Over the summer, Carl and I celebrated eighteen years of marriage, and twenty four of being a couple. I feel so blessed.

We spent the morning at Osea View which is a heavenly little spot to eat, looking out over the River Blackwater. From our window seat we could see almost across to Maldon, and it was so relaxing to sit together and watch the Thames barges sailing past.

The food they serve is just wonderful – they use local producers, and take real care over it. My Eggs Benedict was garnished with a viola which was such a beautiful contrast against the buttercup yellow of the hollandaise sauce. Another thing they do fantastically well is their pancakes. I had honestly never seen pancakes like it – fluffy does not even begin to cover it!

We’ve already been back for a return visit and will do so again, but I also wanted to recreate them at home. After a few tries, I am fairly happy with how they have turned out…

The trick is to use a crumpet ring to get the shape, I also have a crepe maker that I use rather than a frying pan, but there is no reason why a frying pan shouldn’t work – you just may find you can’t fit in as many at a time.

If you would like to make some for yourself, allow a bit more time than you think you need, pop on an audiobook or podcast, and have a cup of tea to hand.

Sunday Morning Pancakes

175g plain flour

1tsp baking powder

1 egg

200ml milk (semi skimmed or whole)

25g melted butter (optional)

1tbsp sugar

Gently whisk (use a balloon whisk, not electric) together your dry ingredients, then use the whisk to stir in the wet ingredients. You will have a very thick batter. You can add in a splash of vanilla extract at this point, or a scattering of chocolate chips, or just leave it as it is.

Lightly grease 4 crumpet rings and the surface of a crepe maker or frying pan. In either case, you want the heat to be medium-low.

Half fill each crumpet ring – it should take about 2tbsp of the batter. After about 2 minutes, you should see the start of tiny bubbles around the edge. At the point, protect your hand with a dry tea towel, and run a butter knife around the edge of the crumpet ring to loosen the pancake.

Gently lift the crumpet ring off the pancake, then flip the pancake over, and cook for about 2 minutes the other side.

You will find the pancakes end up about the same height as your crumpet ring!

Repeat until you have used all your batteries. If the first ones have gone a bit cold, you can pop them back into the pan for a few moments on each side.

You really won’t want more than 2 per person, 3 at the very most if you are having brunch instead of lunch. Enjoy with your favourite toppings – any leftover pancakes freeze very well.

Let me know if you try making them, and what your favourite topping is!

Love, Mimi xxx

Pour yourself a cup of tea, help yourself to a biscuit, and let’s catch up….

It’s strange to think that the last time I truly wrote here, the world was in a very different place. I was, too. Back in 2021, I pressed “publish” and thought I’d be back again soon… but the months quietly stacked themselves into years.

Life has a way of sweeping us along, doesn’t it? In that time, there have been busy seasons and quiet ones, new routines and old comforts rediscovered. My mornings have changed — lately, they’ve included a jam jar coffee ritual that has become a small, grounding joy. (Yes, coffee in a jam jar! More on that in my last post.) But there’s still tea, always tea, in the background of my days: mugs clutched during phone calls, teapots steeping in the afternoons, the sound of water just reaching a boil.

Work-wise, I’ve had a change or two. For a few years, I was at Holdfast Credit Union, in a small office with just me and the wonderful Steph, helping to support our local community. Last November I left — a bittersweet decision — but I didn’t go far. From our little office upstairs in the church building, I moved downstairs to the church office itself, where I’m now happily working part-time as church administrator.

At home, time seems to be running as fast as the kettle just before it boils. Jessica now prefers to go by Jess, and has finished primary school and is ready to start secondary — she sailed through her SATS with flying colours, but I’m still adjusting to the idea of my “baby” heading off in her smart new blazer. Meanwhile, little Alice is starting juniors at primary school, and I couldn’t be more proud of her. Once shy and a very restricted eater, she has blossomed into such a happy little soul — open, curious, and full of life. And my poor husband is still working far too much, so the moments we do have together feel all the more precious.

When I look back, I realise blogging was once an anchor for me — a way to slow down, reflect, and share life’s small details before they slipped away. I’ve missed that. I’ve missed you.

So, I’m dusting off the corners of this little online home and settling back in. I can’t promise daily posts or perfectly polished essays, but I can promise to show up more often, with the same gentle curiosity that first brought me here.

