Give us a clue

I played a game with the boys this morning which involved at some point Leo drawing some pictures and me and Zachary trying to guess what they were. Here's his sheet -

The first one he drew was the middle top shape which Zachary correctly guessed was a door. The next one he drew caused a bit of confusion - it's the one over on the right, sort of on its own. Can you guess? Apparently it's a person disguised as a door! Yay!

About me

While I was waiting for the blog to load up this evening I read my 'About me' snapshot again. I really must update it - having been back at work about 18 months now, I can't really claim to be 'just back to work' and let that excuse my still really rather clumsy attempts at life! It's easily changed though - the opening two words on their own cover everything nicely - 'slightly deranged'!!!

Baking Catch-up

I've not posted about any baking since the disastrous Shrewsbury biscuits, but it has been going on - minus a few photos, sorry!

The next biscuits attempted were Coconut cherry macaroons - delicious! They were great - although I don't really like glace cherries and I made them during our Lent fast of chocolate and alcohol, so they didn't have the dark chocolate drizzled on the top either....but still tasty.

I've then also tried Fudgy nut conversation stoppers

These again went really well although the fudgy almost stained glass windows in the biscuit seemed a bit odd, but were supposed to be there according to the photo in the book!

Then today I tried Rhubarb crumble biscuits as the garden rhubarb is just ready for picking - you can see it just peeping out of the side of the biscuit...

My biscuits seemed a bit misshapen, but there were no photos in the book to guide me - also, the rhubarb is chopped into 1cm pieces and then folded into the rest of the mixture. Although very tasty, it is quite soggy in the biscuit even when fully cooled. This might well be why the recipe says they are best eaten the day they are made. I suspect when I go to the tin in the morning, the rest of the biscuit will be as soggy as the rhubarby bit!

We've also been trying to find recipes to use up veg box veg. Usually we try to be good at using veg box veg, but sometimes there's something we get for 2 or 3 weeks on the trot and just cannot keep up with - beetroot, leeks, courgettes and even pears lately have all been sat lowly rotting in the fridge!

So, with the beetroot I tried beetroot crisps - a good way of using the beetroot and when I get them right they're lovely. But the cooking time seems to be very variable and 2 minutes too long goes from slightly undercooked crisp to burnt nasty. I haven't quite mastered these yet but need to keep trying.

The leek recipe we've found is this one, which is a great leek and smoked salmon tart by James Martin. It does need a few ingredients more than just the leeks, but it is not difficult, very tasty and uses a good 4 leeks.

Pears - hmmmm, just chopped them and popped them in the freezer ready for a pear crumble or (hint, hint), some more pear and vanilla butter.... 1 and a half kilos put away on Friday thank you very much.

And finally courgettes - Leigh made an amazing big breakfast potato and courgette rosti (Good Food magazine this month) to use those up. Potato and courgette rosti with bacon and eggs on the side - yum, yum yum. Only used 1 of the 4 courgettes, but what the hey!!

Easter egg hunting!

After a bit of a rainstorm this morning, the weather cleared a little in the afternoon and we managed to have our annual egg hunt at our friends' house - such fun!

Fudgy Nut Conversation Stoppers

Thanks Miranda - these came out really well, although did need a bit longer in the oven than the recipe said! I love the way the fudge pieces make those really strange 'holes' in the biscuits!

Goodbye Princess Peach

We have had another chicken death in the family. Leigh discovered Princess Peach last night when he went out to make sure the chickens were sleeping in the right part of their house.

She had always been the smallest and lightest of the chickens, but a beautiful white and usually very perky and nosy. Her moult this year was the most dramatic and the worst thing is that we hadn't even noticed anything was wrong.

The boys seemed slightly more affected than they have done previously, although Zachary's suggestion was that we could get two more and give them the same names!

Farewell Princess Peach.

Infernites Max!

As the boys get older it becomes more obvious to me that I spend very little time one on one with Zachary. He had my undivided attention until Leo was born, and then because he is the older child and started school first (and because I have gone back to work...) there is now no real time that I spend with him on my own - well, other than birthday parties which don't really count because he's just a blur of activity with his friends!

But this morning it was my turn to get up first and Leo was still sleeping off the after-effects of the chest infection he's had this week and I had a lovely hour with Zachary on his own. We played a bit a computer game together before deconstructing his three fire Mixels and reconstructing them into one Infernites Max!!!

I love spending time with the boys - but it's a totally different experience with 2 of them than with them on their own. Both boys together spend most of their time needling, poking and generally annoying each other and Leigh and I spend a lot of time just refereeing between them. That (unsurprisingly) doesn't happen when they're one on one, probably because they know they have all the attention!

Next Saturday, Leigh has a gaming day in Beeston so I have the boys on my own - I was talking to Zachary about it at dinnertime and asking what he might like to do. His suggestion was that I drop Leo off at their Nan's house and then I do something with him on his own - because Leo shots a lot and I have to keep talking to him (Leo). It reminded me that I really should make more effort to spend time with him and I'm sure it's the same for Leigh. Life is generally so busy at the moment but there will be time for it somewhere!

