girl, meets wolf

Nutella Pies

2014-11-15T08:44:00.001-08:00

Nutella Pie recipe is the best thing ever

ffefrynau friday : 05.09.14

2014-09-05T14:28:00.002-07:00

1. this photo 2. diy doily light bulbs 3. stunning blind
4. that chandelier 5. those shutters 6. a single bulb
7. this bicycle 8. that collar & colour 9. those giant lights

HERE & THERE

these self-drafted leggings here
these fabulous photo products (I've already placed my order!)
this beautiful new clothes collection there
this post from house of humble
stuff learned, there at the london book fair (a must for anyone wanting to write)
this post here on evaluating business ideas
this lovely blogger for renewing her space with me (get your space here)
these there brushes for your home
this tutorial here, on making your cheekbones pop
this 20% discount (AD573) on outdoor living products from The White Company here
these black & white pictures there

girl

ffefrynau plural of ffe-fryn fe-vruhn-eye noun 1. A person or thing that is especially well liked.		OTHER FFEFRYNAU FRIDAY POSTS: 28-Dec-13 10-May-13 18-May-12 Or click here for all ffefrynau friday posts
ffefrynau fridays

Grow // Tips on Growing Salad

2014-07-11T14:18:00.000-07:00

Today has been the kind of day I aspire to on a daily basis, a day of puttering and productivity going hand in hand, where the internet has been pushed only to the times my hayfever has driven me away from fresh air. In the battle of tors vs the back garden I have to award myself at least a 2, maybe 2.5, to the garden's 1. As the picture shows, it's still full of overgrown pots, creeping ivy and bramble, but I have cleared away most of the patio, and cut back the ridiculous amounts of creepers climbing over the wall between my neighbours and myself. I've left a fairly thick covering of the dry stone wall as birds nest throughout the foliage and I didn't want to disturb any of the nests or let ol' Codface have better access to the birds, despite being fairly confident he wouldn't know what to do with one if he caught it. I'll have to remember to cut them all back completely come winter, my washing line will eventually go just inside that wall, on an old fashioned pulley system.

I'm sitting here, munching on a pizza (alas, not homemade as I've not had a chance to make the dough), and a cold glass of Pimms. I've sown a small tray of lettuce and a small tray of cucumber today, which pleases me more than I thought. I can only hope, however, that their version of waterlogged and mine differ vastly, thanks to a small watering can that decided to gush rather than sprinkle. My fingernails are black (and blue, courtesy of a stint of ombre dyeing yesterday) and there's a good chance I'm allergic to something I pulled up if the welts along one forearm are any indication. And the itching. The itching was ... itchy. I knew I should have made my plantain cream already (next week, the oil will finally be ready!).

I was surprised by how much I have enjoyed puttering around the back garden today, pulling up the plants growing along the walls of the house, up the dry stone walls surrounding the garden, and in the small gaps of my patio. I'm considering pulling up the patio too: it's 110 square feet of cracked, broken stone and would allow me to plant far more than I can grow in pots. An allotment grower friend has mentioned that pots dry out quicker than digging in to the ground, adding another pro to the list.

High on that list are salad leaves. Cut and come again are a great choice from what I can tell, giving you a continuous source of food as you cut what leaves you need, leaving the plant to continue to grow rather than removing it from the soil as you would a head of lettuce. As a single person, living alone, I don't really want a full head wilting in the fridge as I desperately try to eat it all before it moulds or I get sick of it. Cut and come again would be the perfect choice. And, thankfully for me and my black thumb, the RHS say they're really easy to grow - if anyone would know, I hope it would be the Royal Horticultural Society.

Plantable in containers, cut and come again lettuce can be grown on a balcony or a window sill if you don't have a garden. I'm hoping to find a local off-licence that will donate old wine boxes as planters, they can then sit just outside my back door so that whenever I'm hungry I don't have to go far. Who says gardening and laziness can't go hand in hand? Interestingly, beetroot, radish and turnip fall in the cut and come again category as the young leaves on the plants are supposed to be yummy. Just remember to water your cut and come again leaves to encourage new growth, giving you salad until late autumn if you plant well.