If you’ve stayed subscribed all this time, thank you. If you’re new, welcome. Let’s share the quiet moments together again — one little sip at a time.

Like a teabag resting in warm water, I think I’ve been quietly steeping these past few years — gathering flavour, colour, and depth without even realising it. Now it’s time to pour a cup, take a seat, and begin again.

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In dusting off Little Sips of Tea, I have just found this post sitting in drafts….that same little girl who was taking her first steps as I wrote this post, is now 7 years old! But I remember this moment so well, and it says so much about Alice, that I wanted to share it.

Tonight is the eve of Alice turning 15 months. Earlier I had been looking at some lovely instagram posts by a lady with a little girl, who at several months younger is walking and talking…and I was feeling a bit glum. Then, just now, upstairs in the spare room ensuite, Alice stood up (stark naked) and took two wibbly wobbly steps in pursuit of some loo rolls to eat! (She won’t eat food at the moment, just loo roll, tissues, socks….)

I feel so happy! I try not to worry and not to compare, but I do a fair amount of both. I am sure she might not do it again for a while, but I know she can do it now!

The other thing she has very recently learnt to do is to kiss! They are great big smackeroos, slightly toothy and dribbly, and they mean the world to me!

Other lovely things from a day which started with very little sleep ( Alice is teething)…tea with some school Mum friends. Sharing the joy of celebration rings. Hearing that Simple Abundance has been updated and will be released next week. Oh, and only tomorrow, and we are on half term! I can’t wait!

Tea will always be my first love, but over the past few years I have drifted into starting my day with a coffee. A summer or two ago I was making blended iced coffees in the morning…in went coffee, ice, some frozen avocado, a spoonful of various powders and potions which promised health benefits…a date for sweetness…chia seeds…it was delicious, but I just don’t have the energy for that these days.

I’ve been in quite an extended wintering phase, my depression has not always been well controlled, and I have a lot of brain fog and fatigue. So this summer, my iced lattes have been a lot simpler, and while they may not have all the nutritional benefits of those that came before, they are perhaps closer to being a true iced coffee.

Since I discovered the jam jar method, I’ve really settled into enjoying the morning ritual of making it…and here is how you can, too.

I use a Nespresso machine to make my coffee. Make it directly into your jam jar, but before you do this, add a little (no more than 1tsp) honey or maple syrup to the bottom of the jar, along with a little cinnamon and a pinch of salt. I like flaky Maldon sea salt – and not just because I grew up there! Dispense the coffee on top, add some ice cubes, screw on the kid, then shake, shake, shake! Usually I just pour cold milk on top of this and give it another quick shake, but today I frothed the cold milk with some more cinnamon, then poured it over.

I drink it straight from the jar. I like the Bonne Maman ones best.

You can make endless variations to this, adding perhaps some vanilla, or using nutmeg maybe…but the cinnamon honey combination is one I keep coming back to.

And so, here we are in January. As Big Ben begins to chime midnight each December 31st, I always feel suddenly a little unprepared, not quite ready to leave the old year behind. Yet when I wake up on January 1st, that feeling has passed and I am ready to settle in to all the cosy pleasures that January has to offer.

The temperature has dropped and the mornings are icy cold, so hot water bottles, soft slippers, cosy blankets, and steaming pots of tea are in order. We missed a bus yesterday, and had a half hour wait in the cold for the next one, so I popped into a cafe to buy a coffee for myself and hot chocolates for my girls…it came to just under £10! I think it is time to rummage out our thermos flasks and start taking our own hot drinks out with us – partly because it adds up very quickly to buy drinks out, and partly because it feels like a little act of self care to take with us what we may need.

In a similar vein, I batch cooked a huge chicken stew last night, and then portioned it out, and frozen them flat in bags – a great tip from The Full Freezer book. The portions of stew will have different things added to each of them, which will turn them into stroganoff(ish), pie, curry, and Italian(ish) chicken. It feels so lovely knowing that I have those recipes waiting for me when I need them. I will be batch cooking mince Ragu this evening, which will be treated in the same way.

A big theme for me for the coming year is doing things to make life easier, more organised, to feel supported and nourished.

Today I shall be taking my girls to visit my Mum, having a browse of our favourite independent bookshop, and treating myself to a new jar of marmalade.

