BLACKSTICKS CHEESES

I noticed some new cheeses recently in ASDA. I hadn't tried these before so bought them, being a big cheese fan. I would highly recommend them if you like smooth, creamy blue cheeses!

THE BOTTOMLESS PIT

The WHO says I shouldn't start feeding Amaia (remember the 10lb baby) till she is 26 weeks old - ie in another 5 weeks. The WHO is barking mad! If I hadn't started her on solids I fear she might actually have eaten a member of the family by now - possibly Anna as she is currently the least mobile and the second smallest. Take today for example: it started with four rounds of breast milk from 2am onwards, then she had a cereal bowl full of porridge with blueberry compote at 9am, followed by more breast milk, at 1pm she was screaming again so had cauliflower, broccoli and cheese sauce with water, at 5pm she downed a jar (I didn't have time to cook her anything - she wouldn't let me!) of beef and root veg of some sort - I heated just half, then she demanded the other half, then a whole cereal bowl of yogurt with fruit and more of my milk (twice more). At 9pm I went up to change the other kids' bedding and came down to find Thomas feeding her a rusk dissolved in milk as she had declared famine once more. After another feed from me she fell asleep - no doubt to work up the strength to be up all night drinking again. She is a bottomless pit! Could I even contemplate not giving her any solids yet???

A PROUD PARENTING MOMENT

 A day out Originally uploaded by PhylB

I know I'm going to come across as a sad middle-class cow but I'm going to share this with you anyway :-) Today my 4 year (and 8 months) old son was playing in the garden when a neighbour's 6 year old came wandering down the path holding a small burger in one hand and a McDonalds Happy Meal box in the other. Léon whispered to me What is that? I explained it was a burger and a Happy Meal box and he replied What is a Happy Meal? This came from a child who can tell chives from garlic chives in the herb patch and who knows which plants give raspberries, strawberries and blueberries around the garden! I'm a smug and happy mummy!

I'M SPEECHLESS

For goodness sake! What kind of planet are we living on???? I'd be horrified if I had an 18 month old who couldn't identify fruit and veg. This is unimaginable to me. Mind you, I have tried to teach them from early on about good food and of course Thomas grows it in the garden so they know exactly where it comes from too!
I have to say that one of the major advantages of having a big family is not being able to afford ready meals so the kids get to see how to make food from the bottom up and of course it also forces the big ones into having their own cooking days which further advances this knowledge. Tell them to go cook a meal for ten from raw ingredients, they are completely undaunted.

HOMEMADE PRESERVES

I know rumour has it I am going to be 42 next week, but given I am from the UK, admitting that I have never made jam, marmalade or anything similar in my life does not single me out as terribly odd. One of the first questions my first mother-in-law asked me at 18 was what my favourite jam to make was - I was quite embarrassed to admit I didn't know how to make jam, she dubbed me an 'intello' thereafter, and never revised that opinion! Thomas decided yesterday to make marmalade (see here on the left), (which seems to have become whisky marmalade somewhere along the line) and I watched. It actually seemed easy! I mentioned how much I like lemon curd and he dug me out a recipe. I decided to rope in Charlotte as a scapegautier in case I failed miserably! So today after school Lots and I made our first batch of lemon curd (here on the right) and it's bloody brilliant - so good I am tempted to try lime or orange curd tomorrow! That's next Xmas sorted - small homemade preserves for everyone :-)

QUALITY, STYLE AND BEAUTY

My major garlic press rant of last autumn did not go unnoticed! When Amaia was born last week, Sabine dropped by with a cuddly bear and a beautiful new garlic press for her and I must say it is the epitome of quality, style and beauty! It is so sturdy you could crush a car in it, so shiny you could replace your favourite ornament with it and so non-British in its functionality I feel almost like I've moved somewhere Mediterranean! It's so perfect I need all the kitchen tools in the set! Thanks Sabine! Amaia can't wait for her first taste of pureed carrot (with added garlic!)

HOW MANY DOUGHNUTS (DONUTS)?

