baby its cold inside...

Today is window day. Today all 3 windows at the front of the house were taken out and replaced with new ones! Ones that actually shut all the way! However. Today is also a wet, miserable, rainy, cold day. The baby is ensconced in furry blankets supervising the proceedings and I..I am sheltering in the relative peace of the kitchen making muffins and dinner and writing this. In a jumper. With another massive cup of really hot tea.

After my usual Thursday routine--going to Aldi and Sainsbury's in the rain -- I came home to utter chaos all over the house. We like to give ourselves a challege on our days without Joel, to see how messy we can make things, and then see how fast we can tidy them up before people come over for the church joining in course at our house in T minues 3hrs 20mins.

So I did what I do: stay out of the way, keep quiet, let the men get on with the job while making cups of tea and cakes. Days like today call for a quick muffin recipe and a dinner that you can throw in the slow cooker. Ideally make it a slow cooker dinner that reminds you of a chinese takeaway!

Courgette mini muffins

1 1/2 cups plain flour
1 cup sugar (I like to mix brown and white)
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
2 eggs
1/2 cup oil (you can substitute 1 mashed banana or 1/2 cup applesauce)

2 cups finely shredded courgette (zucchini) peel it first.

Grease a mini muffin tin (if you use papers, then you'll pull off most of the muffin with the paper.) Preheat the oven to 180C/350F.  Mix together all the dry ingredients. Make a well in the middle and add the eggs and the oil and mix together until just moistened. Then fold in the courgette. You can add chocolate chips or raisins or craisins to the mix if you want.
Spoon into the greased mini muffin cups and bake for about 20 minutes until golden brown and they spring back when touched.


                                                    Peking Pork for the slow cooker             

1 pack of diced pork shoulder about 450g/ 1 lb
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 tsp ground ginger
1/2 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup ketchup
1 large clove chopped garlic
splash of vinager (cider or sherry work well)

Cook on low 6-8 hours. I like to steam some broccoli and carrots and throw them in at the end. Serve over rice or noodles. Serves 3-4 people.
This also works well with stewing beef-cook it all day, or chicken- cook 4-6 hours. Also good with chinese veggies thrown in, some bamboo shoots/spring onion/bok choy---whatever you like best.

Lefties and Haybales

A variety of studies show that less than 10% of the world is left-handed (source: wikipedia font of all knowledge). However, I may have produced 2 left handed little boys. For the first time today I watched Luke grab for toys--and he did it--you guessed it--left handed. He also chooses mainly to chew his left arm, take out his soothie with his left arm and cuddle his blanket with his left hand. Strong early evidence.  Joel is unquestionably left-handed. He chooses to use that hand for all of his major activities: eating, digging, colouring with permanant markers while I stand hovering with wet wipes, and most importantly, making haybales.

Making haybales. For those of you who have never made toddler haybales a la Joel, allow me to explain. You will need a lot of freshly cut grass, so that you have loads of clippings left in piles to scoop up. You will also need a ride on car. Joel uses his Chuggington car for this, as it comes with a haybale maker. The haybale maker is cleverly disguised as the seat of the car, and lifts up to reveal a compartment for storing toys or treasures if you wish, however it is really for making haybales. In order to make a haybale, you lift up the 'seat' and stuff as much freshly cut grass or rotting leaves or old dry grass or freshly fallen leaves inside. It doesn't matter if it doesn't all fit, the bigger the haybale the better.  Once you have filled the 'haybale making compartment' then you squoosh it as hard as you can by pressing on the 'seat' i.e. haybale maker and jump up and down a few times. Then in order to check the durability of your haybale, run as fast as you can, pushing the car, preferably down a gravelly path so that there is a lot of bumps. Then after about 10-15metres, stop. Unload the haybale into the middle of the path and proceed to begin again with a new pile of grass.

I dedicate this haybale making lesson to Lucy Leach who patiently waited while this scene played out again and again and again and again around Boscawen park. :)  And for her and for all the little monkey toddlers making haybales I give you this cake:

Monkey Bread Cake 
(I personally like a less sticky monkey bread, so this is why I do it this way)

Do the dough in the bread machine on the dough cycle. If you don't have a bread machine, then do as for baking bread. Mix and let rise 1 hour, punch down, let rise another hour, then punch down and knead and proceed from there. 

