I have of late, wherefore I know not...lost my cooking mojo.

I seem to be channelling my inner Hamlet at the minute with these post headlines. It must be my education coming back to haunt me although maybe I should have paid more attention in home-economics as these past few weeks my abilities in the kitchen have taken a knock or two. I've gone from (self proclaimed) kitchen diva to kitchen disaster in the time it took to realise that grown-ups at work actually have conversations and don't just say 'Please can I have' swiftly followed by 'Why?' every five minutes. Perhaps I am still reeling from the shock and when I get my balance back so the cooking mojo will return.

Big tall hubby and I still enjoy monthly £10 dinner dates, this month it was my turn to cook and I set out determined to be Mrs Organised and deliver a delicious taste sensation in three easy courses despite it being on a Friday and me not getting home from work till gone six. Attending the girl-guides all those years ago hasn't been wasted on me, oh no, I can be prepared with the best of them. So Wednesday I'm planning a menu, loosely around an Andalusian theme, Thursday I begin to get things prepped. We're starting with Gazpacho, which would have been fine but for the fact the blender broke.The resulting food processed soup lacks that, smoothness, the velvety touch, but I ploughed ahead with it anyway. Then I attempted the pudding, a mango tatin, which went horribly wrong not once but twice. Second time around I was too tired to care and plonked it on a plate hoping lashings of ice-cream would disguise the burnt-caramel top.

The real Gazpacho - look at the glossy liquid in that glass!

Friday arrives and in a crazy, 'ooh I've got a paycheck' frenzy I decided to make an extra course (clearly flaunting the £10 rule) of dates wrapped in bacon. Sadly the balsamic reduction goes the same way as the mango tatin. So we're 'enjoying' and I use the term loosely, burnt appetisers followed by grainy lumpy soup for starters.Thank heavens for Sainsbury's special offer on Rioja!

Things start to look up with the main, polenta crusted pork with a chili buttered rice and green beans (thank you Delicious Magazine for that). That we wolf down all smiles. Although, by this point it could be the Rioja kicking in. Then comes the dessert, with mangoes so overcooked they give rubber a run for its money. You could have tiled roofs with them, I swear. Hubby, in a bid to cheer me up announces the pastry 'is lovely and goes well with the cream'. Much to his amazement this throws me further into a foodie-funk - I bought the pastry ready made - the only edible bit of the whole dessert was not from my own fair hand. Sigh. Abandoning culinary delights for coffee and rum is a much wiser move and ensures we finish our date with a flourish. These things are for the fun, not the food, I remind myself; there is more than one sort of mojo out there...

Still, there is a summer fete coming up and I'm down to bake a cake...please sir, can I have my mojo back now?

Sew, a needle pulling thread

In case you hadn't guessed I like to cook. I love cooking, which is just as well as I do a lot of it, tonnes of the stuff. Our bread, cakes, biscuits, sweet treats, soups, sauces and meals are 99.9% of the time home cooked by my fair hand. As a consequence my wee ones enjoy time in the kitchen watching mummy go slowly mad trying to prepare four things at once and keep tiny fingers from being burnt/chopped/blended/crushed in the frenzy.

Alternatively I'm attempting to save the dish of the day from total ruination thanks to the wonderful 'help' the wee ones love to offer. Such help as adding handfuls of salt, pouring in twice as much liquid or dropping it all into the beaten egg mix; all and more has gone before my frazzled eyes as two hours of work goes into the bin. But, you know, it's my mummy-duty to encourage this cooking interest so I'm told and I always like to do what I'm told - well nearly always.

To be fair small boy is now very adept at helping and will almost do exactly what he's asked. I like this progress and to encourage it I decided it was time for him to own an apron. Toddler girl was gifted a charming pink apron which she adores mostly because it is pink. Pink is the colour of joy and happiness for her right now; she gravitates towards all things pinky like a bee to nectar. Both the wee ones like to copy grown up behaviour, so when I don my apron toddler girl must have hers. Poor small boy was feeling a tad left out.