Resources

Check out this thirty minute episode of The Edible Garden, devoted entirely to growing salads (cut and come again are at around 19'30")
The RHS' information on cut and come again salads
The BBC gardening website info on salads
Real Men Sow's tips on salad growing

girl

How To Be A Bone Fide Gardener

2014-07-11T14:13:00.004-07:00

If there's one thing blogging has taught me, it's how to waste time sat on my bum in front of my computer. While there's plenty I want to get up and do, my need to research, research, research tends to fade into obsessed web browsing rather than a decision to just get on with it. Take my garden, for example. Not that you would as it's a 110 square feet travesty of concrete and paving slabs and little else but weeds. There's not enough room to swing a cat, not that Emerson would let me (or that I would, you know, actually want to).

But I've been determined to start a veggie garden out there for some years now. My schedule won't allow time to visit an allotment, not with the wolf demanding two walks a day and biology necessitating I move eating up my to-do list, so the back yard it has to be. Except, I never quite manage to carry through on that plan at the right points of the year to catch sowing seasons, so it's been put off and put off and put off. Well no longer cries my wallet! No longer cries my vitamin deprived body! No longer cries my ever increasing posterior!

So, I am now a bone fide gardener. I even have the wellies to prove it. Everyone knows that step one of becoming a proper gardener is to have wellies, but did you know that step two is to fold the tops down? By the way, as an added bonus, this also helps stop wellies from slapping skinny calves and sounding like you're wearing flip flops - who knew?

This weekend's shopping list consists of things like carrot seedlings (or seeds if I must), cut and come again lettuce seeds and wishing I hadn't thrown away those sprouting potatoes because I could have just planted the darn things and gotten myself a whole heap more in a few months time. Live and learn. I even have some pallets, kindly donated to the cause by a local nearby, so that I can build a log store and a potting bench. Time to get over my fear of power tools then. I'd put that as step three, but power tools and gardening proper probably don't go hand in hand, I guess I'll find out now that I'm a bone fide gardener and all.

I spent last weekend planning my garden, with an awful lot of help from Smart Gardener because what do I know about planning gardens or keeping track of things I'm supposed to do? An American site, you can tweak the growing season data to match the climate you actually live in, which is actually the hardest bit about the whole process. So my 110 sq ft will eventually grow me a myriad of different vegetables. And flowers, because - inspired by Alys Fowler's short series from a few years back - I want a garden that's both productive and beautiful. For six lovely 30 min segments of inspiration check out this playlist on youtube, and for a whole heap of inspiration, both practical and beautiful, I've been pinning like crazy to my garden board, Garden Grow.

In fact, I've just figured out what step three actually is: hoarding empty loo rolls and plastic milk jugs (check out my pinterest board for why, I prefer to remain mysterious to keep the romance alive). Not to mention haunting every car boot in a ten mile radius in the hope of scoring some seedlings ready for planting at the grand price of 20p. A few more things to add to my to-do list there so, if you'll excuse me, I need to go send a begging email to freecycle for old windows with which to build a cold frame and get cracking on the ever increasing things to be done to get my garden ship shape.

If you're wanting to become a bone fide gardener and need a hand with step one, check out my fave wellies to suit all budgets (I actually own two out of three of these brands, if you're going to be a bone fide gardener you need more than one pair of wellies, right?). If you're already a bone fide gardener, check you out! Got any tips?


hunter original welly // £85	joules striped welly // £39.95	b&q dunlop welly // £11.98

girl

PS Dad's need wellies too, why not get your Padre a pair this Father's Day?
PPS Want your own set of Polabora photographs? The giveaway may be over (congrats Leanne!) but you can get 20% off your order with the code GIRLWOLF14 until the end of the month

Eat // Homemade BBQ Sauce

2014-07-11T13:44:00.006-07:00

Ah, the lure of an old family recipe, handed down through the generations until the matriarch who created it is all but forgotten. Or, y'know, one generation and the matriarch who created is lost in amongst the magazine and clippings thrown into the recycling. Mum's been using this recipe for homemade barbecue sauce for as long as I can remember which, in all honesty, isn't as long as you might think, long term memory isn't a specialty of mine. Epic barbecues at my parents house are no new thing, we've been having successful (and unsuccessful, oh garage door and shed, how amazing you were to us then) barbecues as a family for decades, and this barbecue sauce has helped raise some of the truly terrible ones out into apathy and into a happy belly. Not going to lie, this is a chuck-it-all-together recipe that requires you to eyeball your ingredients, but don't panic, you really can't go wrong even if you do actually get it wrong, it always tastes delicious and goes with simply everything (we've tried so far).

