The observant amongst you will have noticed that I haven’t updated you on progress with the Basic Kitchen project. I have just found two blog posts sitting in draft, which review progress at week one and after a month – I obviously wasn’t happy with either of them (although reading them now I am not sure why).

Rather than belatedly publishing the two posts, I am going to tell you about what has been making me too preoccupied to write, and why I have quite enough challenges to be going on with at the moment! I do have some brief ‘lessons learned’ from the Basic Kitchen project to share with you, but I will do that in another post rather than make this one long and unwieldy.

I think I ‘may’ have taken on a little too much in the next few months! First and foremost I am expecting my first baby in early July – I think that this alone would slow most people down! In addition, Steve and I are organising the blessing of our marriage; we had a relaxed little wedding last summer, with the intention of having a big big party and blessing the following year. Originally, we were going to have the blessing at midsummer but that was (happily) scuppered by the baby, so we are planning the party for September.

Organising a big event with a baby on the way wasn’t enough to keep Steve and I busy… so we decided to put an offer on a house!

So, in summary, we are currently doing what are widely perceived to be three of the most stressful things in life – having a baby, organising a wedding, and moving house! Phew! All very exciting, but you can see that giving myself a tiny budget and blogging challenges won’t be top of my list for a little while.

So what can you expect from Kitty’s Store-Cupboard over the next few months? Probably radio-silence a lot of the time! When I do share recipes I expect that they will mostly still be of a frugal nature – buying a house and organising the blessing are quite expensive occupations. I’m sure that there will also be a few treats thrown in, and some excitement at being able to cook and eat things which pregnant ladies are not supposed to eat – such as pate and blue cheese. I am hoping that there will also be a few guest bloggers – watch this space!

I would very much like to write about the vegetables and herbs I am growing, however I expect that I won’t find time to do so. Currently I am sharing an allotment with my sister, it was very overgrown when we took it on earlier in the year but we are doing reasonably well given our different constraints (I’m not really up to heavy digging, however crouching down to weed is pretty good exercise for getting the baby into the best position for birth – you win some, you lose some!). We have got garlic, onions, beans, squash and raspberries growing, so I am looking forward to some harvest cooking. I am very excited that the house we are buying has a greenhouse – I have some very happy looking tomato plants in pots which will ripen nicely under glass.

So, here is an obligatory ‘bump’ photograph (now somewhat bigger!) taken in my scruffs down at the allotment. I will share the Basic Kitchen ‘lessons learned’ with you next week.

Kitty x