going on and when. But we still did loads. Beer’n Hymns was a particular highlight (two nights in a row!) As was a talk by John Swinton on the theology of disability. Also one by a bloke who walked the entire route of the M62 and wrote a book and a blog about it. And then there was the Taize worship. And the dinner I had from the Pie Minister stall (almost a religious experience in itself). Oh, and the Iona Big Sing. I could go on.

Camping with T was not too bad at all. The first night’s sleep was a bit rubbish; we went to bed at 1am and T woke us up before 4 and that was that. But Saturday and Sunday were a lot better.

And I spent a small fortune on books

Here’s a few pictures. There will be more on facebook.

Husband and older son plus my Mum have toodled off to Paris for a short autism-free break, leaving me and and the little fella at home. We have no grand plans because we are off to the Isle of Wight on Saturday.

I thought I’d keep a daily diary of our very quiet week at home. Here’s what we did yesterday:

Good Bits
-T enjoyed his first visit to his respite carer in a while (she’s been on holiday herself). She’s recently moved house but is still very close to us.
-While T was out, I spent the whole afternoon messing around learning to cook a new curry - chicken dhansak, mmm-mmnn.
-We cycled to the pool and had a very relaxing swim.
-Overnight I taped a ridiculously long Ingmar Bergman movie off Channel 4 to watch over the week - Scenes from a Marriage

Bad bits
- Have you any idea of the horrible mess that can be made by an autistic boy in search of sensory fun armed with only two slightly overrripe bananas?
-I spent the whole evening working, grrrr.
-correction, I spent the first part of the evening struggling to work with my underpowered laptop then gave up and moved onto husband’s smart games oriented PC (I’m going to have to do something about this in the autumn).

Finally, finally my older son S has decided to do something about his fussy food habits. He’s always been what you might describe as a nightmare eater; no sauces, no wet food in general, no veg, no salad, no bread but sliced white, no no no. You get the picture.

Goodness only know what’s behind it. Clearly I’m a bad mother who allows her children to use mealtimes as a manipulative battleground so we won’t dwell on that. Me, I think there are some sensory issues and a very slowly developing palate. I do recall that I was an incredibly fussy eater as a child and drove my poor mother to distraction for years.

The past year has seen a little progress and the gradual introduction of a few extra foods. And yesterday a revolution happened.

S and my husband arrived home from a three day trip to Italy. Though they’d had a good time, Mr. BK could not hide his frustration and irritation with S’s attitude to food on the trip and told him in no uncertain terms that there would be no more trips until he sorted himself out.  After all what’s the point of a trip to Venice if you can’t relax in a nice restaurant in the evening. The combination of this threat, the fact that at nearly 13 he does seem to be hungry all the time and a sudden and genuine realisation that his eating habits actually marred his dad’s enjoyment of the holiday flicked a switch in his brain.

Yesterday evening, bolognese sauce was eaten with the pasta (for the first time ever!) Today we went for a pub lunch and S munched his way through a few slices of granary bread (for the first time ever!), asked for a side salad (for the first time ever!) and ate it (for the first time ever!). What’s more he enjoyed them all

 I’ll have him eating olives before the month is out. MWAHAHAHAHA!

S has been agitating to go back to the Forbidden Corner for almost a whole year now http://www.asdfriendly.org/blog/busyknitter/?p=37Â so today that’s what we did; me, my Mum and the boys

Last time I’d had to take everyone’s word for for it about how “amazing”, “eccentric”, “spooky”, “completely bonkers” the place was. This time I got to see it all for myself. Unlike last year, T was a little trooper and happily trotted around all the underground tunnels with us. He even did the stepping stones (I got a soaking, he got off scot free!). Here’s a couple of photos

 On the way home, me Mum treated us all to some nosh at a very superior pub, with a relaxing ASDfriendly garden. The boys got top quality sausage and chips but I had a plate of scallops and langoustines with samphire (the last of which was a first for me) Here’s the link if you’re ever looking for some grub near Kettlewell. http://www.tennantarms.co.uk/home.html

I have after 40-odd years got to grips with the fact that that some people really don’t like Marmite (their loss I say).

