LifeCircle 2012: Outside the comfort zone, but not what I was expecting

Once again, this was not the post I was intending to write. I have been working diligently on pushing my comfort zone and thought it was all in hand but I managed to pick something that was not totally under my control.

And then, earlier this week, I had the rug pulled from under me and I truly am out of my comfort zone. As a result, I currently have no regular work lined up for the foreseeable future and that is scary as hell. I feel I need to work on that but I didn't want to leave this post another week.

This may mean the end of Life Circle for a while. At the moment, achieving some kind of financial security for my family is my top priority and that may mean I can't commit to writing posts on particular days. I will do what I can, but I'm not going to promise. On top of that, I have a busy time for the next week or so as it is Nearly New Sale time again. To add further to this, I'm really not sure where to take Life Circle - I am wondering about whether just setting prompts to blog about and explore in your life might work better. What do you think?

I hope you have had a better time with this task than I have. I do look forward to seeing what you've done in the time we've been off. Hopefully, doing something slightly scary is good for you, it can kick start all kinds of things and who knows where it will take you?

As ever, the linky opens at 6am today and stays open for 2 weeks so you have until 17th May to link up your post.

Thanks for reading.

On my birthday meme - a challenge for all bloggers!

Yes, yes, my birthday was a while back but I've had this idea in my head for a while for a meme. It was something that we did for fun when I used to post on the Handbag forums, when Wikipedia was first becoming popular and vaguely useful.

I'm kind of reviving it for the blog but I'm going to try and be ambitious for this one. I'm going to set up a linky and attempt to get at least one post for all 366 days of the year. If you add your post to it, please try to mention the date of your birthday in the link title if you can. That way, I can check through the list quickly to check how we're doing. It won't matter if we get more than one post for the same date, the aim will be at least one post for each day on the calendar.

What you will have to do is answer questions about your birthday. If you don't know where to look, the best way is to go to Wikpedia, type in your birthday in the search box and it will tell you all you ever want to know (and more) about your special day. Obviously, you can take what is said with a pinch of salt but it's mostly correct. There is also a site called On This Day which you can use but it's not as user-friendly and the lists are not as extensive.

I'm always fascinated with people and things that happened on my birthday. I'm nosey enough to want to know about all your birthdays too, and what you find fascinating about your own birthday. I'm going to tag a few people at the end of this post but don't wait to be tagged if you want to join in - blog and link up, but I would be grateful if you could tag others for me so we can spread it around a bit.

Better get on with the questions then.

When is your birthday? 6th January

Pick three people who share your birthday and share what you know about them.
My three are:
- Kahil Gibran, whose book The Prophet is an absolute favourite of mine, and I've read quite a lot of his work. He even has the same initials as me before I was married. He died before my parents were born, let alone me, so I couldn't really tell you what he was like but I bet he was interesting.
- Nigella Lawson; can you see the similarity? Whaddya mean no?!
- Andy Carroll. Oh dear.

That would make for an interesting dinner party, wouldn't it?

When I was growing up, the only famous person it was ever mentioned shared my birthday with me was Sylvia Syms. Yeah, who? Now, there seems to be a sprinkling of ageing comedian/TV presenter (Angus Deayton, Rowan Atkinson), a dodgy but loveable national football manager (Terry Venables) and a saint (Joan of Arc, allegedly). All very interesting.

Is anyone listed as being born on the same day as you (ie the same year)? If so, what do you know about them?
Erm, well, Wikipedia lists three people - an American Muslim writer, a Cuban wrestler and a Danish political scientist. Again, an eclectic mix but I've never heard of any of them ever before. I know not a sausage. I could tell you from their Wikipedia entries but I suspect you'd drop off.

List three people who died on your birthday and tell us what you know about them. 
Looking down the list, a name leapt out at me - Theodore Roosevelt, the former US president, who died in 1919. And then, in 1993, both Dizzy Gillespie the jazz trumpeter, and Rudolf Nureyev, the ballet dancer, died on the same day. Which was a surprise to me - I remembered Nureyev dying of an AIDS related illness as it was the talk of the newspapers but I don't remember Dizzy Gillespie dying at the same time.

List three notable events that took place on your birthday.
At the top of the list, it mentions that King Harold (or Harold Godwinson) was crowned on 6 January 1066. Err, yes. That ended well and was a long reign. Not. Then, a little more recently in 1947, Pan-Am became the first airline to schedule a flight around the world - yes, around the whole world! Finally, 6 January 1994 will become forever notorious as the day when the American figure skater Nancy Kerrigan got clubbed on the knee by someone paid by her rival's husband. Do you remember that? I certainly do!

Tell us about a holiday that falls on your birthday.
Well, my birthday is Epiphany and is a public holiday in many parts of the world (I live in the wrong country - I could guaranteee my birthday off every year if I moved abroad!) but it's also Pathet Lao Day in Laos and Armed Forces Day in Iraq. Also, I didn't know that it also marks the start of Carnival period which ends on Shrove Tuesday. Why did no-one tell me that another party season starts in January? We're mostly partied out once New Year has been and gone but Carnival appears to be a tradition that has passed this country by. But it would be a great excuse to start yet another party!

Finally, please tag some people who will hate you some lovely people to carry on this meme, then link back to this post so they can find the badge and link up their post once published.


