Nearly there

I'm holding it together, raising a smile now and then. We went for the complete Christmas-dinner-in-a-packet from Marks and Spencer and the experience was OK, not too hectic and just the right amount for the six of us.

The packet chocolate log is purchased, the packet mince pies abound, there are kindling and logs even though it is 14C outside and presents all wrapped. The tree is slightly mental, adorned with an increasing number of decorations. The kids are happy, even though the tooth fairy hasn't come for 2 nights in a row....I guess the fairies are busy helping Santa's elves?

I'm just not keen on the excess. The gross excess when the world around us is falling apart. And every year I say I won't fall into the trap of buying a huge amount of stuff, and every year I do - pressured into being perfect.

I feel it's like not being able to see straight for a month, it's the hugest hurdle to end the year, the last fence to be cleared and finally the finishing post is in view. Ready to start again as 2016 promises new beginnings.

Merry Christmas to you all, wishing you peace and light. And ponies.

Shall I?

"Getting ready for Christmas?" the nice hairdresser lady asked.

"Yup, nearly done," I replied "Just the food now." And moaned about all that cooking.

The hairdresser looked around to make sure no one was listening and almost whispered:

"We get ours from Marks and Spencer, the whole lot, roast potatoes, gravy and everything - you order it on line, pick it up and bung it in the oven - easy!"

"But I don't tell many people because it's embarrassing!" she continued.

We talked about how much easier it was for her mum, and how she wished her mum had got a Marks and Spencer dinner years ago so she could have spent the day with the children and not in the kitchen.

So yes, I am going to do it. A packet Christmas dinner for us this year.

Cooking Club

Everything is 'middle-ish' to P. She quite likes riding Dexter and Freddie. School is OK. Singing in her after-school choir is sometimes fun, sometimes boring - 'middle-ish' really, she will explain. Street Dance turned out to be dull after all and so was ballet. It's hard to have such an ambivalent child when life is pretty darn amazing. I needed to find P's passion, which didn't include chocolate or the iPad.

We have started a Cooking Club, P and I. We look up a recipe in the week and cook it together on a Tuesday when A is out dancing (and loving it). We mainly chat about the week, I listen to her, let her use sharp knives and stir hot pots, she kneads, she grates, she creams together the butter and sugar - and she loves it. She really loves cooking.

And I really love that she loves it.

Yesterdays Aubergine Chilli - gobbled by both kids

Cheese straws

Clams

I had my first experience of killing my prey to eat last week. I was no Ray Mears and no blood was involved, except metaphorically on my hands.

The clams looked inviting, in a foreign kind of way, sitting there on their bed of ice in the new farm shop Eggs to Apples. They reminded me of a sexy weekend in Catania, Sicily, sitting in a humming restaurant overlooking a black, volcanic beach. Linguine vongole, romantic as the weekend itself. All hot and steaming, sloppy to eat, but simple and satisfying - with a crisp white wine that the Sicilians are wise not to export.

The man at the fish counter spent time explaining how to cook them, he told me about tapping them to make sure they close and discarding the ones that didn't open in the cooking process. It was quite complicated, the kids asked many times how to do it - so did he, making sure we had got it right as one bad clam and we could be very ill indeed. Oh the excitement!

Alive

I kept them alive in the fridge for a whole night and tried not to think about them shivering in there, missing the sea bed and filtering for food.

Dead

They were delicious, they did not die in vain, every clam was eaten except one, who died in between the sea and the plate. The performance of eating them was perhaps a little more fun than the tiny creature itself, being masked in parsley, white wine, garlic and chilli - transporting us back to Italy, to a different time altogether.

Christmas 2014

It was OK in the end, I guess it always is, it's just the run up I can't abide - all that shopping, spending and talk of a perfect Christmas. 

Christmas started with Olympia Horse Show, the best part of the festive season for me. An excuse to watch horses all afternoon, shop for jodhpurs, souvenir rosettes and 'oooooh and aaaaahhh' at the size of the jumps with a friend who gets the addiction. The kids sat transfixed at the Ukrainian Cossacks crazy gymnastic riding, the police horses jumping through fire, a Shetland grand national, the dog agility display and the famous riders show jumping the biggest fences. And then Father Christmas made a brief appearance, it was definitely the real one we all decided, with some snow, a carol and lots of kids on ponies galloping around the arena. It was completely brilliant!