1 cup milk/ soymilk
2 tbsp butter/ dairy free marg
1/4 cup sugar
1 tsp salt
1tsp cinnamon
3 cups plain flour
2 1/2 tsp yeast 

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3/4 cup melted butter

1 cup white sugar
2 tsp cinnamon

Once you have the dough, grease a tube or bundt pan really really well. Roll the dough into small pieces a little smaller than a golf ball - about the size of a large marble.

Dip the dough balls in the melted butter and roll them in the cinnamon/sugar mix. Layer them in the pan. and bake at 180C/350F for about 35 minutes until nicely risen and golden and crisp. Pull the edges away with a plastic knife if needed and turn the cake out of the pan after about 10-15 minutes. Best served warm, eaten with fingers pinching out the yummy dough balls.

*If you don't have a tube pan you can do them as muffins- grease the tray and pop 5-6 dough balls in each cup. They still bake for about a half an hour. Or make the pieces even smaller and do mini muffin monkey bread, yummy! *




When you've turned it all out if you think--hmm, this needs some caramel sauce-- then do this:
1/4 cup butter
2/3 cup brown sugar
2 tsp water

Bring it to the boil stirring constantly and cook for about 2 minutes until all the sugar is dissolved and it starts to thicken a bit. Drizzle over the cake or the muffins or serve as a dipping sauce if using immediately.

Vivaldi for toddlers

It is a wonderful, joyous, exuberant moment of pure bliss when your truck obsessed toddler boy asks to see violins after playing with his alphabet flashcards; and you realise with a shocked internal silence of gratefulness that you could watch youtube videos of the greats playing Vivaldi rather than monster trucks in mud.


Oh how I relished those 20 minutes. How I cheered inside everytime when Nigel Kennedy finished a piece and toddler clapped his hands and said 'yay! man with violin, yay!' and I let myself hope that maybe there is a spark of civilised cultured toddler inside the mud encrusted exterior that usually presents itself.

If I had enough eggs, I would be making civilised cultured cakes to celebrate. But alas, I only have enough for tonight's mini toad in the hole...but! if I had the eggs, I would make:

Orange Cranberry Banana Muffins

1 cup whole berry cranberry sauce
(you can make your own by boiling 2 cups of cranberries with 3/4 cup orange juice and 1 cup sugar until thickened, freeze the leftovers to make these again!)

1/3 cup butter (dairy free marg works well too)
2/3 cup white sugar
2 eggs

1 3/4cup flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2tsp salt
1/4tsp baking soda
1 cup mashed banana (2 bananas should do it)

Mix together the butter, sugar and eggs. Then add in the dry ingredients alternately with the banana. Fold in the cranberries at the end.
Bake at 200C/400F for 15-20minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Makes 12 big muffins. Also good as mini muffins for little people. Also good with chocolate drizzled over the tops if you want to make them a bit decadent.

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Now for those of you thinking, what about the mini toad in the hole you mentioned? Another wonderful use for a muffin tray. And a really inexpensive way to do dinner.

Mini Toad in the Hole

6 sausages, cut in half (I like lincolnshire for these)

125g plain flour
2 eggs
125ml milk (we use Sainsbury's sweetened soymilk or Alpro original)
125ml water

oil for the muffin cups

Pre-heat your oven to 200C/400F and put a little oil in each muffin cup and half a sausage. Pop those in the oven for 15-20mins until they are getting a bit brown. Meanwhile, mix up your batter of flour, eggs, milk and water.  When the sausages start to brown, take the tray out and pour batter into each muffin cup over the sausages, they'll be about 3/4 full.  Pop it back in the oven for another 15-20 minutes until they are puffed and golden brown.

Use a knife (plastic/silicon if you've got a non stick muffin pan) to go round the edges and turn them out of the tin. Serve up with veg and gravy. Yummy.

A hungry 2-3 year old will eat 2-3. A hungry adult will eat 3-4. With enough veg and maybe some beans, you should be able to feed 2 adults and 2 kids.

These also freeze really well and heat up fast in the microwave. Good to stash in the freezer for nights when you're in a rush. :)