Home grown pudding anyone ?

How do you like them apples ?

It's Bake Off night which means my annual Kitchenaid craving is in full force and I'm thinking about what to bake pretty much all the time. In my waking moments I'm concocting grand plans for cakes, biscuits and muffins and in my sleeping moments... well I'm pretty much doing the same.

At the weekend I gave all the boys the important job of harvesting the first apples from our trees in the garden. When we moved to this house we were told that the trees grew cooking apples and sure enough the following autumn we had a glut of apples and it was crumbles, cakes and all manner of apple based cuisine for months. We only get apples every two years and with this being an apple year I was very excited when they started to appear.

A small sample of our first harvest of the year

Last year I discovered that we also have quince growing in our garden so I made quince jelly. We also have blackberries, but some overzealous pruning left us with a paltry amount of them last year. This year I've been a bit more judicious and as a result the ratio of apples to blackberries is far more promising.

So, having collated and photographed the fruit I remembered I had some shortcrust pastry in the freezer and my mind began whirring with ideas. In the end I went for a very simple apple and blackberry pie with a pastry topping.

I made this ! 

It's clear my food photography is not quite up to scratch which is why I'm not a food blogger, but it did taste delicious :)

Then we ate this :)

I did also make some simple marmalade straws for Big Boy who is obsessed with Paddington at the moment. He's never shown any interest in marmalade but he did like these. I managed to even keep some for him to enjoy our daily showing of the Paddington movie tomorrow afternoon :)

Movie snack marmalade straws anyone ? 

Neo the cat: a day in the life

I occupy the house with the cat more than with anyone else. Since he came to live with us we've spent the most time together. In the early days when he was being kept in I used to come home from work first so we would have some one to one time then I'd give him his dinner. When I was pregnant he used to sit on my tummy - until the baby started to kick him that is !

As time progressed he got used to the shift in power from him being the first to get fed to the small human being first and then him. He now knows that as soon as the boy has his dinner he will get his, so he sits at his bowl moaning about the starvation he's convinced he's suffering.

Neo came to live with us when he was about 6 and a half years old - Battersea weren't entirely sure - so he's pushing 13 years old now. He's settling into a comfy middle age that is belied by his scampering down the path when he spies me at the kitchen window. He insists on miaowing by the cat flap until someone opens the door - or my son holds the flap open for him. Not for nothing do we call him a primadonna.

He used to follow me around like a doting suitor and he'd miaow at me when he wanted food. Now he only talks to me when he wants to eat - he is basically a teenager. Now my boy is at school during the day so me and the cat have the house to ourselves during the day and a typical day goes something like this:

5.25: Hubbie wakes up to get ready for work - he feeds the cat. He comes up to lie on the bed with me (Neo, not Hubbie)
6am: as Hubbie pops in to say "bye" the boy wakes up and wanders in to join us.

9.30: I get home from the school run and a swim - Neo hasn't moved.

10.30: Neo helps me hang out the washing

Or he doesn't ...

1.30: Lunchtime. He gets up, stretches and goes to the kitchen to miaow for biscuits

2.00: While I listen to the Archers repeat Neo pops out to sunbathe

3.30: We get home from school and he is sitting there waiting to greet the boy

8pm: When we finally some time to ourselves he watches a bit of telly with me. You know, the usual, Bake Off, Come Dine - what can I tell you, he's a foodie.

Unless he can sneak into story-time that is. If he can crash a story at bedtime that's where you'll find him, pretending not to listen. All casual like.

So that's a day in the life of my cat. Not a bad life really is it ?

It's not real life - it's just TV

I often complain that we don't get any decent telly any more, just a lot of reality telly. Another of my bugbears is misery TV and I don't watch soaps for that reason. If I want to watch families yelling at one another I'll visit mine and not do it in my precious leisure time. There is an element of TV being there to inform and educate, but my favourite shows tend to be purely entertainment, which I almost feel I have to apologise for.  More often than not I'll watch Blackadder yet again (which is almost like learning history isn't it ?) and recently Masterchef or the newly returned Great British Bake Off (come on that's just Home Ec) or if I'm being really swotty a quiz so I have to use my brain a little bit. It made me wonder whether TV was always about real life or if this obsession with 'constructed reality' is all new.