I wrapped the presents in one hit with red wine, he helped enormously. We decided not to faff with appetisers and nibbles and instead opened a packet of cheesy balls which went down a treat. The bread sauce came from a packet, and although it was pretty disgusting we had all the right components of the feast. No off-piste cooking this year, a straight-down-the-line-middle-of-the-road-turkey dinner with the trimmings. Demolished in seconds I'm glad I didn't spend any longer on it than I did.

Instead I had time to watch Peter Pan, drink too much wine, play games, open mountains of gifts with the kids and clear up the inevitable Christmas day puke. 

Christmas 2014 ended, and is still ending with the bug. It just wouldn't be the same without it.

Fathers day

I only just realised it was Fathers Day in time. I happened to be standing in the queue in Londis when a hand-written fluorescent cardboard sign reminded me to buy a card, so I chose the most appropriate non-sporty one and bunged a bottle of Chablis in the basket. Job done. What he really wanted out of Fathers Day was just a day with the family, the card will be recycled immediately and the children's offerings will gather dust on his the bed-side table.

Hopefully the memories last longer.

Despite the weather, all cloudy and inclement, we headed to the sea armed with a stove and a couple of packets of sausages, some doughy finger rolls and a bottle of tommy k. No one touched the chopped up cucumber or pineapple all neatly stacked in Tupperware containers. After hot dogs and chocolate bars we watched as the sea encroached further on our picnic spot, gazed at terns hovering on the winds and snoozed to digest the pure, refined wheat we had just consumed. I lay on his belly while he finished the papers and the kids made dinners for the Queen of the Sea, from pebbles, seashore plants and a couple of tablespoons of sand.

The dreamy spell was broken when someone small needed a poo. So we headed into Hastings to use the loo, eat piled-high ice creams and to spend cash on the carousels and arcades.

A happy Fathers Day indeed.

The in-between bit

Christmas came and went. I managed the food alarmingly well; with just a soggy tomato, a bag of salad and half a lemon tarte making it to the bin so far. We had not a brussel sprout or a pig-in-blanket in sight this year, instead I chose a Middle Eastern feast full of spicy lamb, falafels, stuffed aubergines, jewelled rice with dips and sauces galore. It required no less work than the turkey dinner but made me happy knowing everything was a little different than usual - the lack of waste was positively joyful.

It's not really a break, Christmas time. In fact this is the first time I've sat at my pooter in days - he's in bed with the flu #2 and the kids are watching the Cbeebies panto for the squillionth time. I just had a maniacal attack on the wrapping paper, tutting at the plastic, burning a load of cardboard and shoving all their stocking bits into a shoe box each. The house needs hoovering again. More food needs buying. The booze is depleted and we need fizz for New Year.

This in-between bit is itchy-scratchy. I can't quite get on with my resolutions so am carrying on with the bad habits. The tree is still up and moulting. The left over bits of stilton still might be eaten. I keep finding cracker debris. He even agreed that a big escape to somewhere hot next year might be a good idea. I think it's a great idea, I'm sure Santa would still visit us in the Caribbean.

Home school

It's that time of year, my sinuses are screaming as I type. What are sinuses anyway? Do we need them? I'd like mine to take a hike.

The children had filthy colds this week, well A was genuinely ill and P just needed a day off, persuading me by snorting through her nose so violently as if to validate her skive. I didn't leave the house all day, not even to put out some rubbish, we cosied up together and pretended we home-schooled.

We started the day late, all eating a good breakfast together. We read, A read her book upstairs and I helped P with her reading book in front of the fire - we took time to talk about the story, we took time to answer the questions in the back of the book, we discussed her favourite parts of the book. We took time and it was nice.

Next the girls researched on the computer, A looked up and wrote a paragraph about the Tudors and P looked up the toys in the 'olden days' ie the 1970's. They drew pictures, learnt how to print, used Google like a pro and helped each other when they got stuck.

