FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL

Like many parents it was our eldest’s first day of school this week. We have all had six long weeks to prepare for this yet I am still a PE kit short oops! Least next year I’ll be more prepared… haha cough splutter.

We are lucky that the school are not uber strict on uniform and doubly lucky my next door neighbour’s child is older than mine and had an abundance of hand me down in near perfect order. So I only had to buy shirts, polo tops, shoes, sock and PE kit (oops). The local supermarket had a great deal on a lot of what I needed so I stocked up there and then we headed for the shoe shop, you know the good one that actually measures feet properly but is rather expensive. One of my girls feet are so narrow she needs an insole yet the other so wide shoes from any other retailer will not fit her, hence a mini panic attack everytime they need new shoes and pray it falls after pay day.

My girl can be so endearing, she always gets everyone on side with her charm and compliments. We were in the shoe shop and as usual she is wearing one of her pretty dresses, she insists on wearing them as jeans and the like are a complete no no. One of the assistances says what a pretty dress, she replies ‘why thank you, you are kind and you are a very beautiful lady’ the woman gushes. The next lady comes over to measure feet and asks what type of shoes we are buying today ‘school shoes of course, I’m going to start school soon. Are you going to help me I bet you can chose the best shoes’. So now the whole shop wants to help and the visit was actually rather pleasant, I mean normally I would be chasing her little sister around the room stopping her throwing shoes/random objects at people or trying to eat inedible things whilst escaping from the shop and stripping her nappy off. However youngest is in the land of nod hoorah!

Looking at my social media pages I see my friends, neighbours etc updates are about how emotional they are about their kids starting or going back to school. All I can think about is; have I packed everything she needs? I bet just before we leave youngest’s nappy will need an emergency change and how the hell am I supposed to label a water bottle?

The day arrives and she looks so gorgeous in her uniform, we walk to school and she is excited. As we enter the gates I feel very proud of her taking this all in her stride. We enter the class room hang and her coat on the peg that has her picture on. Every other child is smiling nicely in their picture, my girl is practically gurning… I love it. Then her friend runs over and they run off together, I shout bye and I hear a little bye back, I can’t believe I didn’t get a kiss and a cuddle but hey she looks like she’s having fun so I don’t mind.

I turn to leave and see a group of women all crying and I really don’t understand all the kids are having great fun, perhaps I’m the odd one? But I do wish I had a kiss good bye and as I look at her on collection in her uniform all grown up I think wow time does go pretty damn fast.

Date Night Dinner

Due to one thing or another mainly work we’ve moved a lot. Anyhow this leaves us with no babysitter occasionally we are lucky and a family member travels over to give us a night out, but that won’t be for a while and I fancied a night out. That was when ‘Date Night’ was born. We made our kitchen the restaurant and jointly decided what meal we should have once the kids were asleep in bed. The theme was to be Italian food and only 2 courses otherwise we’d be up all night… although one of us usually does that with youngest watching Toy Story at 2am. So on Friday we chose our recipes and unlike me I did all the preparation in the daytime on Saturday, go me!

So it’s Saturday night, the kids are in bed, dog walked and we’re ready. For starter I made Mushroom Crostini for this you need:

400g chopped mixed mushrooms

8tbsp Extra Virgin Olive Oil, & little for drizzling

2 Garlic cloves 1 peeled, 1 chopped

1 tsp of chopped red chillies

1tbsp of fresh marjoram (dry can be used)

Salt & pepper to taste

Ciabatta bread cut into inch thick slices       

For the Crostini: Toast the ciabatta bread, then cut the peeled garlic clove in two and rub this over the ciabatta and drizzle with oil.

For the mushroom topping: Fry the oil, add the chopped garlic and chilli cook for one minute then add mushroom stir for 3-4 minutes until cooked then add marjoram and finally the salt & pepper and serve over the crostini

For the main we decided on Nigella’s Lamb Cutlets with Mint, Chilli & Golden Potatoes. Recipe here http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/lamb_cutlets_with_mint_16788 but rather than on a bed of rocket we did greens. A large handful of both Cavalo nero and spinach (any greens will work) 3 garlic cloves peel in a large saucepan of water, cook and drain squish garlic and mix it all together and squeeze over the juice of half a lemon. It tastes beautiful.

The night was great and we are in the process of deciding on next week’s Date Night dinner. 

Super Soup

I decided today I would make soup for lunch, healthy, cheap and easy peasy…..so I thought.

I opted for a sweet potato soup because that’s what I had in. I started chopping some onion whilst mopping my streaming eyes with kitchen roll. Next a couple of garlic cloves smashed and squished through the presser, most of the garlic remains in the presser so I spend the time it would have to cut the garlic fishing it out of there. I dice the sweet potato and I’m ready to go.

Kettle on I make some veg stock with a cube tut tut this is for lunch not dinner so I cheated, who has time to make stock anyway?

I start by frying the onions in a little oil, add the garlic and  half a teaspoon of ground cumin, as I stir this it starts smelling really odd and not at all nice, I am confused how can fried onions and garlic smell so off urgh. A quick look to my left the cumin was in fact ground cinnamon.

Back to square one, chop onion, cry, crush garlic and curse at presser. Then hide cinnamon at the back of the cupboard and double check it is cumin this time. After I add the sweet potato to the pan I add a large teaspoon of chopped chillies, these are great and really handy. Too many times in the past I’ve chopped chillies and then rubbed my eye or mouth ouch! Ps never go to the loo immediately after chopping chillies you may burn your bits! Using the ready chopped in a jar ensures that doesn’t happen again unfortunately what did happen my hand wobbled and loads more chilli went into the pan, this is going to be spicy. So now my sweet potato and cumin soup is renamed to sweet potato, chilli and cumin soup.

Once the sweet potato is tender I need to jouzz it up (blend to you and I Jouzz is what my kids call it and so we all call it that now) I have a small blender the type you usually use for smoothies, so I portion out some soup and pop it in the cup pop on the blade and jouzz it up. Uh oh I didn’t let it cool so now the lid won’t come off, after much fighting the lid is off but now I have to wait ages for the batch to cool before I can blend it all up. Why didn’t I just make a sandwich!

Finally my soup is ready and actually it was rather tasty, yippee!