a quite surprising photo taken on my phone. yeah. snow. woo.
Too "White Trash" for gloves. and that hat was borrowed too.
It snowed here in lovely Essex. Don't get me started on how stupid it is that our country grinds to a halt when it snows. Yesterday, I cleared the driveway twice and gritted it, and the steps. then next door's little boy cleared the foot path for me because he's awesome.
My garden in full, white glory.
Today there's been no fresh fall, but it's cold enough so the snow is sticking around. i decided we'd go for a snow picnic, the Child was not so sure but went along with another of Mummy's harebrained schemes.
Cue home made soup, me digging out all of our flasks, hot cocoa and sausages. You see the joy of a snow picnic is cold weather, but hot food.
First off, sort out your flasks. Make sure they are good and hot before doing anything else. boiling water poured in and the lid put on and then left for at least 5mins means your food stays hotter for longer. I use stainless steel flasks because the amount of times I dropped and broke glass ones (losing my lunch and my flask in the process) was hideous.
Yes. You can transport hot sausages in a flask so long as 1. you're not going too far so they're not going to be kept hot for too long, 2. the flask is both very clean and very very hot and 3. you remember to take a skewer to extract the sausages at your destination. I didn't, which made for some amusing times. prepare your flask as above, then dump the water out and attempt to dry it at least a little bit. if you can't face slightly damp sausages, put them in a freezer baggie or some foil, and THEN into the flask.
So, you've heated your flasks and sorted your sausages. good. Not sort your soup. make sure it's hot, bubbling simmer at least. dump the water from your flask and immediately fill it with soup. the same follows for your hot chocolate.
Now, go out. find a nice patch of snow. lay out some blankets (I cut large bin bag in half so the blankets wouldn't get wet) and enjoy.
Alright. she wasn't keen. She appears to be far more like her daddy than me when it comes to snow.
Now we're home, I would now put our picnic blanket in the wash, but the pipes to the washer froze a few days ago so we don't have a washing machine for the forseeable. Thankfully we have a lovely next door neighbour and a launderette nearby so we're not too hard done by. and the dryer still works thank goodness. By this time next year I will have a tank in my shed above the washing machine to feed the washing machine. auto filling for most of the year, but able to be manually filled when the cold snaps hit. we never get too cold for too long in the UK thankfully. Yay! Gulf Stream! Woo! Anyway, this tank will also take the grey water from the condenser dryer too, the ultimate recycling. It's thinking like this that keeps our water bills down.
Anyway, my little home schooled darling has written some letters to be posted later, and done 3 whole pages from her maths book. mostly with the help of a bag of skittles to count out.... time for me to scoot. let's see if I can try and fix the sewing machine again.......?!
