Cooking - can't rely on this!

Could kick myself for forgetting to take photos of this - we made a simple outdoor solar cooker using our inspirational 100 Science Experiments from Usborne (I love this book, you can get it here and it's also on my wish list if any generous person would like to treat me!).

Line a large bowl with silver foil. Place some blue tac or similar inside bowl. Push a marshmallow onto a cocktail stick and stick it in to the blue tac. Cover the bowl with clingfilm and place outside propped up to face the sun for 15 mins (the book said). Check to see if the marshmallow has cooked, if not return for another 15 mins. Not too sure what went wrong for us as it was a scorching day and the bowl was certainly pointing directly at the sun, but it took us an hour to get the mallow slightly sticky on the inside. Nevermind, we enjoyed eating the goodies anyway. Was rather hoping this makeshift cooker would be fun for camping - don't think so! Perhaps we'd be better trying this style of cooker (I think I picked it up from another blog) - looks a little complicated to me, but it probably works 10 times better than ours!

We've all been quite grumpy since the schools have broken up. I'm putting it down to the heat, and the fact that everywhere we go there's huge amounts of kids (just not used to it!). The heat is stopping K from sleeping (her room is like an oven, even in winter) and making her quite tearful. B is better but we've all lost our energy to do anything for more than a few mins. It's B's 7th birthday on Friday and we thought, to cheer ourselves up (hopefully), we'll try our first overnight camp close to home at a local farm attraction. This perked the kids up and got them rushing to look it up on the map.

Have finished Henry VIII and his lovely wives mobile. I've enjoyed finding out about them as I'd never really had an interest before. I've also enjoyed reading Philippa Gregory's "The Other Boleyn Girl" and "The Constant Princess" (about Katherine of Aragon) - can thoroughly recommend them both. Anyway, thought we'd add the three children born to Henry to their relevant mothers to extend this as the kids seem interested.

Have been playing some board games etc., which doesn't happen that often. Kids played their own version of twister. Unfortunately the photo of B looks like he's had an unfortunate accident. He actually had just sat on a glass of water (which I carelessly placed on the sofa). Must say B is very good at this game and can get into the strangest positions!







Veg I thought were doing well. We're having to water the tomatoes at least three times each day as they are in grow bags and the beans have finally got some flowers. K's potatoes look ready for harvesting - a little nervous incase there's nothing under all that soil and bush! Unfortunately, K noticed that a lot of the tomatoes had black bottoms which is a bit of a blow after all the hard work. Have chucked the damaged ones away and a friend suggested giving the plants some tomato feed which I'll do tomorrow. Wondering whether to pick the good ones, although they are green, to ripen in the airing cupboard. Anyone know if this is a good idea or not?

Finally, check out this little fella (or lady). I found little hedgie in the middle of the road couple of nights ago - so cute.