Homemade BBQ Sauce

Ingredients

3 good shakes of Tomato Ketchup
3 good shakes of runny Honey (equal amount to ketchup)
Worcester sauce (a good splash)
Dark Soy sauce (enough to turn the colour dark)
1 teaspoon of Dry English Mustard (or large heaped teaspoon of wet)
Sprinkle of mixed herbs
Salt & Pepper to taste

Preparation time: 10 minutes
Total time: 10 minutes

Your ketchup and honey are the base, and will give you the basic amount of sauce you're after so the more you want the more ketchup and honey you use. Make sure that you've got equal amounts of the two (or thereabouts). We tend to measure ours by goops, three large goops of each makes a fair amount of sauce, for more than 4 people you'll probably need an entire container of ketchup and a jar of honey as a minimum. Once you've got your base, chuck in some Worcester sauce and the rest of the ingredients then give it a good mix, you should end up with a browny-red colour runny sauce. Apply to your barbecue meat with a brush.

girl

Let's Talk ... Getting Old(er)

2014-07-11T13:43:00.003-07:00

Today is a 'contemplate your navel' sort of day, one I'm devoting to a topic relevant to everyone: growing old(er). If there's one thing to make you navel gaze avidly it's the prospect of turning forty combined with your first hen do experience. In a stunning display of youthfulness, my friend and I both left the girls partying at 9pm to drive home from Bath and fall into our beds, you don't get much more Rock n' Roll than that in my book. Consequently, today's navel gazing is taking place on my comfy bed with the odd moment of relocation to the couch for a change of scene, illustrated by scenes for a girl's bedroom (mine, in case you were wondering).

I'm not going to lie, I'm getting a little self-conscious about a number of things the rapidly approaching big four-oh has brought to my attention. Little things that no one has ever mentioned to me, that probably would have been nice to know in advance. Like middle aged spread is a real thing, and is really rather literal. My weight has started to increase, as have the number of bits that wobble that I'm pretty certain shouldn't, despite my diet getting better (marginally). Middle aged spread has hit, starting just under the boobs and increasing exponentially. If I can figure out how to crack on with my exercise videos without being pounced on by a six stone wolf, or without having to hoover the lounge rug to get rid of Bear's left overs before I get my dance groove on (I ballet beautiful, or I will once I get my act together), maybe I can get the jiggly bits to jog on.

My skin has also undergone a rather dramatic transformation, incredibly noticeable all of a sudden, and prompting the sudden stop of all commercial moisturisers: dry, flaky skin all over my face. So I've switched to plain old olive oil, at a lot less per bottle of organic oil than a commercial moisturising product, I'm laughing that dry skin away ... just without the actual laughing cos, y'know, laugh lines and all. Actually I'm all about the laugh lines, it's the frown lines I've suddenly developed that are freaking me out. Those and those horizontal lines that run across my throat and just under my collarbone, what on earth are those about? Thankfully the oil regime seems to have helped with the skin on my face, and the recent tightening of muscles around my mouth have meant my face is a little more defined this past year, despite the additional weight. All those forty year old actresses I'd thought had had botox or surgery? Yeah, probably not so much.

Otherwise, there's the usual suspects like hair growing in new and unexpected places. Thankfully I've just purchased a retro safety razor (blades are around £2 for a pack of five, if that's not reason enough I don't know what is!), so as my beard begins to flesh itself out I'll be able to keep that bad boy in line. Also, I can shave my legs with it. Win win. Sugar crashes are harder and faster than ever before, and so little fun I'm actually considering if it's possible to cut sugar out of my diet completely before I remind myself not to go too far with all this healthy thinking.

There are some plus sides to ageing, so don't think that I'm laying in bed weeping over it. That's purely because I'm so knackered and the wolf keeps jumping on me. No, the plus sides are pretty darn good actually: I learned to say no. Even better, I learned to say no and stick to it. While I'm shockingly bad at looking after myself on a day to day basis, my ability to reduce the stress I put on myself in the workplace is the best it's ever been. As is my certainty in what I want out of life. I have, literally, never been more me and for that I'm always going to love my thirties, even as I edge my way out of them.

How about you, any changes you've noticed as you age that you wish people had told you about?

girl