Cooking and decluttering - and trying not to get cluttered in the first place

It's a bit more wintery today, the temperature has dropped noticeably and it's howling a hoolie.  We've battened down the proverbial hatches.  

We made the effort to get out agin for a walk this morning, wrapping up against the chills, and it was really exhilarating.  A bright clear sky, plenty of muddy puddles, lots of dogs keen to make friends with us, and a wealth of bird song, though the birds looked a bit cold themselves - feathers all puffed up.

I put some time aside yesterday to do some cooking.  A large pot of veg stew and a lentil loaf, to be precise.  I don't do much cooking these days - N is the chef of the house, producing delicious meals for us while I do the baking (of bread and cakes) and it was quite nice to potter around in the kitchen for an hour or so.  The loaf sliced into 6 portions, and the stew made 4 including a helping for last night's dinner.  The rest is now in the freezer.  

Tonight we had home-made pizza.  Usually I make a bread-dough base but this time I tried a non-yeast mix and it worked much better, producing a light, crisp base.  Topping - home-made passata and lots of veggies from the freezer.  A definite win!  We'll have that again.

I'm continuing with my efforts to declutter (a little) every day.  A drawer here, a cupboard there, a shelf of the bookcase or just a pile of paperwork, though I'm making real progress in that respect; very little in the way of random papers lying around the house now, it's all either been sorted and filed, or shredded.  I'm realising how easy it is for random stuff to sneak into the house - freebies (pens, diaries, handouts from banks etc) for example, difficult to say 'no' to but really, do I need any more?  While I was cooking in the kitchen yesterday, it occurred to me that we don't have cupboards full of gadgets and equipment that never or rarely gets used.  Everything in our kitchen is used on a regular basis.  We have one dinner service (from a charity shop).  Pots, pans, pressure cooker, slo-cooker, utensils, bowls (nothing matches, it's simply what we have collected over the years) - everything is used weekly, if not daily.  There is nothing lurking in the back of a cupboard, never seeing the light of day.  We don't have that many cupboards so space is a premium - it can't be wasted storing something that never gets used.  I do wonder how many fancy 'must-have' gadgets were given as Christmas presents, only to spend their lives gathering dust, forgotten at the back of a cupboard.  I suspect many will likely find their way to charity shops in the future.

As I'm sat here typing, there is the most wonderful perfume of hyacinth in the room - the bulbs I started off before Christmas have been in bloom for a couple of days and tonight is the first time the scent has filled the air.  It's lovely.