I want to talk to you today about cutlery.

There are some things in life that, for me, represent adulthood. They’re a sign that you’ve made it – that you’ve made the transition from studenty type who can’t afford anything that matches, to proper grown up who has things like mugs that are actually beautiful, rather than just a collection of random gifts and 1990s Easter egg freebies.

Cutlery is one of those things.

Both of my sets of grandparents had strong cutlery games. I could describe their cutlery sets to you now, even though they’ve been dead for years. Both kept their cutlery in sideboards next to dining tables that were actually used to eat meals at, rather than to ‘store’ important documents and style photos of pretend meals. (Like I do.)

My cutlery drawer on the other hand, has always been a shambles – mismatched knives and forks that I’ve accumulated over the years, which often double as tools when I can’t be bothered to look for a screwdriver. It’s the cutlery collection of a 22 year old.

UNTIL NOW.

Now I have the cutlery drawer of dreams. I have a set of Robert Welch Malvern cutlery.

Ooh!

Robert Welch Malvern cutlery View Post

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How did you imagine your life would look when you grew up? What were your dreams and, more importantly, have you achieved them?

I’ve found that as I’ve got older, my dreams have changed. Whereas once I might have imagined myself in some high-powered job, or living in a mansion, (what is it with being a kid and wanting to live in a mansion?!), now I’m quite content pottering about watering my plants and buying cushions.

Fiancé too has pretty simple dreams. (Which is why we get along). If I had to compile a list of his top ten best things, it would go something like this:

  1. Me (natch)
  2. Somerset County Cricket Club (generally)
  3. Marcus Trescothick (specifically)
  4. Peanut butter
  5. Music
  6. Banana flavoured things (If you’re ever in Bristol, the banana gelato at Swoon is amazing)
  7. Books (especially biographies)
  8. Looking inside churches that we find when we are out for a little drive
  9. Imagining he has a pet polar bear
  10. Watching reruns of classic comedies

(I’m not sure of the order of the first three.)

He is especially happy when I manage to combine two of more of the ten. For example, I have set up a Goggle alert for ‘Marcus Trescothick’, so when any interesting Marcus related news breaks I can act interested and knowledgeable about cricket, thus combining the entire top three.

This sort of scene would get him excited – it’s a cricket pitch with a church in the background to look at:

university building Oxford church and cricket pitch

If we were sat together at the edge of this picture, watching Somerset and eating banana ice-creams while a small polar bear slept at his feet, he’d be just about in heaven. I think it could probably only be improved if he got to actually play for Somerset County Cricket Club. This really would be living the dream. View Post

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Do you make your own Christmas cake?

I have once. It was a right faff. Totally worth it though in terms of how smug I felt come Christmas day, presenting the cake I’d been liberally soaking in brandy for what felt like about two years. Plus once I’d trimmed off the burnt bits and covered it all in marzipan and icing, it tasted pretty good too.

It went nicely with my display of intricately decorated Christmas gingerbread cookies:

Christmas gingerbread cookies

Haha! Not really. Can you even imagine?!

Still, when you think about it, it’s cake plus alcohol, so what’s not to like about that, regardless of how it looks?

Christmas of course is not just about cake and booze.

(Seriously?! That’s disappointing.) View Post

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unicorn poo cupcakesAs you may have picked up in the seven or so years that I’ve been blogging, I don’t have what you’d call a passion for housework. My ideal way of spending less time ironing is simply to not do it, and instead to wear stretchy clothes where the creases get sort of pulled flat.

Or, to get out of ironing other people’s clothes, you could try the method I accidentally employed on an ex-boyfriend. I was trying to be helpful and was ironing a few shirts. I was doing his favourite white shirt when Bee showed me a picture of a baby doing something cute. I can’t remember what exactly – it was dressed up as a lobster or something like that I think.

I laughed and dropped the iron on the floor.

Whoops.

I figured that if I just picked it up really quickly and carried on, that no one would notice. Unfortunately, I didn’t notice the large amount of carpet that had melted onto the iron and which I then proceeded to iron onto the back of the shirt.

I wasn’t hugely popular when the boyfriend got home to find a patch of carpet missing. Even less popular when he discovered the missing patch had found a new home on his shirt.

Double whoops.

I do appreciate though that neither of these approaches are an effective long term strategy, and that ironing is one of those things that you just have to do, both for everyday things and more special occasions. Like last week when I bought new curtains for the two windows in our bedroom. Seriously, it felt like I was ironing those curtains for about two days. View Post

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I was a massive fan of Roald Dahl stories when I was little. I know, who isn’t? But I loved them. I had a tape of Fantastic Mr Fox that I listened to again and again and again, and my favourite books were probably The Witches, Danny Champion of the World and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. (The latter was a particular favourite as it had a character in it called Josephine. Which is my name, in case you didn’t know.)

With Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, it was never really the idea of a lifetime’s supply of chocolate that did it for me, it was always the factory itself. I desperately wanted to try the chewing gum that was a three course meal. As I read it, I would try to imagine the warm tomato soup trickling down the back of my throat, morphing into roast beef and gravy. I’m doing it now as I type.

