Extreme swinging and just the right number of linear!

I've just realised that the title may be a bit misleading for some.....I am obviously referring to swinging on a swing. Had friend over for a bbq and one little girl (older than Isobel) was doing some great gymnastics on the swing - one leg, one arm, trying to climb up the side etc etc.

'It won't be long until Isobel is doing that' said her mum.

5 minutes later, there she was, trying to copy her - so a bit faster than we were imagining and filling me with terror as she dangled off about to fall but somehow saving herself! I'm trying to remain calm - inside thinking, OMG, she could fall and quite hurt herself. But she is a brave little thing and I don't want to instill fear - she wouldn't have broken anything, just added another few grazes to her battered legs! What would social services say?

Anyway, a tart update. Well, the pastry didn't shrink and the egg wash (I didn't know about this - thank u Jamie!) stopped it getting a soggy botty. Now then I'm writing this on my phone so its hard to organise the photos to do a 'here is one Jamie made' and 'here is mine' but needless to say, Jamie's was all perfect on the top and mine was, well, a little bit brown. But, suffice to say with a bit of icing sugar sprinkled on it looked good and tasted good - just the right amount lime apparently as I was told! Not sure its the healthiest option with 8 eggs and 300 ml cream but who cares, its pudding!

The pavlova went down a treat too - great for kids and you can hide a relatively small piece under loads if fruit!

I also kept the asparagus theme going with another naked chef recipe - asparagus, broad bean and French bean salad with a mustard dressing. Now the recipe called for French beans and I must say we improvised and added fresh peas but it was still lovely. And interestingly, I used to hate broad beans but I followed the recipe and off I was eating broad beans! Quite nice they were too! Arty also enjoyed it so a hit with the kids which is always good.

And, as we were in a Jamie mode, we also made the potato salad with a salsa Verde which was good - full of capers and anchovies and yummy yummy!

So, another Jamie verdict - good sweet crust pastry recipe and tips, great salads and another asparagus option for that lovely veggie!

Tired now. Have a few days off from the kids as am off to sunny Norfolk for training! I wonder if it will be rude to just go to be at 630 when the course finishes each day? Imagine, 12 hours sleep. What is that? In fact, what is 6 hours sleep?

Feeling crafty.....

For some reason I feel I've been quite productive today - especially when I was out for lunch for most of it with the kids! Maybe it's the sunshine!

I also know I must be careful though. After both kids were born I just did too much I think - I baked, made stuff, went out....and what happened? I got exhausted. I think that played a big part in the whole PND thing. I am just not good at not being active....and I also need to remember that when I see Isobel who has clearly taken after me - I find it hard to deal with her craziness but basically she is just doing what I do - running around like she has ants in her pants, wanting to try things, expend energy, not seeing the point in sitting....ha ha. Arthur doesn't appear to have inherited that....well not yet anyway!

So I started the day with a run. Not just any run but a run 'off piste'....followed the signs for some public footpath and ended up in a sea of oilseed rape flowers intermingled with stinging nettles.....and then got rather lost passing the same man and his dog about 3 times. He surely thought it was odd but was too polite to say 'nutter'.  Ended the day with some crazy disco dancing in the bedroom with Isobel and Arthur....probably not best practice in getting them to calm down before bed but how we all laughed!

In between I've started a dodgy homemade lantern (needs spray painting, pink of course), and started another Jamie Oliver recipe.  Shock of shocks it isn't asparagus.  No, its a tart. Oh a lovely tart.

The first stage this evening was to make the sweet pastry. Now then, last time I made sweet pastry it shrank into a tiny weeny ball in the oven....so, am wondering if Jamie will do me proud.

He has quite an interesting way to make it - after whizzing it up in the Kenwood (behaving this evening), the recipe calls for it to be pushed together into a dough with the fewest possible moves and then wrapped in clingy in the fridge.

So far, so good. Although its really a wee bit crumbly - hoping that means it will be lovely and short and opposed to dry and rubbish! Then he calls for it to be sliced into 5mm slices and pressed into the tin, then frozen. Not tried this before. Anyway, it seemed to go in ok and I appear to have about 3 large tins in the freezer now for all those tarts!

