Soup: celeriac and bramley apple

Last winter for a while I posted a soup recipe every week. This winter, as soon as the cold winter started, I started making soup again. For a long while I got away with last year's recipes, but eventually I got bored and started again.

 

I like this soup because the smooth, earthy flavour of the celariac goes so well with the sharp freshness of the apples. It's tasty, filling, easy and healthy - next to no fat, and no Weightwatchers points.

Knitting: a baby blanket

A very special baby is due next month.

Sunshine on window boxes

At about this time of year, I start to get hopeful. The mornings get lighter. I start to leave work as the sun sets, looking at my beautiful adopted city bathed in impossible - and impossible to photograph - colours. Then it gets lighter earlier still, and soon I'll be leaving the office in daylight. The quality of light starts to change - this could be fanciful, but it starts to feel stronger, richer. It is still freezing cold outside most days, but it starts to become possible to believe that some time soon, spring will come.

Smoked salmon, dill and cucumber open sandwiches

This is such a simple, fresh tasting lunch - very healthy, but every mouthful shouts 'luxury', not 'diet'.

 

As with all the best simple lunches, it's almost insulting to give you a recipe, but here goes.

Christmas knitting

So. It's been a while. To catch you up, there was a lovely holiday in the middle of nowhere, there was a wonderful Christmas spent between two families and before both of these things, the husband got a job after 11 months freelancing, and for the first time for a long time we were both able to breath and sleep propeerly.

There was also a lot of Christmas knitting, much of it done listening to audiobooks by a stove during the same holiday in the middle of nowhere, while snow fell and sheep baa'd.