I wanted to be there, seeing how things were made, seeing inventions come to life.

A couple of weeks ago I got about as close as I am ever likely to get when I went to visit the Thorntons chocolate factory. (Although I don’t remember them wearing sexy hair nets in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.)

Thorntons chocolate factory tour View Post

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This year Uncle Ben’s pioneered the first ever Cook With Your Kids Day as part of their Ben’s Beginners initiative. The idea behind Ben’s Beginners and Cook With Your Kids Day, which is on October 15th, is that we’re a bit rubbish when it comes to teaching our kids the basics of food preparation. Okay, so ‘a bit rubbish’ is maybe a little harsh, but you know what I mean. We get so focussed on academic teaching – SATS and spellings and reading levels – that we loose sight of key skills like cooking.

I’ve always been pretty good at cooking with my own kids when it comes to baking, but that’s really just because I want them to be able to cook me treats. I’m a bit less on the ball when it comes to actual meals.

(To be honest, I’ve never been good at actual meals generally. I hate food shopping, and will normally leave Sainsbury’s with a collection of random items like ice cream cones and radishes rather than useful ingredients for things.)

It wasn’t long ago for example that I had a text message from Bee in London. Bee is an expert baker, but clearly I’ve not taught her so well on the savoury front.

‘How do you make stir-fry?’ her text read.

I wasn’t sure how to answer that.

‘Well, the clue is sort of in the name…’

This week though Belle and I made chicken curry. With actual spices! And vegetables! Fancy.

easy chicken curry recipe View Post

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A funny and unusual thing happened this morning. I accidentally sent Belle to her school cake sale with a batch of home made jam tarts. 

I know, I know, it’s about the least slummy thing I have ever done, but in my defence, I didn’t mean to.

Let me set the scene.

I’ve not been feeling very well this week. Belle has been a bit poorly too, so was off school on Wednesday, and yesterday I was feeling particularly rough, in that self-absorbed, ‘I’m so ill’ sort of way. I went to Sainsbury’s in the morning and a friend from book group had to literally stand in front of me and shout boo, and it still took about two seconds for the world to swim into focus from behind the fog of self-pity.

Anyway, you know how sometimes when you’re feeling a bit yukky, so just want something nice to comfort you? I decided that the something nice I wanted was jam. Fiance actually made some jam a couple of months ago, but I felt a bit bad just eating jam out of the jar with a spoon, so I decided to make jam tarts.

Let’s face it, what exactly is a jam tart if not just a socially acceptable way to eat big blobs of jam? Plus you don’t even have a spoon to wash up at the end. 

So I made some.

The pastry was a bit iffy, and I had a few problems when it came to making the cases. I only had a small cutter or a large cutter, when clearly what I needed was a medium cutter. I did my best though. I cut out 12 small circles, an then individually rolled each one out a bit more to make it bigger. I pictured myself on the Bake Off. Paul’s eyebrows were raised.

jam tarts

(This is a stock image, but fairly representative of the scene, although I was probably a little more generous with the jam. I didn’t want you to think though that I went about life doing ordinary things like feeling a bit crap and making jam tarts, pausing every few minutes to style a photo, just in case.) View Post

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I’ve been getting a little concerned of late about our diet.

I don’t know why I say ‘of late’ – we’ve never been one of those ‘no cereals in the house, only natural yogurt for breakfast’ type of families. Lately though, and especially since the the other morning when I came downstairs to find out Belle had eaten bacon crisps for breakfast, I’ve had the feeling that I need to take some action.

I was heartened the other week when we made the rice and black bean tacos, and I discovered in the process that Belle actually liked black beans. Actively quite liked them, not just eating them because I’d promised her a chocolate button at the end if she did. Spurred on, I decided that I would take an hour after school and teach her how to make a proper lasagne. They have cooked lasagne at school before, but to be quite honest, it wasn’t a patch on mine. Plus the school recipe went something like this:

  • Beef
  • Onions (optional)
  • Carrots (optional)

That’s hardly encouraging healthy eating is it?! View Post

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Word up yo!

(That’s me being down with the kids to prove that I’m not a grandparent yet.)

I’ve got a little story to tell you about chips, but first…

This Sunday is Grandparents’ Day, and environmental charity Hubbub and Unilever are seizing the opportunity to highlight the importance of cooking with grandparents as a way to spend time together, pass on valuable skills and reduce food waste. They’ve set up an online resource to help you #CookSomethingGrand, offering tips and a whole load of great recipes.

To demonstrate the issue, Hubbub and Unilever conducted a survey of 1,000 UK parents. The results showed that eight out of 10 parents wish they had more time to teach their children to cook and over half expressed a concern that their children won’t have the skills needed to cook a meal for themselves when they grow up. Cooking skills are essential if we want to use up leftovers, maximise the value from our food and tackle the 7 million tonnes of food wasted in the UK each year.

