Courgette and red pepper bake

Serves 2

1 courgette
1 red pepper (preferably long and pointy)
Mushrooms
Cherry tomatoes
Pesto
Olive oil
Black pepper
Assorted herbs (I used oregano, basil and thyme)
Breadcrumbs (I grated some stale baguette, so, thrifty food par excellence)
About 2 tablespoons of grated parmesan

Spread a couple of tablespoonsful of pesto on the bottom of an ovenproof dish. Then later sliced courgettes, pepper, mushrooms and cherry tomatoes on top. Drizzle some olive oil on top, add some torn fresh herbs and a grinding of black pepper, and roast in the oven for about twenty minutes. Then mix the breadcrumbs and grated parmesan together, sprinkle this on top of the roasted vegetable mixture, add another little drizzle of olive oil and return to the oven until the topping is golden and starting to go crunchy. We had it with boiled new potatoes and mangetout.

Tomorrow: courgette, feta and walnut loaf, I think ...

I seem to have developed a habit (or an odd mental and visual quirk, or whatever) of misreading things. When this happens, my brain transposes letters. Usually, I manage to sort it out fairly quickly, but occasionally, the misreading is actually quite sweet, such as today outside Lincoln Cathedral where I thought I saw a Snug Eucharist being advertised. I rather like the idea of a Snug Eucharist.

Those of you who are on the friends lists of the fabulous bingo_mcdingo and mockduck will know that the two of them organised a Livejournal Secret Santa. It was a brilliant idea and there has been lots of plotting going on. I still have no idea who my Secret Santa was, but my gift was a package of delicious squishy cookies and Bee Wilson's Swindled: From Poison Sweets to Counterfeit Coffee, the Dark History of the Food Cheats. Thank you! It was a really lovely surprise and both the book and the cookies look excellent (Small Hare is very interested in the cookies, and wanted to know who was sending me presents wrapped in Charlie and Lola wrapping paper). I hope you had a lovely Christmas!

It has been a relaxed day in the Hare household: lots of eating and playing with Small Hare's new toys, and occasional bits of snoozing. Small Hare has a heavy cold, and hasn't wanted to eat anything that didn't involve either chocolate or satsumas; he has just gone to bed and fell asleep within two minutes, which is rare for him. M and I are making plans that involve Stilton and pears and red wine. Best wishes to everyone.

Small Hare announced that he had spiky pie for lunch at nursery. It turned out to be enchiladas. Spiky pie sounds much more exciting, though.

What do you think would be in a spiky pie?

This is the best news I've had in ages.

This site is brilliant! I particularly like the fact that there are two different types of whale.

Mr H took Small Hare to Mini Music Makers at Stamford Arts Centre today. The Arts Centre cafe is one of those places where mums with prams congregate before various messy play activities and toddler music groups, and there has been a rash of snotty notices in the cafe about how 'mums' {sic} need to take reponsibility for their children's behaviour. Mr H was talking to one of the other mums about this, and she said, 'Oh, they need to be careful not to alienate people, given the power of the pram pound'.

The pram pound! What a brilliant expression! It is utterly perfect, and captures all those Boden-clad mummies (because most of them are mummies, let's be honest) meeting in coffee shops to eat cake and get away from endless episodes of the Tweenies. I have filed it away, and will tell the Upper Sixth on Monday so that they can quote it in their Language Change paper and stun the examiners with their awareness of the cutting edge of linguistic innovation.

Heard in Morrisons, in Alnwick: 'Ian McEwan to Fresh Produce please, Ian McEwan to Fresh Produce'.

- thus Small Hare, seeing Tony Blair waving on the steps of 10 Downing Street on the news today, and waving back.

A 'tishy' is something that is small and good to eat. Strawberries and grapes are tishies, and so (curiously, for such a little boy) are Bran Flakes, his current favourite breakfast. It took us a while to work out what a tishy actually was, but clearly there is a need for such a word (or there is as far as Small Hare is concerned).

He can almost count to five, now, too.

A very happy birthday to land_girl! I'm glad the sun is shining.

Purple sprouting broccoli in this week's vegbox! Lots of it! Mmmm.

I have flu. I haven't had flu in years, and had forgotten quite how vile it is. I spent all of yesterday in bed, apart from the couple of minutes it took me to ring land_girl to cancel our coffee date, and only emerged at one o'clock this afternoon. I seem to have lost three-quarters of a stone since last time I weighed myself, which was less than a week ago. I have some serious recuperating to do.

What's weird is that I don't know anyone in real life who's has flu recently. I do, however, have several LJ friends who have. I find this faintly disturbing.

Found in the oven this morning: a dish of parsnips, prepared last night for serving with sausage and mash and roasted to perfection with olive oil, honey and rosemary, but quite clearly forgotten about when I took the sausages out. I am so not a domestic goddess.

... the feeling you get when someone offers to lend you a book that you have neither the desire nor the time to read, especially when it's someone you like and you're too polite to refuse.

A lovely present from bopeepsheep this week, in the form of a copy of How Babies Think, and the inimitable Charlie and Lola. How Babies Think contains a perfect description of a two year-old who will go and pull a wire that he really knows he shouldn't pull, while all the time calmly and gravely watching his mother for her reaction. Sounds like someone I know. Charlie and Lola are fantastic. Soren Lorensen! I wish I had an imaginary friend called Soren Lorensen. Sadly, I see someone has already claimed soren_lorensen as a username. Bah.

Seamus Heaney, “Scaffolding”

Masons, when they start upon a building,
Are careful to test out the scaffolding;
Make sure that planks won’t slip at busy points,
Secure all ladders, tighten bolted joints,
And yet all this comes down when the job’s done,
Showing off walls of sure and solid stone.

So if, my dear, there sometimes seem to be
Old bridges breaking between you and me
Never fear. We may have let the scaffolds fall
Confident that we have built our wall.

For exiles from the North-West, an article in today's Guardian about pies. The line about Wiganers putting a pie between two slices of barm cake reminds me of the time in a French lesson about favourite foods, when we were about eleven, when one girl asked the teacher what the French for 'pie sandwich' was.

Good old Amazon have recommended Balancing Senses: The Six Senses Spa Book by Kate O'Brien, presumably on the basis that last year I ordered As Music and Splendour from them. The fact that the Kate O'Brien who writes about luxury spas is not the Irish novelist who died in 1974 has clearly escaped their notice, although the idea of a spa is a very nice (albeit unrealistic) one at the moment.

Sometimes, 'ffs' is the only appropriate reaction. If we're talking about 'matters of conscience', then how about placing traumatised children with the families who will be best able to cope with their needs? And why hasn't the BBC bothered to get a representative from the British Association for Adoption and Fostering to say that for some children, there might be very good reasons why being placed with a heterosexual couple would be a complete and utter disaster? It seems remarkably shortsighted that this is being reported exclusively as a debate about sexuality: nobody seems to be considering it from the adoption angle. Triangulate, folks, triangulate.