The April Roundup. This month I have been mostly:
Loving…
the cute and quirky (and sustainable) wooden items at Lulabird.co.uk. Lulabird is a brand new company producing a unique range of wooden clocks and wall art. All of their gorgeous designs are inspired by grown up interior trends and would add retro style and quirkiness to any child’s bedroom. The products are made from high quality birch plywood, sourced from sustainable forests, so are eco friendly as well as beautiful…loving the LulaWhale – retro cuteness!
Laughing…
At more cuteness in the shape of these great pics from Butlins. I love this. Butlins are launching their Butlins Toddler Art Prize, a prestigious competition with a prize fund totalling £10,000, that aims to find Britain’s leading contemporary artists aged four and under.
“We’re searching for the mini Mondrians, weeny Warhols, and petite Pollocks.” says Mike Godolphin, Head of Entertainment at Butlins.
A panel of judges from the Contemporary Art Society will choose 12 pieces of submitted artwork for exhibition at a gallery in East London in October 2010. The chosen 12 talented toddlers will share in a prize fund totalling £10,000 with the winning tot banking £500 in cash!
To enter visit www.butlins.com/artprize. All entries must be received by 31st August 2010 and the 12 shortlisted toddlers, and their immediate family, will be invited to attend an impressive VIP ‘orange squash and canapés’ opening and award ceremony in the capital.
Helping…
…Shreddies find some new Knitting Nanas. Join the search and/or nominate your Nana here.
Scoffing…
…loads and loads of chips and NOT getting fat! No, really. The lovely chaps at Tefal sent me one of their new Actifrys to try and it’s blimmin fantastic.
Basically, you just peel and slice up to a kilo of potatoes, bung them into the little machine with one tablespoon of oil and a bit of salt and let it work its magic. The result is chips that are crispy on the outside and soft on the inside, with only 3% fat content. Afterwards, everything but the base goes straight in the dishwasher. A lazy woman’s dream. I love it.
You can find out all about Tefal’s new range, Nutritious and Delicious, on their Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/nutritiousanddelicious
Supporting…
…Tesco’s Race for Life Campaign. Tesco’s annual charity event, in partnership with Cancer Research, is coming up fast. This year, there’s a new social networking site supporting those taking part. You can find it at http://www.tescosupportsraceforlife.co.uk
Wearing…
my fetching ‘Man from Del Monte’ hat – sent to me by the lovely chaps at Del Monte. After scouring exotic climes across the globe for the best quality fruits, the Man from Del Monte has made it easier for us girls to get our bodies in tip top condition this summer with a new range of fruit juices (I’m loving the Mango & Papaya, but if you’re a traditionalist you can go for the classic orange or maybe pineapple or grapefruit). The new range is in supermarkets (in swanky new packaging) from May.
Phew! And that’s it. Oh no, how could I forget, there’s one more…
Looking forward…
…to our rearranged trip to SeaWorld, Busch Gardens, the beautiful Discovery Cove and Aquatica in Florida sometime in June. Yes, I’ll be intrepidly and selflessly checking the place out with my fellow bloggers, so that you can book your next holiday with confidence. See the things I do for you? And are you grateful? Pffft.
What I did in Morocco, by English Mum, aged 40 and a bit
Moving on from gunrunning and rude nightmares, then. We finally made it onto the plane and were delighted to find that Thomson Holidays’ new pre-flight safety video was being shown. If you haven’t seen it yet, check this out:
Isn’t that just the cutest darned thing? I love the little wiggle when pulling down on the life jacket toggle.
This isn’t a sponsored post or anything, but I have to say I was well impressed with Thomson/First Choice all round. They’ve had a big shake-up recently, scrapping 400 hotels whose customer feedback was a bit ropey, and getting rid of that awful ‘hard sell’ bit at the welcome meeting (where they used to practically force you at gunpoint to go on their excursions) by rewarding their Reps for good feedback rather than sales. There were no queues at all to check in (apart from those caused at security by a certain gangly teenager and his concealed weapon) and their flight attendants were genuinely friendly, not ‘grit your teeth and smile with venom’ friendly like some other attendants I could mention.
