Longer post later, but a very Happy Christmas to all my readers (I think there’s 5 now, including my mother)!
Category Archives: Personal
And Now You Can See…
The completely finished Christmas Cake, done via Delia’s Cake in A box, as previously noted. If you watch this video you’ll see what it’s suppose to look like at the end: –
See that? Yeah. Well this is mine: –
So not horrible. But not perfect.
Which just goes to prove why I consider myself a cook. And not a baker.
Well, That’s Done For Another Few Months
Adam’s hair cut, that is.
He does hate it so. Starts to cry when he even sees me lay out newspaper and put his high chair on it. Starts to scream when the clippers get taken out. Kicks and moans as I wrestle him into the chair.
Cries for the entire cut.
But it needs to be done and until he can be calm about it, it needs to be done by me. Because, unlike a professional, I just ignore the screaming and get on with it.
Cut hair and waiting for toast.
The One Thing That I Hate About This House
is the electric stove. I think I’ve mentioned this before. I have been cooking on gas for the past 8 years and am having a really hard time adjusting.
The hardest part is remembering that the burners stay hot for, literally, hours after the stove is turned off. I am so used to just putting a pot back on the stove that it has been really hard to break the habit. Especially as there is so little counter space in the kitchen.
And then I went to Ikea to look at things for Adam’s room to make it more ‘boyish’. The whole house is decorated in pink and light blue and flowers, not my taste but I can live with it. Except in Adam’s room. It’s just such a ridiculous thing for a little boy to have, so I went shopping for some things to make the room more his.
And while I was there I found these 6×6 wooden trivets for 90p each. And I have now bought 12 of them. And lined the entire side of the kitchen counter to the left of the stove with them, making that entire area heat proof.
It’s saved my sanity. Such a great place to put a hot pot or two without having to move trivets around or get my cutting boards out.
I have a few more trivets on order for the other side of the stove. Just in time to be able to dish up and serve Christmas dinner.
As for Adam’s room, Ikea didn’t have much, but he did get this rug and this storage thing. I’ve also ordered him some curtains and some removable stickers for his walls.
I realize I haven’t done upstairs pictures yet, but hopefully Thursday, as Wednesday is finish the upstairs day in preparation for the hoards that descend starting Friday!
Let the festivities begin!
Adam’s First Full Sentence…
was this past week. I was heading to the shower and told him to go downstairs to be with daddy.
“Me no want Daddy. Me want Mummy.”
I guess that was actually 2 sentences.
🙂
The Cake What I Won
So about 2 weeks ago Mumsnet had a live chat with Delia Smith. I asked a question about what other sweet I could make as I despise Christmas Cake. She didn’t answer me specifically as someone else had also asked that question (oops, sorry! should read the thread!) but MNHQ announced that everyone who had asked a question would be entered into a prize draw to win Delia’s Cake in a Box.
And yes, you’re reading that right. Waitrose can’t do math. An object that was £10 and is now £5 is not 25% off.
Anyway, imagine my surprise when me, who never wins anything, was announced to be a winner of said cake.
For the American’s in the audience, you should know that you’re suppose to make your Christmas cake at least 4 weeks before Christmas so you can feed it with brandy in the run up to Christmas until it’s such a drunk cake you wouldn’t dare feed it to your 2.5 year old. However, I did not actually receive my Box o’ Cake until last week and then had the issue that I did not have a 20cm cake tin. I did have a 20cm cake tin, but it rusted and I threw it away and never bought another as I never bake cakes.
So I had my Box o’ Cake and no way to bake it. And then the day I was going to go buy a cake tin, Adam was home ill and I didn’t get to go shopping.
So today I finally had the Box o Cake, the pan and all the other ingredients needed to make the cake. And Adam at daycare. And so I baked it. For 4 hours. You read that right. It bakes for 4 hours. O_o
And here it is: –
Simon says it tastes okay. It is still cooling as I write this and then I will feed it with some brandy over the next week and then do the icing bit on the 23rd ready to be served on Christmas Eve. To my American guests.
Who will probably hate it as much as I do…
OUCH!
Got off bus, with Adam.
Took a step along the pavement.
SLIDE! Goes my left foot.
CRASH! Goes Robyn onto her left leg. The bad leg. Right onto my hip.
Adam! Don’t move! I say as I crawl to a non-slippery bit and haul myself up.
Carefully we walk up the pavement to nursery.
SLIDE! Goes Adam’s foot. CATCH goes Mummy’s hand in his.
