Lacer’s Life

I love it when I find a new easy pasta favourite, the onion and pepper arn’t really burnt, they’re ‘caramelised’ and it imparts a lovely flavour and texture. I think I much prefer ‘bits in it’ rather than a conventional sauce (although you can’t beat Tana Ramsay’s bolognaise) and I get a bit too over-reliant on my favourite pasta of pancetta and chilli!

Anyway this recipe is an Ainsley Harriett from Gourmet Express 2 (much prefer his older cookbooks over his newer ones). Very simply it’s (per person) one red pepper cut into 1cm strips, fried in a little olive oil for 15 minutes, initially over a medium heat but then lower it (Ainsley recommended quite a high heat throughout, but then it would have been burnt!). After 15 minutes add a quarter of sliced red onion and continue cooking for 30 minutes. Meanwhile cook some pasta. After the 30 minutes is up, toss pasta with the pepper and onion and some torn basil (first outing of my greek basil, which is growing very vigorously), plate up and top with a liberal sprinkling of parmesan.

A playdate here this morning, wasn’t too bad getting the flat playdate proof first and thanks to the kids bunkbeds their bedroom didn’t look too bad either afterwards (pre-bunkbeds, with Girl Lacer’s toddler bed and Boy Lacer’s cot taking up all the floor space, a playdate turned the room into a bomb site). The living room on the other hand . . . but that’s all cleared up now.

The only other excitement of the day was that I was expecting a delivery of brown paper bags by courier, for my book selling (they’re also going to be great for Mr. Lacer’s and later Girl Lacer’s sandwich bags, a bit more environmentally friendly than the plasticised paper bags we use at the moment and they’re really cheap). The only time I really needed to go out was for 20 minutes to do the nursery run and you guessed it, I missed the delivery guy by 8 minutes, sigh. They will attempt to deliver again tomorrow but I can’t not go out and do the nursery run tomorrow either.

Busy day today; after thinking my book selling was going into a rather deathly lull, specially with changes within the company I direct sell for, it’s now going rather well, I have two large and one very large events coming up. The very large event could be 15,000 people if the weather is good and I’m doing it with two other people and I’ve spent a large chunk of today sorting stuff out for that, so the washing machine and the dishwasher have laid idle, well I figured if I were actually at work, i.e. ‘proper’ work, I wouldn’t exactly be loading the dishwasher and doing the washing would I? I made that point to Mr. Lacer when he pointed out none of the dishes hadn’t been washed (it wasn’t that bad, we were just out of beakers) and he was verging on going “and yes?” when I pointed out I was working with two other people who were depending on me doing certain things by certain times. Luckily the kids were well behaved (reasonably) today, trying to do a spreadsheet whilst your computer obsessed 2 year old is also trying to get on there was a little ‘interesting’ and at one point Girl Lacer was laying next to be going “This is boring,”, so I pointed out to her why didn’t she go and play with one of her many toys? I was slightly bad mummy though, in that both of them where still in their pjs until just before lunch time, but that is one of the (only) advantages of nursery being in the afternoon.

So lunch was hurried and Girl Lacer packed off to nursery, whilst me and Boy Lacer returned home to look into the wonderful world of brown paper bags. Time flew and we went to pick up Girl Lacer again, since Boy Lacer has stopped napping, Girl Lacer has been missing out on our shopping trips, even if it’s only to buy bread and milk, which it normally is. And I have to admit I do sometimes see mums when I’m out shopping with just Boy Lacer, whilst Girl Lacer is at nursery and those mums have children a bit younger than mine, pushing that double buggy I was glad to get rid of, a baby in the back, two year old in the front and feel a pang for those days, even though I very much remember a time when the kids were that age and we were out shopping in John Lewis and I saw in the distance a woman pushing a double buggy and my immediate thought (honestly) was “Who’s that poor woman? She looks even more knackered than I feel,” it was only a moment or so later when I realised that woman was me in a mirror. Anyway, Girl Lacer has been missing the purchasing of bread and I’ve been missing having her there, even though just prior to Boy Lacer stopping napping I was swearing blind that I would never ever go shopping with two children ever ever again! So what with the weather being nice, it’s proved ideal for going shopping after nursery, so there’s not so much of a rush to get back in time for anything. It wasn’t the most exciting of shopping trips, the kids got a McDonalds, as I was craving chips and we got some fabric for my sister’s birthday present, which is quite complex and I haven’t started making it yet and it’s for Saturday, yelp! We then went down to Waitrose (and for those waiting for the lion bit, it’s coming).

