First day of the holidays

A quiet day today, lots of housework (dishwasher on twice, washing machine on twice and it’s only lunchtime), Girl Lacer has been helping me and now you can see the floors of the living room and the kids bedroom.

We’ve just had lunch, I’d been hoping for a later lunch now we no longer have to rush to nursery but come 11.45am Boy Lacer looks me straight in the face and goes “hungry” (new rather useful word there), so I go into the kitchen begrudgingly to make lunch. Come 12pm on the dot when CBeebies play their lunch time song, Girl Lacer calls to me from the living room whilst I’m still making lunch “Lunch is late!”. Sigh, early lunches are going to take a while to wean them off.

Lunch incidentally was cheese and ham quesadilias, cows cheese. We’re still trialing Boy Lacer on cow’s dairy, so far it’s just been cows milk first thing in the morning and we don’t think there’s been a problem so far (he’s been a bit whingy but that’s nothing new). So I thought I’d try him with cheese this lunch time, his last definite reaction to a dairy product last year was due to cheese, so we’ll see what happens. Although he didn’t eat much of his quesadilia, he’s never been a big fan of cheesy, creamy stuff.

So off shopping this afternoon, what an exciting life I lead.

Orange juice and olive oil cake with pine nuts

 

In case you hadn’t guessed, I’m menu planning from Tessa Kiros’ Apple for Jam this week (and probably next, there’s so many recipes I want to do). This afternoon me and Girl Lacer had a go at making Kiros’ Orange Juice and Olive Oil Cake with pine nuts, probably the most ‘technically difficult’ cake I’ve made with her so far. Still, we had fun, lots of new techniques for her, whisking egg whites and squeezing oranges.

The recipe was for making two cakes and I thought why not? I’ve always wanted to run the sort of household where there was always a bit of home made cake or biscuit somewhere (and that never happens because they always get eaten really quickly, but even we would not polish off two cakes that quickly!). Anyway the resulting cakes were a little ah hem flat, that’s because me and Girl Lacer didn’t whisk the egg whites properly but they’re still tasty and actually bordering on healthy with the pine nuts and the copious amounts of olive oil. Talking of the olive oil, I’d recommend using a really good olive oil as you can really taste it in the cake, I’m using Waitrose Organic 100% Italian olive oil at the moment (it was on special offer, I’m not normally that posh) but you can really appreciate it’s taste. Also the use of olive oil means that the cake is dairy free (always handy if Boy Lacer does turn out to fail his intolerance test).

Tessa Kiros’ Tomato Lasagne

Oh my that was delicious! Tessa Kiros’ Tomato Lasagne from Apples for Jam is one of those recipes I’ve been meaning to make for a while and why did I wait so long! Basically lasagne constructed from a lovely basic tomato sauce with a bechamal sauce (and Kiros’s method for making it was some how so much more easier than other bechamal sauces I’ve made), some sprinklings of parmesan and some lasagne sheets, that’s about it! The only secret is to add a little bit of water to your tomato sauce to make is liquid enough to soak into your no pre-cook dry lasagne sheets. Three out of four Lacer’s loved it, Boy Lacer who’s having a cow dairy day as we’ve finally got round to doing a summer intolerance test and therefore could eat this, refused to touch it as he doesn’t like creamy dishes. All you other parents out there, what do you do if one of your children point blank refuses to eat a certain type of dish? I refuse to go down the path of separate meals. We’re lucky in that Boy Lacer, although he’s been on a cow dairy free diet is ok to eat goats milk products so most dishes are adaptable, if he’d eat them that is.

A Family Book Selling Affair

It was my last book selling event of the season today (unless I get anymore bookings) and this time Mr. Lacer and the kids came with me. Unfortunately for all concerned we’d envisioned the event I was selling at to be a bit bigger than it actually turned out to be, so I sold less books than I hoped and it was difficult to find stuff to keep the kids entertained for four hours, although Boy Lacer was a good boy and happy to sit on the grass and watch everyone or just lay in the sun. Girl Lacer got lots of free gos on the bouncy castle whilst I was setting up and ate lots of cakes. Both kids also got a book from my remaining stock pile as a thank you, although Girl Lacer said she charged £2, she also got one of my puppets as it’d been in my stock box for a while and was beginning to look a little ropey. Mr. Lacer joked that I should have perhaps have given Boy Lacer his book at the beginning of the event, as that would have encouraged people, as he sat on the grass in front of the stall enthusiastically turning the pages and pointing at all the vehicles (it was a vehicle book) and making their noises. As a bibliophile though, it is always a bit depressing when I go to events like that and realise that not everyone is like me and some people can happily pass up a book and go and buy something else instead. The books I sell, in the majority, are lovely (and no I’m not biased), I wouldn’t be selling them (at an overall loss most of the time) if I didn’t think they were, so I’m pretty sure it’s not the books themselves except maybe for their lack of Noddy, Barbie et al. Although of course the credit crunch is not helping, even as a family of self-confessed biblioholics (well . . .  me and the kids are, Mr. Lacer just reads Terry Pratchett and Chris Moyles, although I’m trying to get him onto Neil Gaiman), I can’t remember the last time I actually brought the kids books after the need for greater budgetary constraint.