We had some lunch, all together, and they finished what was on their plates as they had time to do so - unlike the amount of waste that comes home in their sandwich boxes when they are rushed to eat in school. We talked about what was on the news, the horrors that the people of the Philippines are experiencing, some politics and some sporting news which I struggled to explain.

We played catch with juggling balls after lunch - that was our PE, then they had some free time while I caught up with some emails and did the washing up. We played pelmanism, P thrashed us in the first game and sulked when she lost the second. We made some flapjacks, each taking it in turn to weigh and measure, and then they helped me with the dinner. School didn't finish that day, we carried on until bed time.

('Scuse the union jack napkins - a hangover from the jubilee!)

I liked it, home schooling for one day. Could I do it forever? I don't think so. The kids fought all the time, they bicker, they argue, they day dream, they don't listen, I have little patience, I want to ride, I need to work and they missed their friends. But for one day, home schooling was just fine.

Flower Show

Nursing a minor headache from the obligatory red wine of a Friday night, my Saturday morning was spent washing potatoes, tying up onions and giggling over googly eyes. For Saturday was the annual village flower show, a country affair, an English tradition with large amounts of competitive spirit.

During the last few months some parents and I have dug, toiled, sweated, watered, weeded and tended to a plot at our local allotment site. On Friday afternoons, groups of little people have trooped down from the school to get their hands mucky, to plant runner bean seeds, courgettes, onion sets and peas. They created an enormous bug hotel out of pallets and pots, they squealed in delight in finding insects and butterflies and they fed all the grubs to the neighbours chickens - some were keen to get involved while others hung around on the peripheries, maybe shy, but usually afraid of the dirt. But there is always a job for everyone, writing the labels, sorting the seeds and discussing the names of the plants and animal life we find in the garden. The hour of gardening at the allotment always goes quickly, the children love it and have pride in their doings - some even came up in their summer holidays to water and weed.

Of course the harvesting is the most fun. Children gasped in awe at the size of the courgettes, overgrown to some eyes but just perfect to theirs. We dug for potatoes like jewels in the cloddy brown earth, we picked long and nobbly runner beans and we pulled up onions bigger than their fists. It was a true delight. A soup was made with some of the older children, a real 'plot to plate' recipe in under an hour - how delicious vegetable soup tastes when you have grown the vegetables yourself!

The children were rewarded for all their efforts, a second for the runner beans, a third prize for the herbs and a fourth plus 'highly commended' for the 'Master Gardener' section. I could see some people looking around very scared - who were these supreme gardeners? If the children put as much enthusiasm down the allotment next year as they did this year, then who knows - we may just be taking home the cup!

Spotty biscuits

It's been a bit of a week down here in Sussex, what with all the snow and chaos. Tuesday was so bad that we had snow drifts and cars were abandoned on the sides of the road while commuters struggled to get home. I am pleased to say that the local farmer even brought his lambs indoors so they were out of the elements, I could sleep at night knowing that - soppy bugger that I am.

Predictably the children had a day off school, thankfully I wasn't working so we all had a home day, a snow day. They drove each other mad, bounced off the walls and needed constant entertaining. It was time to attempt cooking - I hate cooking, it's not fun - it's a necessary chore. The kids, however absolutely love it. And I loved it as a child as well, standing on a stool at the cooker to make flapjacks. I remember loving watching the butter as it melted and stirring it with a wooden spoon before adding the syrup and rolled oats. Mum was always there, baking something or other with radio 2 droning in the background. Happy rainy days. It wasn't fair to deprive the girls of the same experience.

The problem is is that I am utterly crap at baking - remember these? But these dotty cookies came out a treat.

Not only did they look good, they tasted good and there was enough little stages in the making process for both children to have a go. The kids were both shocked and delighted, shocked that something actually 'worked' and delighted they tasted nice. And I felt a teeny bit proud as well.

Simple Sundays

The lamb, being slow-roasted with rosemary and garlic, wafts around the house. The children are clean with tangle-free hair after being dunked in their Sunday bath - they do get washed a few more times in a week but the Sunday ritual being the main event. He's ironing his shirts ready for the week ahead and I've just done some hand washing, a yearly task. You don't need to know the colour of the water that came from my jumper.