On to Morocco, then, where we were delighted to experience that ‘hot hairdryer in the face’ sensation when stepping off the plane. Al-Massira airport is beautiful, like a giant sandcastle shimmering in the flat desert. We were met by friendly people and shown onto an air conditioned coach with seatbelts (how things have changed).
The hotel was lovely, but sadly somewhat ruined by a totally overenthusiastic Moroccan/French entertainment team. Let’s be honest, as a family, we’re not joiners. We don’t want to listen to a Christiano Ronaldo wannabe blathering into his microphone (hello, we’re six fucking feet away from you, put the microphone down you pillock), entreating us to join him in ‘du stretching’, or my personal favourite, ‘l’aquagym’, pronounced ‘aquazsheeeem’). And no, I don’t want to ‘have lots of furrrn’ in some weird group activity that consists of everyone shuffling around the pool and clapping like those Hare Krishna people (without the orange robes or bald heads admittedly).
Every time Ronaldo turned up his Mika CD (God that bloody Mika song will haunt me until I die) and reached for his microphone, we sat moaning and griping like the grumpy old men from the Muppets in our little sunbed stronghold furthest away from the speakers and ’shut up, you fucking twat’ was muttered from under Mark Billinghams and James Pattersons all round the pool. The French, however, who made up 90% of the guests and who also cannot queue or be civil to anyone apart from other French people, love a bit of joining in and happily belly danced, ‘du stretched’ and ‘aquazsheeemed’ their days away under our withering stares.
Anyhoo, enough Anglophilia. Our lovely rep, Andy, who was an absolute star, hilariously funny and a total saint during the whole volcano/ash cloud debacle, recommended that we visit the Souk, so visit we did. It’s a funny place, the Moroccon Souk, kind of interesting and terrifying in equal measure. We are shown enormous tagines (‘how the bejaysus am I going to fit that in my case?’), and rubbed with Argan Oil (‘see, you are beyooootiful!’). The traders lure us to their stalls with weird, Delboy Trotter-like cries of ‘Eeenglish! Come have a shufty!’ #2 happily barters with a stallholder for a Barcelona shirt while another assures me with pride that the tealight holder I’m looking at is ’100% top-quality camel skin’. Bleurgh.
Happily, Moroccan food is a darned sight better than its entertainment. We dined every night on a fabulous selection of tagines…
…wonderful roast lamb, chickens cooked to perfection on an amazing rotisserie, salads, dried fruits, jaw-dropping desserts…
I could go on, but I’d get dribble all over the keyboard. If you ever happen to find yourself in Morocco, make sure you try the saffron potatoes, oh and pastilla – a potentially odd concoction of layers of filo-type pastry, egg and chicken, all topped with cinnamon and icing sugar. Yes I know it sounds horrible but trust me, it’s lovely. The only thing I didn’t try was the calves’ foot casserole. Oh I don’t know, just something about the title, I suppose.
Our enforced extra 4 night stay was dealt with admirably. Andy worked like a lunatic and was often to be seen rushing around the hotel, grabbing various people and giving them updates. He sacrificed his day off and I personally witnessed him dealing with the odd screamer in a very dignified manner and without shouting ‘it’s not my fault a volcano erupted you arse’ (I’d have punched at least one person). Happily, Thomson sent a 757 at some ungodly hour to rescue us all (again with the smiles) and we arrived in time for a McDonalds breakfast. Result.
So would I go to Morocco again? Probably. Would I check first that my resort had NO entertainment and NO French people? Definitely. Would I use First Choice/Thomson again? Absolutely. While others were struggling to get home, we got an extra four days’ holiday and a pretty good tan into the bargain. So let’s face is, as my friend Kerry pointed out, ‘every ash cloud has a silver lining’.
Nightmares and spud guns: what I dun on my hodilays, part one
Okay so possibly deciding that all of us would share a family room the night before flying out to Morocco was a bit of a mistake. #1 sleep talks and keeps us all awake shouting ‘BOOM!’ in a rapper styley, and then ”YOU’RE SO SHORT!’ (at his brother, we presume – well, he is a bit short) until the early hours of the morning. (This actually wasn’t as bad on the night of our wedding blessing, when he shouted ‘YOU FUCKING JEW!’ at the top of his voice at about 3am, but that’s another story. By the way, he’d never normally utter such horrors, it’s totally out of character – I wonder what on earth he was dreaming about? It was so awful we couldn’t even tell him he’d done it.)
