Foraging fail

One of the entertaining things about moving to a new house is seeing what comes up in the garden.  I know that we have several fruit trees - apple, cherry, plum, and apricot - and I can't wait to see which is which.  We also have all sorts of beautiful geraniums, nigella, nasturtium, and, of course, forget-me-nots popping up in every bed.  It's a little thrill every time I see something new sprouting - though it does mean I've let the weeds grow much more than I have in gardens that I designed myself.  And my restraint paid off, as I would likely have uprooted a large stand of aquilegia.

Living in the countryside, I also get excited about the flora and fauna surrounding us.  I have had a recipe calling for wild garlic since time immemorial.  Now I live near woodlands - I went foraging for wild garlic.

I found none.  I toodled through all the local woods, with and without children, dogs, and spouse and found nada.  Sadly, I filed away my recipe for another day.

I was weeding the flower bed today, when I noticed a distinctive garlicky smell coming from the bruised leaves of what I had assumed were more bluebells or lily of the valley.  A closer look at the emerging flowers confirmed it.  I have wild garlic in my back yard.

My own Allium ursinum

 

My first thought was "I can't believe I spent all that time looking for something that I had at home.  Metaphor for life, right?  My second was "now I know what's for dinner!"

Sunburned and happy (+ a quick recipe for kids' tea!)

So, nominate me for the anti-mum of the year awards, both of my children have rosy cheeks now.  As do I.  We spent the entire bank holiday weekend in the sun.  We soaked up every iota, in the lido, in the sandpit in the garden, and at Knole Park.  Unless we had to be inside (sleeping - the kids aren't quite old enough to camp in the back garden), we weren't.

It was a seriously magical long weekend.

C had today off too, but the weather, sensing the end of the weekend for the general public, shifted back to the standard English, and it rained all day.  Luckily after all that outside time, the kids were really pleased with a trip to the library.

Cooking can be a challenge when it's hot and you're busy doing fun things like finding slugs (so mum can kill them - don't tell the kids).  I whipped out one of my old favourites, that has been in development since I was at university and ate a lot of rice.  This is my cheat's fried rice - a great quick tea for kids that's good enough to serve to grownups too.  I made it this weekend with peppers, mushrooms and prawns, but really, this is a great way to use up things that are hanging around in the kitchen.  Grated carrots and courgettes also work particularly well, as does ham - though with ham, I normally leave the soy sauce out, as ham is salty enough on its own.

Ingredients:

Tbs vegetable oil
2 eggs
soy sauce
4 spring onions, sliced
1/2 red pepper, sliced
garlic, sliced
handful of mushrooms, sliced
packet of raw prawns (try to make sure they're sustainably sourced!)
250g packet pre-cooked rice (I used Tilda basmati)
handful of frozen peas
handful of coriander, chopped

Instructions:
Heat a tsp of vegetable oil over a medium heat in a non-stick frying pan while you beat the eggs with a dash of soy sauce (you can omit the soy sauce for very small children, but it gives a nice flavour to the omelette).  Pour into a thin layer in the bottom of the pan and cook until set.  Flip to brown on the top and then set aside.

Heat 2 more tsp vegetable oil and toss in the spring onions, the peppers and the mushrooms.  Stir fry until the peppers are starting to soften (5 - 10 mins).  While they are cooking, roll up the omelette and cut into strips around 2cm wide.  Throw in garlic and stir for another couple of minutes until fragrant.  Add the prawns and stir fry until the prawns are pink and opaque - just a couple of minutes again.

Once the prawns are cooked, add in the rice, peas, and omelette strips and heat through.  Serve with coriander as a garnish.

From Paris to Berlin

If we're friends on Facebook (and if you're reading this, we likely are), you probably noticed that Eurovision was this past weekend.  I struggle slightly to explain my deep affection for the song competition.

A friend (Jenny!) once described Eurovision as "like the smell of skunk", impossible to describe unless you've experienced it.  Another friend (Kat!) described it as "if the Olympics and [American] Idol had a baby, and that baby was raised by noted Russian lady band Tatu."  I would add that, although the song "From Paris to Berlin" was not a Eurovision song, it should have been.

My heart is pumping for love...

I watched Eurovision for the first time as an adult, and I delighted in watching acts where I mostly wondered why on Earth they were doing that on stage.

