Country Life

The Londoners went to Derbyshire for a long weekend - here's a few of the things we did.



Went to a lovely wedding (we were invited - in case you just thought we crashed it).





We spent the day at Chatsworth in glorious sunshine.





Coco climbed trees and her and Henry had a brilliant time at the amazing adventure playground.





We explored the gardens with Grandma and Grandpa...



The highlight of the weekend for Henry (oh, apart from finding out he could reach a table of pick-n-mix sweets at the wedding) was walking up the water cascade at Chatsworth. He was in heaven.



We found our way to the middle of the maze... and maybe tried to cheat a bit to find our way out again...




Henry jumped a lot.



In fact he became a bit of a jump-a-holic.



We tried to avoid killing any sheep on the road, and we drove up and down some amazing hills, which Hugh cycled up and down, for fun, because he's getting to middle age.



We ate fish and chips on the floor of our hotel room.

...and we forgot to take the camera charger, so we missed a lot of photo opportunities!

Tulips - Inside & Out

Tulips from friends who came over for a long lazy roast lunch on sunday.





Tulips in the garden, I've been keeping my eye on these new bulbs that we planted last autumn waiting to see exactly what colour they would be, couldn't face picking them to bring inside though. Not this year, next, maybe.

A little French place I know...

We have an occasional Friday ritual of going out for a family supper. Hugh and I get to enjoy a glass of beer or vino and we are normally still home by about 8pm but with no clearing up and children who are happy to be tucked straight into bed.
It's our idea of a Friday night out.

Most often we go to Franco Manca (one of my top two pizza places in London; the other one being Malletti in Soho) or our local pub.



But last Friday we set of down the road to try somewhere new.
(Oh yeah, and Coco insisted on wearing her bowler hat. She is going through a hat phase.*)

Whenever I get the bus to or through Hammersmith (about 10 minutes from our house) I end up staring out of the window at this little French creperie opposite the bus stop called La Petite Bretagne.
Now, I do love a proper French crepe, made with buckwheat, so after WestLondonMum tweeted about the place last week I suggested to Hugh that we meet in Hammersmith after work on Friday.

Me, Henry and Coco got on the tube...



We traveled without a buggy for once - which is quite a liberating experience after nearly two and half years... but can also get quite hairy when you:
a) have a toddler 
b) and the toddler loves trains
c) ...and refuses to hold your hand
d) you're a blogger who feels the need to document everything
e) you also have a scooter and a five year old



I think our journey of four tube stops took longer than Hugh's nine-mile cycle from work... but it was all part of the fun.
The tube is raised and we get a good view of all our playground haunts along the way which Coco and Henry gave a running commentary on.



Coco: "My old nursery school"
Henry: School! School, SCHOOOOOL!"
Coco: "There's the paddling pool!" (Ravenscourt Park) "We used to go their with Sam!"
Henry: "No water in there, no water, WATER!!"



We looked like a bit of a circus family with Coco in her bowler hat and Hugh in full lycra... but the two French ladies/girls at the helm took it in their stride and we made ourselves at home ordering three delicious crepes to share.



Coco checking that she was getting the correct amount of Tunella (that's nutella to you and me) on her pudding crepe.



They also sell a few beautifully packaged deli items - including a jar of salted caramel, the ingredient de jour it seems... I resisted as I don't think a jar of caramel would last very long in this house.

Had Henry not decided to be sick mid-meal then it really would have been a 100% success. As it was I'll have to mark it down to only 88% successful. 
(He was sick after gagging on a sticker he decided to put in his mouth... we did manage to contain the event and clear up swiftly after him, I think, and he still went on to enjoy his pudding. Hugh of course got to cycle off home leaving me with the slight sicky smelling toddler on the tube home, but I'd had a glass of wine so I didn't care too much...)

Foolproof Banana Bread

When I went around to my friend Nisia's a couple of weeks ago her and her five year old Maja had just started baking a banana cake.
Of course Coco wanted in on the action...



Nisia and I were busy chatting and not paying as much attention as we should to the proceedings.



So Maja and Coco got busy pretending they were on an episode of 'I Can Cook'.
But guess what?
The cake turned out fine.



Check it out, and it honestly tasted really good too.

