Catching up, Growing and Vegan Ice Cream

This week has seen a lot of alterations some mine, some not but no photos. I started the week by getting rid of all the little jobs I had been putting off. So I added a zip to a dress that I felt was not fitted enough, re-doing the waist yoke on a skirt, taking in another dress, altering the sleeves and shoulders so I will actually wear it, fixing some of the boys clothes then  finally taking up and adjusting two brides maid  dresses for somebody.  The lack of photography does not mean it hasn't been busy but I will try to take some updated pics of some of my items this week as I wear them and I will link back to their original posts.

In the garden my husband  has now made me some planters from pallets that are hung on the fence, the reason for this is that the dogs insist on digging in newly planted things and I don't want my veg dug up as they are put out!  Obviously this won't work for everything but we thought for light things like lettuce it may be ok, currently they have viola and pansies in there oh and my swiss chard is up there for safety.

We have had that swiss chard in a salad now twice already so I am impressed with that little plant.

A quick peak at a few other things growing...

Strawberries, I think these will just stay inside to at least give us a chance ahead of the birds this year.

Tomatoes and courgettes going wild but I don't know why there are now white marks on the courgette leaves, I will look that up in a  bit.  Tomatoes smell so lovely I keep rubbing the leaves to have a little smell of them.

Curly kale also growing nicely though this gets big so will have to go out I just need to decide where.

On a different theme yesterday I was in the mood for something sweet and cold so I made this ice cream alternative.  It is really easy and just requires you being near the freezer so if you are home it's not a problem.

Vegan Ice cream 
Chop one banana and put it in a bag in the freezer, leave it for a few hours then take it out and mash it up.  Add 1 tbsp. peanut butter, 2 tsp cacao powder and a squirt of maple syrup.

Give a good mix then put it in a shallow tub and back into the freezer, after an hour take it out and give it a good break up and mash down again.

 Put it back for another 2 hours after this time it will be ready to scoop.
See easy, if you are home it is no big deal to walk past the freezer and give it all a stir is it. The good thing about this is that you know there is nutrition in there and not just cream and sugar as with regular ice cream, it is the kind of snack you can have after a long walk or a run when you need an energy boost.

Yesterday I picked up a couple more books from the library,  I had been reading The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock but I just couldn't get into it after a hundred pages so I took that back.  I am now reading The Utopia Experiment by Dylan Evans and this a non fiction work, I have to say I am half way through already as it is intriguing.  I have been watching a few videos recently  on youtube about small communities living small and so on, so this caught my eye while I was browsing.

Now don't get me wrong I don't think we should all go and live in yurts or anything like that, but shouldn't energy and water preservation be more of an issue in that it was something we had to do, a colleague of my husband's was saying how in Germany they still have coin return on bottles and it appears other European countries are ahead of us in these areas. I don't know why we lag behind.