Today has been a simple Sunday. A relaxing family Sunday. A free Sunday with no commitments or expenditure. A Sunday starting with a lie in, a pot of Columbian coffee and yesterdays papers. The weather looked promising enough to brave a walk, wrapped in layers and woollies we all hiked around a local but unexplored wood, stopping half way for sandwiches and chocolate. Food never tasted so good. We giggled at the mud, looked hopefully at the emerging bluebells and talked about the future as the children ran off like dogs released from their leads, coming back occasionally to check we were still there.

A Sunday like today feels restorative, cosy and warming, happy and fuzzy. Just a perfect way to set us all up for the week - and a little birdie told me the temperature is rising and that the sun may even make an appearance....

Christmas food

I've just opened the fridge door to be greeted with jugs of jellied gravy, a bowl of congealed bread sauce, four day old goose-fatted roast potatoes and a bowl of cooked sprouts. Against all my better intentions, it was time to bin the Christmas leftovers, which goes against everything I have ever written about wasting food. The fridge was jammed with sliced ham and turkey - enough for another twelve roast dinners, I kid you not. We asked the butcher for a boned, rolled and stuffed turkey for 9 adults and 2 kids and this is what we got; 1 stone  and 2 oz of meat. A third of this would have sufficed and even that would've produced Boxing day sarnies. We have learnt our lesson, not being very proficient in hosting large roast dinners and all.

We have one gluteus maximus of stilton left to eat, two boxes of Sainsbury's deep filled mince pies, cold meats, packets of olives, 5 large bags of 2-for-1 revoltingly flavoured crisps and chutneys and pickles galore.  

The festive season is very good at putting me off food altogether, if I could just take a pill-full of all the nutrients I need from now until the allotment starts to flourish, then I would be happy.

Green soup

With a chink of sun in the sky, I popped down to the allotment with wellies, to assess the rain damage and to check if anything was occurring. There were the usual mole hills, rotten plants, pitiful slug-eaten beans, some unpicked raspberries and the ever encroaching weeds from a negligent neighbours plot.

But there were joys to be found! One big orange pumpkin, two curly wurly pumpkin/courgettes (I'll have to hunt out the seed packet as have no idea what they are), three yellow courgettes, one mini marrow and a great big bunch of swiss chard. I love swiss chard and so do the kids.

"Go in the kitchen, there's an allotment surprise for you!" I said to the children after school today.

Instead of whoops and squeals over the oddness of the curly pumpkins, they both cried:

"YAAAAY, green soup!"

So that's what I made for dinner, 20 minutes from plot to plate.

Our Green Soup recipe

Big bunch of swiss chard, slugs removed
2 onions
Lots of garlic, 4 or more cloves
A potato
Some oil
Stock
Salt
Pepper

Remove the stalks from the swiss chard and chop into small pieces. Chop up onion and garlic. Fry the swiss chard stalks, garlic and onion in some oil, until softened. Add the stock, a chopped up potato and all the chopped green leaves from the swiss chard. Bubble away, adding more stock/hot water as necessary. Whizz with a hand blender. Serve with soft wholemeal bread, chunks of cheddar and a dose of Autumn.

Greek Salad

We have just eaten a really delicious Greek Salad, seriously yummy with hot pitta and a Cambodian Wedding  Day dip. As you do on the weekend. The Cambodian Wedding day dip tasted exactly as one would imagine it to, sort of dippy and wedding day-ish, and most definitely Cambodian. But the Greek Salad just did not taste like it used to during the years I spent in Corfu. The tomatoes weren't tasty enough, the feta not crumbly or salty enough, the red onion not sweet enough, the olives not rich and purple enough and the olive oil not green and thick as it should be. It wasn't a bad attempt, just not the same.