Still, the Gatwick Hilton is very nice, and just the fact that they manage to lever 4 beds into one room is pretty impressive and almost enough for us to let them off the ridiculous price of an evening meal. It was nice, but come on, £300 for three adults and two kids?
The alarm beeps at ridiculous o’clock, and we all spring out of bed looking a bit panicky, with the wild hair and mildly bewildered look of the sleep-exhausted.
So there we are, a bit of a raggle taggle mob, with bleary eyes and sticky-up hair, 300 quid lighter, shuffling through security, when IT happens. Imagine if you will…. [now come on, join in: you have to imagine harp music and that shimmery air thing like they do on the telly when they're taking you back in time. Bear with me...]
We’re faffing around, taking off belts and shoes and shoving stuff into those little trays. I’m trying to get my belt back on and am vaguely aware that everything has ground to a halt. I look around and wonder why nobody is moving through the body scanners. Then, feeling slightly more tense, I notice that the entire security staff seems to be clustered anxiously around the x-ray monitor. This uneasy feeling continues when I notice that they all seem to be shooting the odd shifty look at #1 . #1 also feels this unwanted attention. A little whimper escapes his lips, and suddenly with his wonky glasses and fuzzy hair, he looks more four than 14.
Then, a large and very serious customs officer approaches. The conversation goes something like this:
Serious customs officer: ‘Is this your bag, Sir…?’
#1 (nodding unhappily): ‘Erm, yes…’
Serious customs officer: ‘…the one with THE GUN in it?’
I laugh nervously. Surely he’s joking? My Mad Professor, a gun toting, airline-hijacking lunatic? The child can’t even find his school bag without his glasses on – how could he have hatched this dastardly plot? I look at him in a whole new light.
Several other serious customs officers have now joined us (one actually does the thumbs-hooked-in-belt-loops thing like in a western as he swaggers towards us).
Cowboy customs officer: ‘can you please step away from him?’
We move to one side. The child is frisked. Now I panic. I shoot an anxious look at Hubby who seems to have gone a bit green. Our would-be terrorist is now white as a sheet and his eyes are like saucers, looking at me with ‘oh shit’ written all over his face.
The serious customs officer asks me if I’ll open the front of my son’s bag, and there, in the little front pocket, is a small red metal spud gun.
Oh shit indeed.
Oh shitting shit.
There is then a moment that, if we weren’t so terrified, would have been hysterically funny:
#2 (happily): ”ooh, I wondered where I put that. I thought I’d lost it…’
Even more comically, we then begin to have a little bickery family fight, right there in security. Yup, hissy accusations and angry denials. With about four massive customs officers standing staring at us, and everybody in the queue looking at us as if we’re mental. #1 is furious with #2 (nothing is ever #1′s fault – he never loses anything, it gets stolen from him and replaced by the thief in a different and unexpected place). We’re furious with #1. He didn’t think to check his bag? He’s been using it for his sports kit for the last six months, for fuck’s sake…’
I mentally wave goodbye to my palm-fringed Moroccan beach.
Happily, though, once they’ve emptied the rest of his bag onto the counter: Nintendo DS, headphones, a snotty tissue (the cowboy customs officer wipes his hands on his trousers and looks disgusted), a foul smelling pair of football socks (well, it is his sports bag)… it becomes clear that this is an honest mistake.
We escape with a telling off about the importance of double checking your child’s bag. See, I might have known I’d get the blame. He’s nearly 15 for goodness’ sake, what did we think he was going to bring? A gun or something?
Aha. Ahahaha…
Out of conservatory message
Hello, you’ve reached English Mum, I’m afraid I’m out of the office for a week now, so you’ll have to call back later. Actually, thinking about it, this should be more of an ‘out of the conservatory’ message, seeing as that’s where you’ll usually find me – perched at my ageing desktop, alternately roasting if the sun’s shining through the window, or blue and shivering when it’s not.
Not this week, though, oh no sirreee.