Wherever you are, I hope that your teapot is full, and your heart is happy.

Love, Mimi xxx

Yesterday was ‘freedom day’ as it was billed here in England. It didn’t feel much different for me. I am choosing to live in much the same way as before I had the choice not to. I don’t quite understand the rationale behind lifting restrictions when our cases are rocketing so rapidly. The government have said that as restrictions are lifted, it will cause further increases in cases of covid. Apart from not wanting to catch it myself, I want to know that as far as possible I have not done anything to put anybody else at risk.

I know that we must each make our own choices, and I am not judging those who choose differently (to a point anyway, nothing will convince me that the films of crammed nightclubs with people squashed in like sardines is anything other than irresponsible) instead I am trying to remember that all of us have lived through extraordinary and often harrowing times. 

You’d think the lifting of restrictions meant that it is all over…but it feels that it is very far from that. So what should be the beginning of the end doesn’t really feel like it to me.

Today was also the last day of term for Jessica…and not only the last day of term but her last day of infants; when she returns in September she will be in Year 3 and Juniors…how can this be?!

I always feel emotional at the end of term and even more so at the end of the school year. Every year we have been lucky enough to have a teacher we have been sad to leave behind. I keep reminding myself that it is the end of the school year but also the start of the summer holidays, and then that lovely New Year feeling awaits us in September.

I have been chain reading the Chief Inspector Gamache series by Louise Penny, and have just one more to read before I reach the end – although happily there is a new one being published in the autumn. They are set in a small Canadian village called Three Pines, and heavens I could just move there! It sounds so delightful and having read fifteen of the books almost back to back, I feel like the bistro and bookstore are just around the corner, and that I know Armand, Jean-Guy, Myrna, Clara, and Ruth. 

It feels strange coming to the end of the series, although I am glad to know that there will be more to come.

Alice is turning there on Saturday which feels like the end of early childhood too…suddenly she is more of a preschooler than a toddler! I think she is close to being ready to learn to use a potty or toilet too, so the end of another era is on the horizon.

Now I sit and think about it it does all really feel like endings and beginnings. Thankfully the main fabric stays the same…family and friends, tea and books, writing letters, crochet, garden flowers, homemade cake in the cake tins, vintage cups and saucers….

Wherever you are I hope you are safe and well, and remain that way.

Love

Mini

Xxx

At last, at last, over the past few months, and increasing in the last few weeks, I have my cooking and baking spark back again. For so long it felt like I was going through the motions, wading through treacle, and it sapped what little energy I had. But happily I have really bounced back.

I recently borrowed a Mary Berry book from the library which led me to making homemade bourbons and sultana flapjacks. It was lovely sending Carl and Jessica off camping with tins of home baking. I love having something homemade to offer people now that we may have the occasional visitor again.

Mum sent me an idea on pinterest for pansy topped shortbread biscuits. When I read the method, I could not believe how easy it was, and decided to give them a try. Mum kindly brought me some violas from her garden (we realised that pansies would be too big) and this was the result…

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I think they look beautiful, and all you do is press your violas between kitchen paper in a heavy book while you make and bake your shortbread. I used a recipe from Alice Through The Year which you can find on her website, but it would work with any shortbread recipe. Once you have taken the shortbread biscuits out of the oven, gently press a pressed Viola onto each biscuit. You do it while they are hot, and the heat from the biscuit bonds the Viola to it. It really is as simple as that!

I sprinkled a little caster sugar over them to finish them off, but you don’t have to.

Now that charity shops are open again I am going to keep my eye open for cake or biscuit tins, so I can give tins of these as gifts and have the tin be part of the gift.

Half term starts early for us, as we have a non-pupil day today. I had my second covid vaccination on Wednesday, and whilst I am very glad to have had it, I am definitely feeling the effects more this time, and am glad of a slower day.

As we don’t have to be out of the door for the school run, I decided to make a breakfast which takes a bit more time than I usually have. I baked an apple scone ring – I have shared the recipe here a few times over the years, and it suddenly came to mind that as I learnt to make it at secondary school, I have been making this from time to time over a span of some 25 years now. Time feels like it is telescoping somehow… I will have been married for 14 years this year, and it is so our 20th anniversary of getting together… I don’t understand where time has gone!