Brighton has some fantasticly lush cook shops, and those shops that don't seem to sell anything specific just random things from joke toys to candles and in the mix is always some fascinatingly wonderful homeware that costs at least twice as much as you'd expect for the size/practicality/general existence. Off I went in search of an apron suitable for a small boy and aprons I found in said cook shops and random emporiums. Could I find one that was A) attractive and B) affordable? Could I heck. If it was cheap then it was usually branded with some hideous kids TV programme and if it was funky it was a small fortune for such a simple item.

Many choices of pattern but it comes at a price.

With no middle ground in sight and very achey feet from all that shop-browsing I admitted defeat and trudged home; it was on the slog up the hill that it hit me - I would sew him an apron. With bags of fabrics at my disposal it was the ideal sollution. That very eve I perused my fabrics and using toddler girl's apron (or apricot as she likes to call it, thankfully I speak fluent toddler) as a basic template I upgraded it for my small man. So easy, it took less than two hours to choose, cut and hand sew the whole thing. The next morning I made pancakes just to have an excuse to whip it out for him.

Should you fancy making your own I found this great web site which has stacks of apron designs you can use... Free-apron-patterns-you-can-make

Now my small boy sports a very dashing denim apron, designed especially for him. It has been lovingly hand crafted from recycled jeans and bears his name in chunky letters of other clothing related fabrics. Waste not want not as the mantra goes. When he stands still for long enough I shall post up a photo as I'm most chuffed with this needle and thread effort. It cost me nothing but time and it was time well spent. All three of us strut around the kitchen decked out in our apricots having a grand old time with whatever ingredients are called for; cooking doesn't get better than this.

Good times aren't hard to find

You know the annoying credit card ad on TV which shows you someone spending a fortune to 'bond' with a family member before declaring the whole thing 'priceless', well they got one bit right. Time with people you care for is totally priceless. The crucial point the ad misses is that because time with such people is invaluable then you don't need to spend a king's ransom to enjoy a few hours with them. Some aspects of life are not for buying. I will now climb down from my soap box in a ladylike way.

It came to mind because we've just had a lovely weekend spent with friends and family and while it didn't come for free we certainly didn't need to crack into the credit cards to make it happen. All it cost really was a bit of organisation and commitment. First we had family round for dinner; there's only one set close enough to 'pop round' for dinner. You can't really call a 300 mile or 800 mile round trip 'popping' can you? But with work, kids and DIY those of us down south find it hard to pop anywhere in synch despite living 10 miles away from each other. So dinner was an event. We've had a few of these events this year. It's the plan; socialise at home, cook lavish 4/5 course dinners and go the whole hog with menu's and place names. I keep a menu from each and they'll be going into my scrap book (the year we ate - I'll call this section in the ongoing saga of life.) Maybe I'm hoping that one day I'll be a famous author and these scrapbooks will be lovingly held in a museum. More likely I'll be scrutinizing them in the old people's home wondering what it's all about; but hey I prefer option one.

Despite spending a day and a half cooking  like a loon it was worth the effort; we valiantly stayed up till midnight before confessing en-mass to being shattered and good for nothing; certainly not Pictionary which had been the plan post dinner. We even abandoned the rum - imagine! Another perk of the lavish dinner party is left overs. I say lavish but it is more about the scrumptiousness of the food than expensive ingredients; so tonight we're having steak chili in tortillas and chocolate mole tart for pud; not fancy but tasty. I love leftovers.

Chocolate, spices and sweet temptation on a plate...

There were no leftovers from our catch up with friends the day after though; the downside of not being the cook. Many moons ago we lived in London and were lucky enough to find the most amazing group of locals who we gelled with; for many years we socialised with each other several times a week. This was BC of course when nipping to the pub didn't involve UN levels of negotiation. And Gipsy Hill is an area awash with good pubs and restaurants for DINKIES to wallow in; it would have been rude not to. These days few of us remain DINKIES but we do remain friends. For the first time our new child-focused life collided with our old footloose and fancy free life as we took the small ones along for the reunion. So weird to hold my small boy's hand while wandering past pubs I'd staggered out of almost a decade before. But our old favourite restaurant Lorenzo's (http://www.lorenzo.uk.com/)did not let us down; all the children were catered for and all the adults ordered wine and old faves from the menu. Lunch lasted three hours but it felt like minutes and when the bill came we all smiled. Yup, Lorenzo's is still great value for money and our friends are still great friends. In some cases thousands of miles usually separate us but you wouldn't have guessed from the banter round the table.