It still managed to transport me back to my days as a Groom on the stunningly verdant island of Corfu. The summers would be spent looking after a menagerie of animals, not unlike Gerald Durrell's when he was a boy, as well as the show jumping horses who were on their holiday from the show circuit on the mainland. My job involved recovering from enormous all night partying in Corfu's 18-30 hot spots, jumping in the Fiat 500 with the dogs and chugging my way up the mountains deep into the Greek countryside. Past gnarled olive groves, tortoises ambling across the roads and waving to locals who knew me as the crazy English horse girl. I would feed Hoffy, the 45 year old gelding with one eye, before opening up the gates to the yard where I would be greeted by a gaggle of hissing and spitting geese, way more effective than any dog.

The days were spent alone with the animals. Riding through dried scrub land scented with oregano and rosemary, green snakes weaving their way across our paths making me squeal and the horses shy, over olive nets, across the height of the hills with magnificent views to Albania with a deep turquoise sea separating the island from the mainland. These are very happy memories. I was 24 or so, no responsibilities other than to keep myself alive - and I tested that often enough. I would love my children to have the opportunity of freedom and adventure before life gets too serious. These experiences shape your life and will provide me with brain fodder as I rock aimlessly in the nursing home.

I remember when the tomatoes used to taste of tomatoes, the red wine was bought by the 5 litre plastic container and the days were spent riding bareback without a hat. 

Ah yes, I hope my children have plenty of 'I-remember-when's'.

Camping #3

Are you kidding? In this weather? Camping?

Nah, we stayed at home instead and had a jolly nice time thanks.

It was little P's birthday today, she was supposed to wake up in a tent in 'Winnie the Pooh' land at the heart of the Ashdown Forest but instead became 4 years old at home, nice and dry. After yesterday's down-pours we were so pleased with our decision, only feeling sorry for the camp site owners who must be living off deposits this year. The promised BBC forecast of bright sun and 18C didn't quite come true today, but do you know what? We were just grateful for no rain and a few hours on the beach. Simple pleasures.

Driving over the downs to catch the first glimpse of the sea blew me away, the hues of green and blue and turquoise glinted in the distance. I felt a lump in my throat, a little bit emotional at how beautiful and wild the view was, I couldn't wait to get down to the waters edge. The children were exploding with excitement as well, two buckets, a few pots, a spade and some sausages to fry, there were a moments of perfection today. 

The children crouched in the rare patches of sand, absorbed in their intricate games, collecting pebbles, seaweed, flotsam and jetsam, the odd shell and smooth green glass - beer bottles made safe and gem like from months on the ocean wave. Squeals and screams as we all hoiked up our jeans as the waves caught us unawares, soaked in ice cold sea water, all giggling as we skimmed flat stones across the meniscus of the sea.

We fried sausages and ate them ravenous between cheap puffy bread roles, dripping with tomato ketchup and washed down with some equally cheap French beer, it all tasted so good and it was wonderful to be in that moment. To revel in the now, to feel the warmth on our cheeks and watch seagulls above us hover on the wind. After snoozes we sang 'Happy Birthday' and managed to light 4 candles stuck into a shop bought cake, second helpings all round and healthy eating happily left at home, discarded until tomorrow.

We found crabs, blobby anemones, shrimps and whelks, rock pool fish and limpets. Treasures of the sea delighted in and undisturbed.

Happy happy birthday darling P. My big little girl. I love you so much and can't wait to share the adventures of your fifth year on this astonishingly beautiful earth.

Fruits of June

I am trying so hard to be a glass-half-full-kinda-gal at the moment, even though there is plenty to feel blue about when wandering around the garden and allotment. The lupins and delphiniums never achieved flowering thanks to the snails and an over zealous child and a football, the sweet peas have been rain and wind battered when usually I am picking a few bunches here and there by now. Not even the good old gaudy dahlia has shown any promise this year.

The allotment is eerie. Its like a vegetable cemetery, little labels stuck into the hard tilled soil where the plant was supposed to be, but has been decimated by slugs I can only presume. It really was hard not to cry today when 12 french bean plants were standing in a row, devoid of leaves and resembling miniature trees that had been struck by lightening. Even the pumpkins have gone. No courgette glut for us this year. We watered what was left and as I stood facing the war zone, I focused on a bed of swiss chard which will supply us in soup all winter, and the brave little kale plants which are trying so very hard not to be eaten, the few runner beans who have sprinted up the pole as if to stick two fingers at the slugs on the ground and the armfuls of gladioli that will provide colour and cheer in a couple of months time. The rhubarb has been fantastic and we are picking at least six fat juicy strawberries a day, one seems to ripen each time you walk past the raised bed, crying to be immediately picked, eaten and dribbled down the chin.

