What To Do With Time on Your Hands

As regular readers will have spotted by the reduction in frequency of my posts, time is at a premium recently. So with a week of relative ease - well a week away from work at any rate - I have lighted upon a few things I have neglected.

• I have sharpened all the knives in the kitchen - a task I enjoy and, for the boy scouts among us, a topic of great interest. There are many fascinating methods of achieving razor like sharpness, I prefer the DMT Diamond sharpening system myself, with its angle guide for those of us whose free hand angle maintenance is not sufficiently confident.
  
  
• I have baked bread using the time consuming, flavour developing, old fashioned, sponge method rather than the 'speed is everything so chuck a ton of yeast in it' bread machine method.Yum!
  
  
• We are cooking properly for every meal. This really is a luxury; I hoyed off to Sainsurys and picked up a copy of Delicious magazine. You are always spoilt for choice with Delicious, with more than enough recipes - if you have the time. Usually we avoid the magazine like the plague because it just makes you feel guilty as you chuck a jar of pasta sauce in with the mince on an average work day.
  
  
• If the weather picks up, I am going to dig up part of our middle lawn to make a raised veg bed. We had to give up the allotment because we didn't have the time; but with a bed just outside the patio door we should to at least be able sow garlic this autumn, and then perhaps some beetroot and other easy crops next year.
  

And here is where, with the smoothness of a Radio 2 DJ, I move onto Catherine's kind comments over at her New Zealand based blog. You see she flattered me by recommending my blog among her favourites. Why is this relevant to my week off? Because the other thing I've been doing is catching up on my blog reading, so, by return, I can recommend some of my current favourites too:

• Adventures of an Urban Cowgirl: This, together with my second choice, was one of the first blogs I read. It's the engagingly written account of a woman who moved to New Zealand. Like all the best blogs, it's the writing that does it.
  
• Blunt By Name: Bill Blunt is an institution and his wry look at life through the spectacles of an aged, enbittered hack make this an enjoyable read (especially if you need to know a decent Wetherspoons near you)
• Occupied Country: a fellow Mancunian with a great taste in music and always great pictures
• Mr Woppit: Takes life seriously; in his own words - Emptying the nose of life into the handkerchief of derision
• Mystic Veg: What I'd like to be able to do in the garden and more, from a fellow Oldhamer (a displaced one that is)
• The Toy Cupboard: I like blogs that take a different twist on blogging. This is one of those, and my next choice is another. The Toy Cupboard features, well, a cupboard of childhood toys, memories and anecdotes - makes you feel warm all over (that is assuming your childhood memories haven't cost you thousands in therapy bills).
• Diary of a 70s Teen: Exactly what it says - read it and remember what you were doing when...
• Olga The Travelling Bra: An uplifting travel blog, great fun!