Tell me what happened and you get Brady face !!

There's an episode of american sitcom How I Met Your Mother where they are trying to avoid seeing the result of the superbowl so they can watch it on a recording. It's a modern take on a Likely Lads episode where they don't want to hear the score of the match they are going to watch on repeat later. The humour is in how they have to blindfold themselves and cover their ears while in company and even turn away from seeing any tv screens to ensure they don't spoil the surprise.

On a Wednesday when occasionally me and Hubbie have been out for the evening I can relate to both of these scenarios as we try and avoid all human contact and social media so that when we get home to watch the Apprentice we won't already know who was fired. It is a minefield of course as an inadvertent click of TV channel or sideways glance at the BBC news website could mean it's game over.

We take the suspense of it all very seriously so the fact that we live in a digital age where there are so many potential spoilers causes a frisson that possibly exceeds watching the show itself.

Now I can't sit here nattering I have a recording of the Apprentice to watch. Ooh look they're filming at a venue we looked at for out wedding reception !!

Whatever you do don't tell me what happens or guess what ?

Foodie Friday: Festive Fare

This year I've been a bit more prepared than I usually am and have been ahead of the curve on the baking front with Christmas food. Of course it helps that I'm at home and therefore able to prepare food while my son is either at nursery or sleeping, rather than after a day at work and a horrid commute. On cold days like these I prefer to be in the kitchen weighing out sugar and rifling through the cupboard for a suitable baking tin to line for delicious fudge.

Which brings me neatly to the first recipe with I found courtesy of a lovely friend who directed me to the BBC food website where I found Sophie Dahl's recipe for Peanut Butter fudge which is really simple and requires very few ingredients, but enough sugar to make you diabetic with one bite !

The only difficulty was in finding a suitable jar to put it in for gifts, but once I'd located these it was all good. Oh, that was until I discovered that one of my intended recipients has a nut allergy so I've had to rethink that - I mean how selfish is that ?

Homemade sweets are a great luxury item and presented in a lovely glass  jar makes them even more of a treat so I'm dead chuffed that I haven't scoffed the lot as the recipe make a lot of fudge - even for someone as greedy as me !



I had a bit more of a trial with the Christmas cake. I mentioned in a previous foodie post that I bought a mix from Waitrose that I've used twice before - it's been a bit hit and miss for me in the past as it's taken so long, but this time the box said it would take 2-3 hours so I had high hopes - even with an unpredictable oven that I've blamed in the past.

We had a rare night out planned and my sister was coming to babysit so I popped the cake mix into the oven around 2pm thinking it would be done in plenty of time. When it was still soggy 4 hours later I was becoming more than a little concerned that we would have to miss the Idiot Bastard Band to stay in and watch my cake not cooking ! Instead I left the oven on low and gave instructions to switch it off whatever happened after 5 hours had passed.

It did look ok eventually (if a little damp on the bottom, but less said about that the better) so I turned it out onto a board and covered it in marzipan and icing and my traditional snowmen decorations and festive ribbon. All I can do now is hope that when we finally cut into it the middle isn't gruesome !

Then this week I finally got round to making some mince pies and used up the marzipan that was left from the cake as mini stars for the topping of the puff pastry fancies. They're ok, but not quite as neat as I'd hoped they'd look. They taste fine, but I did already buy some fancy ones just in case my homemade ones weren't quite up to scratch. I have a bit of mincemeat left in the jar so I might do some festive palmiers based on the recipe I saw that uses marmalade and brown sugar - I'll let you know how they turn out when I finally get round to them.

So these are the advance guard of the food prep. In a week I'll be making the stuff that won't keep so well. Sausage rolls (meat and veggie) the aforementioned palmiers and the gingerbread stars that I hope my son will help decorate. His budding culinary skills were at the fore today as he created the taste sensation of chow mein with onion bagel (surprisingly good) and then stabbed the leftover bagel half and announced it was a 'helicopter' (propeller).

I may just let him plan our Christmas meal. My lad is a gastro-genius !

"Stop going on about pants" (Hubbie to me during the beach volleyball)

By now you've probably watched the Olympic opening ceremony. You may even have been in it in which case well done, unless you're the woman who infiltrated the indian team and caused an international incident. For my part I loved loved loved the whole thing and - as I commented on Facebook - the only way it could have been more spectacular is if it was an Indian wedding organised by my Mum.

It's out of character for me to take any interest in a sporting event and even more so for me to choose to go to one. So being excited about the beach volleyball yesterday morning took me by surprise. The last time I chose to go to an event with Hubbie was when we saw the San Francisco Giants at the SBC Stadium while on holiday in California. That was a long evening made manageable only by the constant entertainment and the organ that does indeed go "dah dah dah dah" like in the movies between innings.

I'm as interested in sport as Hubbie is in weddings. While I'm oohing and aahing at the dresses and flowers he's checking the sports results on his phone. In fact at his brother's wedding - which took place during the Ashes - the photographer had to keep sending his assistant into the bar to retrieve all the male guests (and groom) so the photos wouldn't just have women in them.

Likewise when sport is on I'm checking my email, facebook, twitter or blogging. I don't watch the BBC during Wimbledon fortnight as I have no interest in tennis and when the world cup takes place I spend a lot of time shopping or baking as I don't want to deny Hubbie his footie fix. Every Saturday during the football season the boys follow their team Fisher and I get to see my friends for lunch or catch up with the cleaning. Before we were married I used to attend one game a season, I'm now officially a Fisher widow which I much prefer.

Like almost everyone else I applied for tickets to a lot of sports in the Olympics without any genuine interest in them. I got tickets for the Beach Volleyball and Hockey and it's only the former that I was bothered about going to. It was as I expected unreconstructed sexim (complete with Benny Hill) and audience participation not unlike the baseball. It was fun and almost held my interest once Hubbie explained to me how the scoring works.

Now I regret that I'm not going to more events over the next fortnight - maybe all sports are like this and I'm missing out on something ?

Radio Ga Ga Goo Goo

So my radio show will be on air on Monday between 1-2pm on internet station Croydon Radio

It takes me back to attending all day interviews at Pebble Mill for the BBC broadcasting apprenticeship and being overwhelmed by the other candidates who'd just come back from some war zone or other doing something very journalistic. I felt so unprepared and amateur it wasn't surprising the Beeb saw fit to turn me down. Instead I did some hospital radio, then some community radio.

Somewhere along the way I found my radio voice (it's a lot more serious than I am, but not too squeaky so that's ok) and learned that we don't play Madness to the psycho-geriatric wards of Ealing Hospital and speaking too close to the mic is called 'popping.' And now after a break of some years 'Radio Rabbit' is back.

Croydon Radio is going to be on air from the end of this week (official launch on Mon 23rd July) and I'll be producing and presenting a show called "Are we nearly there yet ?" I'm not the young, single gal I was so it's less music and more chat about grown up stuff and some ideas of things to do as a family over the Summer break. I've always wondered why it's called a 'show' when, clearly, you can't see the presenter or the programme, but as it's an internet station you can follow along online too.

I will have guests on the show and first up will be Totstars who do football and other sports for children - which my son loves. I really want to support and promote local businesses who are working with children and families. It's difficult enough to keep little ones busy as they grow and become harder to tire out so any assistance has to be welcome.

Tune into Croydon Radio at: www.croydonradio.com
Find out more about Totstars at: www.totstarsuk.com