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 ?

Foodie Friday: Horses for (main) courses

Do you recall how a few years ago there was a major public health scare over CJD in beef ? The photo call with a minister feeding his children burgers in front of cameras ? Every public authority from old people's homes to hospitals trying desperately to distance themselves from having fed those in their care contaminated meat products ?

And now we're hearing news items practically frothing with excitement that horsemeat has been found in supermarket foods that are labelled as beef. Headline writers have been free-flowing with puns (hence the terrible title of this post for which I apologise) and foodie writers have been terribly smug about 'the end of cheap food.' For it is the budget lines and the processed meat products like burgers and packaged meals that have been found to contain very little beef.

Why anyone is surprised by this baffles me. A meal that costs £1 and purports to have meat in it is going to be padded out with something cheap and in some cases it is rusk or water. When my Mother used to work at Walls she told us that she never saw any actual meat go into the sausages so she still doesn't eat them to this day. I've read the contents of cat food (I get bored) and found it contains ash - which is more often a hair colour or a paint chart description, not an ingredient surely ? To discover that the padding is actual meat is a revelation to me as I was under the impression that foodstuffs like cheap sausages were practically vegetarian anyway.

The big deal with beef that is horse is the fraud for some and the cost for others. So we've been lied to about what is in the food and have paid too much for a meat that is cheaper than the one we were told it was. Except I haven't. I don't eat beef - unless the next discovery is actual beef in Quorn lasagne in which case we have some serious ethical issues - so in theory it's not my problem. However, upon closer inspection it turns out that some sweets and desserts contain beef gelatine, so I may have inadvertently eaten beef in the days before clearer labelling. It would appear that as well as being worried that our chocolate 'may contain nuts' we now have to worry that our cheesecake 'may contain hoof.'

Back when the whole CJD thing was going on I joked to my friends that if only non-beef eaters were left the planet would be solely populated by practising Hindus, Sikhs and vegetarians. Yoga would become compulsory on school timetables, orange would be the new black and not believing in reincarnation or karma would be considered 'kooky.'

How ironic would it be if the beef that everyone worried about being contaminated with 'mad cow disease' was horse all along ? Would that make it better or worse ?

I can see the makers of vegetarian foodstuffs rubbing their hands with glee (and a lovely lotion made of organic beeswax) at the thought of all the new converts to meat-free living. Personally I'd just issue a few words of caution - sausages in trifle aren't just a nightmare meal choice on Come Dine With Me - it's possible you've bought something similar in the budget puddings aisle.

Oh, and I don't eat trifle either.

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.

I cook, therefore I am

Apparently we're all in love with baking now thanks to the Great British Bake Off. To be honest I think we all watch cooking shows, but very few of us actually do any cooking. I have been inspired by Gordon Ramsey's Ultimate Cookery Course, not to make any of his recipes, but to properly cook from scratch again which I had moved away from doing once my boy was born. The rise of the 'dine in' offer has also scuppered any creativity in preparing meals other than to choose which side dish goes with which main course. So why are we all so fascinated by watching other people cook ?

Food as love

The massive worldwide success of the Come Dine With Me formula suggests that the appeal is not restricted to watching someone prepare food that we can't make. It's about nosing round someone else's kitchen - just ask Hubbie how often I've said "ooh I love that kitchen, I'd like that cooker and island if we had the space."There's also something about seeing how other people cook at home. Let's face it we aren't buying the whole 'I'm at home and this is how I cook for my family' scenario that TV chefs fake for us. It's a well constructed artifice even if it is in their actual home.

Delia was the original and her no nonsense domestic science teacher approach told us how to do the basics which is why her 'how to cook' series is still the go to guide for a lot of amateur cooks. She appeared to be in her own kitchen at home and we all rushed out to get the exact same muffin tray or mixing bowl so that we could cook just like her. Who can forget the famous run on limes when she cooked with one and all the supermarkets were caught off guard.

The polar opposite of Delia was the manic outdoor cooking of Keith Floyd that showed us how to prepare food while drinking wine at the same time - a more realistic depiction of cooking for most of us. If Delia was domestic science then Heston is food technology. He does the actual science bit and the food is pretty secondary to it all. Then we have Jamie who's more home 'eck than anything else. I'm willing to believe that he's at home, but we all know how controversial the whole 'meal in 30 minutes' offering turned out to be. He's far too heavy handed with the olive oil for my liking and when will he give the oven settings in gas marks please ? Also, stop telling us how good it smells eh Jamie ? It's just not on.