Even more carefully we continue to walk.
Whew. Made it. No great damage done.
Until tomorrow when I won’t be able to walk.
Perhaps.
Last Night’s Trip From Nursery Was A Bit Hairy Scary…
It was pouring rain. It was freezing cold. And it was dark.
I never used to be afraid to be out after dark, walking confidently in all sorts of places. But with Adam with me I get very nervous about fast cars and slippery pavements.
And Adam is very stubborn. I can’t imagine where he gets it from. The words ‘It’s raining, put your hood up.’ before we leave nursery gets me a very firm ‘No hood!’ And then we get outside and the rain hits his head and he says ‘Mummy, hood up, please!’ If only he’d listen to begin with…
Anyway, we headed to the bus stop, in the rain, and the cold and the dark. And he hates walking right by me, but always in front or behind me, especially on the narrow pavement on the road that runs by nursery. I, of course, prefer in front and try to arrange us that way, but it doesn’t always work. Then we get to the wider pavement and the busier street and I make him walk beside me away from traffic, not moving until he’s where I want him.
And it was dark and cold and raining. And we get to the bus stop and wait. And wait. And wait. And I start to get a bit nervous with the cars flying by about 3 feet in front of us and know Adam is feeling a bit scared as well as he insists on holding my hand the whole time, which he never does. And we wait, in the dark and the cold and the rain and the cars flying by 3 feet away, spraying us with water nearly every time.
And we wait some more, me peering up the street constantly looking for the lights of the bus and then finally they appear. Warm and welcoming and dry.
And my big boy and I get on the bus and go to the back, where Adam likes to sit because the seats are higher and he can see out, and we settle in for our journey home, finally dry and warm and lighted.
And then we get to our stop and it’s still cold and still raining and even darker. And I put his hood up again and we go as fast as we can up our little hill. Our front light is being temperamental and it decided last night to not be on when we got home so I am relieved that I had left the inside light on. And the key goes in the lock and the light welcomes us in.
And we’re warm and dry and lighted.
And no longer scared.
Christmas Cookies, The Battle I Won…
So the other day I decided that Adam and I should make Christmas cookies. I had purchased a set of Christmas cutters and decorating equipment from Lakeland (which is no longer on it’s website, which is odd) that included a recipe for sugar cookies so I got the ingredients out and went to work.
I don’t have an electric mixer, so I used my food processor instead. This was probably a mistake, although the instruction book that came with the processor says it should work. Let’s see what happened:
Sugar and butter. So far, so good...
Adam, was, of course my helper here:
Adam keeps an eye on the timer for the creaming process.
After the butter and sugar was creamy, about 3 minutes like the recipe said, I added an egg and let it mix further. And then added the flour, 1/2 cup at a time. The recipe said after 2 cups of flour I should have a ball of dough:
I wouldn't call that dough. More like batter.
I poured it out of the processor and into a big bowl at this point and proceeded to dump all the plain flour in the house into the mix…
In the interest of full discloser, I should note here that I actually had an entire canister of plain flour still on the shelf. I just completely forgot it was there. This is probably a good thing…
All my flour...still pretty much not dough...
I decided, thinking I had used all my flour, to let it chill and see what happened:
Not a circle of dough. More like a lump.
I took it out of the ‘fridge and tried to roll it out, using self rising flour to flour the board. It didn’t work too well…
Perhaps it's art...
Adam had been watching eagerly and pressing the cookie cutters in, getting confused when mummy would then roll the, to him, perfect cookies back up and try rolling it out again, with even more self rising flour.
Yeah. Big lump of non-dough...
I finally put it back into the fridge for another hour and, miracle of miracles, it started to work!
The first batch. With holes poked in the top. That way if they were totally inedible we could hang them on the tree.
But they worked! They cooked! And kinda tasty. Well, sort of tasty. In truth I couldn’t get unsalted butter (I have now found a source!) so used salted and then guestimated how much more salt to put in and it was too much. But they didn’t taste horrid. Just a bit salty and over floury. I can live with that!
A bit over cooked but my oven is very iffy. ::nods::
Next up, of course, came the colouring process:
Adam stirs the colour into the icing.
Again, I should really check my cupboards before I start doing this sort of thing. I thought I had red food colouring. I was wrong. I also thought I had a ton of icing sugar. WRONG!
Shhhh. Artist at work!
So the cookies are teal, as Adam mixed together the green and blue icing we made. And only half of them were iced.
But it was a fun morning with my son. And the cookies were most definitely edible!