Help my Mum is on steriods, Living with the older generation.

One dose she's taken, just one and already she has me wanting to crawl up the wall with my teeth. How is that even possible the stuff can't have even got in to her system yet and she's charging round the place with a self imposed sense of importance and the attitude of a stroppy teenager.  I already have one of those, who is of my own creation, I don't want to deal with another one thank you.

It started yesterday when eldest child offered to make dinner. Now I don't know how you play this is your own household but in ours those that are doing get to choose what they do.  It seems the only fair way in my opinion of making this ardourous task (see previous blog post) anymore bearable.  So she decided she wanted to make homemade wedges from actual potato's.  I know, shock horror this would involved actually having to prep stuff, so as I was being let off one of my less enjoyable chores (I'd rather iron than cook, its that bad) I full supported this decision of hers.  Now we weren't prepared for a wedge type dinner in the sense that I hadn't bothered to get any meat out to cook at all that evening, before you ask, I don't know what I was planning to do for food that night before eldest child kindly stepped in (again see previous blog post) luckily, well not exactly luckily as the whole family know what I am like and so we regularly stock up on frozen chicken in various forms. We had in the freezer some chicken steak things so we decided we would together go wedges from scratch, broccoli and frozen chicken steaks.  Its almost there in the healthy eating stakes.  Anyway the point to the is incredibly long winded story is the fact that sterioded up mother walks in on daughter and I sweating & swearing over the ovens and stoves and has a complete paddy over what is being cooked.

The conversation went as follows, "WHY are you making THOSE things?" "Mum, Lexi is cooking and she wanted to do wedges we didn't have any fresh steak or chicken breast so we've used this instead but the wedges are fresh and so is the broccoli" "Well I bought fresh meat, I'm not eating this crap, why should I have to eat this crap" me know slightly irritated "Its not crap Mum we are cooking from fresh most of it, and the meat you bought is for stir fry, you bought 2 different types of meat, neither of which is a big enough portion for all the family so we decided it would be ok to do this and feed the entire family the same thing. ok" she storms off through the swinging doors muttering "its not good enough, I don't want to eat that crap, its not fair" anyway I turn to look at my daughter and her face is crestfallen.  I know that look, its the look that must be on my face when I am trying hard to cook for everyone and someone turns their nose up at it, and while I expect it from the boys to have my mother make my daughter feel that way, got me alittle bit angry.

"You are either cooked for or bought food for every bloody night of the week, Mother.  If you want to start making demands on what is eaten in this house, you can either cook for everyone or cook for yourself but you are not going to dictate to me how this entire family eats just because it suits you"  She sulked the entire rest of the evening, though she did manage to throw some veg and wedges down her throat without choking and I bet she enjoyed them to as Moo did a fine job of seasoning them.

Needless to say, we're still not on the best of talking terms, second dose has gone down and she's whizzing around slamming doors, demanding why things are where they are, driving the cleaner up the wall moaning about everything and generally huffing and puffing alot.  Don't get me wrong I'm glad she's feeling better I just wish she's calm the feck down otherwise there will be war on our hands and I won't be held responsible.

Tonight I shall use the beef and the pork she bought but I am not going to cook it in the way she demands but in the way I think the entire family will enjoy it so heads up round two will be around 5.30pm tonight.

Wish me luck xxx

Give it up for the slow roast and other dinners they hate

As awful as it is to say and totally non PC, being born female a layer of expectation is already being placed on me from the minute I draw my first breath in the world.

One of these is an innate predisposed ability to cook.  Whether it be just the pressure of tradition or the natural maternal instinct to feed our off spring, women on the most part are the main cooks in any given home anywhere in the world.

There is only one slight problem for me with this whole set up and that is the fact I don't actually like doing it. While I like the praise for a meal well prepared and the pleasure of seeing faces enjoying the meal I have placed in front of them none of it makes up for the pain and drudgery of having to not only think what I can make but then go about preparing it.

Don't get me wrong there are days when I am totally up for the challenge and feel positive about the food I am making.  I take pride in adding flavours together and challenging myself to push the boundaries of my food comfort zone.  But unfortunately these days are few and far between, given that anything new I put in front of my darling children at least one of them will turn their pretty little noses up at it.

I don't know about you guys, but my heart breaks alittle when I spend all day cooking and they refuse to eat it and then the next day I present them with chicken nuggets and the wolf it down.  Persistence, you may say, or even, they will look back and appreciate your efforts one day, which quite possibly is true, but you couple this normal parent/child relationship with the fact I don't actually like cooking and you hit an impasse.  I don't like doing it, they don't like eating it. Where do I go from here?

I could give in and just make pizza and nuggets everyday but that goes against every parenting bone in my body.  I was brought up on meat, veg and potatoes every night, how can i possibly not do that for my children as well, plus the other grown ups in the house might complain slightly as they would find a diet based solely on stick it in the oven jobs rather hard to swallow (excuse the pun).

There's always the other possibility of simply handing the job on to someone else, but we all know that's never going to happen unless I drop dead or something.  I could just cook meals I like every day and have everyone complain at me but not give a toss as I would be eating something I like. I could try and get the kids more involved with the cooking but past experience has left me rather scared by these events and the kids are probably traumatised still to this day.  I could go on strike until they all agree to promise to always eat whatever I put before them, but I am pretty sure we'd all starve before this happened.

So my only conclusion is I keep plodding on till they all leave home as most mothers do, then get complained at bitterly that I always cook far to much for "just the two of us" while I'm secretly hoping that one of the kids will pop in and fancy something to eat.

I've lost my baking virginity

I really don't know what came over me the other day.  I've never had the urge to bake anything before in my life but suddenly I had this massive desire to make a bacon and leek pie.  Admittedly I had an excess amount of bacon left over from Christmas and my knowledge of what to do with a large quantity of uncooked bacon is rather limited and I have little if no imagination, so it seemed like an ideal solution.

I had ready to roll puff pastry sitting in the fridge (no hassle there then) but when I went to retrieve it I realised that it was actually out of date and therefore not viable as an ingredient.  Damn and drat, I'd have to make my own pastry.  

Luckily Mooki moo was on hand to guide her mother (me) through the steps of how to make pastry and together we managed to produce some dough.  Who knew, I even had plain flour in the cupboard...!!

I loved kneading the dough it was great fun, I really got to give my upper arms and shoulders a good work out and having to do that sort of thing every night of the week for dinner it was not surprising ladies may have been stronger, muscular and generally scarier in the olden days (builders biceps).

With dough ready we got out the rolling pin, by this time two more little pairs of hands decided they wanted to join in with the cooking and so for the next 10 minutes we were having to take it in turns with the roller but eventually with got a nice thin dough and we covered the base of the pie tin with it.  In went my leeks, bacon, salt, pepper and a pinch of nutmeg and then we put the pastry lid on ready for the oven.

The pie in the end took a good hour to cook (even though the recipe said 35 minutes) and it was delicious,  though I am sure I could have improved in so many ways.  Anyway here it is........................

Before lid on



With lid on :0)



Yummy with chips all cooked.