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I love lightning a candle at mealtimes, especially breakfast time. I think it sets a nice tone for the day. We have quiet music playing (Elizabeth Mitchell features a lot) and it feels good. However when I tried to light the stubby end of my beeswax candle this morning, it kept going out. I haven’t bought a new one yet (I get them from Myriad Natural Toys, the dinner candle when I am feeling poor and the pillar candle when funds are more abundant!) so I rummaged out this little candle instead. It is a scented one, which I usually avoid at mealtimes, but this one is the Inspiritus scent from St Eval, and it smells like church incense to me and I love it. It is the end of a candle again though, but it did mange to keep burning through breakfast time.

And so starts another day, and another half term break from school. I cannot fathom how this will be Jessica’s last half term as an infant, and that next week she will be seven!

Now for the rest of my cup of tea before taking the girls out to get some baking provisions in…

Beauty matters, doesn’t it? Not as in feminine ‘beauty’ which society seems to equate with cosmetics and such things, but beauty as in the natural world around us, music, art, the gurgling laugh of a baby.

It is a truth so intrinsic to me that I struggle to articulate why it matters…but matter it does. I am reading Sarah Clarkson’s new book on Beauty and she is giving me much to think about.

There is so much beauty around us that sometimes it is easy to forget it is even there. Having small children is such a gift because in helping them discover beauty, you rediscover it for yourself.

Once Alice and I have walked Jessica to school, we walk home again. It takes twice as long because we go at Alice’s pace. She loves to splash in a particular puddle at school before we leave. She puts so much effort into her jump, and manages to get only an inch or two high. She is delighted though! ‘Splash!’ she calls out excitedly, almost inevitably followed a few moments later by ‘all soggy Mummy!’

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Seeing her dandelion hair bouncing and the sheer delight on her face is a joy. She finds beauty in the splashing of the puddle, and I find beauty in watching her.

Then on our walk home we go past a house with a border of big pebbles that she loves to pick up and put back down again. Further on is a low wall with lines of moss growing between the bricks like little green caterpillars which she loves to stroke.

If we aren’t going to the shop on the way home we walk along the field that takes us to a little bridge over a stream. So many birds make their home in the trees there that it is always alive with birdsong. Best of all for Alice though are the dandelions.

She loves to pick them, exclaiming ‘I did it!’ as she presents them to me. To start with she called them ‘yellow ones’ but now she knows that they are ‘daaaaandeleeeons’

Now she is starting to recognize daisies too. I love that my girls know their flowers. Jessica can point out snowdrops and daffodils, muscari, tulips, buttercups and more. I think that it is easier to notice things when we can name them. Naming them seems to say somehow that they are important to us. Again, I find it slightly hard to explain why it is important, but it is.

All this beauty is around us, and all we need do is notice it. So that is what I want for my girls, the gift of noticing, knowing, and naming. These days of Dandelions and Daisies are so precious to me.

A drizzly grey Sunday calls out for a quiet afternoon of baking. My spirits needed a bit of a lift as this morning we passed on a lot of our baby things to go to a new home. When we had Alice, the doctors said that it would be dangerous for me to have any more children, and while knowing something is sensible is one thing, reconciling your heart to it is another. I am pleased to have passed on our things to help someone else out, but I must admit that I was sad to see them go.

So, grey drizzling skies, slightly weepy eyes, and feeling slightly blue, I headed into the kitchen to bake myself better.

A grey day seemed to call for the sunshine of lemons, so I decided to make a lemon drizzle cake. I used a recipe from Jane’s Patisserie which is free on her blog. Everything of hers that I have made so far has turned out really well, so do visit her and try out some of her recipes.

For this cake, the cake batter is flavoured with lemon zest, and when it is still warm from the oven you drizzle it with a lemon syrup. Then when it is cool you drizzle it with lemon icing. However, I knew I wanted to use my new culinary rose petals and wanted a covering rather than drizzling of icing, so I made double.

I have to say that I am pleased with how it turned out, and it was really simple to make. When I think about the kind of home I want to create for my family, homemade cake in the tin features pretty highly up the list. I like to think that we could make a hobbit feel at home with our little comforts!

Next on my list of things that I would like to bake is dandelion shortbread. I can see in my mind’s eye a simple shortbread studded with dark chocolate chips and flecked with golden dandelion petals.

Tell me, what is on your baking list, or in your cake tin?

Love, Mimi xxx