When Léon and I were in Manhattan a few years ago we decided to go up the Empire State Building one morning because our jet lag had got us up so early there was no queue yet. Figuring we'd be hungry before we'd done our sightseeing, I decided to buy a couple of donuts to go in a bag. Luckily there was a donut shop just across the road so I went in and asked for two. The man behind the counter looked at me as if I had asked for two live chickens in a bag. He proceeded to explain that donuts were so much cheaper to buy by the half dozen. I pointed out I was alone with a baby and two would be fine. I probably ended up paying as much for two as I would have for six, but I didn't see any point in carrying four spares around all day. Last night Lots and Thomas decided to make homemade doughnuts for breakfast for the first time. Thomas had a well-known American cookbook called 'Joy' and he and Charlotte disappeared into the kitchen for the best part of yesterday evening doing odd things with dough and yeast. It seemed like a lot of hassle. They made one batch of doughnuts as explained in the cookbook. This morning they were ready for frying. The one batch as recommended by the American cookbook contained approximately thirty donuts and mentioned they had to be eaten within two hours of frying. I assume most American families have two, maybe three kids at the most, so their breakfast batch suggests you should be eating six or even seven large donuts each for breakfast! Suddenly I understand both why the bloke in Manhattan had mocked my order of two donuts and why Americans aren't generally the skinniest people around! (Incidentally, I don't actually like doughnuts - they are greasy and heavy, and even one is too much, but these were light and fluffy and I probably polished off at least three in the required two hours, so maybe people should make their own.)

INDIAN COOKERY

Years ago I bought an Indian cookbook. Although I like most of the recipes it offers and am planning to make a nice aromatic fish curry out of it this weekend, I have to say my favourite recipe in the whole book is the (Vegetarian) Cauliflower surprise. This aptly named dish never fails to make me smile!

FLYING SLUGS?

It's funny trying to grow your own veg. I've never bothered with more than tomatoes in the window sills before but Thomas has got me into herbs, veg and potatoes. Most things seem to be doing quite well but all members of the cabbage family are beginning to look like lace. I have rarely seen any slugs around or in the veggie patch but we have holes as high up as Pudge's waist in our Brussel sprouts. Do nocturnal, levitating slugs exist in the West of Scotland?

LAMB BIRYANI AND CHICKEN KORMA

Because English uses bizarre words like beef and pork instead of cow and pig for meat, I remember the surprise shown by Marcel and Lots when they were first told they were eating dead animals (not that it put them off - they are not very veggie people!) Anna seems to have sussed straight away though what she's eating as she points out in this video which parts of her curry used to be sheep 'mæh' (as in baaah in English) and which are chicken 'gok-gok' (as in cluck-cluck in English!)

WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE?

Now here's a strange thing. I may have mentioned Anna is your archetypal hunter-gatherer baby - she either wants meat, or berries. She eats most other things but left to her own devices, she'd happily pass on all carbs in favour of her beloved meat. When we buy a fresh, still warm loaf from ASDA or Tesco, she has to be coerced into eating it, just the same as if we buy a cold six hour old loaf from ASDA or Tesco. However if we bake a loaf at home in our bread machine, she suddenly abandons everything and devours most of the loaf simply with butter. No meat is necessary. How can she tell the difference at once between a fresh shop loaf and a fresh bread machine loaf?

THE PROBLEM WITH TOMATOES

I experienced it once before years ago when a workmate, Daphne, gave me some cherry tomato seeds. I grew the tomatoes on the windowledge of my third floor flat and picked and ate each one as it ripened - truly divine... however, the downside was that supermarket tomatoes, even the extra special ones, tasted like washing up liquid for about 18 months till my tastebuds forgot the homegrown ones and accepted the shop rubbish. We now have a greenhouse and we're growing our own tomatoes - we get about three cherry tomatoes a week between six of us but it's that or the washing-up liquid variety again :-(

POTATO PARANOIA?

