did that really just happen?

Hello, my name is Laura. I am of reasonable height and in decent shape for my size. I can wear most of my trousers without worrying about muffin top (or cake top on a bad day!) I own a lovely knitted poncho that looks like little flowers all strung together. Today, I wore my lovely knitted poncho top over my pajama top to go to the doctor to get some drugs for a fairly ouchy infection. I was attempting to look like I was not, in fact, wearing my pajamas in public. Moderate success.  As you do, when trying to fly undetected, under the radar, you meet someone you know. I met a lady I know vaguely from school in the doctors office. For the record, I look like death today.

Her opener: "Congratulations! When is your baby due?"  me: "I had him. 6 months ago."  Ouch.
Do I look pregnant? I hope not. If so, must lay off of eating cake. Or stop wearing lovely poncho.

Anyway, here are the 'Did that really just happen?' highlights of late:

1) "Your lunch went in your tummy mummy, you've got a baby in your tummy." 
NO I DO NOT.

2) "I driving my fire engine through wee wee" again, noooooooo.

3) "Why is baby Luke crying?"  "Cos I hit my bottle with the train track and it hit him." (the mind boggles at the different expressions of the same basic bullying.)

I find the best thing for times like these is something a little bit gooey, squidgy and chocolately.

Chocolate Chip Bread and Butter Pudding

8 slices bread, crusts on or off, your call.
butter/dairy free marg
chocolate bits (tesco value plain chocolate is dairy free and a steal at 30p a bar)
about 30ish g of sugar (about a 1/4 cup)
1 pint soymilk/ almond milk
2 eggs
nutmeg

Preheat your oven to 150C/ 300F.  Butter your dish, and butter your slices of bread on 1 side. I like to cut them in triangles. Use plain chocolate and enjoy cutting it up or beating out frustrations on it. Or if you feel at peace, use chocolate chips. (I used DF plain choc and it came out lovely)

Layer the buttered bread slices covering most of the bottom of the dish. Top each layer with a generous sprinkle of sugar and chocolate bits. Then mix together your soymilk and eggs and pour over the top. Let it hang out for about 30mins to let the egg and milk soak in. Have a cuppa, make some dinner....  Then sprinkle some nutmeg over the top. Pop it in the oven for 45 mins - 1hr, until its a bit golden on top and a knife in the middle comes out clean.

This version is creamier and gooeyier (sp?) than your average bread and butter pudding, but tastes like pain au chocolate only softer and more custardy. I would have a picture, but it got eaten too quickly.

slugs, stolen goods, and the art of the Spanish language.

I am now happily eating lemon blueberry cake and drinking a much much much needed cup of tea.

Today was a very busy Friday. Joel and I have been patiently waiting for our strawberry crop to fruit and ripen for us to pick and try one. We were waiting for today because our first big red strawberry was going to be ready. Daddy was out in the garden, we asked him to check on our fruit and lo and behold,  a slug had gotten there first. Right in the middle of our lovely juicy ripe strawberry a baby slug had happily munched away on half of it. I was annoyed, Joel's face was the picture of disappointment. We deemed it a naughty slug. I looked up what to do to keep slugs away--consensus seems to be eggshells or beer. Joel liked the word beer. Eggshells were what we had to hand. We then crushed all the eggshells from today (5 in total) and spread them around to defend our strawberries. Later I checked the shells were doing the job, only to find the most enormous Jabba the hut slug I have ever seen under one of my strawberry plants. So I did what you do. I flicked it 15 feet into the hedge with my trowel. Nothing messes with my berries.

We also did some much overdue DIY this week. Finishing off the trim in the conservatory (it's taken us since Sept 2010 to finish this job.) And hanging some shelves. We need to pick up some bits to tile a splashback in the downstairs loo and so we took a family field trip to Wickes. Whenever I walk in Wickes with the children, immediately, the annoucement about how parents must look after their children is played. I wonder if they have a button they push....  Anyway, we looked at tiles, decided we needed to do more research, went back to the car only to realise that Joel had tucked, under Luke's carseat, on the trolley, some particularly lovely stone border tiles. Daddy and Joel returned the stolen goods.

While making dinner- we created the kitchen mess. While it was fun--  mixing crushed cornflakes, chicken breasts, DF ranch dressing and toddlers gets messy. Then they wash their hands and dip the tea towel in the washing up bowl, lifting it up to say "It's dripping now mummy" Really? Shock.  Then we made cake. Joel's learned that he likes batter. So now instead of waiting to lick the beater or the bowl, he just tries to dig in. Managed to stop his hand, only to turn around to get blueberries out of the fridge, to find him then dipping the beater back into the batter and trying to load it into his mouth. Boy likes cake. Even not yet cooked.

On the plus side, we learned some Spanish while making all of this mess. Joel is pretty good at 'Hola' and 'Buenos Dias'. Quite liked 'bombero' as well.

