Easy Roast Chicken Bake Thingy
There are some days when I practically sprint into the kitchen first thing in the morning, then have to be wrestled out again last thing at night. I’ll often be found in the nice, sunny spot at the kitchen table reading recipe books, or pottering about watering my herbs or baking something fattening. Today though, has not been a good day and the thought of making a roast dinner made me feel more ‘ugh’ than ‘wehay’. At my base level I’m a lazy cow and although I hesitate to call this a recipe exactly, it’s an easy way to get Sunday lunch on the table with very little effort (God I’m sounding all ‘Nigella Express’ – I’ll be pouting at the camera and licking my fingers next). I did cook a lemon drizzle cake for pudding, but that’s just because I’m greedy.
4 large chicken breasts
2 red onions
2 large parsnips/carrots/turnips/whatever
4 or 5 large baking potatoes
1 lemon
Couple of fat garlic cloves
Olive oil
Basically then, just peel the potatoes, parsnips and whatever other stuff you have lying around. Quarter the potatoes (or smaller if they’re enormous) and cut the other stuff into roughly the same sized chunks. Put them all in a large pan on the hob in some salted water and bring them to the boil. Meanwhile, get out a large baking tray and drizzle in a generous glug or two of oil before bunging in your chicken breasts, red onions, garlic cloves (don’t bother to peel them) and half the lemon (I used a whole one but the kids said it was too lemony). Leave this to one side until your veg has had time to parboil (about ten minutes), then throw it all in the baking dish, mixing it up with the chicken breasts, etc with a couple of wooden spoons.
Bung in the oven at 190 degrees (what’s that, gas 5?) for 30 to 40 minutes. Transfer the chicken and vegetables to a serving dish, then put the tray on the hob, adding a pint of stock and a sprinkling of flour. Whisk and bubble until your gravy is slightly thickened then serve with the chicken and vegetables. Oh and frozen peas if you can be bothered. Bribe children to wash up and retire to sofa with crossword and stupid dog.
Britney: It’s that sisterhood thang again
Now before I continue I’d like to cover my arse by saying no, I’m not a big Britney fan, and no, I don’t really care about her ‘ongoing battle with… Kevin/drugs/alcohol/her weight/madness… (fill in the blanks from any newspaper this morning)’. But am I the only one who finds the whole thing so terribly sad? I mean, where are her friends? Where’s her Mum? Where are the people that one relies on in life to keep you on the straight and narrow? I know I’m always banging on about sisterhood, and I’m not one of those girls that has armies of female friends (a mere glimpse of a typical hen party on any given Dublin Saturday night being enough to send me running for my duvet), but blimey, there are a select number of people in this world that I can really rely on, depend on, would trust with my life (and my children’s), and know me well enough to tell me when I’m being a twit. How come this girl doesn’t have a single person in her life to say ‘whoa, things are getting out of control, time for me to step in’?
I smoked for x number of years and I remember the first time my soon-to-be Hubby said ‘ew, you smell gross’. It hurt my feelings, but it was the kick I needed to quit the habit. Now I’m not comparing my easy peasy life as a Yummy Mummy with what this poor girl’s going through and I appreciate that others have more addictive personalities. People in the public eye such as yer one there are exposed to an awful lot more than the odd pack of Benson’s, but where’s her support network? Where’s the firm but fair? The one person that’ll say ‘look, enough already’?
I think my point is that there’s love, and then there’s tough love. And sometimes the people that are prepared to dish out the toughest love are the ones that actually love you the most.
2008 Irish Blog Awards
Voting is now underway for the Irish Blog Awards 2008. Use your vote wisely, people (hint, hint).
How Grandad Grinch stole Christmas
So this’ll make you laugh. No, it really will. My Disreputable Dad is the Hardest Person in the Whole World to Buy Presents For (yes, that’s his official title). So every year he ends up with wine, or port, or Stilton, or port and Stilton, or wine and Stilton, or port, wine and Stilton. Well, you get the idea. This Christmas, being a woman of little imagination, I sent him some port and Stilton. But having my nice head on, I thought I’d girly it up a little for the Child Bride, and added a scented candle and some pink champagne truffles into the mix. Something for everyone there, thought I. Sorted.