Just to frighten you, by the age of 11:
– 44% of children have never boiled an egg
– 28% have never peeled a potato
– 28% have never mashed potatoes
– 23% have never chopped vegetables with a knife

68% of parents also said they’d like their children to spend more time cooking with their grandparents, hence the link to Grandparents’ Day. Take a look at the video that Hubbub and Unilever have put together if you need a bit of inspiration.

 

My story about chips

I have very fond memories of cooking with my Gran. We didn’t make cakes though, or scones, or anything traditionally grandparenty like that. The only things I ever remember making with my Gran were crinkle cut chips.

My Gran made an awful lot of crinkle cut chips.

crinkle cut chips Grandparents' Day View Post

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I came downstairs on Monday morning, while Belle was getting dressed for school, to the usual collection of breakfast debris. For some reason, she seems to be under the impression that she lives in a cafe, and so every morning is a dilemma – do I ask her to tidy up after herself, and face her teenage wrath, or just do it myself and live in peace?

On Monday morning though, I didn’t come down to the usual sticky peanut butter knife or empty cereal bowl. On Monday I came downstairs to find an empty packet of bacon and tomato ketchup flavour crisps on the sofa. 

teenage fussy eater

I was feeling brave, so I decided to confront her.

“You know it’s not okay to eat crisps for breakfast don’t you?” I said, ducking down behind the table. (Metaphorically.)

“But they were bacon flavour,” she said.

?

“So it counts as breakfast,” she clarified.

Ah right. Well that’s fine then. 

Now the issue I have is that I’m actually quite fond of Belle, and don’t want her to get rickets or any other weird vitamin deficiency, but once a child gets to 14, how exactly are you meant to make them do things? This applies generally to be honest, but with food in particular, how are you actually, physically, meant to get them to eat sensible things?! I’d hoped that as she got older, she’d grow out of her fussy eating habits, and be happy to at least be in the same room as a courgette, but if anything it’s getting worse. She used to tolerate peas for instance, but even they have seemed to have slipped on to her ‘don’t make me eat that or I’ll gag’ list.

So how do you do it?

I provide her with a range of tasty options and I encourage her to try new things. I don’t especially want to never have treats in the house, (I like treats), but even if I did resort to that, at 14 she is quite capable of just stopping at the shop on her way home and buying her own crisps. Where has my authority gone?

(More to the point, was it ever there in the first place?)

I just want to be a good parent, or at least the sort that you don’t feel the need to report to anyone, but apart from holding Belle down and stuffing her cheeks with kale, how do I make her eat good things?

Photo – Only Fabrizio/shutterstock

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I work for myself, but to escape the trap of working from home and spending the day watching Jeremy Kyle I rent an office in town, about a twenty minute walk away. I share it with a couple of people, and it’s really nice for the whole work/life balance thing, but there’s one downside.

Lunch.

When I worked from home, I’d always take the time to make a proper lunch. It wasn’t always fancy, but there’s a lot to be said for beans on toast. As an office worker though, I’m a bit rubbish at lunch. I hate making Belle’s packed lunches, and the last thing I want to do is make two of the damn things, so I normally buy something. This means a Boots meal deal, (excellent value for what it is, but bleurgh), or, if I’m feeling rebellious, it’s a ‘meat of the day’ bap from the sandwich bar around the corner, (delicious, but basically a heart attack in a bun.)

I feel like things need to change.

Good timing then for the launch of Ryvita‘s new lunch packs. I wrote about Ryvita not long ago, and how tasty they actually are, but if you’re taking them to work, you’ve always got the issue of having to fit the big packet in your handbag, or what you do once you’ve opened them – how do you store them in your desk and keep them fresh?

Come on in lunch packs, this is your cue…

Ryvita lunch packs

Ryvita lunch packs

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It never fails to horrify me, (and it’s a fact I bore people with over and over again), that when Bee went to university, she was the only person in her flat of eight people who knew how to use a washing machine.

Not cool.

It was the same with food. While her flatmates were trying to get their heads around the idea of cooking pasta and heating up a sauce at the same time, Bee was organising her tea drawer and fine tuning recipes for her food blog. I’d like to take full credit for this, and say that it was all part of a long term plan to help her develop basic life skills and a strong sense of independence, but I suspect the reality was just that I got bored of doing her washing and making packed lunches, and so she had to learn how.

Belle isn’t quite as forthcoming in the laundry department. I think there’s a part of me that’s doing that cliched thing of keeping your littlest baby a baby for as long as possible, and although I’ve never felt hugely maternal in a ‘Oh look at her in her school uniform!’ sort of a way, I do, especially as I get older, have a habit of wanting to potter around behind everybody, fetching them things and tidying up after them.

Belle does enjoy cooking though, and I know that I should exploit this. Mainly she likes to make sweet things – she makes a mean chewy cookie – and I tend to let her get on with it, seeing it as something for her to do while I work/water my plant babies, rather than a family activity. I know she likes it when I get involved though, especially when I do the bits she doesn’t like, like spooning batter into cake cases, and I should make more of this, and do more proper* cooking with her. View Post

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