Carrots and Kids

What January Needs is Mars Bar Vodka

 I don't really mind January. After all it's the month that saw the birth of one of our children so it's one of my favourites. Then there's all that obligatory snuggling under blankets on the sofa and eating of stew and steamed puddings...

Spring, however, does seem a bit of a way off, although I have been pretending that it was very imminent when we had a spell of mild weather last week.

Obviously the snow and cold has put paid to that little fantasy. Apparently we are due for a large snowfall on Friday, although I am in complete denial about this. I am not a fan of snow. I know, it's akin to saying you hate babies and think kittens are ugly. Just not done. But there you have it, I prefer it not to snow.

At the risk of sounding like either me or this blog has a drink problem, I think what this month needs is Mars Bar vodka. I know I've mentioned making home-made drinks a couple of times before, but I honestly hardly ever drink. Anyway, forget all that denying yourself food but enforcing exercise. Who thought that was a good idea? In the depths of winter, staring at a few extra pounds on your hips and a few less in your bank account what is needed is MORE not LESS.

I actually made this for a friend's 21st but there is a small bit that wouldn't fit in the bottle so am going to taste test it tonight.

There are loads of recipes online but I just went with what I had which was a 35cl bottle of vodka. I chopped up three Mars Bars, melted them in a bowl over boiling water and then added the vodka, mixing well as I went. Then back into the bottle it went and into the freezer for 24 hours.

I think this is just the ticket when it's snowing and, oh no, you have to sit in front of the fire. Diets can wait, just like spring has to.

Firsts

It has been another lousy year in the garden. Partly my fault and partly the weather. And there appears to be an all-you-can-eat evening cafe for rabbits that has set up business at the allotment.

But let's not focus on the negatives.

Let's celebrate the positives. There is much to be grateful for but I admit I am struggling a bit at the moment. I am in the doldrums and I haven't a clue why (so unlike me).

I aim to combat that with knitting and baking bread. I had a book token (I know, how quaint!) so treated myself to Dan Lepard's The Handmade Loaf. I like his Short and Sweet which I received for Christmas so I'm hoping this will be just as good.

It was published a while ago and should be just the ticket for making fancy pants bread. It's subtitled Contemporary European Recipes for the Home Baker.

I've also been enjoying the first strawberries from the plot and the first sweet peas from the garden. Everything seems so much later this year but all the more sweeter for it.

Lunch

Lunch is my favourite meal of the day. It's important that wherever you are at lunchtime, you make time to show show yourself some love by having a lovely meal.

And I'm not talking about a sandwich.

Huge salads, home-made soup, noodles with veg and home-made peanut dressing, wraps with roasted peppers, onions finished with ham and feta cheese - all of them are lipsmackingly lovely.

Today it was the turn of Broccoli Gribiche from one of my favourite cookbooks, Super Natural Every Day by Heidi Swanson (she of 101 Cookbooks fame).

It was delicious. Roasted potatoes and broccoli together with a dressing and hard boiled eggs. Really, what's not to love? Except the portion size. I had reduced it as the recipe was for six. Next time I shall just halve it. I mean, eating one for three people isn't too piggy...

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Thank you all for your lovely welcome back comments. I was really touched, not expecting anyone to still be visiting here, so your comments in my inbox were a lovely surprise.

{eggs}

We used to have back garden hens. They were enormous fun, until a fox made off with the lot of them. A friend had loaned us a broody chicken which we named Gladys and gave us some fertile eggs and away we went, having fun and enjoying the resulting eggs for years.

Would I have chickens again? Yes, if I had the space. Oh, I know you can house them in an Eglu thing but it doesn't seem overly spacious to me. And right now we need the space for things like football.

Plus, if you let them roam, and why wouldn't you, they tend to wreck your lawn. And we had a rat in the garden. I know not everyone does but we did. Although they tend not to need much by way of encouragement to visit us. Bird food? Rats. Chickens? Rats.

So I make do with buying my eggs, which we seem to get through at a rate of knots. They are perfect though, versatile and coming complete with their own packaging which can be recycled in so many ways.

I try to keep the empty shells in a container or bag next to the Aga. When I have lots, I pop them into the bottom oven for a while.

Then I either crush them to add as a layer to pots of tomato seedlings when I'm potting on or as a slug deterrent around the base of seedlings.

Sometimes I also use them to grow seeds in, gently breaking them when it's time to transfer to the ground. Occasionally they go in the compost bin but they never seem to break down well plus, when they have so many other uses it seems a bit of a missed opportunity.