I feel the foolproof-ness of this cake recipe was thoroughly tested as:
a) No method was followed, AT ALL (the first step was that flour was added to the mashed banana, creating a lovely sticky mess).
b) The measuring out was a bit 'blah' to say the least.
c) It was meant to go in a loaf tin, but no loaf tin could be located so it went in a shallow cake tin
d) Nisia's oven is very vintage and I think Henry messed around with the temperature half way through baking, plus we forgot to even set the timer so no idea how long it actually cooked for.

So, the moral of the story is, if you want a cake and have a spare five year old around, get them to make this one for you.



Here's the recipe...



I know this seems like another food post - but I'm wondering if really it's actually a messy play post? Messy play with benefits.

17/52 A Portrait a Week

Both crouching and both studying!
Coco - making a mini habitat for some woodlouse with her friend Sam.
Henry - sorting out the shells from the stones in the garden.

Last week I liked seeing this little chap teddy-wearing, and to discover a new blog.

Doing the 52 Project as started by Jodi at Che & Fidel


I must say I'm starting to struggle a bit with this project trying to take a different and interesting portrait of each of my children every week. I thought the spring weather would bring more opportunities to get some candid photos of the children doing what they do but that doesn't seem to have happened.
We are having quite a funny time after we pick up Coco from school, sometimes we head straight to the park and I don't really feel like taking my camera, or we have a tired/moody girl on our hands and come straight home and Coco makes herself endless snacks which seem to end up merging into supper. Henry is very keen to play with her, having missed her all day but she can be quite nasty to him (especially if she thinks I'm not looking) and then I have to talk to her and she'll get cross with me.
If we have friends over then she can flip into being over-excited and just silly, which grates on my nerves so then I'm snappy... I'm feeling on edge just thinking about it. It seems impossible to keep both Henry and Coco happy at the moment.
The knock-on effect for the 52 project is I'm ending up taking all my photos at home and I don't seem to be able to get much variety... Or as soon as I get my camera out to take a photo of one child then the other kicks off. I need to get more imaginative... or just start taking my camera out more and leaving the hefty nappy bag at home instead (asking for trouble!)?
Maybe I should use getting the photos as an excuse for us to do some more different things after school. I guess that would be the best outcome.
If you are doing this project how are you managing it?

Me & Cooking

**OK this is not the sort of post I normally do - but it's been sitting in my drafts for a couple of weeks and I think it may end up being useful to someone out there (probably just me, when I try to remember where I found the recipes that I link to) - so I'm going with it anyway... it's a cooking/recipes/menu planning special!



One of the most frustrating things about being an an accidental stay at home mum is having to cook, what feels like, all the time.

I used to like cooking, mainly because I like the eating bit. I really love food. I'd get in from work with a bag of ingredients, have a drink, music turned up (or maybe a bit of radio 4...) and cook a meal.
Then I met Hugh, who is frankly a better cook than me (he would kindly say 'different, not better' I expect) and it was more tempting to drink the wine, listen to the music and watch him cook than do it myself.

Now I'm at home I tend to feel like I should be the one cooking, but the cooking no longer feels like a leisurely pursuit, but more of a chore, with Henry round my ankles pulling at my clothes and Coco moaning that she doesn't want to have whatever it is that I'm slaving away to make - half the time I'm hungry when cooking too, never good for my mood so I'm adding to the unhappy mix behaving like a half-starved crazy woman.
Sometimes I do just give up and Hugh will get home to me polishing off the left-overs of some thrown together at the last minute meal (pasta pesto most likely) and complaining that we've got no food, or I'm too tired to cook... and too tired to even think about cooking. What a lucky man he is.


So I need to get my cooking mojo back (and my shopping one too, but that is for another day). Lia at Dizzy Loves Icy seems to love cooking and it's making me a little jealous! Lia's photos of all her prepped ingredients are so mouth-watering (it's very annoying that most of the time I'm reading her blog at about 11pm, the last time that I feel like suddenly cooking up a meal) but it is inspiring. Her recipes look like the type of things you cook when you LOVE cooking... I really want to love, or at least like, cooking again, because for all my hatred of cooking I still spend a good deal of time in the kitchen making dodgy meals that I don't really actually fancy eating.



SO... A couple of weeks ago (for what ended up being a bit of a one-off week) I decided to get in control and make an extra effort to make some GOOD meals. And you know what? It was great and I kind of did enjoy it.
I just need to doing that every week, which feels like a lot of work.

