Lockdown Gardening - Making Plantpots Out of Plastic Bottles

Our seedlings did really well (better than expected!) in our tiny dipping sauce containers, see earlier post Lockdown Gardening - Using Dipping Sauce Containers to Plant Seeds. Now they need a bigger pot. I haven't been out to buy any new containers for them yet. I'm still only going out if I really have to and I'm also trying to spend as little money as possible! 

If I venture as far as the recently reopened garden centre I know I will get carried away a spend a fortune. As a family we, like many others, are unsure as to what our income will be in the next few months. We've been meal planning and sticking to a budget since the lockdown began so I'm trying to continue in the spirit of keeping spending to a minimum and making the most of what we've got and recycling as much as possible. 

The sauce seed pots didn't cost a penny so I'm trying to carry that on to the next stage of my little plants' development. After looking at various options I decided on cutting up a plastic drinks bottle and using the bottom. 

It was easy to cut to the right size and add good sized holes to the bottom for drainage. The size should keep these plants happy for a little while during their next stage of development. 

I simply tapped the bottom of the sauce container to remove the seedling and soil.

And then transferred it, soil and all, to its new, soil filled container.

A little extra water and it's ready to keep on growing.

A couple of weeks on the windowsill and spells outside on very warm sunny days and it's thriving.

Paper Butterfly Toilet Roll Craft

My 4 year old daughter has been learning about bugs in her latest learning topic from school and she asked if we could make on theme. After looking through our arts and crafts box and recycling tub we decided on making a butterfly.

I cut out two wings out of black paper.

She then used different items to draw around on coloured paper.

I also showed her how to fold paper into four so she could cut out two identical shapes, she tried hearts and diamonds.

She got to practice using scissors as well as learning about shapes and symmetry.

Once she was happy she glued the shapes to the black wings and then we attached them to a toilet roll tube with sellotape.

Finally, she drew on a little face to complete her butterfly.

It was a super simple activity that she really enjoyed and time well spent on a rainy day.

You Don't Need Packs of Seeds, Save Them When Cooking!

Although I'd bought a few packs of 99p seeds before the lockdown began, I also started noticing them more and more whilst chopping up fruit to eat.

We always have fresh tomatoes in the house so I thought they would be the easiest to experiment with. 

 

I simply scooped out the seeds from a couple of plum tomatoes and placed them on to a piece of kitchen paper, where I also wrote on what they were. 

I then placed the kitchen paper holding the seeds in an empty plastic container. A takeaway container from the days when we had a weekly Friday night treat! Oh, how I miss those days! These were the perfect size and I could use the lid to make a makeshift mini greenhouse and keep them warm. Any other container covered with clingfilm to cover would do.

I added some water to the seeds so the paper was wet, but not so much it would be dripping.

Then I popped the lid on and put them in a warm place in the kitchen.

I left them to see if they would show signs of germination. It took a couple of days for the tomato seeds to germinate. You can just about see the little white shoots appearing in the photograph.

I then chose the best four seeds (running out of room to grow more!) and transferred them into the little pots and covered them with some compost mentioned in the earlier post Lockdown Gardening - Using Dipping Sauce Containers to Plant Seeds to

 carry on growing.

I'm really enjoying experimenting with gardening and also teaching my children (and myself!) about where the food we eat comes from and how wonderful nature is.

After another two or three days, they've started to grow. I'm not sure how they'll do in the long run but having taken less than a week to get to this stage it's a fun little project to give the children an interest in gardening. And didn't cost a thing! 

Desiccated Coconut Loaf Cake

I've managed to get more flour! So back to baking. I've really enjoyed making a weekly cake, it's given me some time to myself practicing something I've never been very good at.

I search for recipes to fit my ingredients but always find I have to adapt them slightly to fit what I have available and then I cross my fingers and hope for the best! Even if the results aren't perfect they've so far always been edible.

Today was my first time making a coconut loaf cake. I love coconut, and this cake is now my new favourite!

Ingredients

125g softened butter, cut into cubes

225g plain flour

1 tsp baking powder

110g caster sugar

100g desiccated coconut

2 large eggs

4 tbsp milk

Method

Pre-heat oven to 140C (fan). Line a loaf tin or grease with extra butter.

