When I was a child, I always got this one particular kind of redcurrant cake for my birthday. I don’t have the recipe so I thought I would just google for something similar. Shortcrust pastry, redcurrants, meringue topping – easy, right? Nope. The end result was good but nothing at all like I had imagined and hoped. The filling was too sweet and didn’t have enough redcurrants; the meringue was waaay to sweet. I really hope my mum still has that old hand-written recipe somewhere.

Birthday get-together for my nephews-in-law.

Speaking of shopping lists, here’s one of our best life hacks ever: a magnetic pen.

It started with a notepad for grocery lists with a magnetic backing that we got from somewhere or saw somewhere. We realized that we could easily make our own with magnetic tape. The original pad came with a (somewhat crappy) pen that was attached to it somehow. For our own magnetic notepad, we simply took a normal gel pen and glued a small rare earth magnet to it. The magnet fits between the body of the pen and the clip, so pulling it off the fridge never puts any real load on the glue, so it doesn’t come off by accident. But when the pen runs out, it’s easy to pry the magnet loose for reuse. Best thing ever.

… when the kids are old enough to cook their own meals when their meal times are out of sync with the rest of the family, and their cooking doesn’t stretch much farther than pasta with ketchup or pasta with canned tomato sauce or possibly mac and cheese, and they keep this up for weeks, and they somehow never learn to write things down on the shopping list when they empty the last package of something, and then I feel like making pasta for dinner, only to discover that the pasta shelf of the pantry is effectively empty.

I see deer passing through our garden almost daily. And when I was out walking this evening, I met this guy. They’re barely even shy. I guess there aren’t many people around right now, with vacations and everything, so they deer can be bolder than usual.

The hydrangeas I planted last year have both survived. One of them isn’t doing any more than that but the other one is bravely flowering, in an almost unreal, eye-wateringly blue colour.

Ingrid and I went out for sushi and treated ourselves to ridiculous passion fruit drinks.

[ Monday, July 19th, 2021 — in Adrian, Dailies, Photography — No comments ]

I have even less energy than usual when it is so hot, but I did pick up my knitting again for the first time in weeks. And of course “knitting” really means “ripping things up so I can redo them” as usual. (The sleeve cuff was too narrow, despite all the measuring and gauging etc.)

By the time I finish this cardigan, if I add up all the work I’ve actually done, I think I will have knitted the equivalent of almost two cardigans.