Mashed Potatoes
Originally uploaded by jugglerpm

Thomas seems a tad more worried by green-skinned potatoes than me. In fact he approaches them in the same way that most Brits would approach a plate of toadstools collected randomly in the forest by an amateur.
Here in the UK we might avoid a dark green potato but a slight green haze on one potato in the bag wouldn't send us looking for an all-night doctor. We're used to the odd green chip or crisp in a bag and we happily munch them.
Thomas explained to me that Danes are so worried about the toxicity of green potatoes they'd take one back to a shop for a refund or bin it.
I thought I'd investigate.
It seems they are toxic but an adult would have to ingest 2kg of green potatoes at one sitting before the toxicity would start to affect them.
Interesting!
(I'm away to eat my mash - I hope Thomas won't notice the one greenish potato I threw in ;-) )

AUBERGINES

One of the problems with having an aversion to instruction manuals is the fact that that spills over into recipe usage. I wouldn't say I never use recipes (in the way I never read manuals even when the kitchen around me is flooding because I don't know how to work the new dishwasher or washing machine) but I do tend to improvise unless the Queen herself is dropping by for dinner. For that reason I have spent my whole adult life being disappointed by aubergines. I always thought something that shiny and photogenic should taste nice but no matter what sauce or pasta I threw them in, I sadly got out chewy, bath-sponge-consistency, tasteless lumps. Then I met Thomas who is the best cook I know but who uses a recipe for everything (including how to butter a piece of bread). He has more cookbooks than most people have books... in fact than many libraries have books but he knows about drawing the water from aubergines using salt water and frying them till they are delicious both in flavour and texture. Aubergines have now jumped from around the bottom of my preferred veg list to near top. Hooray!

NARDINI'S

Last spring I suggested a day trip to Largs because it was a nice day. I imagined a nice drive, a stroll along the beach and an ice cream at Nardini's. Much to my horror on arrival I found Nardini's derelict with a sign advertising luxury flats attached to the building. I bored Thomas and the kids with the story of my first ever flavoured ice cream on a trip to Nardini's circa 1972. I told of how my parents had bought me a strawberry cone and I had stared at its pinkness in wonder having only ever seen vanilla, or 'plain' ice cream as we called it, in my life before then. My kids of course assumed, as always, that I was some sort of prehistoric fossil from an era of black and white tellies.

We returned home and I sadly uploaded my last photos of Nardini's, or so I thought.
This week I was on facebook when I noticed a friend, who lives in Canada, had set his current status to 'going to Largs for ice-cream from Nardini's'. Could it be true? Several friends queried its existence there and then and the reply popped up 'Nardini's is very there - all redone and reopened.' Music to my ears! Less than twenty-four hours later with Thomas and all 4.3 kids packed into the car we drove down to Largs to find it was indeed 'de retour'.

The ice creams on display made your mouth water. The flavours and presentation were superb and for someone who tends only to indulge in such extravagances in the likes of Nice or Paris, the Scottish prices were even better!
I had caramel shortcake and honeycomb, Thomas had tablet, raspberry cranachan and one of their many chocolates, Anna had banoffee pie, Lots had After Eights, Irn Bru and caramel shortcake, Marcel had another chocolate with tablet and caramel shortcake and for my Pudgeman - what could we buy him at nearly 4? A large cone with Nardini's own fresh strawberry ice cream of course!
Hopefully one day he'll take his own kids to Nardini's and tell them all about the day when he was nearly 4 when Thomas and Mum bought him a lovely strawberry ice!

MY BABY?

I know Anna was born in a big hurry back in 2007 and probably never left my side for the 24 or so hours I was in hospital. I know too that she looks like half my family but I am beginning to have severe doubts she is my child... Could Thomas have been unfaithful? ;-) On Monday night Thomas cut her a slice of my beloved chocolate and vanilla cheesecake and offered her it. She played around with it for a bit not really interested and then asked for a Farley's rusk instead! Sacrilege!