So, back home now and shattered. Unfortunately with book selling all day, even the minimal household chores that even I do everyday (laundry, dishwasher) have not been done and the kitchen is a disaster zone and I need to make a birthday cake tonight. Ok, I don’t need to, it’s for Mr. Lacer and he can survive without birthday cake but Girl Lacer would definitely be questioning where it was and it doesn’t seem right not having a birthday cake. But honestly, if it wasn’t for the fact of Boy Lacer’s cows milk intolerance I’d have been down the corner shop buying a ready made corner shop cake. So, as it is I have to conjure a cake out of what I’ve got in my kitchen. Mr. Lacer has quite tentatively said he’d like sponge (as I never make sponge) but I don’t think I could pull it off as I don’t have the right tins and probably not enough eggs. So then I thought about blueberry muffins but then I realised I didn’t have any goats or plain soya yogurt, so then I thought about my default birthday cake, a buttermilk one and then realised I needed goats or soya yoghurt for that to. So who knows what it’ll be . . .

Cupcake Day

An extremely busy day today, nothing particularly special, just not much chance to sit down. This morning was in town with both kids shopping for a birthday present for daddy (I won’t say what it is as he occasionally reads this (I think) but it’s cool) and a gazebo for me (book selling protection). The straight onto nursery for Girl Lacer and back home for me and Boy Lacer but no rest for the wicked as today was cake sale day for nursery and I needed to make some cakes. I remember the enthusiasm with which I made my first ever batch of cake sale cakes, now I’m an old hand (sort of) of the whole school thing, there’s a lot of internal groaning. So keeping with my current Bill Granger cooking theme and looking for something simple, I made his vanilla cupcakes from Bill’s Open Kitchen. He decorated his with the perfect white icing and raspberries, I ummmm . . . .

Now, do I get a gold star for innovative emergency use of writing icing or do I get marched straight down to the nearest shop and told to finally get a decent sieve so I can sieve my icing sugar? As you can see there are ten cakes, originally there were twelve, one went down my gullet uniced ‘just to check they were cooked’ and the other fell victim to some very lumpy, very bad white icing, it looked like baby sick, so I ate that to It didn’t help that the cakes, due to the neccesity of timing were still warm.

So the cakes, almost still hot from the oven, were couriered to the school precariously on the back of the double buggy which had been dug out of the shed earlier to transport the gazebo.

Girl Lacer came out of nursery with an envelope I’ve been waiting a while for, we finally know now which Reception class she’ll be in, her teacher’s name and what day she’s starting. Girl Lacer of course knew all this already as they’d told her during nursery, so when I read the letter and said “Oh your teacher’s name is Mrs . . .”, Girl Lacer immediately corrected my pronunciation! Also a surprise on the staffing front, the nursery assistant from nursery, who is a lovely lady, will also be moving with them and will become the nursery assistant in Girl Lacer’s reception class, which is going to be nice. So, we now know the exact uniform requirements, so I can make the most of the 3 for 2 offer on school uniform in M&S at the moment and I’ve seen the new packed lunch rules, which seemed to have relaxed a bit thank goodness, as they’re now allowed crisps and cereal bars as long as the crisps are low fat / low salt and the cereal bars chocolate/ nut free, I can just imagine the lunch staff checking all the crisp packets! It all seems so much more real now that we have all the documentation and dates, argh my baby is growing up!

Anyway, so two cakes were shoved down the throats of Girl and Boy Lacer at varying speeds; Girl Lacer reasonably restrained; Boy Lacer, who due to his cow’s milk intolerance can only have a cake sale cake once a term i.e. one I’ve made and therefore we know it doesn’t have cows milk in it (as I use goats milk and Pure) shoved the cake into his mouth literally in one go, I was a bit worried that we’d have a repeat of the coconut bread incident from earlier this week but his mouth has a very large cake capacity obviously.

We then went on to a council fun thing in one of the playing fields with some friends from nursery, one of the nice things about my area is that they are good about things like that, but they should be considering the amount of council tax we pay. So lots of freebies and crafty stuff, this was the first one were Boy Lacer was old enough to just about appreciate it and he had fun with the playdough and even made a badge (which he gave to Girl Lacer, awww) and a mask. He even tried to climb up a slide (couldn’t, he needed some help) which was a first, played in the sandpit with some dinosaurs and stuck a gorilla down several volcanoes, he even offered a palm tree to another little girl playing there. So, a good after school activity!