The wonderful Lorenzo's for tasty Italian food that won't break the bank

With so much going on in the world that is sad, grim or plain horrible at the moment I wanted to offer up a post that celebrated the simple pleasures of spending time with good people. It need not cost the earth but it is most certainly priceless. 

Boxing clever

This year I have come to the conclusion that Boxing Day is far superior to Christmas Day. There is less stress, less mess, no fuss and a whole lot more relaxation with all the treats left over from the day before. Apparently it is so called due to the boxes people got - some say servants got gift boxes from masters, others argue the priests opened the alms boxes to the poor and yet another suggestion is that the Romans collected money in boxes to pay for the people to have their games. I see the theme there - boxes. All good stuff.

We had lots of boxes in our house too. Empty boxes with the contents scattered in death inducing fashion all over the place. Not a single room was safe from small bits of plastic, nuggets of wood or wheeled things. Thank goodness we elected to conduct the day from the safety of the sofa or someone could have been hurt. Although we did manage a small jaunt to the beach for a pebble dash with the wee ones; nothing better for working off the mince pies. Life beside the seaside is wonderful in winter. No tourists crowding the place leaving wide stretches of beach free for the locals to enjoy. Okay it is a tad on the chilly side but the view is worth it; nothing says hope like an endless horizon. There is such promise where the sea meets the sky, perfect for the closing days of the festive season.

Not quite as we saw it Boxing Day but Brighton Beach in winter is amazing.

And it has been a funny festive season this year. Christmas had ping-ponged from our place to up north and then back down again. Our feasty preparations swirled like snow as health and weather took our plans and shook them upside down. In the end by the time it came to the big day we'd sort of lost momentum. I say 'we' but the small ones maintained full throttle until around 4pm on Christmas day when they hit melt down; almost literally given the amount of chocolate consumed. Tall hubby and I rode out the day on wine and adrenalin; we cruised on the kids craziness but after they hit the hay we found ourselves fading fast. So it was a relief to wake up on Boxing Day full of festive joy and that special Christmas buzz that makes all things merry and bright.

The real fun in Boxing Day comes from the left overs. All that mad over spending is swapped for thrifty concoctions involving beat up roasties and mashed sprouts. We opted for a goose this year and I just didn't know how it would taste the day after; some things don't work the next go round, thankfully goose isn't one of them. I dry fried it with a bit of garlic, shallots and smoked sweet paprika with a dash of cream; totally yummy with a bit of bubble and the chili roasted beetroot on the side. Tomorrow the plan is to stir fry it with some grated ginger and orange for a noodle-tastic dish of leftover delight. And then that goose will be well and truly cooked.

The goose got fat and we ate it all up!

Now that the frenzy of Christmas is past we can fully enjoy the rest of  this festive season. There are treats-a-plenty to be over-consumed and presents to be explored, TV specials to veg in front of and friends to swap xmassy stories with. And let us not forget the grandest of all grand finales - New Year's Eve. Ah yes, the Christmas spirit is flowing now...Merry Christmas one and all.

It is all in the planning

These days I don't leave the house without a detailed plan of action. Spontaneity has packed its bags and left in despair; utterly neglected. There are pluses and minuses to this situation. My inner twenty-something (and who over 30 does not have an inner twenty-something dissecting every move?) rages at the loss of life on the whimsy-side. Tall hubby and I walk past a pub with the pushchair in tow and pine for the days when we could have nipped inside and stayed till closing. To stay in a pub 'till closing these days demands military grade forward planning. And becoming sergeant major of the drinks brigade somewhat takes the fun out of it.