OUTDOOR EATING

For the best part of the last three weeks we have had every meal outside. We have even had breakfast under the parasol some mornings. Bliss! It's almost been like living back in France, but without the olive trees in the garden. Yesterday and today we had to eat in the dining room. It was quite depressing to come back indoors but not for the reasons I had expected. Tonight's dinner was running late so I made some chicken noodle soup as a starter - talk about Armageddon! The table and floor were swimming in soup, there were noodles all over the table, noodles the full length of the ornate table legs and stretching all the way to the coffee room door. Half a kitchen roll later we had pork and potatoes with gravy and cauliflower. Pudge was so covered in gravy by the end of the meal that I was terrified he'd touch the wallpaper and Thomas was elected as the person who should strip off completely and carry the two grubby monsters to the bath. Eating outside where the noodles and soup simply fall on the grass and where, by the time they've run around the garden for an hour after dinner, the sticky, greasy hands have lost some of the element of danger is just so much less stressful :-( Come back sun, now!

KETCHUP

 Yummy ketchup Originally uploaded by PhylB

I am beginning to feel like a freak. Everyone in my house loves ketchup and I just can't abide the stuff. I can think of absolutely nothing that's flavour could in any way be enhanced by adding sugary tomato purée. At first the philistines reserved it for chips. Then at some point fried rice with bacon bits started inheriting the sickly stuff. (Believe me, when you don't like the putrid gloop, the smell is much more overwhelming when you are surrounded by 5 people dousing their dinner in it). As if to torment me, Thomas started offering it to Anna on chips and rice before the poor kid could say no, and much to my digust, she liked it so much she started pointing at it on the table and squeaking until it was profferred. But tomorrow I have resolved to hide it at the back of a dark cupboard... Why? The sight of Anna eating a bowl of cornflakes this morning, suddenly spying the ketchup bottle on the table, pointing and squeaking was just too much for my stomach to take. It has to stop somewhere, NOW!

USELESS LITTLE JARS OF SPICES

I was in Chinatown in Garnethill today getting some shopping. Being in the Chinese supermarket reminded me about another rant. How do Schwartz get away with selling people 3 spoonfuls of spice in a jar for extortionate prices in all our supermarkets? Why would any sane human being buy these pitiful little jars when any Chinese or Indian supermarket in town will sell you a bag of the same spices at approximately 10% of the price? You can get 2kg of paprika in Chinatown for £1.55. You can get about 3kg of dried chilis for less than £2 too - Schwartz want £2 for one of these little jars that will barely do you one meal. Maybe I just use more herbs or spices than most but with sell-by/use-by dates 2 and 3 years down the line, I really don't see why more people don't source their spices elsewhere. (Oh and soy sauce is also about 30% ASDA price, while I'm on the subject).

DUCK AND LEMON MERINGUE PIE

bow of the USS Lemon Meringue
Originally uploaded by zen

Thomas has been gardening all day and is too knackered to cook. I checked the freezer and found we only had legs of lamb and turkeys that would feed 10 people. The kids are away this weekend so we had the choice of Chinese or a trip to ASDA. The Chinese won hands down.
We ordered a boring satay and a boring sweet and sour but decided to be adventurous and go for something different for a change to supplement these as two meals aren't enough, given Anna is a bottomless pit. We looked at the duck options. We'd tried them all before, except Duck in lemon sauce. Well it's nice in plum and it's nice in orange so we ordered the lemon.
Unlike a European who I presume would have added a hint of lemon so as not to make the dish too tart, the Chinese had gone for a different solution. They had juiced about 2 dozen lemons, sat the duck in it and to make sure we could cope with the bitterness, had added about a kilo of sugar for good measure. The result was exactly as I imagine Duck and Lemon meringue pie would taste. Yeuch! It was one of those tastes that didn't grow on you the more you had, on the contrary, it became more and more obscene. It definitely gets a rather large thumbs down from the Buchanan-Widmann household...
Mind you I now quite fancy a slice of lemon meringue pie and a nice cappuccino while I watch the Eurovision song contest.