What is making me happy this week: family lunches

Miners and Their Families Gather to Talk and Enjoy the Outing at the Tennessee Consolidated Coal Company First Annual Picnic at a Tennessee Valley Authority Lake near Jasper and Chattanooga, Tennessee. They Ate a Barbecue Lunch, Participated in Sports, Watched a Greased Pig Contest and Heard the Company Officials Explain Health and Retirement Benefits 08/1974 via Flickr Commons

I like to listen to an NBC podcast called Pop Culture Happy Hour, and my favourite bit is at the end of each podcast when the presenters talk about what has made them happy that week. It's like, Things I Love Thursday without an entire list of twee or including compulsory pictures of beautifully iced cupcakes.

This week, what is making me happy is: family lunches.

I had my mum and my three brothers around for lunch on Mother's Day, which involved me cleaning my butt off on Saturday and then cooking what remained of the aforementioned butt on Sunday.

I made a huge pot of French Onion soup with requisite gruyere croutons, and then a lemon and sour cream cake for dessert - I imagined that it would be the sort of lunch that a character in a PD James novel might serve. (I cannot tell a lie: I went to the trouble of actually imagining a PD James type menu and then carrying it out. Could become a hobby (proposed next lunch: a Harry Potter menu of treacle tart and steak and kidney pudding)).

At any rate: my family is loud and talkative and loud and somewhat exhausting. They are also MINE, and funny. I struggle sometimes with getting family balance right (which I can't explain without saying - too much) but when it works, it works so well. I want more fabulous family lunches in my future.

And quickly, my pop-culture consumption for the week:

READING: The Confusion, Neal Stephenson and Liar's Lullaby, Meg Gardiner. The first: epic, fabulous, funny. The second appears to be basically quite trashy and I'm looking forward to rotting my brain cells with it (I have only read about ten pages so far).

RECENTLY WATCHED: I'm working my way through the 2003 series of Time Team, after watching the 2012 series in one sitting.

FAVOURITE PODCAST EPISODE: The Radio 4 Nature doco series on the poetry of Edward Thomas, The Pursuit of Spring. Much inspiration for my proposed toddle in the UK.

LISTENING: I've been scrounging singles from the new Vampire Weekend album on Grooveshark - planning to listen to the whole thing next pay day.