However there is much to be said for the boyscout motto 'be prepared'. From day trips to shopping trips; birthdays to Christmas, all are broken down into lists, tasks and detailed plans. Now the list thing is partly down to the fact that if a thought stays in my head for more than two minutes it counts as a minor miracle. Call it prolonged baby-brain or call it the  early onset of Alzheimer's but my memory ain't what it used to be. These days I can walk from the living room to the kitchen and forget why I've opened the fridge. An ideal excuse to nibble a slice of ham perhaps; alas not now the 'healthy eating plan' is in motion.

A real bonus to all this planning is the cost-saving; oh the chancellor would beam with pride if that face of his is capable of such a thing. I've slashed and bashed expenditure to get the most of...ooh everything...for the least money possible. With my trusty list pinned to the fridge by the giant letter A, I can track and chase Xmas goodies, hunting out the best deals and bargains. Inch by inch our Christmas delights accumulate into a fantastic feast that will make the 'healthy eating plan' quake in its boots. Ditto wee boys upcoming birthday party. And it is so much easier to enjoy it all when I know the bank is not broken (well it might have a slight hairline fracture).

The font of all wisdom...

This leads us nicely to the other big plus - stress reduction. With it all broken down to bite sized chunks life is so much easier to manage. Harangued by the demands of two small children the days slip past in a haze not dissimilar to the mild intoxication of the morning after the night before. There is no accounting for the time as it whizzes by - it just goes. But thanks to my new 'be prepared' philosophy Christmas is in the bag. Presents are bought (or made), stocking fillers acquired and Xmas tree goodies await a tree. I can sit and wait to see big grins on Xmas morning with time aplenty to relax and get festive.I don't share this to be smug (honest) but to spread the happy news that the loss of life on a whim comes with perks - its a yin-yang thing.

Christmas all wrapped up with time to spare

So while it is now impossible to head for the closest Italian at 8pm when we've realised too late we need to eat but can't be bothered with cooking we can whip out 'one I prepared earlier' as part of my monthly menu plan - which is almost (if you squint) spontaneous. The best of both worlds? Well it might just be...

On the flipside part deux

Just as a little addendum to yesterday's post here is the recipe for the squash/pumpkin pasta sauce. Good time of year to do it and it tastes fantastic. I got it from the 'Top 100 pasta sauces' cookbook by Diane Seed.




500g pasta
1.5kg pumpkin or squash cut into thin slices
50g butter
1 leek finely sliced
1 onion finely chopped
1 stick celery finely sliced
300ml chicken stock (may need more or less depending)
Half tsp nutmeg
150ml double cream or 125g fromage frais
70g grated Parmesan


Melt half the butter and gently soften the onion, leek and celery. Add the pumpkin/squash and cook on low heat for about 5 mins. Add enough stock to make it all moist and cover, simmer for about 20 mins. Add more stock and repeat until it is all cooked through and soft. Add salt/pepper to taste and the nutmeg then blend. Return to the pan and add the cream, Parmesan and the rest of the butter stir through and serve up.

Guess what; toddler boy is messing with the breakfast now too - not ketchup thankfully - today he announced he liked his cereal crunchy and would not be having milk. Ah such is the joy of parenting.

These bad boys are a taste sensation with pasta

Parkin for when it's parky

Sometimes life just likes to slap you about the face a bit, like a tanked up landlady at the Queen Vic it assumes you need taking down a peg or two when in fact that is the last thing you need. The weather has turned wintry and the park has turned into the last place on earth you want to visit. Beautiful autumn colours on the trees? Well yes they are but it is also freeeeeezing. Call me difficult but I just can't concentrate on the finer points of decaying foliage when my fingers are falling off. Now don't get me wrong I'm quite partial to a bit of the outdoors even when  it has turned a tad nippy in the air, but the play park is something quite different. Toddler boy loves to climb and swing and whizz about without any help from me, Channeling his inner gibbon. Baby girl is swiftly approaching toddler status too and likes nothing more than a clamber up the slide to the tree house where she'll happily sit...ooh for hours if allowed while I stand guard slowly turning into a snow woman. There is no action for the grown up. If I'm going to be outside then at least let's keep moving.