Anyhoo, during one of our many, long-drawn-out email conversations, I happened to mention to the Disreputable One about my little girly touch. ‘Was it appreciated?’ says I. ‘Oh’, says the Disreputable One, ‘I don’t think we got any girly stuff’. So a snotty letter of indignant complaint went back to the Port, Stilton and Smelly Candle Company (they’re not actually called that), to say ‘thanks, for not delivering the girly part of the package, and by default making me look like a cow to the Child Bride’.
But then this morning, and this is the funny bit, I got another, slightly more sheepish email. The exchange went something like this:
Disreputable One: ‘That present. Scented candles and pink champagne truffles, you say?’
Me: ‘Yep’
Disreputable One: ‘Ah.’
Me (dropping in): ‘Why? What have you done?’
Disreputable One: ‘Well, when my parcel from you arrived it was accompanied by a second parcel without a label and I thought it might have been something that I’d ordered from a catalogue. I parcelled it up and gave it to the other half who was duly grateful for my thoughtfulness’.
Me: ‘So, hang on, I sent a girly parcel and you parcelled it up and gave it to her from you, leaving her to believe that we sent her nothing?’
Disreputable One: ”Er, yes, but I’ve come clean now and she’s very grateful’.
Me: ‘Grateful. Oh good.’
Disreputable One: ‘Yes, sorry about that. You’ll have to put it down to old age.’
So, people, there’s a lesson here. Next time someone opens a present from you and you don’t really remember buying it, chances are… well, that you didn’t.
Snow business
Well, we woke up to a little light sprinkling of snow this morning, much to the smalls’ delight. This soon turned into bit fat flakes, and soon English Towers was nestling under a beautiful blanket of white. The children set to work building a snow fort, and sledding down our scarily sloped back garden, crashing delicately to a stop into the patio doors. Bert staged his usual sit down protest when we took him for a walk down the boat road, but sadly by lunchtime those fat flakes had turned to slush. Several sodden children are still wringing the very last slushy bits of fun out of the day, but hey, that’s my kind of snow: play and go.
English Mum’s Lubly Shop of the Week: Sage and Stone
…or it could be month. I suppose it depends how many really lubly shops I find. Anyhoo, if you ever venture into County Meath (or Ireland, if you’re not a local), point yourself in the direction of Navan (directions…directions…I’m rubbish at directions … follow the vaguely grubby, bedraggled ones to the Hill of Tara and go North. A lot.)
So, when you’ve found someone who knows where Navan is better than I do, get thyself to Kennedy Road, home of Gamestop (I know it well, being the mother of small boys) and SuperMacs (ditto). Right at the end, down near the Post Office is the small but perfectly formed Aladdin’s cave that is Sage and Stone. As you know, I’m a sucker for anything sparkly and was drawn, almost against my will, down Kennedy Road by the outrageously nice sparkly trees they had outside the door. Inside, I was shocked, and rather pleased, to find all manner of rather lovely things: Christmas decorations (on sale!), lovely crystal, KitchnAids (woohoo!), nice table linen, Le Creuset (mmmm, I love Le Creuset), that weird Stephen Pearce pottery stuff that I don’t get at all, but is very trendy, and all manner of weird and wonderful kitchen wizardry. Upstairs, they’ve even got furniture and some gorgeous bedlinen. It was all I could do not to drool.
