Happy Birthday J!!!

I cannot believe it! My baby is not a baby anymore!! He has turned 2 and to sound like the old saying "Hoe time has flown!" To celebrate we went to a farm nearby for a bit of a party and to feed some animals and have a tractor ride. Fun was had by all (though I do believe that most of the adults had more fun than some of the kids!).

To go along with the farm themed party, we decided to buy a tractor cake. However, after shopping around and being told that the cheapest quote would be £47.25 (!!!!!!!), I decided that it could not be that hard to make one myself. So after much research at the local library, I bought a rather fabulous book and decided to give it a go.

Now I need to point out hat I am by no means a fabulous baker, I want to be and I aim to be, but I am new to the world of cooking and baking, a complete novice and am teaching myself to cook and bake from scratch. Prior to doing this cake, I had only ever made a two tier cake, like a victoria sandwhich, once and thought that that was hard!

So after my said trip to the cake decorating shop in the village, I bit the bullet and started the cake.

Make 2 loaf cakes out of a recipe for a madiera cake or such like. I used a reciped for Vanilla custard sponge cake. It worked really well, as it stayed moist yet was easy to carve and strong enough to make a novelty cake from.

500g softened butter
3 cups white sugar
6 eggs
1 1/2 cups custard powder
4 cups self raising flour
1 cup milk
3 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 180C and grease two 25cm x 11.5 cm loaf tin
Cream butter and sugar and add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.
Gradually add sifted custard powder and flour and beat well.
Beat in milk and vanilla extract until combined.
Divide batter into the 2 loaf tins and bake for around 45mins.



Level the first loaf cake and cut 6cm off one end. From this small piece, shape a rectangle that is 2cm high x 6cm wide x 9cm long. This is for the bonnet of the tractor. The remainder of the loaf cake is for the main body of the tractor. Then coat each piece in butter cream or real icing, whatever you like. I used Betty Crockers butter cream and it turned out fab.

From the second loaf cake cut a rectangle that is 10cm high and 9cm wide fro the cabin. Cover this in butter cream. Leave the rest of this piece for the wheels.

Use the butter cream to stick the bonnet ontop of the main body of the tractor. Ice the main body of the tactor in whatever colour icing you want and place onto your cake board.

Then cover your cabin piece and bonnet piece. Place them onto the main body.

The only thing here was that our cabin was a little heavy for the base. Use  dowels/straws, toothpicks or whatever you fancy, to secure it in place. We had to use 6 wooden skewers, but next time we will use straws and a piece of thin card.

Make your wheels for the remaining cake, cover in butter cream and ice. Stick to the tractor with skewers and leave to set.

And Ta Da!!!!

I do have to say, that I am a little bit proud of it! I love the fact that it looks super homemade and a bit wobbly in places ( I think I can honestly say I am not going to make a living from novelty cake making )but we did it! J loved it and we had to hide it until Sunday as he wanted to play with it.

So my first homemade novelty cake. If I can do it, ANYONE can do it!!

The only thing now is we had such a good time making it (Si and myself), that I want to make another. Maybe we could have an all singing and dancing Christmas cake! We will have to see.

Follow your heart not your brain!!

So after a couple of weeks of going through a hundred different thoughts and ideas about what I want to do ( I felt like I was going through career guidance at school again!!), I have have come to the conclusion that the only person that I need to impress regarding my own development, is, shock horror, myself. Given that I am my own worst critic, this is a tall order to meet. I have to be realistic in that we will hopefully be expanding our family in the next couple of years and J is not starting school for a couple of years either, so it would be ridiculous to start trying to complete a degree, or try to give a language or other course my full undivided attention, until we have got to a place as a family, where I can focus on something other than us as a unit. So I decided that as I am the chef of our household, I would throw myself into something I LOVE. Learning how to cook and bake.

So I am following my heart in order to feed my family and my brain. Plus The Great British Bake Off has started and there is no better time in my eyes to try and increase my baking and cooking knowledge, whilst using the medium of media to motivate myself, plus every episode makes me want to bake more and more exciting things (Battenburg here I come!!).

