Our boots blessed with gold

Went for a rather lovely walk this bank holiday afternoon with the baby and the hubby - up the river, along muddy banks thronged with cowslips and forget me nots, and shaded by white and the palest pink blossomed hawthorn. there were cows munching on clover, birds twittering away, the river slow and leisurely.
The same fields and river banks where Wilfred Owen walked along as a boy - and it was apparently where he came up with some of the lines for Spring Offensive, one of the more goose-bumpy war poems I've read. At once a poem about the beautiful every day, a walk in a sunlit flower filled field. And yet not, this foreboding of menace and dread - terrifying in its contrast. He can have had no idea of what was to come as he played there as a boy, no concept of the terror we humans would inflict upon one another. I feel a little trite using some of it to describe the pleasant walk we had, but it was with us as we walked and talked, picking flowers, showing baby River all this beauty, thinking about how lucky we are.

Marvelling they stood, and watched the long grass swirled

By the May breeze, murmurous with wasp and midge,
For though the summer oozed into their veins
Like the injected drug for their bones' pains,
Sharp on their souls hung the imminent line of grass,
Fearfully flashed the sky's mysterious glass.

Hour after hour they ponder the warm field —
And the far valley behind, where the buttercups
Had blessed with gold their slow boots coming up,
Where even the little brambles would not yield,
But clutched and clung to them like sorrowing hands;
They breathe like trees unstirred.

comfort quiche

Less philosophising, more cooking today - a wholesome rustic quiche lorraine of sorts. The pastry was a bit thrown together, with butter that was too soft and probably too many seeds. But still yummy, crumbly and buttery.

For the pastry: 150g butter, 150g plain white flour and 20g wholemeal flour, pinch seasalt, a tablespoon of mixed seeds (I used sunflower, pumpkin and poppy) and a small bunch of chopped thyme from the garden. I used very soft butter, worked it all to a consistent dough then wrapped it in clingfilm and chucked it in the freezer for twenty minutes. Not ideal but it works if you really need quiche quickly (yes, this was one of those times - no sleep, again, nothing in the fridge except lots of eggs, and a hungry horde).

Fry two sliced onions and a couple of rashers of bacon, chopped, until lightly browned. add three or four cherry tomatoes cut in half to warm through. Leave to cool slightly in the pan while you prepare the eggs.

In a measuring jug whisk six eggs with a fork, add salt and pepper, then add about 100 ml of double cream and another 100-150 ml of milk. Mix well.

Roll out the chilled pastry - it is very short so will be a pain tow work - and squish into your buttered quiche tin, making sure it's an even thickness, there are no holes, and it goes up the sides sufficiently to hold your filling. Then spread the onion and bacon mix over the base, spreading the tomato halves evenly. Grate a little cheddar over it, then pour in the egg mix. I sprinkled a few snipped chives on top.
Bake at 180 C for around 25-30 mins, until the middle is no longer wobbly. Leave to cool then serve, with simple green salad. Or eat it straight out of the pan, like we did. It was an emergency comfort quiche situation after all.

Self - insufficiency

No, the title above does not refer to my parenting skills. I am acutely aware with this blog that what I often have to say is what millions of other stay-at-home lefty liberal foodie mums have to say. Being original in the era of the internet is pretty tricky. Being a mum is hard. And choosing food with conscience is even trickier. But maybe some of the things we take for granted are actually not what they appear..
I was brought up on a smallholding (though that word didn't exist when I was little - we just had lots of animals - a whole herd of goats - grew our own veg, baked our own bread, and didn't have a telly). Crisps were what we saw in our friends cupboards when we visited them. As exotic as Barbie dolls and pot noodles. My mother, who emigrated from Germany when I was two, worked from home, taught me at home until I was ten, and I helped feed the chickens, learned to milk the goats, built dens in the woods, when I wasn't doing my lessons.  All very house on the prairie.

An idyllic upbringing, which made me love real food, and craft building, and the great outdoors in general. For years The Self Sufficiency Bible was my main reading fodder, and it's a rhetoric so many of my friends buy into too. If we could just grow our own stuff and not need the shops, everything would be better.
But it's not as simple as you would think, this dream of ours. As Julian Baggini, author of The Virtues of the Table: How to Eat and Think, says: "It seems obvious that self sufficiency makes us more secure, less dependent on others and therefore more resilient. But this is wrong. What makes us stronger is not independence but interdependence". We are stronger when we make links, work together, trade. I always thought I would love to live the way I grew up - on a little plot of land, up in the hills, making everything myself. But it turns out I love the life I have now far more. In a small-ish rural town, with lovely shops, and cafes, and people to say hi to in the street, and no garden. A few pots to grow herbs in, and I'm happy. There's a great greengrocer in town.
Everything we do, be it buying the seeds to grow our veg, to felling the trees to build our houses - everything relies on others, is done better when it is done as a cooperative effort. Our so called self sufficient childhood was made of a million links and interdependencies, and was all the better for it. Growing your own is great, as long as we are aware that to even do so has required a global market. Those seeds have come from somewhere, the tools manufactured, how-to books printed, wellies made of Brazilian rubber. Even the most ardent of my crafty make-everything-myself friends buys their underwear from somewhere!
We live in a global world, and are all the better for it. It's just about how we do the communicating, the trading, that will make it a better place. In my opinion. Make those interactions personal wherever possible, cut out the middle man, make your choices conscious ones. Be self-insufficient, and proud :)