So feeling happier with all that is good in the world I got to work and became Country Living mum for the day and the kids looked like they had stepped out of a Boden advert.

We made elderflower cordial, rhubarb fool for a dinner party adorned with fresh mint and I am about to make a batch of rhubarb and date chutney - I'll let you know if its any good.

I muffed the muffins

Sorry Queen, I know you have been on the throne for 60 years (however did you manage that? - I only last 2 years in a job max) but I have royally muffed the muffins. Look.

Tomorrow is P's jubilee celebrations at her pre-school and seeing as I am woman-ing the cake stall I felt I had to contribute. And as I had excessively ordered bananas from the Shopping Man/Woman last week, what a perfect opportunity to make muffins.

Obviously I am going to have to buy a packet of brownies instead, and pass them off as my own with a dusting of icing sugar.

Runner bean chutney

We eat a lot of pickle in our house, not the Branston kind full of sugar, preservatives and strange hard lumpy vegetables , but the home made kind. I made some runner bean chutney yesterday. Sounds revolting, but actually is absolutely delicious, and with a strong cheddar a whole jar can be snaffled in one sitting. The runner beans had been sitting in the freezer for about a year and the only way to use them really, was to boil them up with vinegar and sugar to make them edible. Actually, the only reason I grow runner beans is to make this chutney, not only for the flavour but for its ability to transport me back in time to when I was about 8.

Memories of my childhood are as warm and fuzzy as the 1970's polaroid shots. Everyday blissfully warm spent in shorts and flip-flops or freezing cold pulling a sledge through snow. There was nothing in between. Summers were spent in north Cornwall with an Auntie and cousins who were actually neither, just my parents friends who obtained the prefix through familiarity and love. All of us would pile down to the beach, a long trek from the car to a deserted cove, far away from the grockles and emmets, to go rock pooling, sand drawing, swimming, pebble collecting and sea anemone poking - gently of course. And when we were hungry we would all trek back up the steep cliffs (I wonder how steep they would be now?) to Auntie's house for potato pasty pie and runner bean chutney. The days when nutrition was less understood and food enjoyed. Now of course, it sounds like something out of the Famous Five, but those lunches tasted sublime - hands and face covered in a fine layer of crusty sea salt which added to the tautness of our sunburnt skin. Factor 50? Factor schmifty.

And as I look forward to my runner bean and cheddar sarnie today I can only hope that my own children look back on their own childhoods with such fondness. I want them to have memories of carelessness and freedom, of security and love, of adventure and lashings of ginger beer.

Wild garlic pesto

Look at all this free food. Jars and jars of pesto just growing there waiting to be whizzed up with a drop of olive oil and some parmesan. This is our garlic woods (well not actually ours, but we have named them - so feel as though we can lay some sort of claim) and for the last 4 years I have lived here, I have never actually got round to making the pesto. We regularly drive past the woods, wind down the windows in Spring and scream 'GARLIC WOODS' while taking in great nose-fulls of the pungency. This always provides much joy to A and P, and to me, but this year we actually went a-collecting... Boy its good. Bright green from those young spring leaves, incredibly strong tasting and so satisfying that I made it.

You see, this is not going to be a blog of Cath Kidston / Country Living smugness. I don't make cup cakes, wear a pinny or enjoy bunting. That's why these jars of pesto are so wildly exciting. I nicked the recipe from Hugh (the Fernly-Whitting whatsit variety) and it goes something like this:

Some wild garlic - take off the stalks
Olive oil
Walnuts
Parmesan or good hard cheddar/goats cheese
pinch of salt
tiny bit of sugar

Put in a food processor and whizz, place in sterilzed jars (ie put in the oven for a while) and pour a little oil on the top. Job done.