I've always given a wide berth to Nigella (no pun intended), but having watched her newest show I can vouch for her being so gorgeous that the cooking is pretty irrelevant. I don't want to watch someone who is so self satisfied with her own cooking that I feel like a voyeur thanks. Nigel Slater is more my thing. His recipes are unfathomable, with a pinch of this and a handful of that, but his soft spoken delivery and clear enjoyment of food are bewitching. I am baffled at the concept of a 'leftover duck breast,' which he cooked this week, but that aside his kitchen garden approach is a winner for me.

This brings me onto the one sticking point I have with TV chefs - eating on camera. I noticed watching Gordon that he doesn't eat his own food. It's refreshing to not have a chef scoff what they've just cooked on screen. If I have to shout 'don't talk with your mouth full !' at Lorraine Pascale again I swear I will get very cross. I realise that part of the Nigella factor is watching her stuff her face, but I don't go to a restaurant to watch the chef eat his own cooking - why would I do that with TV ?

I cook to make people happy. Whether it's a cake for my boys or to thank the neighbours for babysitting. Indian food for Mother-in-law and Brother-in-law when they visit us. Or flapjacks for my friend SJ to stop her having low blood sugar in the afternoons on the way home from work (well that's more a public service really - you don't want to have a crazed hungry woman on your bus home do you ?)

I may not get a TV show out of it, but that's ok… for now.

Kitchen Confidential (or thrills, spills and lentils)

You already know about my unhealthy obsession with Come Dine With Me and food in general. I have also said I'd never do the programme because no one comes out of it looking anything other than grasping and desperate or incompetent and clueless. I have no idea what I'd cook and while I enjoy cooking I don't think I'm especially skilled at it. I also fear a disaster in the kitchen which once on tape would haunt me forever.

True I do sit around thinking about what I'm going to eat next or even tomorrow. If I have a random ingredient to use up I spend a ridiculous amount of time trawling the internet and poring over my cookbooks to find a suitable recipe. Usually I find one that requires yet more ingredients so I end up with even more in the cupboard which I'll need to use up at a later date. This is why I make banana cake so often - we buy a lot of bananas and if they go a bit soft or spotty I won't eat them. The plus side is I don't like cooked bananas so Hubbie and our friend Jan are the main beneficiaries of my baking prowess, so I don't end up piling on the pounds and I appear altruistic.

When Hubbie cooks a special meal for me he will find a recipe that requires at least 12 ingredients (only 4 of which I have in) and I end up with bottles of rose essence, mustard seeds, desiccated coconut and curry leaves to use at a later date. The meal is always delicious and far more inventive than anything I would try, but then it is an annual effort so he does go to town a bit.

Of course cooking almost every day means there will be occasional mishaps and some of them are so bad they put you off that foodstuff for life.

Here - in no particular order - are some of the many disasters I have had in my years of cooking:

1. While rushing around in the world's smallest kitchen preparing food I dropped an entire bowl of homemade potato salad on the floor before a picnic with friends. Only one of them witnessed it and she is no longer in the circle so can't tell anyone when they might have tasted floor food.

2. The options were to steam for 30 minutes or to zap in the microwave for 10 minutes so for ease I did that latter and this meant we had an exploding rice filled lotus leaf with our beautifully marinated and steamed fish.

3. During an experimental phase with fruit and curry I made an ill-judged decision to put grapefruit in chicken curry. To quote Ross and Monica's dad Jack Geller, "it was not good."

4. In an attempt to use up a box of mangos left by my Dad for my son (which he didn't like) I decided to make my own sorbet / ice cream. I managed to do the stirring every few hours bit for most of the day then forgot and left it overnight. Lets just say it needs to be taken out of the freezer a few hours before eating in order to break into it - yes it is a bit too frozen.

5. I had a pot of quark that I had used about one spoonful of and needed to finish so I had the genius idea to make mushroom pate with it instead of greek yoghurt. The taste was pretty good, but it was quite sloppy. Of course my guests were far too polite to comment on the runniness of the starter.

And the ones that I got away with:

When working in the staff kitchen in Sainsburys I managed to seriously burn the sponge pudding so I poured some lemon icing over it and was astounded at the compliments I got for my "treacly citrus pudding." 

I found a load of seeds and nuts that I'd bought while pregnant and not finished so I adapted my usual cookie recipe to include them. The results were not to my taste, but by all accounts they were a hit with Hubbie's work colleagues. 

