Does anyone else find themselves exhausted after the holidays?  Maybe it’s that we have not only John’s dad living with us but his mother is in a nursing home nearby.  After New Year’s day I just wanted to crawl in a box and sleep but of course I couldn’t.  Time marches on and work needs to be done.

Of course I cooked (or we’d starve) but I didn’t feel like being creative in the kitchen.  I’ll be honest and admit that if the kitchen had been removed I wouldn’t have missed it.

The good news is that my kitchen mojo has returned and I’ve begun researching recipe ideas, making lists and testing recipes.  I found this book at an op shop recently and almost every recipe brought me back to my childhood.

My darling friend Claire from ClaireKCreations gave me this wonderful silk shopping bag that squooshes to almost nothing in my handbag but it’s HUGE.  It does look a lot like a ladies shell top with the hem sewn together but it works like a dream.  Thank you, Claire!

This cinnamon honey from hellohoney.com.au smells so good I couldn’t resist sticking a spoon in the jar to taste it.  It is creamy, sweet and cinnamony and was perfect on a slice of toast.

I got up this morning and when I went to the fridge to get the strawberry jam for Rob’s toast there was less than a spoonful in the jar.  Does that drive you nuts?  Why did someone (John) put it away if there’s nothing in the jar?  Then I noticed a large box of strawberries we bought from the fruit shop and in less than 15 minutes, I made half a jar of jam.

I reminded Rob that not everyone was getting homemade jam made before breakfast.   I had some too and it was really good.  I just put the strawberries in a pan with a squeeze of lemon juice and half a cup of sugar.  Ten minutes later we were eating jam.  No skimming, no pectin – just jam.

When I was in the fridge looking for jam, I found the lychees we bought (and promptly forgot).  We had most of them for breakfast with mango and they were brilliant.  They do look a bit tired but the inny bits were delicious.  I had every intention of making lychee sorbet but that’s not going to happen since most of them are gone.

If you’re wondering why I bothered doing an in my kitchen post since I have nothing fancy in my kitchen – I thought the same thing.  I’m even way late doing it because I thought I’d have time to buy something snappy for the post.  It didn’t happen.  So here’s what we had for lunch – leftover pea and ham soup made with the Christmas ham bone I’d frozen.

Finally, I was puttering around in the kitchen and looked outside to find Charlie waiting outside the door for me to come to toss the ball.  I stand behind that chair and he hops up and hands me the ball and then he races across the patio to wait for the ball to arrive.  One of these months I’ll find a smile.

As I said, I’m late this month so I won’t be included on the In My Kitchen roundup but I didn’t want to miss a month.  I like being part of some amazing bloggers.  To see all the ‘In My Kitchen’ posts, visit Celia at Fig Jam and Lime Cordial.