But over the past few weeks I’ve encountered quite a few folks (marmite lovers and marmite haters in equal measure) who have actually never even heard of the world-beating combination that is the cheese and marmite sandwich. How could they have lived in ignorance for so long? It’s as classic as Cheese and pickle, peanut butter and jam, egg and cress.

Well, we’ve ordered a turkey this year, the first I will ever have cooked in 18 years of marriage. First couple of years we were fed by either my Mum or the MIL. Since then we’ve been studiously not having turkey as a means of fighting back against everything that we find just too stressful and horrible about Christmas. But it never works. Like the poor, Christmas is always with us.

So this year we have caved in and have ordered a bloody great free range organic gobbler, which I’m going to have to cook. All tips and suggestions gratefully received.

Post mortem
Organising the meal (so that everything is ready and hot at the same time) - 9/10
Knowing where butchers put turkey giblets - 0/10
Properly cooked turkey (ie not overcooked but no food poisoning either) - 10/10
Creativity with the veg- 5/10 (nowt wrong with steamed sprouts and carrots)
Crunchiness of roast potatoes - 8/10
Feeding the inevitable vegetarian (cheese sauce to go on her veg) - 6/10
Getting pleasantly sloshed on sherry and champagne while cooking - 10/10

Lessons in life for an 11-year old:

None but a fool will leave a battenburg cake laid out on the kitchen table, within easy reach of their autistic younger brother. For verily, were that young rapscallion to chance upon this most noble confection, wouldst he not indeed consume for himself the whole of that most succulent covering of marzipan, leaving the cake naked and the fool bereft

I’ve been baking bread for nearly 10 years now. Personally, I blame Worthing. We moved there in 1996 and found that there was nowhere, just nowhere to buy even half decent bread.

I think I’ve come to realise that Worthing is more typical of the situation in England as a whole and I’d just been fortunate up until then. Growing up in Brighton, we used to buy our bread at the incomparable Raven’s bakery on Ditchling Road (mmmmn, those almond slices….) . At uni in Newcastle and after that living in London for a few years, there were always plenty of decent sources of bread (actually Fenwicks Food Hall in Eldon Square, Newcastle was always good, they used to be supplied by a Polish baker based in Gateshead). The North West is not too bad as well. Our local supermarket stocks breads from the Village Bakery in Melmerby, Cumbria and also the best rye bread I’ve ever come across which I think is made in a Ukranian bakery in Bradford.

But Worthing, oh Worthing! The problem was that there was nowhere to go but large chain bakeries and the mega supermarkets. And what do you get? Wholemeal bread that you can’t slice because the loaf squishes into a pulp whenever a bit of pressure is applied with a knife. And white bread that’s no use apart from as a substitute for cotton wool to take off my mascara.

So I started making my own. For a while , I used to bake 3 or 4 times a week, so we didn’t have to buy any extra. Now that we’re back oop north, that’s dropped off a bit, but I still bake a large batch at least once a week.

Bread books
The classic work is Elizabeth David’s English Bread and Yeast Cookery (see link on the side panel). Lots of history and a whole chapter on the use of salt in bread! It describes methods of making differnt breads, but doesn’t give many recipes as such.

Recipes galore in my other book, The Sunday Times Book of Real Bread, published in 1974 and now long out of print. I spotted it in a second hand bookshop and it’s a brilliant source of ideas.

But my basic white bread recipe is from my battered, old copy of Delia - slightly amended over the years to make larger quantities.

Ask anyone who knows me at all well what my favorite food is and they should tell you without hesitation that I am always eating apples, all day - every day.

Any variety will do (except Granny Smiths, nasty acidic objects). But you just cannot beat a fresh, sweet, juicy English Apple. So I always look forward to seeing the first Discoveries in the shops. They’re not as tasty as Cox, Russet or Katy. But they are the first. And here they are: