The Wednesday Hodgepodge #26

I hope you are all having a good week? It's Wednesday which means it's time to join in with the Wednesday Hodgepodge with Joyce who blogs at From This Side of the Pond! Each week there are 6 questions, we answer and then link up. Simple!

1. Next Sunday is Grandparent's Day. Share a favorite memory, photo, recipe, or something you learned from a grandparent.

I really only had my Grandad, my dad’s dad, in my life but he made up for any missing grandparents I didn’t have. He was just the best! My favourite memories of him all revolve around food. He loved kippers (smoked herring) for breakfast and would stink the house out, he always had Lurpak butter which is the best in my opinion and would smother it on toast for me. He kept chickens and it was always exciting to go hunting for eggs with him and picking tomatoes from his greenhouse. When my mam would cook my brother sensible, healthy meals and we wouldn't eat them we knew we could go to my grandad and he would fill us with ham and pickle sandwiches or soft boiled eggs and toast, he was the best at making the eggs just right! He always had money for the ice cream van and McDonalds when my parents would say no.

2. What's a quote from a book (besides The Bible) that has stayed with you?

I’ve always loved books, and as a kid, I was a big Roald Dahl fan. One quote that has really stuck with me is from The Twits:

“If a person has ugly thoughts, it begins to show on the face. And when that person has ugly thoughts every day, every week, every year, the face gets uglier and uglier until you can hardly bear to look at it. A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly. You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth and a double chin and stick out teeth, but if you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.”

3. What's your number one food pet peeve?

It is so hard to list just one. I think my number one food pet peeve has to be when people eat and chew with their mouths open. I also can't stand loud eaters, people who drown everything in ketchup, those who leave just a bite on their plate, why not just finish it and those people who say they're not hungry but will eat half of what you have ordered.

4. What's one thing about you that is still the same as it was when you were young?

I would say my love for curiosity and asking why about everything. Even as a kid I’d drive adults nuts with endless questions and that hasn’t changed a bit. I still like learning new things, discovering random facts or just poking around for answers.

5. September is National Preparedness Month...does your family have an emergency plan? Do you have some sort of preparedness kit you keep on hand? If so, tell us one thing that's kept there.

I’m not ready for anything. If the zombie apocalypse, a flash flood or a power cut hit tomorrow, I’d probably be running around like a headless chicken with no emergency kit and no plan. The only thing I do have plenty of is candles. So at least if the lights go out I can pretend I’m in some cozy, romantic survival movie instead of panicking. Thinking about it I always have plenty of tinned food in the cupboards so we're not going to starve and a good first aid kit so we wouldn't be compleatly doomed.

6. Insert your own random thought here.

My fella is putting together a flat pack dressing table for my youngest and it is my entertainment for the afternoon. Bits keep going missing, pieces are somehow ending up upside down and the instructions? He’s pretending they don’t exist. Every so often he mutters something about why they can’t just make this simple. Flat packs were clearly invented to test us as adults and between the missing screws and confusing diagrams we’re failing spectacularly but at least we’re laughing about it.