But anyway, here's what I/we did.

Day 1. Roast Chicken
We cooked a VERY* large roast chicken with roast potatoes and all the trimmings. Always goes down well.
*it needed to be large as the 'leftovers' are used in all the following meals...

Day 2. Tacos - as inspired by Lia over at Dizzy Loves Icy (of course!)
I made a big batch of Lia's spicy sauce. Before we added some left over roast chicken I filled a couple of pots for the freezer so next time we have left over roast chicken we can have an almost ready made meal of tacos again.
Coco and Henry had a milder version of the sauce before the chipotles en adobo had been added to spice things up.
We had lots of avocado and tomato and salad on the side to give us a good amount of veg with this meal.
I stocked up on Mexican ingredients at The Cool Chili Co at Borough market (as shown here).

Day 3. Mushroom risotto
I'd kind of fallen out of love with risotto - but made with a good chicken stock from our roast chicken and lots of garlic and mushrooms this was pretty good - and a hit with the small people too.
This risotto recipe that my friend Annabel made a few times while she was staying with us is a good one.  

Day 4. Piri Piri Chicken
A spicy one for grown ups only (I think the children had pasta this evening... or maybe seconds of risotto, I can't remember). We have got rather addicted to Jamie Oliver's 30 minute (ahem) Piri Piri Chicken recipe - the sweet potato mash with lots of herbs and feta cheese is delicious, pretty healthy and also popular with children so we make sure there are left-overs for them.
Using left over roast chicken works too and saves on cooking time.

Day 5. Curry and Rice
This was a bit of a left-field success story. I wanted to make a mild curry that Coco and Henry would like. I found the recipe on a forum here -  it sounded good so I went with it, I'm so pleased I did as it's sure to be repeated

Ingredients
1 onion
3 carrots (and I'm sure you could put in lots of other veg if you wanted)
1 tbs mild curry powder
4 tbs red lentils
1 can of coconut milk

1. Fry the carrots and onion in olive oil over a medium heat until they start to soften.
2. Add the curry powder and cook for anther couple of minutes
3. Pour in the lentils and enough boiling water to cover what's in the pan. Cook over a low heat for about 1/2 an hour, stirring every now and again, if the mixture looks a bit dry add some more water.
4. When the lentils are soft stir in a can of coconut milk.
5. Leave it to cool for a bit then blend until smooth with a hand blender or in a food processor.
6. Add the left over chicken or veg or prawns to make your final curry.

This recipe makes quite a lot of sauce so, again I used some and froze a couple of pots for another day, we do love leftovers in this house.
Hugh and I actually also defrosted some more spicy aubergine curry from the freezer that we added to this meal. He has a thing about always having more than one curry. We had lots of cucumber raita and popadoms to pimp it all up too.

So there you have it, a week of suppers for a family of four -
And now I'm feeling really hungry.

Who's Afraid of Messy Play?

Who's afraid of messy play? Well, frankly, I am.
The house gets messy enough without the play being officially deemed messy - ie involving sand or water or (horror) both.
Coco went to nursery from when she was 10 months old, so I relieved myself of any obligation to let her do messy play at home. Judging by the state of her clothes when I picked her up on my way home from work she had plenty of exposure to paint, play-doh, sand and other sticky substances. 



But poor Henry is deprived (in a very middle-class sense of the word).
His messy play boils down to, play doh, helping with cooking (when I'm feeling adventurous) and water play. Oh, and he has used paint, um, a handful of times.


He often gets the paints out of the cupboard and brings them to me hopefully and it's a constant battle to keep him away from the sink. So the other day I let this happen (and I admit, it's not that messy... but surely it's all about the potential)?



I put some tiny specks of gel food colouring  (as purchased for the making of a rainbow cake many moons ago) into milk bottles, so that as Henry filled them with water they made coloured water.



And that was pretty much it!
I just gave him more and more containers... and occasionally topped up the food coloring, but as it was gel it didn't always totally dilute, so actually lasted quite well.



We did a bit of colour mixing too which amused Henry no end. He kept saying "What's 'appening!?"
And it was fun, fun for Henry and fun for me to watch (just a bit tricky to photograph well).

Some food colouring, some bottles and tubs, and a very happy boy.

I need to let go and go with the (potential) mess more often.
And of course, hooray for sunshine, now this can all happen outside again.