I am tagging:

Ruth at Geekmummy
Nickie at Typecast
Fay at Glass Half Full
Heidi at Him, Me & Three
Angela at This is Life
Claire at CJ's Palace

Badge code is here:

  
<a href="http://thefivefsblog.blogspot.com/2012/03/on-my-birthday-meme-challenge-for-all.html" target="_blank"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjyxhv5_GZx0xYaehuzzmOFCOrmVrFNEQS5lzsKt-yqDwCMV4Cpixo-5YmVtW_3ZpU6sPfngsyZNRb5vIIbMGi4wgKTqA7FlN_ZrVFy2sIIyxPNZ_j3NKM9aXf7SbVysJHBma9ONNAFHHw/s1600/birthdaybadge.jpg" border="0" alt="On my birthday" /></a>

And linky is here. I will leave it open for over a year, but I should be able to reopen it if necessary. Get entering, people! I'm counting on you.

The Life Circle - The Life Plan and Week 3

So, this week, we're all writing our life plans. I'm going to share with you as much of mine as you will read. Remember, it's our ideal lives we're talking about so it's all going to be good, right? Right?!

Starting from furthest away, we'll start with five years from now. By then, Monkey will be 11 and Missy Woo 10. Monkey will have just started at high school, one that we believe is right for him. Missy will be in Year 6 and due to follow her brother the following year. (And yes, it's my life and I've started talking about my children; they are an important part of my life).

A soupcon of something

At this time of year, as the temperature starts to drop along with the leaves on the trees, soup becomes the perfect lunch. It's warming, and generally a healthy option. It's quick to heat up, and even if you don't have access to a microwave or cooker, you can take it in a flask.

I have a serious soup habit and am quite fussy. Only fresh soups will do for me these days. They are expensive, so I often make my own to save money. Making soup is the easiest thing in the world if you have a blender. A hand blender is best as you can blend in the pan, making less mess.

I do, however, get in a bit of a soup rut. I often end up just making soup from the leftover veg at the end of the week. This means that most end up tasting quite similar and looking distinctly orange from all the carrots and swedes that dominate this time of year.

So, I'm starting another meme. A soup recipe meme. The idea is we all share a recipe for a soup. It can be anything - a new recipe you've discovered or designed yourself, your ultimate recipe for a particular soup, an unusual soup or just an old favourite. It just has to be soup. I've designed a badge and everything. And yes, I know that soupcon has a fancy cedilla thingy under the c, but the application I used to make the badge wouldn't allow me to enter fancy schmancy characters. I'm hoping we've all got different favourites and we'll be able to discover new soups to keep us warm in the colder months.

So, the guidelines for this meme are as follows:

1. Write your post including recipe and add my spectacular badge.
2. Mention this post so your readers can find other blogger recipes for some fab soups.
3. Tag some other bloggers to join in and share their favourite soup recipes.
4. Once you have published, come back and add a link to your recipe below. The Linky tool is set up to stay open all Winter so there is no rush, but please let me know if it's not working properly.

My soup is an unusual one.  In the mid 90s, I went to work for a company that ran a chain of American themed diners and nightclub, looking after their IT. I would visit venues who had problems I couldn't solve over the phone, or to install new equipment and software. One day, I was called to Basingstoke to fix a major problem. Whenever you turned up to fix the computers at a venue, nothing would be too much trouble. The staff would offer you drinks or food if the kitchen was open and bring it up to the office. On this occasion, they offered to get me some lunch. I asked what their soup was and was intrigued by the answer. It sounded odd but I decided to try it.

The soup was peanut butter and pumpkin. You're probably pulling faces right but trust me. It was so good that I remember that soup to this day and wanted to recreate it. After a quick Google , I found a few recipes and decided to have a go. All the recipes give measurements in cups so I've adapted it for UK foodies with the help of the good folk of Twitter pointing me at great resource like this. This soup is easiest if you can get canned pumpkin, but it's not widely available in the UK. It's not that hard to cook the puree, it just takes a bit longer. Use peanut butter that doesn't have added sugar.

Peanut Butter and Pumpkin Soup
Serves 6

Ingredients
25g butter, unsalted best
900g canned pumpkin or fresh pumpkin (not a carving one), peeled, deseeded and cut into cubes
400g sweet potato, peeled and cut into cubes
250g smooth peanut butter
1.4l chicken or vegetable stock
Ground black pepper
Snipped chives
Sour cream or low fat natural greek yogurt, to garnish

1. First, make your puree. Put the pumpkin (if you don't have canned) and sweet potato cubes into a saucepan and cover with water. Bring to the boil and simmer until the cubes are soft. Drain, then whizz to a puree with a hand blender or place in a blender.

2. Melt the butter in a large saucepan over a medium heat. Stir in the puree, the canned pumpkin if using, and the peanut butter. Add the stock, and season with pepper. It should not need salt! Stir well until smooth. Bring to the boil, then reduce to a simmer and cook for 20 minutes.

3. Serve, garnished with the sour cream or yogurt and the chives.

This soup tastes better the day after it's made so it's worth making in advance. When I made it, I had to use butternut squash as Asda didn't have any pumpkins - a shocking state of affairs for mid-October! It was pretty much as I remember it and unless you really hate one of the ingredients, I recommend you give it a try. And yes, I realise it is another orange soup - but it is definitely not run of the mill.

So, now I must tag some lovely bloggers to carry forward my newly birthed meme. They are:

Cass at The Diary of a Frugal Family
Kerry at And Then All I Thought About Was You
Nic at Nic's Notebook
Kirsty at Imperfect Pages

If you're not tagged, either ask one of these lovely ladies to tag you, or just blog and add your own link here. All contributions are more than welcome.

Don't forget to check back here for links to other great recipes here soon!