If you need me, I’ll be in Morocco: falling asleep on the beach (and subsequently burning, festering and flaking), enjoying time with my family (for that read: having a few fits of shouty hysterics), drinking too much and trying to tuck my too-many-cupcakes stomach into the top of my zebra-print bikini.
Play nice ’til I get back, then. I’ll be thinking of you all, though. No, really, I will…
Travel tips for the disaster-prone
So hot on the heels of my pretty darned wondrous trip to Disneyland Paris, I’m off again shortly. Sunday sees us heading off to Morocco for a lovely week’s family holiday (‘this is what I did on my holidays’ pictures will surely follow – apart from the aforementioned Pilsbury Dough Boy/small Zebra/Russell Brand genetic mutation that is me in my bikini).
I’m not good at organising stuff, so have decided in advance to make a really good ‘what to take on holiday’ list, which will be really useful should you ever feel the need to travel with a teenager, a tweenager, a grumpy husband and a mildly bonkers mother:
1. Factor 50 suncream: I’m a really strange cocktail of English, Scottish and Irish roots, which manifests itself in skin so pale it’s practically blue. I do tan, but this is only when my freckles get so big they kind of merge together to cover some of the red. This happens in odd splodges on my face too – giving me a kind of embarrassed Dalmatian look. Not the most flattering.
2. A first aid kit the size of Wales. There will be vomiting. There always is. When we went on holiday to Goa, #1 decided to be violently sick on Christmas Day. I read the instructions on the rehydration sachets wrong and tried to get him to whoof down a whole glass of it every time he was sick. Hence, he was sick even more. We’ll also need lots of plasters because someone (generally The Death Wish Child) will do a backflip in about 3″ of water and scrape all the skin off his spine, or impale himself upon a piece of broken shell or something. Happily, in India we needn’t have worried because it turns out that you can buy just about any prescription medicine (and probably crack cocaine too) over the counter just by vaguely describing your symptoms with hand-signals and gurning. I kid you not. The Hubby got two packs of Valium for his bad shoulder (and being the hysterical type, I flushed it, just in case he got the habit).
3. Five sunhats. They always disappear, and I’m prone to burnt partings which then fester and finally peel, making me look like I have a horrible attack of scabies (on the plus-side, I can always get a sunbed). My sister in law told me recently that she’s always horrified when she remembers once waving lovely little Turtle and Jackson off on a camel ride with some random beach guy when they were toddlers. The camel guy could have been a trader in little blonde twins and she would have been none the wiser. Happily, he came back with them. Turtle, however, was minus her sunhat, which had blown away towards a man on the beach who had picked it up and then, just when she thought he was bringing it to her, had promptly pocketed it and walked off.
4. Everybody’s passport. It’s in my genes: as a family, we have passport-related lunacy in our blood. My Disreputable Dad once got all the way to the actual check-in desk at London Gatwick before realising that he had in fact got his passport and his spare passport, rather than his other half’s. Luckily, my Dad usually aims to get to the airport a good 12 hours before the flight (he’s a forward planner of epic proportions – many a time I can remember childhood holidays commencing with being bundled sleepily into a taxi at 4am – very exciting when you’re a kid, but I now realise the flight probably didn’t leave until tea-time), so he had time to bimble all the way home (an hour and a half), leaving his seething girlfriend waiting anxiously at the counter, pick up the passport and pootle all the way back again without missing the flight.
5. My phone. And no, I won’t be allowed to use it (not at £1.37 per minute roaming I won’t be), it’s purely for the music. I like to sing along, but I seem to have a very bad case of malapropitis when it comes to lyrics. The Brethren constantly despair of my inability to remember the words to any song, and it absolutely kills them when I fill in my own instead. I also use it to drown out the sound of other people’s children (I’m toddler intolerant). Hence, I shall be happily grilling myself to a crisp on the beach, singing ‘I kissed a girl and I liked it, the taste of her cherry chopsticks’, or ‘let’s pee on a corner… let’s pee on a spot.. light… choosing my religionnnnnn’ while my children go bright red and wander off to choose some other, less embarrassing parents to sit near.