Only today I halved the quantities in a recipe for cookies, but a miscalculation meant I added double coconut into the mix. We have yet to find out what the consequences of this error are as the mix won't be cooked until it's been in the fridge overnight. 

Fingers crossed it won't be so bad it'll go into the first list !

Chocolate, chocolate everywhere...

On the way to visit my family today we saw a parade of churchgoers walking alongside the road we were driving on. Some were carrying crosses and Hubbie pointed out to our boy that this was taking place. It reminded me that for some people Easter is about a lot more than chocolate eggs and Bond movies on the telly. For my family it is pretty much about chocolate, eating food and hanging out for the long weekend. In particular for me it's catching up with as many Come Dine With Me episodes as possible and telling myself that I'm not going to ruin my diet and pig out (which is not helped when Hubbie has given me a chocolate Percy Pig !!)

I should know this, but I have no idea why we associate Easter with chocolate eggs. It might be that Cadbury were particularly hot on selling the idea of an ovoid filled with fondant and created a parallel celebration to the resurrection. Maybe sales start flagging at this time of year with Valentine's Day and Mother's Day gone - after all Father's Day isn't until June. It's not really much of a chocolate day anyway since Red Letter Days sold us on the idea of vouchers for adrenaline events so that grown men can pretend to be James Bond instead of just watching Daniel Craig drive fast cars.

My own conspiracy theory is that it's the diet industry that creates all these food related celebrations so that we are always fighting to lose weight for something. The post Christmas diet, the pre-holiday diet, the pre and post Easter diet, it's never ending !! Many moons ago when I was still at university I stayed at the student house over Easter to do some work and was following a low fat diet plan. Of course I was twenty years younger than I am today so I was already slimmer to start with, but it's the only time I've actually lost weight over Easter as instead of eating chocolate I was exercising every day and eating sensibly.

The problem with everyone knowing you love chocolate is that there is so much of it out there and even when you say you don't want any it still finds you. The Easter Bunny has been very generous to us this year, so I'm going to pace myself and hopefully the damage won't leave me looking ovoid !

Daddy or chips ? (one for the teenagers)

When I was growing up we didn't get to see a lot of my family as they lived in India. Visiting them was an extravagance that we couldn't really afford so it was not often that I got to see my Grandmother or my aunts and uncles. We visited when I was 11 and I remember being really surprised that they all had photos of me and my siblings on display. It hadn't occured to me that people who lived thousands of miles away would have a school photo of me on the shelf. Any news was passed on by letter or telephone calls conducted at high volume in the front room - a running joke in any Indian household is a father shouting "Hello, calling from London."

We have far more options now so if my mother wants to see her beloved grandson we either fire up Skype or use facetime on the iphone. She can enjoy watching him eat his dinner or running away from me and his Daddy as we insist it's time for bed. The pure joy on my parents' faces as they watch their grandson do the most mundane things is truly inspiring. Of course we think he is fabulous, funny, handsome, clever and many other things. He is our son so it's almost arrogant to pay him compliments ourselves, but when our parents do it's adorable.

It's always interesting to meet other peoples' families. I recall visiting my friend Nicola as a child and being very excited that we were having lunch at someone else's house (my parents did not go in for socialising with other people much). Nic was baffled that we hadn't eaten meatloaf before and I was mystified that this was such a big deal. It was around this time that I also went to the birthday party of a schoolfriend called Amber who (sharp intake of breath) has her own double bed. It was also when I learned that everyone else's family seems more interesting than your own.

The main difference for me has always been in the approach to food that my family has compared with any other I've ever seen. As soon as you walk through the door my Mother proffers food and will not stop until you accept and are stuffed. On one occasion I warned her in advance that we'd be eating lunch before we came so not to cook for us. I reminded her in a phone call before we arrived and again when we got to the house. She left it at least half an hour before she asked if we were hungry yet and persisted the entire time we were there until finally we did indeed eat something if only to stop her worrying.

My in-laws have a more relaxed approach to eating (which is why they are slim and my family are not) and I remember being struck by the difference the first time I met them. I wasn't offered a cup of tea until the designated tea time and (unlike my family) the table was not heaving with cake, biscuits and and assortment of other treats. Of course as soon as we pull up on the drive now they put the kettle on - I have them trained.

For years I believed that English people just didn't like food and had no appreciation of eating as a family and socialising over food. Come Dine With Me does nothing to disabuse me of this notion, but at least it shows people willing to try and feed others. Cooking for someone you love is such a warm and caring act (even if it isn't strictly successful) that I'd rather have a piece of toast made by a loved one than a fancy meal with strangers. 

