Half Pint Pixie

We don’t really “do” St. Patrick’s day here, not really that into nationalistic, “celebrate the day we cleared the snakes pagans out of Ireland” type celebrations, but living in Ireland the day is fairly unavoidable! It’s one of those holidays that is a big community thing, all the school bands and local groups march in the parade, everyone else goes to watch the parade and a lot of people get drunk. So while we don’t personally celebrate it, it’s one of those days that is important to local communities, plus it’s a public holiday so everyone is off work!

So being community-minded folk, we decided to bring Littlepixie up to see the village parade today. And, as anticipated, it was stunning I was fairly staggered to see how many people actually live around here, I’ve never seen such a huge amount of people here before!

LP did enjoy all the people watching, and some of the more colourful dancing butterfly-type aspects of the parade fascinated her, but whenever random groups marched by with banners, you could hear LP saying “where’s the parade?, where’s the parade gone?” from her perch on Mr.HPP’s shoulders!

She announced later that this was just a small baby parade and we would see a big parade in Disneyland Paris! Oops, it’s still about 3 weeks till our trip, and she is so excited.

Weatherwise, it was a much-needed fabulous day, summer is on its way at last. Two loads of laundry dried on the washing line, yay, the first outdoor drying day of the year so far! We spent most of the day outside, it does the heart good!

I accidentally made themed soup today, it was only as I peeked into the pot that I noticed my soup was green & orange and very Irish looking!

I could pretend I planned it that way but nope, ’twas a lucky coincidence, I am “souping” all our fridge veggies and I had a pumpkin that needed souping , and I really wanted to make lentil soup, and then google told me to make this “Spicy Red Lentil & Pumpkin Soup“, so I did!

I basically followed the recipe as is, but subbed in 1 can of coconut milk for part of the stock, and added 1/2 a head of broccoli and a handful of spinach leaves that were lanquishing in the fridge. All good. It was delicious and yielded 6 pots of soup for the freezer.

I also made (yet more) of the very aptly named My Favourite Carrot Soup, this is a great “junk” soup as it will happily absorb any extra veggies you chuck into the pot. As always, 1.5 tablespoons of curry powder was added to the mix, and this time I also added an extra 1/2 can of coconut milk that was left over from the pancakes. We shall add coconut milk each time from now on, it is so good in the soup! Also chucked in 1/2 a red pepper, some spinach, a head of broccoli and 2 extra potatoes. Yield: lunch and an extra 4 pots for the freezer, but they don’t last long in there

I also found a motherlode of Celeriac soup that was hiding in the freezer, excellent, I had thought there was none left. I really miss celeriac, our veg box has been devoid of it this past two weeks, I might treat myself to some from the market on Thursday, how did I manage without it for so many years?!

We also had a little potter through the local woods, and all the crows are nesting in the high trees, you can imagine the sound they make, it is so loud there! And also a little nerve-wracking strolling along beneath them as you wait for them to poo on your head! A good opportunity to try out the 10x zoom on my new Lumix TZ5 again (please take note of the sky, does anyone know what that unusual colour is called? )….

Tall trees:

Close-up of crow & nest (see circle above):

Cool eh? I love this camera I’m looking forward to putting it through its paces in London soon! Hope you all had a good day too!