After we had got our food, we went to one of the lifts and were waiting for it to arrive but (despite no ‘out of order’ sign) it didn’t look to be working, so Girl Lacer piped up,

“Maybe it’s because there’s a lion in it.”

So I replied “We better get out of here then, because that lift door is going to open any minute and he’ll eat us!”

So we crossed to the other side of the store for the other lifts and I go “Look, all the other shoppers are leaving because there’s a lion in there”.

To which Girl Lacer “Yes, they’re going really quickly, although they’re getting their shopping first.”

And I reply “Yes, he thinks he can get humans as food, as it’s a supermarket,”

“Yes” said Girl Lacer, “He’s going to eat the shop assistants,”

We manage to dive into the lifts just in time and exit the store whilst being chased by the lion.

We walk past the clothes shops and I go “I bet he’s going to buy a sun hat.”

“And a really big dress” replied Girl Lacer

We cut through the cafe area of town and Girl Lacer points to one of the outside tables, “Look! He’s over there having a drink!”

We sneak past but we narrowly avoid being pounced on, as the lion tries to ambush us by hiding behind the bushes by the train station.

We rush down the main road out of town, the lion to quote Girl Lacer “miles behind us”. Thankfully the lion is delayed even further when he stops to have a pizza. We pass the barbers and I suggest that maybe that lion will stop and have a haircut, to which Girl Lacer replies,

“Don’t be silly, he wouldn’t fit into the chair, he’ll just have to have long lion hair.”

Brief interlude in the chase when Girl Lacer discovers a previously unknown (to her) fascinating fact about mummy, that I used to work (volunteer) in a zoo (long time ago and not for very long either) as she enquires what do they do in real life if a lion escapes and I told her that they have special people to ‘put the lion back’, to which she wanted to know how I knew that, so I explained.

We’re then rounding the corner into the last strait home, Girl Lacer has decided the lion can’t be caught by a rope, as he’s just eaten pizza (to which she enquires “What does pizza do?”, she is fascinated about the various functions of different foods at the moment, so I tell her it gives you energy and makes you strong (the calcium in the cheese bit). But then she decides she’s strong to, so she captures the lion on the point of her sword and she’s going to take it back to the zoo. But then she decides they’re not feeding the lion in the zoo, which is why he escaped, so with a flick of her magic wand (which she also has up her sleeve), she turns the lion into a nice lion, who eats sweets, which she tells the lion has people in them. She then carries the lion home in her arms, whilst scooting on her scooter. I enquire, do we have enough food at home for a lion? She says yes, because she got a big bag of sweets for her fairy in the supermarket and a big bag of sweets for the lion, but when we’ve run out he can go back to the zoo. The lion is now sleeping on my bed, as he has to sleep with mummy and daddy apparently, there will be lion fur everywhere.