Made a pavlova with the left over whites. It is summer after all ;-).  A kid of delia meets nigella combo. Peter is so excited at the prospect of pavlova he can barely contain himself....well ok, he's on the sofa with me watching LOTR the two towers with some lovely cider.  God bless England in the summer.

Next pie installment tomorrow - will the pastry melt in the mouth or shrink to be smaller than a hobbit!

It's a naked chefess asparagus-thon!

Well we went to Crystal Palace earlier in the week, to see the dinosaurs.  Now then, Isobel was very excited about seeing the dinosaurs.  For those of you who aren't familiar with the dinosaurs, they were built by the Victorians in about 1854 and represent the first dinosaur sculptures in the world! They were designed and sculpted by Benjamin Hawkins and Richard Owen.  They were based on the best scientific info to hand at the time but are now seen as inaccurate in many ways.

Anyway, I digress.  Yes, the dinosaurs.  It was the first time for me to visit them and the first time for Isobel and Arthur.  The excitement built in the car....

'Mummy, are they real dinosaurs'....

'Why aren't they real?'....

'Are they pink?'

'Are they big ones or very very small ones?'

Upon arrival at said dinosaur park, Isobel saw the mural on the side of the cafe - 'look mummy, that one is eating carrot pie with bones in it and that one has a blueberry drink'.  When she actually saw the dinosaur, she wasn't that impressed....she was too busy wanting to scoot off with her friend and climb up muddy banks and tree stumps, play in the sandpit, eat sand, eat food generally and graze her knees almost out of existence.

Oh well.  I enjoyed it anyway!

So, onto the next step in the Jamie Oliver cookathon.  As it's English Asparagus season I have decided to do all the asparagus recipes from the Naked Chef - why not, saves food miles!  There are about 6 including some exciting home made asparagus and ricotta tortellini!  But, that excitement is for later.

We decided to have asparagus with anchovy butter.....not a combination I had thought of I must say.  Anyway, my trusty kenwood failed me - the recipe calls for the soft butter, anchovies, chilli (yum yum), lemon juice and black pepper to be whizzed in the food processor.....the kenwood seemed to just mush it up and then refuse to blend it at all! So I resorted to using a large knife and attempting to cut it in to a smooth consistency....

As you can see....I don't think it really worked....

But anyway, I kept going! Not going to be swayed by such a small think as a dodgy processor.

The asparagus was tossed in the butter as per instructions et voila - and it was yummy, very yummy.  Peter even thought it was a particularly good combo and he doesn't like anchovies!


I thought I would share two examples of the final product, one from the book and one from my plate:

Now this is Jamie's version - with flash

And mine - much better don't you think????

So, so far for Jamie's recipes - maximum points - tasty, easy and quite healthy too!

The naked chef-ess begins!

We plumped for using things up and so asparagus it was! It was also very easy which is what is needed when there has been a bit too much screaming going on (children, not adults....although at times we were tempted to join in!).

We went to penshurst place on Saturday. The sun came out and all was good! Penshurst place has a great adventure playground. Isobel fell for an older boy and they chased each other round a bit, she following him mainly until he went down the very high slide and she obviously thought 'erm, no. I don't fancy that and I'll be damned if I'm going to do something I don't want to just to impress a boy'.

Anyway, back to the asparagus - with melted cheese. In this case er used cashel blue (yummy yummy yummy) and Peter went off posted by adding a poached egg to his! Verdict? Yummy. Healthy (apart from the cheese maybe). Very easy and very quick. And its asparagus....which makes your wee smell don't you know!

Pinterest (2)

I've been going a bit mad on Pinterest.....must stop now.....but so many good ideas! So, this weekend i will mainly be making the first of my Jamie Oliver recipes and having a go at making some tile coasters to replace the rubbish ones we have at home! Oh, and praying my lottery numbers come in.....

The naked chef-ess!

So I had to go on the tube today, in rush hour. I don't miss it all. I have to say, London bridge in rush hour is a nightmare. So glad I don't have to do that every day! And now I am on a latish train home and someone is eating something which really really smells!