Weigh the flour, mix in the baking powder and then add the cubes of butter, mixing with fingers until the appearance of fine breadcrumbs. This gives the cake a light, crumbly texture.

Pour in the sugar, coconut, eggs and milk and mix really well until all elements are combined. If it's still really dry add a little more milk.

Add the mixture to the prepared loaf tin and bake for 50-55 minutes. If you want to add some extra coconut to the outside of the cake, remove after 30mins and sprinkle on some extra dessicated coconut. I didn't do this as I've got children that make enough crumbs as it is without adding extra bits of flaky coconut!

To test if the cake is fully baked, test with a skewer (if it comes out clean, the cake is cooked through), and if ready leave to cool for 10 minutes in the tin before placing on a cooling rack to cool completely.

Lockdown Gardening - Using Dipping Sauce Containers to Plant Seeds

Before the country went into lockdown I bought some packets of seeds to keep the children occupied with a bit of gardening. 

We had a shortage of plantpots or containers suitable for germinating seeds so we improvised with a plastic take away container, some individual sauce containers and clingfilm.

We seemed to accumulate these little pots of dipping sauce back in the days when we had a Macdonald's Drive-Thru and were given more sauce than we needed. 

Any unopened pots ended up in our fridge and eventually used up on homemade burgers, nuggets or fries. After finally using the little pots of sauce up when we ran out of ketchup and the like during lockdown we were left with lots of empty little containers.  

After washing them with the intention of keeping them for potential craft projects I decided to use them as a good solution to grow individual seedlings. With the pots being so small, I was also able to make what limited soil I had spread a long way. 

I pierced some small holes in the bottom for drainage.

They were also easy to write on with a Sharpie marker so we could see what we had planted in each one.

Once filled with soil, the seeds planted and given a little water, they fitted neatly in a plastic takeaway container.

I then covered the container with clingfilm and placed on our kitchen windowsill to keep nice and warm.

The children were so excited when our little plants started to sprout after about a week. Now all we have to do is simply tap out and remove the seedling and soil and transfer to a bigger container.

The little pots can then be rinsed and reused to grow more seedlings. 

Using these little containers saved lots of space and helped ration our limited supply of soil really well.

Apple and Pear Cake

For the last couple of weeks my children have enjoyed eating pears, so when I eventually ventured out to the supermarket I bought plenty. Then, as my children often do, they announced they no longer like pears! So I was left with two bags of ripe pears going soft quickly.

Instead of eating them all myself, I chopped up and steamed them all along with a couple of leftover apples and then puréed them. I started off with 8 small pears and 2 medium apples and after they had been puréed I was going to split the quantity in two and freeze them for use in a future cake. I was going to freeze them as I hardly had any plain flour left to make a cake now. When I went to the supermarket early last week there wasn't a single bag of flour on the shelf. 

In the end I just froze one of the portions and decided to experiment with what I had left of the plain flour in combination with other flours I had in the cupboard, desperate times call for a little experimentation! In the end I had about 150g left of plain flour and for the rest I tried 100g rye flour and 50g maize flour. And then I hoped for the best!! It turned out ok! I was quite surprised.

Ingredients

300g plain flour if you've got it! Otherwise you could always experiment!

1 heaped tsp baking powder

125g butter, plus extra for greasing

200g sugar

3 eggs

3 or 4 pears and 1 apple steamed and puréed and then left to cool (this can be done the day before and kept in the fridge)

2 tbsp milk

Cinnamon (optional)

Method

Measure out the flour into a bowl and add the baking powder and cinnamon.

In a separate bowl, cream the butter and sugar together, add the eggs and then the cooled apple and pear purée.

Add in the dry flour mixture to the butter sugar and eggs bowl along with the milk and mix well with a spoon or electric hand whisk for a couple of minutes.

Add the mixture to a lined or greased loaf tin.

Place in the oven and bake for about 45-50 mins, or until well-risen and golden-brown. For muffin size, 20-25 minutes.

After removing from the oven, let cool in the tin for 5-10 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack to cool.