As a footnote - the author of that book is speaking at the How the Light gets in Festival at Hay next Tuesday! Afternoon tea and philosophy, what could be better?

https://howthelightgetsin.iai.tv

a mean clean scandi fish salad

So in the midst of yet another bout of family illness - it seems to come with having small children - day one of baby River in Nursery and she comes home with another chest infection, which everyone else then caught. Hers ended with a trip to hospital, but all is well again now., although it's now been a week since I slept for more than an hour... Anyway, what was I saying? Oh yes, in the midst of this I managed to try out this recipe, which I pinched off a friend a few weeks ago, from some magazine she had. The photo looked so beautiful (unlike my poor attempts below - after looking at these photos I've thrown out all our mismatched random crockery and we are now only having white plates!)

 I've adapted the original recipe slightly, but I'd recommend making this wholeheartedly. properly luscious flavours, clean and crisp and made us all feel healthier (though Simon's slightly depressed verdict "now I know why all Scandinavians are so thin" means I might add more bread for a main meal next time :)

Smoked trout, pickled radish, griddled cucumber and lemon salad, with sourdough croutons (serves three - if you're not ravenous - or four as a starter)

Break up a packet of smoked trout into chunky pieces and set aside. Cut half a cucumber in half again, then in eighths lengthways - so you end up with 16 chunky batons. Cut one lemon in half, slice around six radishes as thinly as possible and cut two slices of sourdough bread. Dissolve one teaspoon of sugar in one teaspoon of cider vinegar, then toss the sliced radishes in this pickle and leave while you prepare the rest. Heat a griddle pan, and brush the cucumbers, cut lemon sides and bread with olive oil. Chuck a pinch of sea salt on the hot griddle, then lay the cucumber, lemon and bread on it. Griddle for about eight minutes, turning the cucumbers and bread when they're brown and charred on one side. Meanwhile heap some green leaves on serving plates, then arrange the cucumbers, pickled radish slices and trout on top. Cut the bread into croutons and lay those on the salad. Squeeze the two charred lemon slices into a tablespoon of olive oil, and whisk with some chopped dill and sea salt. Drizzle this over the salad, and garnish with chive flowers (they were what I had to hand - more dill will do the trick too, or borage flowers look amazing) and dollops of natural yoghurt.

I served this with some beetroot and goats cheese, for the eagle eyed among you - it really didn't go with this salad, and makes the plates look awful, but I love roast beetroot and it needed using up :)

matilda's marvellous chickpea burgers

Matilda, who is six going on 26, likes to help me cook. I still haven't decided if its a bad thing or not, but she watches so many youtube videos, and american cookery shows with me, that she has to narrate all of our cooking with an american voice. It goes something like this: Mattie, do you want to help me make dinner? Yes mummy: "So hi guys, here we are in our kitchen, and mom is mixing the chickpeas with - oh hang on, now she's wiping the baby's nose - and I'm cracking this egg into a bowl..." you get the picture. All spoken to the wall behind the cooker. 

We made these chickpea burgers for our invisible non-existent audience the other night, before everyone got ill again - more on this in the next post.

Mash one tin of drained chickpeas and add to them one egg, two chopped spring onions, half a finely diced green pepper, a teaspoon of garam masala, a small tin of sweetcorn, and mix. You want it to be the consistency of mince - add chickpea flour (chana dal) until you reach this consistency. I find it needs about two tablespoons, but it depends on the size of your egg, and is different every time. Then season with salt and pepper.

Heat olive oil in a frying pan, and shaping the mix into small burgers - about a tablespoons worth each - fry your burgers over a medium heat until golden brown, turning to brown evenly.

Serve in pitta breads (we have those The Food Doctor multiseed ones) with a green salad and some hummus. They're a hit with even the fussiest of eaters in our house.