Anyway, I digress. I have been looking at these blogs by people who are cooking all of Mary Berry's recipes and found myself thinking, great idea but I would be fat as a house if I did that as I would eat it all! So, how about a similar challenge but with things we could eat for lunch and dinner.....

Who could it be? Well, a possibly controversial choice for some but we have plumped for Jamie. Peter said 'why don't you cook all of Jamie's recipes from every book he has done'. Good idea thought I. His food is generally tasty and the kids eat it. Nuff said.

Only challenge is we don't actually have all his books but hey Ho. So we are starting this madness this weekend, aiming for two recipes a week including flavoured butters and salad dressings as per the naked chef! Starting with The Naked Chef itself. Dilemma currently being faced - to go through recipes in order or be more spontaneous!

Likely to be the latter to use up the asparagus in the fridge.

It's either that or minestrone!

How many weetabix should a baby eat?

Well, apparently Arthur likes to eat 3 for breakfast! Yes, 3! I almost fell over.  He had one at home before going to nursery where he then promptly tucked into another 2......Oh my! Surely that it not normal.  Are we creating a blimp baby? Do we have an obesity crisis in development???

Three weetabix.  That's more than me!

So, it made me think about a few things:

(a) obesity levels in children - apparently by 11, 33% of children are obese in the UK http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7777108.stm.  That's quite frightening.  Obviously there are many reasons for this and there are lots of commentators who look at issues such as lack of activity, over-eating, eating the wrong things, poverty levels etc.  It makes me think of the story regarding the health visitor who commented to a friend of a friend that she had people 'blending macdonalds meals' to give to their babies when they were weaning them.  Now some might argue that 'in poor areas, there isn't the access to fresh fruit and vegetables and that for some, Macdonalds might be the nearest place to get affordable food to eat'.  Others might say that it was to do with education.  But whatever the reason, it's clearly a sad state of affairs as what you eat whilst pregnant and then what the child eats in the first 2 years of life is so important for it's future development.

I went to an interesting talk the other week by a lady working in Zimbabwe who was looking at issues of malnutrition and stunting and trying to work out what the interactions were in the environment which were impacting on children.  She talked about the first 1000 days of life - http://www.thousanddays.org/about/ - and the work they are doing to monitor pregnant women and children up to 18 months/2 years.  The statistics on child stunting, malnutrition and longer term brain, bone etc development were quite stark. 

(b) Being outside - there are all those statistics being shared at the moment about how children aren't playing outside as much. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/family/8623152/Children-no-longer-enjoy-playing-outdoors.html

The other weekend we spent most of the time inside (it was raining and raining and raining) but we still managed to go bowling - Arthur wanted to rush off down the lane to get to the skittles!

This weekend the sun was shining as a result we spent the whole weekend outside and there were families everywhere - running around, playing football, flying kites and generally enjoying themselves.So, the National Trust has started this 50 Things to do by the time you're 11 and 3/4! I was reading this in some magazine last week and it made me smile - I want to try some of these!   the link is below - it makes me laugh as they have to have the 'Health and Safety' comments added too - don't climb a tree on a wet day, don't roll down a really steep slope and so on...

https://www.50things.org.uk/parents-area.aspx

Which ones would I have a go at in my slightly older age?  Here we go:

- bury someone in the sand (I buried my dad and brother when I was young - but think this needs to be done with a certain husband now!)
- hunt for treasure on a beach - preferably find some real treasure with real sparkly gold!
- get behind a waterfall (apart from the fake one at Wisley in the greenhouse)
- go on a nature trail at night
- go wild swimming (do Hampstead Heath ponds count...? probably not)
- find a geocache - what on earth is this? technology enabled treasure hunting. 

And on that note, I'm hungry and need to eat something.  It's cold and wet outside (well it is May!) so I'm off to find a cinammon bun from the freezer, one we made earlier:

The sun is shining!!!

Yes it really is! So much rain and now a day of sun...and apparently it's going to be sunny tomorrow!  It might just prevent the development of webbed feet but only just.

Isobel has been on good form this week - it's so lovely when she is like this.  It makes finishing the happy pills so much easier.  I am due to take my last one tomorrow! Can't believe it.  They have been a lifesaver I think.  I was so scared of taking them and now I suppose part of me is scared of coming off them completely - although I don't think they are needed any more.