In order to get myself started, I decided that I needed a few things, so I made a trip to my local cake decorating shop in order to stock up on a few "essential" (cough, cough) items that I could not do without. I am not too sure that I definitely needed the icing roller or the three different shades of green food colouring/paste, but I got them.

So with my new kit, I have also decided to order an organic vegetable box on a weekly basis. This is the best thing I have ever done. Plus I am stupidly excited every Wednesday when Alan brings our delivery. Fabulous. I am making things that I have never ever thought I could. Not only that, I am realising that recipes are not really that difficult, as long as you read it properly. In fact the only reason I made the same 4 dishes over and over ( lasagne, chicken casserole, sausage casserole and beef in ale, in case you were wondering) was because I found the names of recipes and the huge amount  of ingredients really daunting.

One of my first exciting new creations were courgette polpettes and home made naans, which J helped with of course:

As you can see he was not too impressed with the dough!

All I can say is thank you Hugh Fearnly Whittingstall (?????). His recipe for the polpettes were delicious. Even J ate them, which considering they had green veg in them was a miracle. Admittedly they are not the prettiest things, but boy they were good. The only thing I would have added was possibly some cumin to give it a bit more of a kick, but I suppose you could add some chilli if you wanted some added kick. We will definitely be wheeling these out again.

I am so pleased that I have finally given myself a break and am doing something that I am really enjoying. the only problem now is that I may have to take up running in order to burn all of the extra calories off!

Career or No Career? That is the question.

Over the last few weeks, I have been questioning what I want to do with my time now that J is getting to an age where he will be going to nursery for a couple of days a week. I have played about with doing a cake decorating course, learning a language, doing a creative writing course, doing my Egytpology degree, going back to work..... The list just kept on going. After talking to my mum, I came to the conclusion that I just needed to focus on one thing and run with that. The only problem is what to do?

There have been a few things that have happened recently that have made me question what I should be doing and worse questioning my decision to be a SAHM.

 I recently went to a play group with J and was introduced to a group of mums with similar aged children to J. They were all very welcoming and after the usual introductions they began discussing how fabulous they all felt about having amazing jobs and managing to still be hands on mums. To be honest, I was in awe and thought that they were all amazing managing raising thier children and working.  That was until I spoke to them. One of the mums turned and asked me what I did for a living. I responded that I was a stay at home mum. She did not respond verbally, but looked me up and down and then turned her back on me and carried on talking to the group as if I was not there! Now I am 100% sure that I did not come across in any untoward way and that I did not give her any reason to respond to me in the way that she did. All I could do was walk away and play with J until song time and then  make my excuses and leave. I am also quite ashamed to say that I cried on the walk home and could not get my head around what had happened.

Over the last few weeks I have had a huge debate with myself as to what do I bring to the table? If some mums had thought that I had so little to offer to them based on the fact that I did not work, did it make me any less of a person?

Now back in the dark ages pre baby J, I did have a career, a good one to boot. One that I did really well at and one that I worked blinking hard at. However, once I found out I was pregnant, I realised that I was not living the dream and that after my mat leave I would have a very big desicion to make regarding whether or not I would go back to work.  After 9 mths mat leave, we decided that I could stay at home and raise J and any other children we would have. It was a hard decision and not one that we made lightly.

After much discussion with my girlfriends, husband, family and many other people (including a table of people at a wedding we attended - it was the red wine, honest!!), a general consensus was that a person is not defined by what they do professionally, how they look and what they have. A person is defined by how they treat others, what experiences they have encountered, thier actions, what they have learnt, thier friends and family. All of which, the mums at the playgroup could have found out, if they had bothered to talk to me. I also realised that I had made the right decision in being a SAHM. It is not easy at all, some days I really question my sanity when we are watching Monsters Inc for the one millionth time or when J is having one of his tantrums, but it is such a priviledge to be here with the little man and watch him grow up.