So you'd think it would be quite a relief to have an excuse to stay in for a few days. Alas not. Not when the excuse is two wee ones with nasty buglings oozing out of their noses, spraying forth in coughs and splutters and generally turning them into balls of frothing overtired temper-tots. Ah yes for with the bugs comes sleeplessness. And if they don't sleep, we don't sleep. Housebound, germ-ridden and frazzled; that's us. There is only so much Cbeebies a woman can take, while it seems small ones have an unlimited capacity for the TV twaddle.

Events were ripe for an intervention. In the time honoured tradition of frazzled mothers the world over I sought solace in the kitchen. At the very least it is warm in there. We would bake! It was a cunning plan, keep them busy, cosy warm and produce goodies to bribe them with at a later date. And that is when I found the Parkin recipe. If life was going to administer a few slaps then I'd slap it right back - wallop. Take that evil fictional pub landlady.Armed with only a mixing bowl I defeated the bad mood and ushered in contentment. Ah.Que smiles all round.

Parkin, a great taste of Yorkshire. This recipe came from a Yorkshire man too, James Martin. And as a Brucie Bonus it has hardly any butter and only 1 egg so squeezes into the 'healthy eating' regime too. Okay, I am turning a blind eye to the sugar and syrup but I've had no sleep, for days sugar is essential to my ability to function at any level approaching human...

225g self raising flour
115g caster sugar
2 tsp ground ginger ( I like to add a couple of tsp of mixed spice too)
1 tsp bicarb of soda
55g butter
115g golden syrup
1 egg
200ml milk

Preheat oven to gas mark 2 and grease an 8inch cake tin.
Melt butter and syrup in a pan on a low heat. Add to flour, caster sugar, ginger and bicarb of soda and mix well.
Whisk the egg into the milk and add to mix. Stir all up and put in cake tin.
Bake for 1 hour. Eat!

A ginger taste sensation

Boosted by the success of the parkin we've spent the rest of the week baking flapjacks, peanut butter cookies and lemon drizzle cake. Now as a germ free family we have lots of things to take to the park and nibble to fend off the chill. Of course it would be rude to indulge in cake without a coffee but rather than queue with the yummies for a frothy latte I'm kitted out with a big flask of the hardcore black stuff.

Caffeine, cake and kiddies gone crazy...bring it on.

A liitle off the middle

If it isn't complicated enough trying to keep two small ones and big tall hubby well fed and chirpy without bringing down the wrath of Cameron and Co. on the state of our finances we've added a little extra challenge. Keeps things fresh doesn't it? And what is this challenge? To cook while doing the downward dog? Nope. Shopping only while wearing fluffy slipper booties and a smile? Nah. Although I do love my slipper booties and see no shame in sharing them with the world. See...

Cosy winter tootsie warmers

This is something we never ever do. Ever.

Shh and I'll whisper it...diet. Well I say diet, it is more of a cutting down exercise, trimming off the fat as it were. That dreaded phrase 'portion control' is coming into my kitchen on hushed feet. What torture is this? Actually portion control is fab, saves a fortune so long as we don't snackeroo. So far so good. No, it isn't a diet. Sensible eating fits the bill nicely. If you call it a diet all you want to do is eat. Munch, crunch, chew and nibble. So it is most definitely not a diet. The D word is banned henceforth.

Now you'd think eating less would cost less but not so. 'Tis probably why only the rich and famous can afford to be thin as age advances along with the waistline. This being sensible lark takes time and effort and its toll on the coffers. Wee ones need their food and their fat. Big ones need to reign it all in while they still have the chance. So we're juggling to avoid the jiggling. Thank heavens for booze I say! Cutting down on the nightly medicinal vino (the balm of most mothers post bed time) helps boost the purchase of 'healthier options'. I'm amazed anyone can afford to be veggie, it tots up.

Let's give it a few weeks and see how it goes, once I find a recipe that actually tastes as good as a full fat version then I'll whip it up here in a flash. Hope it isn't a long wait!

The best laid plans...

I'm not a mouse or a man but my best laid plans most certainly went astray this week. The whole creating yumminess on a budget thing has been going remarkable well even if I do toot my own horn in saying it, so I guess it was time for a cock-up.

