This Week’s Small Pleasures: episode 8

My diary is full this week with one thing and another, including another trip to Hamilton (which has meant moving my Pilates to a late class on Tuesday) and a comedy festival thing tomorrow, so I’m doing This Week’s Small Pleasures a day early.  Thanks to Mani over at A New Life Wandering for the idea.

1  I always associate autumn and winter with root vegetables. I’m a huge fan of all of them – except beetroot which I hate.  Anyway, Sunday dinner is a cottage pie* topped with a potato and kumera** mash, and served with roast parsnips and carrots.

Little purple carrots

Parsnips

2  We are still having mild weather for this time of year.  Mornings and evenings are chilly, but the days remain mild.  It means lots of opportunities to stroll about at lunch time.

A view during a lunch time stroll

3  Charlie remains a small pleasure.  I now know his full pedigree name: Wisecracks Dougie Howl Ette, though I think we’ll stick to calling him Charlie.  I met with his ‘real mum’ today and had a good talk about him, and we decided that ‘Wisecracks’ was a good name.

Charlie hiding

4  We went out to a comedy show last night which was fun, and today to see ‘Bolshoi Babylon‘, a film about the scandal surrounding the Bolshoi Ballet after their artistic director had acid thrown in his face.  A fascinating film, and lots of bit of dance as well.

5  Not really a small pleasure, but I managed to find a lightweight jacket to take on our trip to Europe in the second shop I went to.  It’s always nice when that happens.

6  Oh and do check out some small pleasures on the last post to do with watching, listening and reading in April.

Charlie relaxes

*A potato topped pie – there are hundreds of versions such as this one on the BBC GoodFood website.

**Kumara – a type sweet potato.