Past Eurovision winners Lordi

 

Some friends (Lorcan...) take the music seriously - I just love the staging.  This year was disappointing that way, as the setups were generally pretty anodyne.  With a notable exception.

 





How can you fail to be charmed by Dracula singing falsetto?

Greece was also a favourite.  Tiny instruments and kilts FTW.

Alcohol is Free!



So I hope that 2014 will mark a return to the Lordi days (though I really did like the 2012 winner and this year's winner isn't bad).  In that case, I will be euphoric.



What to feed them

When the children were very small, I sometimes felt like I was missing a trick that I didn't really get into the habit of having pouches of baby food and special baby snacks around the house.  I cooked a lot of purees and child-friendly foods, and, having frozen the excess, using that as my convenience food.  I posted on facebook about feeling that perhaps I had "drunk the koolaid" and should just be buying the pouches, but an old friend intervened to say that I was doing the right thing (thanks, Zoe!)

Looks lovely and handmade, right?

 



So I kept on cooking, the kids kept on eating and all was good.  And then I had envy of the people who had little, individually wrapped snacks in their bags.  I tended to have a banana (individually wrapped, right?) or a tub of grapes or something, but my kids seemed to gravitate towards the little fruity bars of delight that I never remembered to buy.  But then, Hattie Garlick came along and made me feel like I was doing a good thing by eschewing mini-rice cakes and kiddie crisps.  And, to be perfectly honest, when I did buy perfectly uniform carrot cake snacks, my kids took two bites and fed them to the dog.

Apparently the packaging was more bewitching than its contents

And then, another friend on facebook shared this story and, after being a bit horrified, I allowed myself, very briefly, to feel smug about the kiddiwinks refusal to eat jars of food.  It turns out that my general kiddie-snack forgetfulness was actually the instinct of a great mum (cue ironic laughter).

Of course, an article like that makes you think (too much?).  The vet had suggested some changes to Coco's diet, and I started thinking that cheap fillers and inappropriate ingredients may not be limited to prepared food for children, so I settled in for a lengthy Google session on dog food.  Now, as much as we love her, I have neither the time, nor the inclination to feed Coco a raw diet, but it also seemed that even a lot of expensive, premium pet foods contained a lot of questionable ingredients.  I stumbled upon the Dog Food Analysis site, which answered a lot of questions and at least gave me some brands to look for.  I'm not saying Coco is going to be eating £70/bag Orijen, but at least I feel like I can make some good decisions for her.

Meanwhile, C and I will continue eating value ready meals with a guaranteed level of horse-meat content (just kidding)...

On women in fantasy fiction

I got some good news yesterday - one of my favourite authors released a new novel this month and I am looking forward to diving in and escaping grim reality for a few hours.

I really love Kay's work - I think his use of language is stunning, precise and beautiful.  His plots are sweeping and are clearly well researched without showing off.  All of this, and he writes awesome women.

He writes female characters who I would love to be.  They are powerful, intelligent, and interesting.  They are part of the team, contributing as much as the men in the story.  Jehane, the doctor, from the Lions of Al-Rassan, Catriana from Tigana - they are women who have opinions, personalities and skills that push the story forward.  And, nearly uniquely in the fantasty genre, they have not had to undergo a terrible sexual trauma to scour away their feminine weakness.  They are simply stong people, and it's so refreshing to read.

There are other authors who are getting there.  Brent Weeks has had several strong women who've gone through the rape crucible (Viridiana, Karris White Oak), but finally seems to have written a women who is both a bad ass and has escaped the "de-womanizing" process (Liv Danavis).  Katherine Kerr's Gill goes back and forth - set on her path as a conflicted love interest, but eventually arriving as a power in her own right.

But generally, female characters exist to reflect the male protagonists.  They are virgins or whores, sweet or evil, love interests or vindictive exes.  And it just gets a bit boring.  Most real women are somewhere in between and equally complex as the men with whom they interact.

It fills me with hope that writers are realising that, as women have related to male heroes, so can men relate to female heroes.

Are there any writers that you think write great women?  Who do you recommend?

Thoughts on Boston

On Monday, someone as yet unidentified did something terrible in a city I love at an event that I respect.  I am, of course, speaking about the bombs planted at the finish line of the Boston Marathon.  It was an act of egregious cowardice, of hate, of evil against ordinary people celebrating the extraordinary achievements of the athletes running.