Got home, read an e-mail from my sister telling me that she was about to do something really very surprising and totally unexpected then tea, bath and bed (and it was my turn) but (surprisingly) I was itching to get out for my scheduled run, even though I was already pretty knackered. So I went out, wasn’t sure I’d even get past 2k, just about managed that, convinced myself to run another 0.5 to get to my current best, got there and convinced myself to run another 0.5k to get to my aimed for distance for this month of 3k. So, pleased with that and it’s all with the incentive that the sportsband gives me.

Sunday’s cooking

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!)

 

The Sunday Salon – The Ninky Nonk in my living room (plus Night Watch Review)

Happy Easter everyone! This year is a rare Easter for us in that we’re actually at home, since my dad moved to North Wales about 4 years ago we’d spent every Easter up there, but as Easter doesn’t actually fall in the school holidays this year we’re delaying our trip by a few weeks.

As we have two autumn born children we usually celebrate Easter by buying them a ‘garden present’ as it’s pretty pointless buying them a garden toy for their autumn birthdays or at Christmas. This year was a pop up Ninky Nonk (I’m pretty sure that Ninky Nonk is a global phenomenon now but still only parents of the under 5 are likely to know what I mean, so for those that don’t, the Ninky Nonk is a fictional train on the children’s TV programme, In the Night Garden, made by the same people who made Teletubbies and I’ve heard described by it’s makers as a gentle interactive nursery book).

Our Ninky Nonk is a series of pop up tents that join together like the train, the kids love it. Boy Lacer who is really in the age group In the Night Garden is aimed at loves ITNG but so does his big sister Girl Lacer. Shame the weather was no where near nice enough to play with it outside today (it was snowing, although unfortunately not settling), so the Ninky Nonk was set up in our living room, taking literally all the floor space.

As well at the Ninky Nonk the kids off course got some Easter eggs; Girl Lacer got a small Smarties egg, a gold foiled chocolate bunny and a soft rabbit from us and Boy Lacer got a goats milk chocolate Easter egg and hen (he’s cow’s milk protein intolerant), that required some sourcing! In the end I got the goats milk chocolate online from Kidmenot, me and Girl Lacer have also tried it (in our position as chocolate connoisseurs) as I had also ordered some minibars of chocolate which turned out even more mini than I had thought. Boy Lacer likes it, although I think he prefers the little packets of dairy free chocolate buttons you can get from Sainsburys, Girl Lacer likes it (she likes any chocolate though) and I think it tastes ok to. As well as chocolate and presents from us, there were also presents from the mother-in-law, chocolate eggs for me and Mr. Lacer and little goodie bags for the kids, with the mother-in-law thankfully making sure Boy Lacer’s was dairy free (more dairy free chocolate buttons from Sainsburys). I also got an egg from Mr. Lacer and I have now consequently eaten too much chocolate (how come I can be more controlled about rationing the kids chocolate than my own?) and feel rather dodgy.

So it’s a good thing I haven’t got much to do today other than eating chocolate (groan, never again) and reading. I finished reading The Night Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko

I gave my initial impressions last week and they haven’t much changed; I had thought the prose a little clunky and it remained so, although that was probably largely due to it’s translation. But now for a proper review:

The Night Watch is the first of a trilogy by the Russian author Sergei Lukyanenko; it tells the story of the battle between Light and Dark on the streets of Moscow, where Others, people with magical powers prowl the streets undetected by normal humans. Told from the perspective of a Night Watch agent, Anton, an Other aligned to the Light, the book takes the shape of three stories, although all three are linked with each other, climaxing in a final battle (as all these sort of books seem to do).

Written with great imagination, the creation of a parallel world hidden from the rest of Moscow’s citizens has been very well done. Describing the effects of magic on the everyday world, I particularly liked one of the earliest scenes where Anton is on the metro and he’s looking at the vortexes above some of the passengers head, formed when another human curses another (i.e. “You’re a stupid idiot” etc. etc.) they cause anything ranging from depression to a migraine, obviously ficitious but I had fun imagining some of the vortexes I would have caused recently lol. The creation of the two Watches; the Night Watch created by Others from the Light and the Day Watch created by Others from the Dark was also well done. The two Watches are at truce with each other, fearing what an all out war would do to the human world. The three stories tell how the members of Night Watch are manipulated.

Overall though this book wasn’t really for me and I won’t be rushing to read the next two books (although I might one day). Reading the book I had a sneaking suspicion I was reading the book 10 years to late, I think I would have loved it when I was in my early 20s, being Russian would also have helped as there are lots of references to Russian pop songs I haven’t heard of. But now there’s just a bit too much introverted soul searching for me, in some scenes when the main character was spending page after page pondering the various machinations between Light and Dark I was incredibly tempted to skip to the next bit of action! Not my book of the year, by far but an ok read.

So it’s only midday (this weekend has been a long weekend, in more ways than one) and I think I may actually have time to start another book, although I feel like something light and fluffy (unusual for me) although I have just the thing on my TBR  mountain (a well meaning but unfortunate Christmas present). So  I think I’ll lurk around the Salon for a bit longer and may be back with my first impressions of ‘light and fluffy’, just keep me away from the chocolate!