Then finally, when I’m nice and red and crispy and slightly flaky, I will be home for just one day of confusion and then I’m off to SeaWorld, Busch Gardens, the beautiful Discovery Cove and Aquatica in Florida with a raggle taggle (but gorgeous) bunch of fellow bloggers: Erica, Liz, Laura, Linda and Jo. I predict snorty laughter, screaming on roller coasters and other aquatic shenanigans. Watch this space…
Kreativ blogger award: Seven things you didn’t know about me
How thoughtful. I just got this lovely award from both the lovely Rosie ‘I shook hands with Eric Clapton’ Scribble and Linda ‘I want to sit on Shane Richie’ Jones from You’ve Got Your Hands Full. In return I have to share seven lesser-known facts about myself for your delectation.
Obviously, because I’ve been blogging since the dawn of creation, and have a terribly bad habit of ‘oversharing’ my most toe-curlingly personal information, there’s probably very little you don’t know about me already. But I’ll try to come up with something original. Here goes:
- I am, very occasionally, prone to bouts of hysteria. These are generally prompted by my getting really cross (a very rare occurrence in itself) or a dangerous cocktail of hormones and a sudden realisation of The Unfairness Of It All. My hysterics are, by and large, kitchen-based. My men-folk, who are well used to my little outbursts by now, sit patiently, flicking ‘here she goes again’ glances at each other while I rant and rave and slam things about, and afterwards dish out tea/wine and sympathetic hugs. The only person outside my family ever to witness one of my meltdowns is my bestest friend in the whole wide world, Jen, but it’s okay because I’m sure she never does impressions of me mid-rant *cough*.
- I was once sacked from my job as a letting agent for crashing my company car into a brick wall when I was supposed to be off sick in bed with the flu. As penance, I had to lie prone on my stomach for what seemed like hours as my poor, doting Hubby picked small shards of glass out of the backs of my legs with a pair of tweezers (I’d been wearing shorts and the windscreen had shattered). Disclaimer: if you’re the owner of that wall, none of this is true.
- As a borderline social-phobic, I definitely have the potential to be one of life’s mad cat ladies. Had I not married and brought forth De Brevren, I could well have ended up drinking myself into a stupor in a stinky council house in Hemel Hempstead with a sticky kitchen floor, one armchair and a ‘family’ of seventeen moth-eaten moggies.
- I read really, really fast. I’m not sure if it’s skim-reading or what, but I can easily do a novel in one bathtime and an early night. My family are aware of this and keep me constantly in paperbacks, lest I run out of reading material and descend into hysteria (see point 1.) After about three weeks, however, I have little or no recall of the plot which is quite handy as it means I can occasionally recycle my reading material.
- I have an enormous, unsightly and somewhat slug-like scar on my arm, the result of three or four really painful bouts of plastic surgery. All this pain and torment was self-inflicted to remove an ill-advised teenage tattoo that, with hindsight, probably wasn’t that bad in the first place. This was in the 1990s, prior to the discovery of today’s easy peasy ‘whip it off by laser’ techniques. My mother has so far resisted the urge to utter ‘I told you so’. It must be killing her.
- When I was at school in the fashion black hole that was the 1980s, I used to bleach my fringe white. My Disreputable Dad used to refer to it as ‘that blob of custard on your head’.
- I swear. A lot. And although this disgustingly bad habit is probably one of my less attractive traits, it’s a win/win situation for the kids as they probably get away with it more than most early-teens. Well, I can hardly tell them off, can I? ’Stop f*cking swearing all the f*cking time you little sh*t’ kind of defeats the object. My one rule is that they never, ever swear in company or in general conversation. But the occasional ‘oh bollocks’ if they drop something on their foot tends to go overlooked. Call me bohemian if you will.
And that’s it. As I clutter up my fellow bloggers’ websites enough already, I shan’t be passing this tag/meme/challenge thing on, but should you wish to divulge something fascinating and/or shocking in the comments, it would be ridiculously entertaining. Over to you, then.
Rocky Road Easter Nests
Barely a recipe this one. More an exercise in getting the kids into the kitchen and allowing them to become covered head to toe in chocolate .