I lived in Boston for two years.  Boston is where I met C, my darling husband, during the 2000 presidential elections.  In 2010, we returned for a vacation and C ran the Boston marathon, not quite breaking the three hour barrier that was his goal.

I grieve for Boston, for all of those affected both directly and indirectly by the bombings.  But I know that Boston has a spirit of determination and I have faith in the resilience of humanity that we will recover from the tragedy.

This was my first "twitter disaster" - I learned about it via a tweet.  Crazy information and misinformation was flying around the internet.  It has, more than anything, brought home to me the power, the advantages and the disadvantages of the rapid flows of information in the world today.

In 1996, I was living in Paris when a bomb exploded on the metro.  It was on a line I used, at a time I might plausibly have been on the RER.  When I heard, I phoned my parents immediately to reassure them that I was unharmed.  The bombing had not made the US news, so the response was much less ecstatic than I expected.  No relieved praising of God, just a calm "Oh, I'm really glad to hear."

Again, in 1998, a bomb exploded in C's home town, causing some of the worst causalities in the Northern Ireland troubles.  When C told me the name of his hometown, Omagh, he paused pregnantly, expecting a reaction.  I spent the summer of 1998 teaching French in the woods of Minnesota.  I don't know for certain whether the bombing made headlines in other part of the US, but I know that I stared blankly at him, waiting for him to continue on to whatever he was going to say next.

I contrast that with the 24-hour news cycle now.  Endless press speculation, endless commentary to fill an imagined void, to satisfy the interest of observers when, really, there is no new information and some of the invented stories are harmful, pejorative, or simply cruel.  Social media facilitates the good - information appeared nearly immediately letting Boston residents know where the could donate blood to replenish stressed supplies - and the ugly - made-up stories about the death of a child from Sandy Hook in the bombing using old, unrelated photos.

In 1996, following the bombing, I had to make a decision.  Would I start walking to my classes instead of using public transportation?  I considered at length and decided that I would continue on as I had before.  To do otherwise would be to let "them" win.  I still remember the stickers that officials handed out on the metro in the following period - "attentif ensemble".  And I still feel that same resolve today.  We will attend the Boston marathon again (assuming C qualifies again).  I will watch with my children.  We will remain defiant of those who would take away our joy in the world.

Post holiday blues

Today is the end of my holiday.  We had a rather extended Easter, with C taking a little bit of time off work for a staycation.  We did a lot of work sorting out the house - we will soon be able to get a car into the garage, the garden is in good order, and all the flatpack has been constructed.  The interior designer will pretty much finish her work tomorrow.  We will have curtains and all.

The weather is appropriately gloomy for end of holidays, an extension of the longest winter of my life.  I swear, even in Boston, it was getting warm before April!  I am dispropotionately sad at the end of our family time, considering we have been a plague house.  Itsyboo had a tummy bug that meant I had to eat his Easter egg.  Miss A was epically car sick the day we dared a trip to the sea side.  We learned that poor Coco has a yeast infection in her ears (I had to both cross my legs and cover my ears at the news).

But despite all the vomit and yeast, it was so lovely to spend time together.  It will be fun to recount for a while how Miss A had to have lunch wearing daddy's jumper, then got a new designer outfit from the only kids' clothing shop we could find in Rye.

It's especially great that it says Joules all over it, so everyone knows that I can drop a bomb on kids' clothes

Normally, I confess the kids are outfitted via donations from friends topped up with bundles from e-bay, but given the fact that I was going to buy a new outfit, I did go for the most gorgeous one there.  Her leggings, which I have utterly failed to find a photo of, have a print to die for. C, who does not buy the gift clothing in the family, nearly choked at the till.  Good times.

So now, on a day so grey that I have all the lights in the house on even though the curtains are open, I am back to business.  I had the kids fed, the dog's ears cleaned and medicated and the hot tub fiddled with by 8 am.  We played all morning, then had a fabulous home-cooked lunch (chicken, mushroom, and pea barley risotto).  Now we are fleeing to London to the afternoon because, seriously, what can you do in this weather?  This is not what I moved to the countryside for...

I still love it, though.