Recipe: Creamy roasted butternut squash and sage tagliatelle

I love to cook this when the nights start drawing in; it's so quick and easy and delicious. It makes your house smell like autumn and tastes a lot more opulent than it is!

It's also really easy to make dairy free and/or gluten free, see bottom.

Serves: 2
Takes: 5 minutes prep time, roughly 40 minutes cooking time.

Ingredients:
250g frozen butternut squash pieces* (note: see step 1)
1 onion, diced
1 heaped teaspoon garlic purée
1 1/2 tablespoons of good quality olive oil
1 teaspoon of dried sage
2 - 3 dried bay leaves
pinch each of salt and pepper
4 tablespoons of single cream

To serve:
Hard cheese/parmesan, grated, optional and amount to taste 
Cooked tagliatelle (spaghetti also works nicely)

Preheat oven to gas mark 5.

1. I like to chop the butternut squash into small cubes before I roast it, so I defrost it before hand for a couple of hours. Put your cubes into a small roasting dish with the onion, garlic purée, olive oil, sage, bay leaves and seasoning and stir together. 
2. Put dish into the oven, stir occasionally. After about 30 minutes it'll start to colour and the squash will begin to break down, at this point add the cream and stir together. Put back in the oven. This is also when I like to start cooking the pasta, given a cooking time of 10 minutes.

This is the point where I add cream, almost done!

3. After 10 more minutes the squash should be nearly completely broken down into a paste. Serve over tagliatelle with optional cheese on top. Don't eat the bay leaves and enjoy!

Note: I have done this recipe with both lactofree cream and soya cream, it works fine. Omit cheese or use finely grated lactofree cheese. For a gluten free option simply use gluten free tagliatelle, I buy mine from Tesco.

Musings at 1AM

When you have a chronic illness getting through the day sometimes feels like just clinging on 'till your next napping opportunity. Like you're existing but not living. When it's invisible it's like coming out of the closet when you socialise, not wanting to meet new people in case they ask what you "do" (eat, sleep, watch TV and stroke cats, mostly), or, even worse, make snide jokes about how you still live at home with your parents. You don't want to talk to your old friends because it's hard to see them do things and hard to admit you've done nothing. It's people gossiping behind your back that you're faking because they saw you doing something that one time and that you should just get a job, like you want to live this life. It's days after you push yourself to do something big where you count brushing your teeth, eating something and sitting on a sofa an achievement, when every sound is too loud, every light is too bright, everything is just too difficult and you turn into a crotchety grouch that cries because she can't open a tin of tomatoes. It's that stiff upper lip thing of saying "I'm fine" if anyone asks. It's feeling like a burden to everyone you're close to; your partner because you can't contribute financially, your mum because you never moved out like her friends' children, your friends because you don't have any interesting anecdotes and "been up to much?" Only yields the answer "not really" and you worry they'll get wise and dump you because you're no use to anyone. It's sitting around watching while your friends go to university, party, get jobs, marry, have children, travel the world, and you've not moved on from where you were 12 years ago when this started, no prospects, no future, no life. It's isolation leading to depression and anxiety so that you're scared of every little noise and walk round your own home on tenterhooks for years of your late teenage years. The best years of your life. You're never getting those back. It's the realisation that things are probably never going to significantly change for you and that you face a life of hardship and poverty, scraping by while people constantly try to push you into jobs you can't do. It's pain and the feeling of lead in your limbs and moths in your brain. It's life and you just have to keep on.

Product review: Lenor Unstoppables

Recently I was lucky enough to be chosen to take part in a product trial for Lenor. Their new product, Unstoppables, are little beads of scent that fragrance your laundry. I received this box in the post, very exciting!

While I'd love to be able to confirm or deny the claim that the scent lasts up to 12 weeks, I simply haven't been testing them out long enough, but here are my thoughts so far.

Firstly, the scent.

My bottles are labelled "fresh". While the smell is fresh, I associate fresh with something less floral and synthetic than this smell. It's nice, but overwhelming. The instructions recommend 1 - 3 capfuls of scent beads, I use less than half a cap and my clothes smell nice but not like they've come out of a soap shop! The smell is a lot less overwhelming and synthetic post-washing and is quite pleasant.

Ease of use.

You just bung the beads into the drum with your clothes, couldn't be easier! I've never had problems with them not fully dissolving in a 40 degree wash and they don't stain clothes.

Overall.

I have to say I don't really feel like I would buy these because the scent in fabric conditioner is strong enough for me. If they conditioned clothes too, then maybe I would. The packaging design is really attractive and they do make washing smell really nice. I'd give them a good 7/10.

Summer Storm

Together we lie, in bed. I can hear the dog's faint snoring, the rain outside falling in heavy droplets. I am warm, I am content. I try to sync my breathing to yours but it only makes me start to panic, so I stop. The rain has slowed. So has our breathing. We are one. Thunder, one roll, quiet. The second roll is louder. By the third, we are asleep.

Long time, no post

It's been a while! A year and a half! In that time I've made things, had good times with friends and lost nearly 40lbs. It's springtime now, edging into summer; my cats adore the sunny days when they occur! At the moment we're getting very mixed weather, blazing sunshine and then pouring rain and back again, but when it's sunny it's lovely here.

My little old lady cat, Fleur, adores the sun. If it's sunny you can always find her in the garden, charging her solar panels.

Two weekends ago, my boyfriend and I celebrated 6 years of our relationship. I can't believe it's been so long! We had a lovely day at an event at his university, listening to live music and drinking cider.

Craft-wise, I'm currently crocheting a long-term project, a hexagon blanket using the Hexagon How-to from Attic24 for my bed. I'm knitting the Still Light Tunic by Veera Välimäki. That's also a long-term project, being in sport weight and being so big! But I'm really enjoying it and it grows surprisingly fast at times. And it goes nicely with my Converse hi-tops.

Well, that's about all for now but I'm resolving to blog more from now on. Adios amigos!

Yule (b)Log

I love crafting around Christmas but my favourite part is putting the stuff up when it's done! My pudding is on the tree and Liam's car is on their tree!

This year I made snowflakes, both as presents for others and for our own window. I used Attic24's crochet snowflake tutorial but as I wasn't using wool, blocking wasn't an option. I got around this and managed to add some glitter by experimentation. I ironed the snowflakes til they stretched out and went floppy (you have to be careful doing this with acrylic, it works brilliantly but if you leave it too long you will end up with a melted mess) but then I needed to make them stiff again.

Cue hairspray.

I opted to do it outside because the glitter and hairspray were messy. I didn't just use a bit of hairspray, I saturated those snowflakes. I looked and smelt like an Essex girl by the end but it was worth it. 

It was pretty cold out there... That's solid ice.

Throw some glitter on, squirt a lot of hairspray, flip it, do it again, mop up any extra glitter and hairspray from the plastic bag and lay them out to dry (preferably not inside, the hairspray smell will kill you).

Et voila!

Merry Christmas!

It's beginning to look a lot like Feltmas

...in my bedroom. Seriously. I have gone insane for felt and hand-sewing and embroidery. I love how fast I can go from drawing out a template (I draw my own) to putting on the finishing touches. This was whipped up in about an hour and a half, including time spent ferreting through my craft drawers looking for brown thread.

This one's for me and my tree. All mine.