So, why has she been on top form? Well, I don't know.  Maybe because it's not been quite as tediously wet (yes, I know 'we need the rain' - but why can't it come at night and then be sunny in the day? I mean, surely that couldn't be that hard?).  We went to the lovely Wisley on Wednesday - I've not been for ages and it didn't let us down, despite the rain.

On the way there, stuck in very slow traffic on the M25, she chirps 'I don't like this road Mummy.  Can we go on another one to Wisley?'.  If only I think.  But we keep going - helped by never ending rounds of 'eye spy'....which goes something like this:

Mummy: I spy with my little eye, something white
Isobel: No pink.  I spy with my little eye something pink.
Mummy: Your jumper
Isobel: My turn. I spy......something white.
Mummy: The lorry....my turn...
Isobel: No, me. I spy....

And so it goes on - we have green (grass or trees), black (steering wheel), blue (coat) and that's about it.  So we repeat.

The game was briefly interrupted by me getting over excited listening to Heart as someone finally guessed one of the voices and won £5000! I couldn't believe it.  It's been going on for months! How my life has changed - excited by listening to Heart FM.

At Wisley we had even more of a laugh - not only did Isobel ruin everything she was wearing jumping about in muddy puddles (let's be honest - there are lots of them!) she then declared that 'odd' was her new word....and so had lots of fun going up to people and telling them they were odd! Mmmh, not something to be encouraged perhaps but really quite entertaining.

Anyway, back to the happy pills.  Yes, I come off them tomorrow.  Last weekend I felt quite wretched.  Really tired, upset stomach, no appetite, grumpy and so on.  Peter was convinced I needed to go back on the pills.  I wasn't as convinced.  I think it might be PMS.  Anyway, I am now on a new regime - the running has died down a bit (partly because of the weather, partly because of long working days for Peter which limits my time to get out) and so I have been reading about PMS and what might help.  As a result I feel like a pill popper:

- Vitamin B complex (for B12)
- Iron
- Evening Primrose Oil
- Calcium and Magnesium (I've cut down on milky coffee in a vague attempt to cut the pounds - both the spent ones and the weight ones!)

Seems to have made a difference - but it's probably all a placebo effect.
 
The week has ended well - all the sunshine today, out on Box Hill (where the Olympic road cycling will take place) having a picnic in the sun which was lovely.   Let's see what happens when the pills stop!

Why don't people vote?

I'm just saddened by the low turnout - just about a third of people who could vote did vote. I just think its shocking. The thought of countries like Syria where people are dying in their efforts to bring about more democracy and then of course the women and the suffragettes. Makes me really sad. I hope I can bring our children up to value their right to vote and to use it, no matter how fed up they might be with the state of politics and politicians.

Thinking of children, another very challenging day with the little lady. I partly wished I was still at work rather than being hit and having her push her brother head first out of the front door! I don't understand why she is so nasty to him. With her teddy bears she is all gentle and kind and plays softly softly with them.  As soon as her little brother comes along she just wants to whack him one! I know I can't do anything but it makes me so sad.  I try to be even handed but it is so difficult when she is being so mean to him and he just wants to play. I know shes little and doesn't really know what she is doing but it breaks my heart.

She had a big fall from the top of the slide the other day - oh my god I almost had a heart attack. I caught her and broke the fall but that didn't stop me taking her to A&E as her mouth didn't stop bleeding! And my how she has enjoyed it - 'my mouth hurts....no I dont want it....I don't like it.....my mouth hurts' despite being offered ice cream as per doctors orders! Then she merrily went off to nursery, said goodbye and sat down to eat a big bowl of weetabix without a word! Ha ha. Caught out. Mind you her mouth does look sore. Poor little thing.

We made some lovely cakes for her birthday party which was therapeutic. I love baking. I find it helps me focus and you get to eat it too! Have made a big batch of cinnamon rolls this evening which are in the fridge waiting till tomorrow for some bank holiday breakfast treats! Can't wait. Might have a sugar high baby girl as a result - but I'm out all day so will leave daddy in charge! I asked isobel what colour hair I should have.....answer? Pink.....watch this space.