For days I'd been gathering in the ingredients for a stuffed cabbage, mentioned before in this blog, the stuffed cabbage is a delight and wonder that belies its grim institutional sounding name. Every trip into town was a recce for another component, all ingredients were located at rock bottom prices starting with the savoy cabbage and ending with some pine nuts (ooh they are pricey little nuggets at the moment - has there been some harvest failure I don't know about?)

Hubby was excited, I was salivating, toddler boy was fascinated and baby girl couldn't care less. All was well in the kitchen as the ingredients took shape into the dish. Now a stuffed cabbage does taste amazing but it is a major faff to make. The French do like their food a tad tricksy on the prep front. So tomatoes had been skinned and cored, pine nuts toasted, bacon diced, onion chopped, breadcrumbs whizzed and cabbage leaves blanched and assembled.Not to mention the crushed garlic, minced pork, blended herbs and beaten eggs. Finally I layered up the leaves with the stuffing and tied it all up into a big muslin wrapped cabbage again. This went to rest in the mixing bowl while I prepped the sauce it cooks in.

Shallots sauteed in butter while I diced potato. I was just peeling the carrots when disaster struck. Toddler boy got over curious and upended the mixing bowl, shattering it all over its contents. Unless we wanted minced insides there was no way we could eat the cabbage. Disappointed is too mild a word. Never have I wanted to eat something so much as that cabbage, nope, not even that hidden choccy bar during PMT. Toddler boy picked up on the enormity of his actions as he inserted a very heavy "sooooo" before his "sorry".

But in the spirit of the blitz (very topical me) I sliced the peeled carrots and whipped out the hummus for a little pre-dinner nibble. After a few more were added to its number the diced spuds turned into a buttery mash. The poor sauteed shallots were rescued by turning them into a white wine gravy (which nearly ended badly when the stock cube refused to co-operate and formed huge lumps throughout the sauce - thank heavens for a whisk Mrs Beeton indeed). A packet of herby sausages pulled from the freezer provided the pork fix and dinner was saved.

It wasn't stuffed cabbage though was it? Grrr...

What we should have been eating...

Viva la France

When embarking on the life of poverty stricken parents hubby and I devised a cunning plan to keep us in the land of happy couples...£10 dinner challenge night... a night of food, fun and where possible a bottle of wine. Just the two of us, the table all set, candles lit and some quality kid free time - if we're lucky.

All the supermarkets have this £10 deal, 2 courses and a bottle of plonk for ten quid - I say pah to that! Not for us pre-packaged same old same old. Oh no, we have to create a 2 or 3 course meal, with or without a bottle of plonk all within a £10 budget. Taking turns we cook up a storm for each other, spending a lovely afternoon in the kitchen while the other is on kid duty. Cookers and toddlers not being a happy combination.

So yesterday was my turn. And I went all French on his ass. We had onion soup (topped with the compulsory gruyere and french bread - top tip to stay on budget buy exactly the amount you need from a deli rather than buy the pack) followed by stuffed cabbage, with a grand finale of crepe suzette, all washed down with a bottle of bordeaux. Stuffed cabbage may not sound all that fab but honest to goodness it is. It oozes taste sensations with smoked bacon, pork, herbs, toms and pine nuts and looks well groovy served up at the table looking like a huge savoy cabbage but new and improved.

The rules are:

1. You can't spend more that £10
2. If you have ingredients in or can get them from your garden/allotment it doesn't count to the cost
3. It must be at least 2 courses
4. Nothing can be ready-made
5. You can't cheat by buying stuff you need a few days before to have in when it comes to the challenge cook-day
6. Basics like potatoes, carrots, onions don't count towards the cost unless they form the main element of your dish as they are usually in the house anyway
   

I came in at a grin inducing £9.59 - oh yes she's a winner this time.

Not only was the meal taste-tastic it was my big thankyou to hubby for being on perma-kid-duty these last 7 weeks while my broken elbow healed. Today sadly, alack, alay he is back at work. Still, at least he has scrummy leftovers for lunch.

Next time hubby promises me he's going all Eastern European to knock my French socks off...the game is afoot...