Enjoy on its own, with ice cream or custard.

Easy Toilet Roll Craft - Making Bangles and Bracelets for Play Shop Display

After days and days of glorious weather, the sun is having a day off! We've spent lots of time outside enjoying the sunshine and the children playing in the garden so now the weather's changed my daughter needed something to keep her occupied indoors.

When we're outside together she is constantly wanting to play shop or café. Using her imagination to tell me the day's specials, take my order and then run to the playhouse to get everything ready.

As she loves playing shop and also enjoys making things we decided to pass a few hours decorating some toilet roll tubes into bracelets and bangles ready to play jewellery shop.

All we needed was:

2 or 3 toilet roll tubes

1 kitchen roll tube

Some Sharpies, felt tips and/or paint

Glue (we used Modge Podge)

Anything available for decoration, we used buttons, sequins, ribbon, glitter and bits from old greetings cards.

I painted the kitchen roll tube white so the bracelets and bangles would show up better on her display.

Then I cut the toilet rolls, first to open them up and then into different shaped rounds.

We then had fun decorating them in lots of different designs.

Once any glue and paint was dry my daughter could display them on the kitchen roll stand ready to play shop.

This was so cheap and easy, and she had so much fun. And after spending time together doing the making she now gets to use what she's made in a game of jewellery shop.

Easy Banana Bread

Bananas are always popular in our house, simple banana splits with squirty cream, sprinkles, mini marshmallows and smarties are a very popular desert in our house! Simple and easy.

But while everyone seems to be baking banana bread at the moment, I thought I'd have a go too! I've run out of plain flour, which is what was recommended by most ingredients I looked at, so I used self-raising flour with a bit of baking powder 'just in case'! I also added some cinnamon as I love it!

It turned out really well and all the family really enjoyed it. 

Ingredients

300g self raising flour

1 tsp baking powder

125g butter

225g sugar

3 free-range eggs

5 small ripe bananas, mashed with approx 4-5 tbsp whole milk

1 tsp cinnamon 

Method

Preheat the oven to 160C (fan oven)

Measure out the flour into a bowl and add the baking powder and cinnamon.

In a separate bowl, cream the butter and sugar together, add the eggs followed by the mashed bananas.

 Add in the dry flour mixture and mix well with a spoon or electric hand whisk for a couple of minutes.

Add the mixture to a lined or greased loaf tin.

Place in the oven and bake for about 45-50 mins, or until well-risen and golden-brown. For muffin size, 20-25 minutes.

After removing from the oven, let  cool in the tin for 5-10 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack to cool.

Enjoy on its own, with ice cream or custard.

Painting Pasta, Making Rainbows

Every day my daughter's early years teachers send us some ideas of things we can do as part of her home learning. She's four, nearly five. Today they suggested some pasta painting, something they regularly do at school but not something we've ever done at home before. We're a little limited on pasta at the moment so we had to think ahead about what we wanted to make and plan it out so we didn't waste any. My daughter decided she wanted to use lots of different colours with the aim of making a pasta rainbow. 

I wanted her to be involved in every stage so as part of the planning she wrote down the colours she wanted to use for her rainbow, she decided on seven in total. 

She then carefully counted out three pieces of pasta for each of her chosen colours. 

We are also limited on paint colours so she started off painting with the colours we had and then we discussed how we could make the colours we were missing. 

She enjoyed experimenting mixing the colours together and was quite particular about the shades she wanted so took her time adding more colour and blending.

Once she'd finished painting and let the pasta dry she arranged them on the paper in the order she wanted them. We discussed that rainbows are normally in horizontal ribbon form but as we didn't have enough pasta we had to do it in blocks of colour. Once she was happy with the design I helped her glue the pasta to a thick piece of paper.

Although it was a really simple activity it required lots of different skills. She did some planning and writing, having a guess at how to spell the different colours. As well as counting and adding. She also got to test her ideas about which colours to mix together to get a desired additional colour. Finally she was able to practice delicately painting small items. 

She really enjoyed the activity and with the beautiful weather it was something we were able to do outside.

She even drew a few extras to the finish off the picture.