Orange and sultana Shrewsbury biscuits

Another yummy looking recipe from Miranda Gore-Browne.

Disaster area.

Do not enter.

Seriously????

There are a few roadworks going on round our way at the moment - one of the diversion signs refers to 'non-Motarway traffic.' It's okay, you'll see it in a minute.

Birthday hijinks

It was my birthday this week - I am now the grand old age of 37... anyhoo... my greatest birthday present this year

a Totoro handbag!!!! I am a very happy 37 year old!

Afternoon tea

We had some friend over this afternoon and put on an afternoon tea spread. As is the way of things with us, what started as just being a few cucumber sandwiches and scones, ended up a far greater and more elaborate affair! Mind you, there was barely anything left over afterwards so perhaps we were not as extravagant as we'd thought...

The scones are under the glass dome!

Dalek cupcakes finally using the skirts and toppers I bought in Lakeland on a mad spending spree when all the Doctor Who bakeware came out...

Mini banoffee and key lime pies with my first attempt at macaroons. Since the Great British Bake-Off, macaroons have held a bit of a mystique about them, but my first attempt seemed to go well. They were crispy on the outside, chewy on the inside and had the lacy bottom layer. My only problem seemed to be that they didn't come cleanly off the baking parchment after baking - lots of bottoms got left behind! I am not sure whether this was because they were baked a little too long, not quite enough, or that I didn't take them off the paper soon enough. I expect only further experimenting will tell!!

Cheese and Vegemite pinwheels and some gorgeous sausage rolls. You can also see in the bottom right of the photo Leigh's egg muffins (basically beaten egg baked in a muffin tin with bacon, mushroom, spinach, seasoning.). Delicious!

Finally a wondrous new tea cosy - bought for the teapot of the new teaset we intended to buy today but didn't see one which quite fitted the bill. Off to Denby tomorrow then!

Stop encouraging me...

I have a very real concern that I am going to end up as one of those people who spends all their time writing off letters of complaint or "I thought you would like to know..." to big companies. The problem is, they keep incentivising me with free stuff.

A few months ago I bought a bottle of Coldpress juice from the supermarket. This is usually delicious, but that bottle was awful - it tasted really earthy and off. So I returned it to the supermarket and got a refund. A few weeks later we received a replacement bottle of juice through the post with a nice letter. Great.

Then just after Christmas, Zachary noticed that on a certain box of own brand cereal from a well-known supermarket there was a recipe for some kind of crispy, marshmallowy snack bar using the cereal. The first instruction told you to 'melt the marshmallows' but Zachary noticed that the ingredients list didn't contain marshmallows! Normally I would totally ignore this, but after my result with the juice, I wrote a letter to said supermarket and this morning a letter from them arrived. It contained a £5 giftcard to use in store. Brilliant - bring on the complaining!!!

Too much earth!

We're hoping to decorate our downstairs rooms this summer - it has finally reached a time when (fingers crossed) the boys are old enough to not write on the walls! But, before we can actually paint the walls, there are several tasks which need to be done first - fix the skirting boards, sort out lighting in the middle room (our central light causes great 'shine' problems when playing board games so we're trying to think of alternatives), fix the shelves, trunk up the electrical cables and get the electrics checked.

When we moved into the house, the kitchen and bathroom had not long been renovated by the family there before us. We have found several problems with the drainage in the bathroom so thought we should probably get the electrics checked ... and didn't want to decorate and then find that the walls needed to be ripped apart for re-wriring!!!

We had an electrician round today to do a survey - he estimated it would take about 3 hours all in. After 10 minutes he called us in, provided a very comprehensive but totally incomprehensible explanation of our electrical system (with lots of acronyms!) which basically ended with him saying that we have too much earth coming into the mains and he can't continue testing until that's fixed because until it is fixed, all the sockets will fail the test. Hmmm. On the plus side he seemed to be quite positive that we would not need total rewiring...to be confirmed.

Coke and pineapple juice

I went out for lunch this week with a local accountant who has been sending work our firm's way and it was a kind of thank you to him. I discovered at the lunch 2 things - firstly he has no large intestine (surprisingly noone asked any further questions!) and secondly his drink of choice is coke with pineapple juice. Yes.

Apparently he used to belong to a caving club, which was more a drinking club and the members tended to look down on those not drinking. One member developed a drink which looked enough like a mild bitter to not attract attention from the drinkers - grapefruit juice in coke. My colleague did not like grapefruit juice and replaced it with pineapple. It does look surprisingly like beer - not sure whether I'm brave enough to try it though. Surely there's curdling????

Little bit of baking (again!)

I made Miranda's bakewell biscuits this weekend and they are lovely - despite being slightly larger than anticipated!

We also had a new veg box. We're trying to use everything each week and that does mean being slightly creative - not all the veg is easily usable as accompaniments. So this week I used up all the extra tomatoes making this (well, not this actual tart - this was the first one I made some time ago)

and we also had a shed-load of courgettes which I'm hoping to turn into this....tomorrow.

We also had mushrooms, broccoli, a savoy cabbage, sweetcorn, apples and pears. Lovely stuff!