Early on in our courtship Hubbie was cooking something and I asked what he'd done with the remainder of the stock cube he'd used. When he told me he'd thrown it out I launched into a diatribe about how in his middle class household it was probably fine to waste food, but I'd never heard of such flagrant wastefulness in my life. I've since realised that mother-in-law finds no joy in cooking and is legendary for her jellies that don't set, overcooked everything and on any given day we are told 'well of course we don't have dessert normally…' despite father-in-law having a thing with the bun lady in Hythe. (Please don't ask !)

I mentioned to Hubbie the other night - while shouting at Heston Blumenthal cooking chips - that my Mum used to make the best home made chips ever. He told me he grew up eating oven chips - what kind of child neglect is that I ask you ? If you can't have real chips as a kid what else is there in life ?

Putting the Yummy into Mummy - one cake at a time :o)

One of the highlights of being a stay at home Mum and housewife (besides the obvious one of being with my boy) is that I can indulge my love of cooking and cookery programmes. I am selective though and very snobby about what I consider worthy of my precious viewing time when the baby is asleep.

I cannot abide the 'food porn' style of cooking: Nigella, Lorraine Pascal and Sophie Dahl seduce with food. They caress, tease and flirt with the camera. Very little is said about how to cook the dish and no actual instructions are involved. Nigella is far too busy telling us about how she entertains her retinue of adoring guests who fawn over her gingerbread, Lorraine Pascal keeps referring to her international pedigree (a Polish aunt and some Italian heritage apparently) while Sophie floats through her show as though she's advertising Cadburys Flake. When we do get a reference to the cooking it's all a bit vague - her pinch is my handful and when will they give the temperature in gas marks for those of us cursed with terrible ovens ?

Lest ye think I am being sexist I also loathe Jamie Oliver for his freehand pouring of olive oil like it's on offer in Sainsburys. That's not a splash you fool it's half a bottle !! His other crime (although he's far from alone) is to constantly say "the smells are amazing" are they Jamie ? I'll take your word for it as I didn't get a scratch and sniff card with the Radio Times.

Rick Stein is another one I fast forward on Saturday Kitchen. I think it's down to a personal grudge against him because I once stayed in Padstow while working in Cornwall and was horrified to discover that it's not even a one horse town, but has a great antiquated book shop. I was so disappointed that I didn't even try his food and bought something from Budgens instead which is how come I found the bookshop where I spent the evening browsing Dickens rather than sampling his seafood delights.

Nigel Slater is the exception for me as he only ever uses about 4 ingredients (supplemented with herbs from his garden) and few measurements or exact timings, but is so personable that I don't mind. He makes it look like you could just put something together after watching his programme with the things in your cupboards. Unlike Delia whose motto seems to be why use only 5 ingredients when 15 and something we've never used before will do ? Remember it's thanks to Deals that we have limes in our supermarkets as she caused a run on them when she made a recipe featuring a lime and they were not widely available at the time.

Delia was scathing about TV chefs endorsing supermarket products and openly criticised them until Waitrose came a knocking with clearly just enough money to buy her endorsements and recipe cards. Don't get me wrong, I'm the first to pick up her cards and have a stack of them with my cookbooks. Feel free to promote a supermarket I have no issue with it. I do, however, take issue with her Christmas cake recipe which I've cooked two years in a row using the pre-measured ingredients and followed the instructions to the letter and it's been soggy in the middle both times.

Mary Berry joined the 'make your own cake using this bag of stuff' brigade this year and as well as a traditional fruitcake she also offered delicious and simple cupcakes (also pre-measured) and the recipe is so simple I've kept it to make from scratch. I'm delighted she's back in fashion as her Christmas cupcakes saved the day for me ! Mary Berry was my first love with baking - years ago I used to make and decorate cakes for my siblings' birthdays so if you see a birthday photo featuring a calculator cake, a hedgehog or a dolly that'll be my handiwork.

Of course it's thanks to the Great British Bake Off that Mary has made her triumphant return, but it is one of the shows I don't watch. That and Masterchef, because while I find Greg Wallace very amusing I cannot watch John Torode. It was his one time covering for James Martin on Saturday Kitchen when he kept telling the chefs to wash their hands like an overeager Home Economics teacher. It is, of course, good sense, but it's also very dull.