Just as a footnote - we don't eat like saints every night, in case I was giving that impression! Those blogs where all that you ever see is supermodel mums serving their angelic children homegrown spinach and himalayan sea salt crusted self-caught salmon cakes in ballgowns before they go out make me feel a little queasy. No supermodels here. Rather haggard sleep deprived ones instead, and today for lunch we had pizza and oven chips, and the baby was snacking on digestives (while sat on the floor of the kitchen rummaging through my handbag). y'know, jus' keeping it real.

cinderella complex

Its been a while since my last post. Not because I haven't had anything to say - far from it, my head is bursting with unfinished thoughts and ideas - more on that later - but because my days consist entirely of what has become known as my cinderella complex. Anyone who is trying to keep a small baby alive during the weaning process might know what I'm talking about here. Now that baby River is pretty much on solids, my life revolves entirely around her diet. I'm attempting to not rely on those very very tempting little pouches of food that look and taste a bit like how I imagine space food tastes - like it has the memory of a real, home cooked meal, but only its spirit remains. Don't get me wrong, I use them, and River gets positively excited when she sees one of those brightly coloured little pouches coming her way at lunchtime. But they're not what I want my daughter to think of as normal food. I cant help but think if all you eat is food out of a bag that has been heat treated to make sure its as inoffensive and safe as possible, you're going to want pretty bland stuff your whole life. Thats not something I want for my kids. I want them to have a passion for good, healthy, delicious food like I do. So.
My day goes something like this. Baby wakes up, I make her milk. I get the other kids up and washed and dressed. I make her breakfast (normally porridge or weetabix or toast - we have a bread machine which as a baker I never thought id say - but its amazing), then I make the kids breakfast, then bundle everyone off to school, hair just about brushed, clothes just about tidy. Then we get back and I tidy up from breakfast. then the baby has a snack, fruit or rice cakes or something. then I start her lunch - this is pretty much whatever im having, normally veggie soup or a sandwich or omelette. She eats that, covers the floor, herself, me... then she has milk and a sleep. And I clean up. And then she wakes up, we pick up her sister from school, I make them a snack and its time to start dinner, and the whole feed/clean cycle begins again. Trying to make a range of interesting foods, both in flavour and with different textures, some she can feed herself, others that are nice and filling, hitting all the major food groups every day, enough protein, vitamins, calcium, carbohydrates, not too reliant on sweetness, both challenging her taste buds and giving her the things I know she likes..
This only stops after she's gone to bed, so i get about an hour of not cooking/cleaning per day. Oh woe is me, I know. You can see why i get the cinderella thing... I'm not complaining (at least not right now). I love that I get to feed my beautiful kids good food, and have the priviledge right now to do that at home. How I will do all this while working I have no idea. But for now, there's been little time to do blogging, or thinking any coherent thoughts for that matter.
Anyway, I thought in the few spare minutes I have today, that I'd write a few of the things I make for her that she really loves. Both for my own posterity, but also because I remember the first time around, I was really worried about weaning, about what to feed my baby, and how much, and when. This second time around it's much less fraught, if still just as exhausting! I'm not a nutritional expert, i don't claim to know better, but if anyone at all reading this (hello, if you're out there??) wants any tips on weaning id be happy to help :)
I reckon weaning is less about recipes and more about a general way of thinking. The sooner a baby starts eating what the grown ups are eating, all together around the table, the better it is for everyone. As for baby led, it didn't really work for us. River is a big hungry baby, who wanted solids well before she could hold them herself. Even now, at ten months, she would much rather be fed than hold her own food.
After River had tried a few things on their own, like stewed apple, baby rice, pureed carrot etc.. I just started blitzing up whatever we were having for her - omitting salt and alcohol from the meals when i was making them of course. Some things taste better mushed together than others. I have to say one of my favourite foods in the world is mashed potato, peas and carrots with grated cheddar and butter. Add some tinned tuna and I'm in heaven :)
Family staples include: the pancakes I've mentioned before - river will eat these all day if she can.
Greek yoghurt with stewed fruit - a great breakfast/lunch. just stew some apples/pears/peaches with a pinch of cinnamon until soft, keep in the fridge for a day or two.
Minestrone - loads of veggies cooked in chicken stock, with mini soup pasta. don't bother paying the premium for 'baby pasta' - just get the Italian mini pasta shells from the pasta aisle. also good with rice or spelt or pearl barley. jus make sure its cooked long enough to be soft and mashable.
Chicken curry - use a mild curry powder, and natural yoghurt or double cream, and blend it with rice - it looks disgusting but she'll love it.
Matzo brei - these are those unleavened crackers you get from jewish delis. soak one in water or milk, then mush it in with whisked egg and treat in the same way as an omelette - filling and protein packed. add grated courgette or carrot and it looks really pretty and is full of vitamins too!
I add grated veg to everything - cakes, bread, omelettes, lasagne, salads. River loves grated carrot with lemon juice and sunflower seeds - really fun for a baby to try and pick up.
Writing this I'm realising you can pretty much give her anything - just blend it with a stick blender, adding a little water or milk if its dry. River has had stir fry, steak, cottage pie, lasagne, all just blended up for her. leave a few lumps in as they get older.
The most challenging aspect of feeding a weaning baby is when you're short on time. Its fine if you're home all day and don't mind doing nothing but cooking and cleaning. Freezing extra portions helps, but then you need to keep on top of what to use and when. Quick meals include scrambled eggs - you can chuck all sorts of finely chopped veg and cheese and tinned fish and herbs in. I have been known to throw tinned sardines into a lasagne and blitz it for her if she needs omega 3 that day. My six year old loved it!
Right, its lunchtime. better go blitz something. and add some sardines.