Now I also have a new use - I'm going to whiz them up in my food processor and add them to home-made bird food. I read this weekend (and can't remember where) that commercial bird food doesn't contain any calcium, essential for the baby birds. It's always nice to make your own fat balls so this is no extra work.

What do you use your egg shells for?

{At Crumbly Kind of Love}

We're currently on Day Two of staying at home, snuggled on the sofa, watching Curious George and Sooty and Sweep ("so funny" declares my little poorly person).

We've made a "nest" on the sofa, the sick bowl, drinks, covers, pillow and remote are all within easy reach. Plans have been cancelled again (of course, these bugs always strike on days pencilled with Plans).

It's hard to get stuck into all the things I need to be doing and, if I'm honest, I'm not feeling too great either. A combination of broken sleep (oh, how we get used to eight hours straight!), worry and fighting off the lurgy I think.

So, revelling in my newly decluttered kitchen, with a bit of a work top change around, I have been cooking up a storm. And baking too.

So far I've made the best ever brownies (so the family told me, I had a tiny bit of one) from a River Cottage Baking booklet free with The Telegraph, apple crumble and banana bread. Currently baking is Mary Berry's apple and cinnamon cake which will do for tonight's pudding.

There have also been some home-made casseroles using my aga cookbooks. I think I need to learn how to fully utilise that beast; I'm currently on the look out for a wooden clothes drier that is not a concentina one but wraps around the oven. Simple but extraordinarily elusive.

I really want to become a good cook but that talent seems just as hard to find too. Maybe it is something you're naturally good at but I'm hoping it's more like practice makes perfect. According to my husband his favourite meal is some Chinese takeaway concoction. I may be practising for some time.

Still, I'm loving my busy kitchen. According to the Riverford booklet, to make good brownies "you must make them with love". I'd say that sums up all cooking and baking. Today I shall present the hoardes with my love wrapped up in a (partially sunken) banana loaf.

{My Favourite Breakfast}

Since I started losing weight I have stopped eating breakfast. Which is not good, I know. I also know that the most successful slimmers are the ones that - yep-  eat breakfast.

The mornings felt too rushed what with a shower, five lunchboxes and all the stray sock finding that getting five children off to school looking reasonable entailed.

Plus, I wasn't sure what to have. Eggs? No. And no hot buttery toast either (my old staple).

But let's face it, even though I found that I could survive all morning on just a latte, it wasn't healthy. And as we all know, I'm all about the healthy now. Plus, it wasn't a good example to set to the children. They're too old now to turn a blind eye to my non-existant breakfast as I extolled the meal's virtues as being the most important one of the day.

Then I found something that would hit the spot and meant, more importantly, that I was well fuelled for my morning Zumba class.

And because I'm kind, I'm going to share this simple but delicioius breakfast with you in case you too are in dire need of it.

It is just two scotch pancakes heated in a toaster (I really should find a recipe for these as we do run out quite often), some fruit or berries of your choice and a teaspoon of maple syrup drizzled on top. Perfection! You can thank me later...

{The Colour of Summer}

Let's face it, I am obsessed with food. Not in a great cook sort of way just in a gluttonous one. And ever since I changed my eating habits, I've been thinking, planning, buying and cooking food even more. If that were possible.

I began my weight loss/healthy eating adventure on February 1st and although I sell it to the children as a healthy eating plan (no scales, full length mirrors or the word "diet" here) it began to dawn on me that it may not be as healthy as I would like.

Sure, I've lost 41lbs (with more to go) and have drastically cut my risk of suffering a heart attack, stroke and type two diabetes but there was a fair bit of Diet Coke guzzling. And sweet chilli Snack a Jack gobbling. Among other things.

So I signed up for Heather's 30 Day Vegan workshop. I know, that word vegan conjurs up many an image for a lot of people. It's almost as if some are scared of it. But I figured that as I wasn't eating a lot of dairy (no cheese or butter) and hardly any meat it's not such a huge step for me to take.

And I'm following it 80% which is fine. I don't want to be the awkward one who can't eat this or that when out.

But here's the thing: being really mindful of what I put in my mouth has had the effect of being mindful in other areas of my life too. I really wasn't expecting that.

I've tweaked my food shopping habits (the above fruit was picked from a local PYO farm) and the health food shop has become a favourite place to stock up. And the weekly "big" shop that I have come to dread but has been a staple of my adult life? That's being phased out too.

Important books have been purchased and downloaded onto a device (less clutter, easily accessible), new rhythms and routines are being created and space is being made (that seems to be a bit of a life theme at present).

Did you also realise that stuffing your body with fruit, veggies, nuts, pulses and seeds means that there is no room, not even a craving, for a Diet Coke? I tell you, I'm learning about more thanjust how to make a delicious peanut dressing.