My container vegetable garden is so far (touch wood), going really well, Mr. Lacer is constantly amazed that I haven’t killed anything yet. My salad container, after a few dodgy moments with the cos and the spinach which was originally covered too much by fleece, followed by the continuous rain we had making me worried that my drainage holes were not enough, I am now worried whether it’s getting enough water but despite all this it’s doing very well, providing more salad leaves that me, the only salad eater in this family can ever possibly want to it and it is so much better than a limp browning bag of supermarket salad. The rocket and the golden mustard are both flowering, which probably isn’t good on the cropping front but at least they’re happy (I’m soft). I have a picture of my flowering rocket in close up on my photo blog here, I like the way how the flowers look like white medieval crosses. Here’s a more general picture of my salad,

The plants in my little plastic greenhouse are also doing well, in fact my little plastic greenhouse is probably getting too hot now, as unzip it and stick your arm in, it’s literally like a steam room. I was worrying about that but thankfully my gardening guru aka my dad, did a flying visit this afternoon (back from his holiday where he discovered train spotting holidays were unsurprisingly full of train spotters) and he recommended unzipping it during the day, so I’ll do that. Anyway here’s the cucumbers, which I’m naughtily not supporting yet, I’m hoping they’ll cling onto the struts of the greenhouse, which they’re starting to do, when plants do do that, it absolutely amazes me, the trained biologist in me is easily impressed.

My peppers are getting so tall, I’ve had to move them to the top shelf of the greenhouse, where they will get more space. My aubergines and chillis, which I’d initially doubled some of them up in their pots, desperately need replanting. My greek basil leaves are getting bigger, as is the plant, phew, I was unsure about that one one when I got it. My ‘normal’ basil seedlings are also doing well and have just been moved from my kitchen window sill in the greenhouse, as the weather stays warm and they look more like basil plants every day. My parsley is doing fine, it’s still going and has lasted already a lot longer than a supermarket potted parsley. My coriander, despite me using it alot is getting leggy, I’ve had this happen before with home grown coriander, I will have to plant some new coriander seeds soon. Oh and as for my carrots, little difficult to see how they’re doing obviously, but still green and bushy up top!

Other than that, I think so far I’ve handled the ‘baby stage’ of my plants fine, apart from a few rocky moments at the start. Now I’m worrying about the ‘teenage stage’, as they start to flower and prepare to fruit, I have no idea if I’m doing the right thing.

A trying out new recipes day yesterday. Lunch was cheese and onion pastries, based loosely on a recipe I think from BBC Good Food magazine (that’s what happens when you tear recipes out). I took a sheet of ready rolled puff pastry, some mashed potato (a couple of potatoes worth should be enough), grated cheese and thinly sliced red onion plus a splash of milk, I mixed together all the ingredients (except for the puff pastry of course!) and then cutting the puff pastry sheet into six rectangles, I took a couple of large heaped spoonfuls of the mixture and put it at one end of each pastry rectangle. I then folded each rectangle over and pressed it shut with my fingers to make six filled squares. I then placed them in a preheated oven at 200C for 20 minutes. I made it Boy Lacer cow’s milk free friendly by using Saxby’s normal puff pastry which doesn’t have any butter in (and you can taste it, it’s ok but not the same as my normal brand) and dividing some of the mashed potato before I put the cheese and milk in and mixed in his goat’s cheese and goat’s milk instead. All that effort proved resoundingly not worth it as he didn’t even touch his, sigh. However everyone else liked theirs, although I thought it was a little bland.

Sunday evening was of course the ultimate comfort food, pasta. Another recipe from my cuttings book, this time from Waitrose, the recipe, Creamy Ham and Courgette Pasta can be found here. I adapted the recipe slightly, using the dried pasta shape I just happened to have in the cupboard and switching the cheese from Le Roulé Full Fat Soft Cheese to good old Philly, just a couple of spoonfuls per person and stirring it until it had melted. Will definitely be making this one again, but will probably switch the ham to my favourite pancetta, adding the pancetta to the pan at the frying onions stage, delicious, may very possibly give it a go tonight!

*All salad featured grown by me (it’s going well!)

After my earlier Sunday Salon post, I have now managed to finish Mums@Home by Sophie King, so two Sunday Salon posts in one Sunday! Mums@Home turned out to be an easy but engrossing read, perfect for a lazy, sunny, not too taxing Sunday. Involving an interesting premise about the lives of the parents who post on an internet parenting site and how they intertwine with each other, it is typical chick-lit but quite cleverly done. I like Sophie King’s use of other media to segment her work, in The School Run she used clips from the radio and in Mums@Home she used internet messages.