However, I have noticed that in recent trips to Tesco, is that I will talk to anyone. I will linger at the deli counter or till point having a chat with one of the assistants slightly longer than I should do, all in an attempt to have an adult conversation. I talk to people doing thier shopping who give me polite smiles that read "back away from the crazy lady!!" Now I do need to point out that I am not some crazy person who randomly skulks in the bacon aisle talking to complete strangers about the weather, but I do manage to talk to a large number of people about nothing! After our last trip to the shops where I needed some points putting on or card and I spent just a moment too long talking about J and his cheeky monkeyness, I realised that I needed some mental stimulation. So again what to do?

I wonder if anyone else is in the same boat and what they are doing. I feel that this could be a time for a little life coaching and a couple of hours of  serious thinking about what I want to do. The only thing I certainly know is that I won't be going back to work just yet and I certainly won't let any more people make me question my decisions. So watch this space whilst I have a ponder.....

The Super Great Outdoors!

We have managed to resume some sort of normaility again after our period of incarceration. But little J has still not been 100%. So we made an executive decision to just stay close to home, but explore what was on our doorstep, in our bid to embrace mother nature and all she has to offer.

The week started with a little ramble behind our house, with a trip to the farm and the footpath that leads up to the top road. What usually takes me about 10 mins to walk took our little posse about an hour to amble up. And what an amazing hour that was. We had muddy puddle splashing, dry stone walling, cattle grid negotiating, cow chasing/spotting, tractor spotting, ruin climbing, trailer leaping, stone collecting, nettle stomping, plane watching........ the list goes on and on and on.

I realised something as we were going on our little adventure, watching J and his friend N, and that is how much of a priviledge it really is to watch the world through the eyes of a toddler. I spent the whole hour just watching them play together shrieking and playing, taking in all of thier surroundings with amazement and wonder. Hearing J shout "House, build, house", as they were dry stone walling was really something else and watching his little face light up with pride as he managed to stack 3 rocks on top of each other as N kept passing up more and more rocks was possibly one of those moments that will be etched on my memory for the rest of my days.

On Friday we went to Blackpool Zoo, which was brilliant. Our band of merry mummies and toddlers arrived in a state of harrassment and frenzy. Trying to round up four very independant toddlers and a five month old, whilst battling with buggies, reins, backpacks and issuing "time-outs" for the heavyweight battles that were commencing (due to being tied down in thier car seats for an hour and then being asked to go in a buggy, whilst Mummy paid to get in) had managed to wear everyone down. But after a frought hour of trying to channel our inner peace and not shouting the same three names over and over again ( to the point where passers by knew the names of the three monkeys in question) we all started to calm down and enjoy the surroundings and the animals. We had a really lovely afternoon watching the sealions whilst eating ice cream, playing in the trees and on the playground.  Absolutely brilliant. Fabulously finished off with pizza and fish fingers with our dear friends. Can it get any better??

J really responds well to being outside, where he can run about with some freedom and independance. He always seems to come on leaps and bounds when he is allowed to spend most of his time outdoors. I too am becoming a bit of an outdoorsy kinda gal. Not bad for someone who's idea of embracing the great outdoors involved a credit card and an afternoon shopping in Manchester! Oh how children change us for the better!

I think sometimes I spend my time fretting about what activities to do with J, what books to read to help him develope, what songs to sing, which toys to play with, so much so that I forget, that its the simpler things that bring him the most enjoyment and pleasure. So I can really say thanks to Mother Nature, for helping me to focus and realise that the outdoors really are GREAT!!!!!

Cabin Fever

So we have spent the last two weeks holed up at home due to J having had an almighty array of illnesses, poor sausage. Also not great for all involved.

To say that I have been pulling my hair out trying to come up with interesting and fun things to do to take his mind of things, would be an understatement. I think that we have managed to do everything from counting through to making spoon people, all in the name of entertainment. I can honestly say, that I would have given Mr Maker a run for his money (we really have watched too much tv as well!)!! I have recylced as much stuff as humanly possible, in the form of egg boxes and containers in a bid to turn them into everything from dumper trucks to rockets. However,  I have also manged to spend a small fortune in Tesco, and the surrounding shops, finding art and craft items to use. It has turned into a bit of an obsession now though! Lets hope that Si is understanding when the credit card bill arrives!! Aarrgghh!!!