I'm pretty sure that very few bus companies are like seventies sitcom On the Buses. For a start they don't have nearly as many staff as that any more, the cultural mix is far more diverse and the bus garage in South Croydon certainly doesn't have a canteen where they all sit around between shifts - hence the roaring trade in transport caffs along the Brighton Road. If the drivers were to walk out in protest at women driving buses they'd get nowhere these days as women drivers are not controversial any more. I do remember when I was at school and Sheila was the well known driver of the E2 bus who would get out of her cab to help pensioners on and would tell the school kids to wait and take their turn. She won bus driver of the year many times and was brilliant !!

Despite what the papers and every Prisons Minister and Justice Secretary (how Orwellian is that ?) think I know for a fact that prisons aren't like Porridge. Prison officers who've been in the job a long time insist it used to be like that and long serving prisoners do hark back to the days of it being like a gentleman's club, but I suspect closing the 'staff clubs' where officers could get 'cold refreshments' during breaks is only a good thing. Norman Stanley Fletcher and his like do exist, but the scams are far less jolly than the ones depicted going on at Slade Prison. In reality we have an interesting TV crossover where the Muppets help children who have parents inside prison to deal with this very difficult issue in their young lives.

Citizen Khan is no more an accurate reflection of 'multicultural Britain' than Love They Neighbour was back in the seventies. It's just the language was less censored back then and now the white character does not get an equal number of digs as the Asian one. It was a stipulation made by Rudolph Walker when he took the part of the black neighbour that for every racist epithet he should get an equal number of them back at his white neighbour as recourse. I think that was what passed for equality back in the seventies.

And despite what every Health  minister in the last 15 years believes, NHS hospitals are not like Green Wing (and then Scrubs). I'm sure they want to believe that doctors have time for japes and hilarity and that the admin staff spend all day photocopying their body parts rather than actual work. If you think it's a bit far-fetched that actual policy on health might be based on misconceptions from watching a comedy series then try and recall the last time you saw a minister or indeed any public figure sitting in A&E at 3 in the morning with a child with a viral infection. No, it's ok I'll wait...

My personal favourite is a recent addition to the thinly disguised propaganda school of TV making and is the vintage and soft focus Call The Midwife. An everyday depiction of childbirth in the East End of London with a side helping of 'why don't women give birth at home anymore ?" I'm pretty sure that it was commissioned as a lovely bit of Sunday evening nostalgia and costume drama to keep families entertained - I mean only a hard heart wouldn't be reduced to tears by the cute ickle babies wouldn't it ? In addition it's a tale of women giving birth in adversity and without horrid doctors interfering that elevates midwives to mythical status. I honestly do think midwives can be marvellous and that childbirth should be treated as a normal thing and not medicalised as a matter of course. I'm also fascinated to see if requests for and actual home births increase as a result of the show.

Of course all of this is moot when you have a toddler as the TV is on Cbeebies the majority of the time he is awake. At least I can say that is educational without fear of contradiction :o)

You've got to be in it to win it

Like a lot of people I enjoy competitions. I love to watch Come Dine With Me, the Great British Bake Off and in the days before we had our boy we were pretty active in the pub quiz world. At one point we had an elite team of 6 of us each with a specialist skill area. I am fiercely competitive and this was possibly not the best way to channel that need to win.

I don't go in for actual gambling like bingo or poker. I'm far too risk averse for that kind of thing and I'm not sure I'd be able to get to Victoria Coren's level of skill in poker without seriously sacrificing a lot of my family life. I also don't play the lottery or scratch cards - they're far too random for me.

No I get my kicks from entering competitions online, usually via other blogs and I do occasionally win. I know there are people who commit a lot of time to competitions and win all sorts of goodies, but my own winnings have been pretty modest. In the last year I have been lucky enough to win:

• a Meatfree cookbook signed by Paul and Mary McCartney 

• a waterproof music player 

• a gorgeous baking book

• a beautiful bracelet 

     and just before Christmas I won something just for my boy

• the Snowman dvd and soft toy

I'm hoping to win some big ticket items this year. I hardly think it's too much to ask to win a Smeg fridge, a new car, an exotic holiday or my beloved Kitchenaid is it ? 