I'd make a terribly boring TV chef as I'm a precise cook. I measure everything and follow the recipe to the letter (if I use one). Having said that I'm not too proud to do a cooking programme and if asked I'd be right in there. It seems you don't need to be an actual chef to get a TV show now, just someone who has cooked something once in your life - that's me qualified then.

Of course my first loyalty is to the one and only Come Dine With Me because I prefer my cooking programmes with a heavy handful of sarcasm. That is also the reason why I'd never apply to go on the show. When they were looking for contestants in Croydon one of my friends even sent me the application form. I politely informed her and everyone else who suggested I apply that the very reason I watch it is why I wouldn't go on it. I love shouting out "if you don't eat anything why are you on a cooking competition !!!" and I'd end up yelling at my guests if I did do it.

Also, I am guilty of equating food with love as that's how I was brought up. If anyone criticised my food I'd take it so personally I'd probably come across as a total loser. I never assume my cooking is anything other than adequate, but at the very least I like to cook things most people will enjoy. There are some ingredients I just can't stand. Cooked bananas just don't do it for me, yet I still make banana bread and ply hubbie and my reflexologist with it to buy favours at a later date.

I'm now that person who consults a handful of cookbooks (or t'internet) if I have some pecans to use up or some treacle that I forgot about in the back of the cupboard. Christmas was kind to me and I now have a brilliant selection of cook books to refer to, including one called the Meatfree Monday cookbook that I won from Ocado that was signed by Paul, Stella and Mary McCartney - which was nice.

Just don't ask me what my favourite dish is. Depending on the day of the week it'll either be a fishfinger sandwich or parmagiano melanzane. Now that would get me onto CDWM !!

Twenty Twelve Vision

As everyone else is saying how rubbish 2011 has been I thought I'd offer my own review of a year that has been a bit of a curate's egg. I've watched Charlie Brooker's Newswipe and it pretty much encapsulated the news events for me, so I refer you to that for the newsy / political perspective done far better than I would have managed it.

The year began with a very close friend coming back from the dead. I mean properly actually dying then having the paddles to bring her back (like in the movies). I put it down to a desperate need for attention myself - it had been a few years since she got married and our friends live in other parts of the world so it took something radical  in order to get them to call. Mission accomplished. She is under strict orders not to repeat this so we're all waiting with bated breath to see what fresh capers she has planned…

I had my first Mother's Day as a mother this year. Of course my son was oblivous to the significance of this. In later years he may badly wrap a gift to give me, but for now I'm content that hubbie helps and we kid ourselves he has any idea what is going on. (I have deliberately left this dubious so you can decide who I mean).

In May we sold our house - the first home me and hubbie have owned together. The home we brought our son back from the hospital to. The home we brought Neo from Battersea Cats & Dogs Home to. Of course it took months to actually move (see Oct), but someone came to see it in May and said she'd buy it. Result !

To everyone else August in London was about lunatics in balaclavas nicking TVs from the walls of betting shops. For my family it was all about the "Monsoon Wedding" of my youngest sister complete with a flower strewn Ambassador and bangra rhythms. It was also a chance for Khushbir to dress up in his Bollywood finery and impress everyone by applauding at the speeches.

Having enjoyed a year of playgroups, back-to-back Come Dine With Me and cups of tea with other Mums the time came to return to work and in September I went back to a new location, but the same colleagues. I'm not sure if it just because I had been away and I missed my boy, but going back to work was truly hideous. The only silver lining in all this was that my boy had his first birthday at the end of September and we celebrated with cake and hats and singing so now he knows that the correct response to a rousing chorus of Happy Birthday is to put out his hand for a piece of cake. That's my boy !

After months of frantic phone calls between vendors, buyers, the bank, the estate agents and solicitors we finally moved house in October. We paid to have a company move all our belongings, which I admit does make life much simpler, but isn't entirely foolproof. We had boxes marked as containing curtains with kitchen items and picture frames in. I wasn't sure if this was simply a mistake or an elaborate attempt to make us laugh when unpacking. The final straw for me was having to wear the same two pairs of shoes for weeks until I looked in the box marked "baby's room" which had all my shoes in it the entire time !

In November after weeks of going into work and being pretty much ignored and sidelined I decided to leave. It wasn't the simplest decision, but one that having been made proved to be the best course of action. My work colleagues continued to ignore me and on my last day only two people actually wished me well. If I could be bothered I'd take up a case of constructive dismissal, but frankly being able to spend every day with my boy is the best outcome I could have asked for - regardless of how I came to it.