We have even managed to cook our way through most of our cook books, ones borrowed from the library and even ones bought from Amazon this week (which resulted in a few days where I stalked the postman. Not good!!). The freezer has never looked so full, mainly as a result of us all not eating anything, J being off his food and it being impossible for one adult and a 23mth old  to eat 8 cakes, 9 batches of biscuits and 3 pies in just under 2 weeks.

I really need to take the bull by the horns. Especially as cabin fever is beginning to set in. It has got that bad that when we ventured out for half an hour today to head into town, poor J was that excited to go out in the car he ran round screaming his usuall "Car, shoes, brrmm." over and over again, whilst laughing and and shaking with excitement. So a plan is needed as we need to spend some quality time outdoors. But what to do? I am going to have to come up with something a bit different than the park as he has a mass of energy that needs to be burned off and I don't think that a slide will cut it!

 I have come across an amazing blog called "Looking for Dragons", which has some fabulous ideas, including making ice cream in a bag out doors with nothing but ice, salt, 2 resealable bags, chocolate milk, sugar and some shaking. Sounds brilliant and more importantly, cheap (Lets just hope that the weather inproves.)! I cannot wait to see what we can come up with.  I cannot wait either to come up with some other random things to do. So let's pack up our brollies and wellington boots and see what sunny Lancashire has to offer!

Monkey Bread It's the Future!!

So after our foray into the animal themed lunch for the zoo, I really really struggled to come up with many original ideas to make the picnic jazzy. Then as I mentioned I found the recipe for Monkey Bread. I did make an attempt to make a salad "animal ish" by calling it vine salad, but even I feel that was a little tentative!

I decided that anything involving a toffee sauce and cinnamon would be worth a try, even under a guise of animal themed food. It was devine. Baby J and Si both polished off about a third of it in under ten minutes. I'd like to say that it was Si who ate the most, but I would be lying!! Not bad for a 22mth old! It was also quite amusing to see them both prowling round the table shouting "Cake!" whilst waiting for it to cool down from the oven. Brilliant. It was even worth the washing up and the 2 hrs it took me to clean the toffee sauce off the milk pan! The cake took a lot of prep, which J helped with and loved, what with waiting for the dough to rise and segment up and rise again, but was really really worth it!!

The Zoo was brilliant, but was most definitely a wash out, in truest sense of the word, owing maily to the downpour that caught us out whilst we were on the playground, not made any better by the fact that I was whizzing down the slide after J when the rain came, which left me with a very damp pair of jeans and a very questionable damp patch! I did draw quite a few odd looks. J managed to become aquainted with a rather giant tortoise shell and fell in love with the Orangutans and Otters.

The fab day was finished off with a rather long nap in the car on the way back, both Daddy and Baby J were wiped out, and a rather large piece of cake or two!!  Honestly Monkey Bread is the future!!!!

Animals, Shoes, Brrmm.

So for the last week J has been on a one man mission to get us to go to the zoo. After a lovely weekend in Wales and a visit to the Welsh Mountain Zoo and Chester Zoo, I think he has aquired a taste for all things Zoological! He has proceeded to follow us around the house from the moment that he wakes up, until he goes to bed , saying "Animal. Shoes. Brrmmm." He even managed this morning to get my car keys and attempt to open the front door!!! Even now whilst he is in bed, I can hear his full repotoire of animal noises being shouted over and over again. Brilliant! I have managed to visit three seperate animal enclosures in the last week to try and fulfill his animal reuirements, but to no avail! I am thinking that it might be another trek across Cheshire to visit the zoo again.

Whislt I was on my quest to cook something "new and intreresting that we have not had before" for my boys, I thought of an excellent idea. What about making J and Si an animal themed menu ( and before you point out that meat comes from animals, I mean in sense of puddings and shaped/named foods)? I came across an amazing recipe on The Pink Whisk for Monkey Bread. Fantastic in all of its yummy, sticky, toffee, cinnamony goodness! So here is the plan. Take J to the zoo at the weekend and then pack a Zoo themed lunch.  So all I have to do now is come up with a few savoury Zoo inspired dishes if I can do that then I think that it could be a success!

So Zoo here we come!