Warning: Shameless self-promotion up ahead

Of course this is not a post without a purpose and like many of my fellow bloggers I'd love it if you would nominate me for the MADS awards with Parentdish. There are a lot of categories and you can be entered into more than one of them so I'm suggesting the family life and best blog categories, but you may choose others if you prefer. There is a link here http://www.the-mads.com/vote/or you can click on the box on the top right of this page.

I have no idea if I even stand a chance, but if you don't try you don't know do you ?

Wish me luck (and don't forget to nominate me will you ?)

Foodie Friday: Snow day, cooking with kids

It started snowing just as we were getting ready to go out for week two of Baking Bears at the local children's centre. It's a popular activity with a waiting list so I was delighted when I got the call before Christmas telling us we'd finally made it onto the toddler cookery course. It is a shame we're missing it this week, but I don't feel so bad because I do bake with my boy at home. Nothing too taxing, biscuits, cupcakes and occasionally something exciting involving pastry cutters, but he does like to stir things and help with measuring out ingredients. Of course the best bit is the tasting at the end.

Great British Bake off here we come !

In the early days of going to playgroups he was always a big fan of the kitchen activities and would always make a beeline for the 'home corner' so we decided to get him a toy kitchen to play with at home. My kindly cousin had to rehome her daughter's kitchen so we acquired a very pink and purple Disney princess cooker which he loved. He's also recently been given a brilliant toy baking set by my sister which he is fascinated by. The hand mixer is just like Mummy's and you can add batteries to make it work to give an authentic feel to your play baking.

At nursery earlier this week the pre-schoolers prepared their own snacks using safe knives. They often prepare fruit or bagels for afternoon tea and learn how to use kitchen utensils safely. The experience of real food preparation helps children to understand where their meals come from and also helps develop their manual dexterity. I know my son recognises that when the microwave pings it usually means something is cooked, but he also knows that the saucepan on the hob often has hot soup or boiled eggs in it, the rolling pin is used to prepare chapattis and that the oven is where the yummy cakes and biscuits come from.

When I spoke to Mother-in-law earlier she recounted that Mary Berry says instead of giving children playdoh why not give them actual dough so they get a feel for cooking and baking real food ? Of course that would make the playdoh barber shop a bit like Sweeney Todd's, but you get the point. And it's not just the queen of the Great British Bake Off who thinks we should cook with our kids, Cbeebies has a plethora of cooking programmes aimed at little ones. Our snow day viewing has included I Can Cook and on Something Special Justin was making shortbread with his friends. In the past my son has watched Big Cook Little Cook with fascination (much like I watch Come Dine With Me) and the lunchtime song is a favourite in our house.

I'd recommend introducing cooking to young children - and I hope these tips are helpful:

•  Be prepared for mess - if it bothers you put a lot of newspaper or a sheet on the floor first.
• Relax if they eat the ingredients - tasting is all part of the learning and a bit of raw pastry isn't going to do any harm 
• Make a game of the practical activities - washing hands at the start and the implements at the end. If you put a washing up bowl onto a low table covered with lots of tea-towels it gives little ones the chance to have lots of fun.
• Reward your little chef with first taste - I always make a smaller version of everything so that he has his own ones 

My little washing machine

It's with all this in mind that I took my boy for his first session of Baking Bears last week and it would be fair to say he was underwhelmed. I'm not sure if it was because we usually go to the children's centre for stay and play and he wanted to go outside to drive the tiny tikes cars or because he was just too tired, but he was as moody as Gordon Ramsey and as energetic as Jamie Oliver in his attempts to escape the kitchen. The first session was preparing a fruit yoghurt and he enjoyed 'sampling' the fruit (some of which I managed to salvage for the recipe), but his favourite part was definitely the washing up at the end.

He may not be the next Heston, but then I'm no Nigella.