I thought this one was a bit better than Sophie King’s The School Run, which was very orientated towards mothers and their children (although there was a token male). As I said before, Mums@Home is still chick-lit and does involve troublesome teenagers and nasty spouses quite heavily but I think this one is more relevant and has something more for the general reader.

Now back to my crime thriller, had my chick-lit dose over and done with for quite a while. 

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell are still missing in action and I’ve temporarily abandoned ‘I’m Watching You’  for a couple of Sophie King books after seeing her at a talk recently. The first ‘The School Run’, I finished yesterday, the second Mums@Home, I’m more than half way through, would probably be on the home run to finishing it actually (these books are nothing but easy reads) if Girl Lacer hadn’t snuggled up to me on the sofa whilst I was reading and said,

“Mummy, that’s not housework.”

“Mummy, you should be doing housework.”

“Mummy, you should be putting washing out on the line or something,”

She pulls me off the sofa.

“Come on then!”

So, I put the washing on the line, which did actually need doing, as does the hedge, which Mr. Lacer wanted to know whether I was doing it “sometime this weekend or was it the next?”. I have to do the hedge but I’m currently on the sofa with Mr. Rabbit who’s asleep, whilst Boy Lacer goes and gets him a drink and some icecream.

Anyway back to Mums@Home, it is very much like The School Run, in fact two of the characters from The School Run do make a brief appearance as just about the only happy people in Mums@Home (although in keeping with what seems to be the norm in Sophie King books they were pretty miserable in The School Run). In both The School Run and Mums@Home, which as their titles suggest are about parenting and children plus also about the relationships between the parents, the characters are miserable because a) their partner has cheated on them b) their partner is possibly cheating on them c) their partner has probably done something dodgy and the children are all complete nightmares. All in all although it is perfectly readable it does get a bit depressing, although books where the parents are happily in love and the children are reasonably behaved little angels probably don’t make much of a good read.

Absolutely brilliant! The Doctor, Donna and Martha are flung into the midst of a war between two species, both who use reproduction technology to produce new soldiers and guess who’s DNA they used? Yep, the Doctor’s. The Doctor getting a daughter leads to some fantastic acting from David Tennant, as the whole maelstrom of emotions is opened up again in regard to what happened to the Timelords. And as for the ending (I don’t like giving away too many spoilers but) a possible spin-off?

“I like the running.”

After seeing Sophie King a.k.a. Jane Bidder talk at a writers’ talk recently, it made me tempted to read some of her work. The first The School Run, I finished today. Telling the story of seven families sharing the same school run, it follows a week in their lives. It’s like watching a car crash in slow motion, as the majority of the characters spiral out of control, a bit addictive but a bit disturbing at the same time. A good book if you have children yourself, other than that you might not ‘get it’.

I’m now reading her second, Mums@Home, I may possibly go into Sophie King overdose, reading two back to back, but Mums@Home has an interesting premise about parents using an internet parenting forum, something I’ve used heavily in the past.

Don’t know what to do with myself! After yesterday’s manic tidying, the flat is now tidy and my dad has been and gone. Ok, the flat is now covered in glitter, which is evil stuff, as I let the kids do some glittering and it’s impossible to completely get rid of, but other than that, not much to do, of course there is stuff to do really, like sort out the cupboards, try and work out what to do with all the kids books, sort out my fabric stash, but I’m conviently forgetting those for the moment.

Talking of things impossible to completely get rid of, my dad, who is fortunately a far better gardener than I am, last night completely blitzed my Russian Vine, which after one complaint too many, we decided to get rid of. The garden now looks a lot bigger and the fences strangely bare. Dad said the vine could have eventually got into the roofs, now that would have made us popular, not! We still need to saw the base off a bit more, we’ll try and dig it up but we’re very realistic that it will grow back.