Things being a little tight just after Chrimbo, I’d promised Hubby I’d be a good girl, but still came out clutching the most adorable pink silicone whisk, and a rather natty pink fish slice thingy with a stainless steel handle (loses a bit in translation, but you get the picture). But do you know what I liked best about the whole place? The lovely smiley lady who was pottering about in the shop singing along to the Christmas music, who took the time to chat happily with me while I paid for my pathetically small purchases. And you just wait, when I’m flush again I’ll be hightailing it back there to part with more cash. The smiley lady deserves it.
http://www.sageandstone.com
Toad in the Hole
Well after all that roasting, basting and stuffing, I chilled today and made a yummy toad in the hole with some nice fat herby sausages. I’m not sure if I’ve given you my tried and tested batter recipe, but here she blows:
4oz plain flour
Pinch of salt
2 eggs
300ml (10 fl oz) Milk
Fat slice (about half oz) of butter
olive or sunflower oil
Pack of sausages
So – get a deep sided baking tin or lasagne dish or something rectangular but not too big and cover the bottom (generously) with oil. Get it into the oven now as you want it really hot (gas 8 or 230 ish). If the sausages are thin I don’t cook them first, but if they’re fat, you might want to put them in the oil now to start cooking.
Put the milk in a jug, carve a nice fat slice off your block of butter, and microwave it until the butter’s just melted. Sieve the flour and salt into a mixing bowl, bung in the eggs, whisk, and then pour in the cooled milk/butter mixture, whisking so you get a smooth runny batter. You can make the batter beforehand and keep it in the fridge.
Right, so now you can carefully pull the oven shelf out with the hot oil (and sausages if you put them in ten mins early), place your sausages in, then pour over the batter. Take care not to get splashed with the hot oil and drop the whole shooting match like I did on Sunday. The oil should be hot enough that the batter starts to bubble up. It’ll probably take about 20 minutes and will rise up all puffy and lovely round the sausages. Yum!!
For the onion gravy, slice a couple of onions, cook them gently in some butter or oil (heavy based pan, people!) until soft and translucent, then add a pint of beef stock and reduce to thicken. If it’s not thick enough for your taste, you can fish out the onions with a slotted spoon and whisk in some plain flour, bubbling and whisking until it’s all cooked out, then add back the onions. Okay so it’s not New Year calorie-counted but sod that, eh? Enjoy!!
Resomalutions 2008
So what’s worse than waking up with a dry mouth and banging headache at 11am on New Year’s Day? Waking up with a dry mouth and banging headache to find that there’s no water. Yay. So, here I am, thirsty, hangover and, frankly, a little irritable. This hasn’t been helped by the fact that nobody actually knows where the water comes from – it just appears out of the tap. Still, we won’t die – there’s always the leftover Merlot if we’re desperate (ugh).
Last night was a laugh and a half and that’s for sure. We all managed to stay up until midnight and beyond – a big improvement on last year’s 9.30pm, that’s for sure. Oh, and we let about four hundred party poppers off, danced around like loonies, drank too much (apart from C who can’t drink but was great fun anyway) and finally collapsed in a big heap at a ridiculous hour in the morning. Fab.
So to last year’s ‘resomalutions’, then. It was a schizophrenic scoreline, with successes in some areas: I did manage to get stuff published (yay!), but none of it paid (boo – oh, unless you count the fab teapot that Quirky Kitchen sent me – thanks guys!). Sadly I failed miserably at stopping crap accumulating on every spare surface of the house, even thought I had a fresh start when we moved, but (ending on a high here) I think I did pretty well in cherishing and appreciating my friends and family and taking less notice of the people that don’t matter and/or annoy the pants off me. Not sure about the living for today/enjoying the present/not moaning thing, but on the plus side, I didn’t curb my red wine and chocolate intake but still don’t look like Bernard Manning. Result!
I’ve been re-reading all my random ramblings and my post on sisterhood still hits a nerve. Seeing as it’s 2008, I’ll extend it to the fellas too. So here’s my new year’s resomalution, in my own words (funnily enough):
If I do one thing today, it will be to tell my friends and family how fab they are, what I love about them and the qualities that I most admire. I will cherish the people I love, strive to make new friends, never be guilty of excluding anyone from my social circle, no matter how complete I think it is. I will strike up a conversation with the lady next to me in Tesco, compliment a total stranger on her gorgeous handbag and celebrate the fact that we are all, obviously, in this together.
Happy New Year!