Still, they taste quite nice, which is always a bonus. Firstly, then, you’ll need:
150g Green and Black’s Milk Cooking Chocolate
1 tbsp golden syrup
100g Rice Krispies
30g mini marshmallows
50g Maltesers
50g dried cranberries
50g brazil nuts
1 pack mini eggs
Firstly, then, melt your chocolate very gently over a saucepan of water. Turn the heat off as soon as the water is simmering. Remember, treat your chocolate gently!
When it’s melted, stir in the golden syrup. You can add a knob of butter if you like but I never bother. Then stir in the rice krispies making sure they’re well covered.
Now just add in anything you like, really. I used marshmallows, Maltesers, dried cranberries and brazil nuts, but you could use any combo of dried fruit/nuts/sweeties. Try to keep the volume roughly the same though:
Stir it all together, then pop into paper cases and add your mini eggs on top. Set aside for a while so they have a chance to set before you scoff them.
Happy Easter!
Hot Cross Buns, Hot Cross Buns…
So this is slightly cheating as after I’d finished my lovely hot cross buns, I realised I’d forgotten to take any pictures. So here, then, in a bit of a ‘mash-oop’, as De Brevren would say is a new recipe, with pics from last year.
This recipe takes a bit of time, but is one of those recipes that’s just so much better home-made than bought. So set aside a chilly Easter weekend (I can definitely remember sunny Easters – what’s happened to our weather?) for an afternoon of kneading and baking. Nom.
450g strong white bread flour
1 tbsp mixed spice
1 tsp salt
75g sugar
1 x 7g sachet dried yeast
100g sultanas (or mixed peel if you must – bleurgh)
150ml milk
150ml water
Zest of 1 orange
50g butter
First, then, sieve the flour and ground mixed spice together into a large bowl. Next, stir in the salt, sugar, dried yeast and sultanas.
In a small saucepan (or jug if you’re doing it in the microwave) warm the milk, water, orange zest and butter until the butter is just melted, then turn off the heat. Let it cool so that when you stick your finger in, it feels like blood temperature. If your BFF happens to have bought you the most fantastically gorgeous Kitchenaid, like me, then set it on low and slowly pour in the milky mixture until the dough comes together (you might not need all of it so go steady), then plug in the dough hook and set it to knead for a good five minutes.
If you’re old-fashionedy or a still waiting to meet the mixer of your dreams (they do actually come out nicer and lighter if you knead them by hand), you’ll have to get to it for at least ten minutes. Yes, I know, sorry, but it’s true. Knead away, then, getting a good kitchen workout into the bargain. The sultanas keep trying to escape, but grab any of the little blighters trying to make a quick getaway and poke them back in. Keep going until the dough is nice and springy and firm (apparently, good dough should be the texture of a woman’s breast).
Erm anyway, moving swiftly on… when your dough is sufficiently boob-like, leave it covered in a warm place until it’s doubled in size. Then, just knock it back with your fist (imagine it’s someone you can’t stand – nice bit of culinary therapy there), and cut it in half, then half again and half again. Form each of your 8 pieces into a ball and place them on a baking tray. Cover and rise again until they’re puffed up.
If you want to add the cross, then mix about 2 tbsp flour, a tsp of caster sugar and enough water to make into a paste and either just dribble it with a teaspoon, or pipe it onto your buns (ooer Missus). Or, you can cut a cross in the top of the buns, like so:
…and pipe the cross into the little lines like so:
But whatever you think. Let’s not obsess here, they’re just buns.
One thing which is rather fund to do is to place your little buns, well spread out, inside a large, springform tin, which produces a little circle of buns that you have to tear off – good for novelty value:
Bake for about 15-20 minutes at 180/gas 6 until they sound hollow when patted on the bottom (sorry, I seem to be filling this recipe with comedy references). Finally, when they’re just out of the oven, glaze with a tbsp of sugar to which a drop or two of boiling water has been added, or warm up some apricot conserve and brush it on for extra glossy stickiness.
Now, to the important business of face stuffing: if you’re eating them straight out of the oven (a move I heartily recommend), slather them in butter and be done with it. But if you’re eating them maybe the next day, split and toast them first. If you’re going to freeze them, slice them in half first so they can go straight in the toaster.
However you like your buns (there I go again), I wish you a wonderfully HAPPY EASTER with your nearest and dearest. Save me an egg.