:: Added note :: Thanks for the suggestions about turning off email unsubbing notifications but, being the numpty I am, I don't know how. I have searched endlessly on Google Reader but drawn a blank. It's the application rather than the unhappy readers themselves who email me!

My New Sunday Morning Routine

A pot of freshly brewed coffee on the Aga, Radio Four Extra filling the kitchen, the back door open, bare feet with legs clad in comfy old jeans, a red spotty pinny on and my first forays into proper bread-making.

That's my new-to-me early Sunday morning routine.

I've decided it's time to create a calm, magical Sunday morning routine in amongst the chaos and hurly burly of weekend life in a large family. I found that increasingly weekends equalled work of one kind or another. I was tired and grumpy.

It's a problem, I think, unique to me. Read blogs and everyone else's weekend consists of interesting trips, coffee shop visits, farmer's market browsing and general contentedness. Maybe it's the shock of having everyone at home (the mess!) after a week of being largely on my own.

I used to go up the allotment really early on Sunday mornings but this year have found my energy levels are so low that I haven't managed to do this so much.

A leisurely shower, the radio alternating between a podcast (I'm loving the Dessert Island Discs archives) and a play plus bread-making. What, I figured, could be nicer.

And it was. I'm happiest when I'm doing and much of that doing seems to involve filling small tummies (and not so small ones too).

I'm not entirely sure the bread was a huge success. It didn't seem to be as elastic as the recipe insisted it would (but I did use half and half flour so maybe that's why?), I probably left it to rest for too long and it didn't rise terribly well.

But I reckon that's OK. I've got plenty of Sunday mornings to perfect it.

Where You'll Find Me

This is my favourite spot in the house. Well, apart from my bed. Which is just as well as this part of my kitchen is where you'll mostly find me at the moment.

It houses my favourite mismatched, charity shop teacups which I use every day (and which are starting to get chipped. Sigh), a favourite bit of artwork, my internet radio (oh, how I love this) and stuff. I am into stuff. As you can probably tell.

Actually, looking at it here with fresh eyes it looks messy. And you can tell I didn't "style" the picture because of the way the tea towel is hanging on the Aga. Yep, what you see is what you get here.

It's where I baked this chocolate birthday cake. And yes, I am showing off. I am stupidly proud of it (but it's ok, you don't have to agree). It's from Nigella's How To Eat and is the one I make for all the birthdays that happen around here.

So, the "kids" part in the Carrots and Kids title of this blog have been keeping me busy. I am hoping soon that the carrots bit might get a look in.

Rhubarb Cake Recipe

Like lots of people, well ones that grow their own, I have a glut of rhubarb. I have gone the crumble route so fancied making something different. Hence a lovely rhubarb cake.

I trawled my numerous cookbooks and the internet and I have to say it was quite tricky finding one that fitted the picture I had in my head and that didn't use buttermilk (because I didn't have any kicking around).

But eventually I hit the jackpot on the BBC Good Food site which also has numerous comments to go with this recipe. Who knew cake baking and eating was such serious business?

I have modified the recipe slightly (it had one ingredient in ounces and everything else in grams) and used less golden syrup but the cake turned out lovely. I did burn the top slightly at the edges as the Aga tends to do and my foil covering obviously didn't fit it quite right.

But you won't need to bother with foil if you're sensible and have an oven you can control. Hopefully your portion size will be under your control too too after you've made this but I'm making no promises...

140g butter (the original calls for 5oz so I rounded down) Oven: 180f/160c/Gas 4

300g self raising flour

2tspn mixed spice

1 tspn ground ginger

100g dark muscovado sugar

200g golden syrup

1 tspn bicarb of soda

200ml boiling water

2 eggs

        300g chopped rhubarb

1. Put the kettle on and line your cake tin (I used a loaf tin)
2. Sift flour and spice
3. Beat the butter and sugar til light and fluffy then beat in golden syrup
4. Dissolve the bicarb in 200ml of water and mix into the butter and sugar mixture
5. Add the flour, then the eggs and beat briefly
6. Stir in the rhubarb (apparently you can use a food processor for all this, I just used arms and a wooden spoon)
7. Pour into your cake tin and cook for about an hour. Eat within three days (if it will last that long).

The Husband, who was the one that devoured this, declared it "lush". I'm not eating cake at the moment. Sigh. Let's not even talk about that.

:: Edited to add, thanks to the eagle eyed Colleen who spotted I had omitted the golden syrup. Thanks so much Colleen. I think we can safely say a career as a food writer does not beckon...::