So we come to the last month of the year when I had already finished going into work and was able to concentrate on preparing for Christmas and more importantly the wedding of our own TOWIE stars. I love, love, love weddings and this one was in a fairytale setting (albeit in Essex) with the funniest best man's speech we've heard in a while.

My year began with a friend's health scare and it ends the same way. A good friend has been diagnosed with breast cancer and will be undergoing treatment in early January. She is my age and has a young son. Whatever else happens in 2012 we've already agreed to go shopping for wigs together and discussed how to wear scarves at a jaunty angle to cover hair loss.

I hope 2012 brings you happiness, good health an abundance of love and just enough wealth to not spoil you.

Stop, Look AND Listen

I used a Sat Nav today for the first time ever and it was fabulous !! Up until now I've muddled along with the AA route planner, then most recently Google maps and back in the stone age I used an atlas, but none of these have anything on the bossy woman in the Garmin. I do realise that I'm late to this party, but now I've tried it there is absolutely no going back for me.

Of course not having had a car for years has something to do with this cultural vacuum, but the other reason I told myself was that I didn't think I'd be able to drive and listen to music and the sat nav all at the same time. I used to pride myself on being able to listen to a few things at a time - which we all try to convince our parents we can do when they ask why we have the radio on when we're supposed to be doing homework or revising. Now, however, I struggle to hear a great deal and mostly say 'huh ?' as a reflex action even if I've actually heard what's been said and it takes my brain a few seconds to register it. I like to think that it's because I have so much going on in my head. I do have selective hearing where I can hear my son breathing heavily in a different room, but I can't hear my husband explaining the offside rule (for like the millionth time) right next to me.

I blame Sky plus. Where before we used to have to listen or accept that we just missed dialogue I can now still pause or rewind to hear the bon mots from Dave Lamb on Come Dine or the muffled dialogue on the Wire. Little effort is expended in watching / listening to television so I've simply lost the knack. I tend to watch with subtitles on now so that if the baby is asleep it won't disturb him. Of course if the cat is snoring I hear him above everything else. First thing in the morning when he's hungry it's hard not to hear him pleading from the bottom of the stairs to be fed after a night on the tiles (as evidenced by his freezing cold ears).

The order of priority in the house for feeding is: baby, cat, hubbie then me. I usually get to make a cuppa after they've all been fed and sometimes even get to sip some of it before moving on to do something else and coming back to a stone cold tea later. Prioritising the boys in the family isn't something I resent at all. It makes my life easier to have a system and it keeps them out of my kitchen. I only mention it so that when hubbie reads this he can teach the other boys of my Mother Theresa type sacrifices for them. The ultimate aim is to be venerated without being a martyr. Not in a tattoo that says ' I love Mum' - I'm sure that is a lovely tribute, but I'd prefer something less permanent and not so inky thanks. Besides which it would look ridiculous on Neo's beautiful white fur.

I'm thinking somewhere in between Priscilla Queen of the Desert and the Krays without the extreme violent criminal tendencies. A sane level of gratitude and not a little awe would do me just fine. With subtitles of course.

I wonder if Dave Lamb remembers me ?

The story so far:

As anyone who knows me well will tell you I am a fanatic about Come Dine With Me. Recently they advertised for potential contestants in Croydon and for a millisecond I considered applying then remembered my vow to never do reality telly, so I encouraged my friend Gemma to do it instead.

Then I told my hubbie that the voiceover of Big Barn Farm on Cbeebies is done by Dave Lamb (the now legendary narrator of CDWM). He wasn't actually listening so a few days later I heard a cry of "Oh My Days !!" from the front room and he asked if the voice of Petal the Pig in Big Barn Farm was Dave Lamb. I rolled my eyes to the ceiling, tutted and went back to making the dinner.

Then we were watching Miranda and hubbie said "Oh look it's Dave Lamb," and I was open mouthed in shock as I realised he was none other than Janutha from Goodness Gracious Me !! All this time I had no idea.

So today I decided to stalk him even further and was even more shocked to discover that not only was he at the same university as me, but at the same time. Oh hold on it gets better.  He was part of a comedy troupe called the Cheese Shop who I actually knew at the time (well I knew a couple of them from the Radio Station we all presented shows on) so I probably at some point actually met him if not drank in the same bars as him.

In the space of a few weeks Dave Lamb has gone from that bloke who does the funny commentary on my favourite TV show to a bloke I probably met at some point 20 years ago in the Biko Bar !!