Romanesco Cauliflower

Last week's veg box was again great - the best item in it though was this

It is apparently a Romanesco Cauliflower and you prepare and cook it as you would a cauliflower - not quite such a strong flavour though and it was loved by everyone in the house. More please!

We also had more beetroot (this time roasted and eaten with nectarines and salad leaves with a dressing), fennel (thinly sliced over the salad!), and more regular items like tomatoes, mushrooms, bag of salad, leeks and fruit. We are still just about managing to either eat or prepare food for the freezer to use up the box each week - I need some more tomato based recipes though!!!

I also made the next set of biscuits over the weekend - coffee and walnut biscuits. I'm sure that Leo would like me to point out that he put the walnuts on the top of the biscuits. Onto the next one!

The Ballet Programme

The NSO have another concert coming up in November - it's being referred to as an all Russian programme, but in my mind I'm calling it the ballet programme. We're playing excerpts from Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet Suites (yes, including the theme from The Apprentice!), Petrouchka by Stravinsky and Piano Concerto No 2 by Shostakovich.

Petrouchka is another ballet - again with a slightly strange and surreal plot, and we're just getting used to the music at the moment. It is not too long and I wanted to try and find a version of it on You Tube, but just found it in 4 sections rather than all in one video, so I'm not going to post it here. Wikipedia had a very full synopsis though which is here.

The piano concerto is a piece I thought I had not heard before, but recognised it within a few bars as being the music used by Disney to set the story of the steadfast tin soldier to in Fantasia 2000. I proclaimed this quite proudly to my desk partner at rehearsal and then thought I perhaps should have been a bit more circumspect about revealing my shabby musical knowledge! But I did find a video of it (it is only the first movement of the concerto) - it isn't a ballet, but there is a ballerina in it!

Homemade Bourbon biscuits

Yummy yummy! These are also from Miranda's biscuit book and taste really great. As you will from the photo though, some of the precision in these biscuits lies in ensuring that they are cut the same shape and size. Yes, well that was a fail for me. I tried to use a measure to make them more accurate, but had nothing that I actually felt comfortable putting against the dough, so they came out as a lovely variety!

Also, the filling was very soft - I think I possibly should have waited until it firmed up slightly before filling the biscuits, because the biscuits ended up absorbing some of the filling and were soft the next day. The flavour was still great, but the texture not so much. I will have to try them again!

Start of the new year

Well, new school year anyway - I thought it sounded a bit more positive than 'end of the summer!' This week has certainly been the end of the summer though - the mornings suddenly seem that bit darker and cooler (although the afternoons are still baking!), and although I've managed to stave it off for another week, my evening appointments will be starting again - orchestra on Monday, Rotary on some Tuesdays. I've had a lovely summer doing bugger all in the evenings (apart from games on a Wednesday which has continued throughout) and had time to do more baking and sorting out. It's going to be difficult getting back into the old routine again, but I'm sure it won't take long!

This week has been a bit rough and ready too - our new childminder is away on holiday and the holiday clubs stopped last week so my Mum and her husband Chris came up to help out with the boys Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday ready for them both to start back at school (well, school for Zachary and new nursery for Leo) this morning. She had a big plan - Nottingham Castle Monday, Sheffield Tuesday and Crich Tramway Museum Wednesday. Needless to say they ended up in Nottingham all 3 days and still didn't manage to reach the Castle!! I think they all had a good time - Mum doesn't see the boys all that often and although they pretty much ran her ragged, she does love being with them.

We also had a new veg box this week - lots of delights, but nothing that I'm going to turn into a cake at the moment - although typing this did remind me of this recipe. We got a lot of tomatoes this week and my Mum brought some from her garden too - mmmm tomato cake!! They're not plum tomatoes....never mind, might still be able to make something of them!

Some other bits of my week in pictures -

Flowers from my Mum

Lower fat treacle tart for pudding club

Very tasty - but I think I'd still prefer a version with just golden syrup in it! This one had a tablespoon of black treacle, grated apple and half-fat creme fraiche in the filling.

And finally, first day of school photos. For some reason it is incredibly hard to get my 2 boys to stand together (but not in front of each other), hands by side (no hands in front of face) and smiling (usually it's one, then the other, then both but one is by then doubled over in hysterics...you get the idea). I managed to get this photo

by also agreeing to a kung fu photo!

They both had a fab time today.

Center Parcs

We have just returned from a lovely few days at the Sherwood Forest Center Parcs - swimming, archery, adventure golf, boating, the works! We were there on the mid-week stay, Monday to Friday and it was just right - if we had been there any longer I would have been forced to clean the bathroom and vacuum!! Oh and wash the shower towels which never quite managed to fully dry each day - bit damp!

There were 2 other things that tickled me - Zachary got into the habit of calling the living accommodation 'valets' (a hybrid of my 'chalets' and Leigh's 'villas') and in the toy gift shop, they had a range of those wooden calendars which have two cubes at the top which you rotate to change the day number. ALL of them were set to 27 January, which is my birthday! Clearly whichever date they chose for the calendars would be someone's birthday, but it made me smile.

The boys want to go back. Again!