Lemon Blueberry Cake

1/2 cup butter (dairy free spread)

1 1/2 cups sugar

2 eggs

zest and juice of 1 lemon

3 cups flour

1 tsp cream of tartar

1/2 tsp baking soda

1 cup milk  (can use soy or almond or oat and still turns out well)

1 pint blueberries (2 x 125g packs. They are 69p at Aldi this week. go go go)

Grease a 13x9 pan, or a tube/bundt pan. Preheat oven to 190C/375F.  Cream together the butter, sugar and eggs. Add the lemon juice and zest.  Then add the dry ingredients alternately with the milk. Dust the blueberries with flour and fold it. Pour it into the prepared pan and bake for 40-50 mins, until a tester in the center comes clean. I like to drizzle a glaze of icing sugar and lemon juice on top. Your call. Just as nice without.



hello friday

Cup of tea. check. Baby now in the jumperoo. check. Washing on. check. New pajama bottoms. check. Sheets changed. check. Time 6:45am. Ugh. Nothing says good morning quite like exploding baby poo.

It's always when they look sweet and lovely and you think, 'oh I'll just change him here in the bed, he looks so cute, maybe he'll go back to sleep really quickly after....'  Then you get the nappy off, and then you get machine gunned with poo. All over me, all over him, all over the bed. Hello Friday. Lesson learned (again) : Use the changing mat. That's what its there for.

It is though, a beautiful sunny morning and baby has been learning how to turn around in the jumperoo and so has occupied himself for the last half an hour which is a total bonus, it means I could recover with tea. Recovering with tea has rather been the theme of this last month, which has seen so much-- an ambulance ride, hospital stay, potty training, a week's holiday at the beach, the start of weaning, the change of my grandfather moving in with my parents, re mortgage of our house, the passing on of two wonderful, godly men-Bob and Andy, the deposit for the little one to go to nursery in September (means I am actually going back to work soon...), a 3rd birthday for Joel and our 8th wedding anniversary.

Sometimes you don't realise how much God has brought you through until you look back to see where you've come from.

I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. Philippians 4:13.

A better reading of that verse is-- 'I am strong for all things in the One [Jesus Christ] who continually infuses me with strength.'  I love that interpretation. I am not trying to do everything on my own, I am not even working from a bag of strength that was once given to me. I am able to face everything in life because I have Jesus, who is continually with me, infusing strength into me at every point. A friend of mine, on long walks back up the ginormous hill to their house, used to give her daughter raisins or grapes on the way, one every few metres to keep her going. Jesus gives strength, all along the way, so much so that when you reach the top of the hill, you don't even realise how far you've come until you look back and think, wow- look what we did.  It's not on my own, it's not Jesus on his own. It's us together. Him and I. I and Him. And that keeps me going. Along with tea and the occasional batch of lemon bars.

Lemon Bars

Oven to 175C/325F  Lightly grease and line a square cake tin with greaseproof paper.

6oz plain flour
4oz butter
2oz white sugar

7oz caster sugar
2 tbsp plain flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
2 eggs
juice and finely grated zest of 1 lemon

icing (powdered) sugar

Rub together the flour and butter (or dairy free marg) until it looks like breadcrumbs. Stir in the sugar and press the mixture into the bottom of the tin. Pop it in the oven for about 20 minutes.  While that's baking, mix together the sugar, flour, baking powder, salt, eggs and lemon until smooth. Pour this over the base and put it back in the oven for another 25 minutes until set but a little wobbly in the centre. Cool in the tin on a rack and then sprinkle with icing sugar.

Joel calls these 'sugar bites' and he'd be right. But soooo yummy when recovering with tea.

forklifts, fire engines and the hunt for toilet tissue.

If you know where your spare toilet tissue is, send up a little prayer of thanks. This morning I had 5 rolls of spare toilet tissue. Tonight, so far, I've found 3. This is because Joel likes to play forklift truck. Usually he is content to forklift cushions, random boxes, my clean laundry, all of his nappies including wipes and nappy sacks, blankets, shoes, etc... and deposit them in various locations all over the house. For small items, they are generally deposited in the funpod. (Funpods are worth the money. Like a learning tower but more solid)  Anyway - this morning - he found the spare toilet tissue. I was alternatively occupied (ie: feeding a baby) when he realised that he could fit 3 rolls of toilet tissue on 1 arm and carry them around "Like a forklift Mummy!"  He has since forklifted them to secret hidden locations around the house, and so far I'm still 2 down. But we'll give him grace, because it's his birthday.

It's hard to believe my little guy is 3 already. 1 more year and he'll be at school, in tiny grey trousers and a button down shirt and a little school bag and.....it doesn't bear thinking about.
Today was low key, the weekends are the party times. We've spread it out this year so that
a) he's not overwhelmed, bless him.  and,
b) so that he actually enjoys the presents he's been given.

So far, it's working really well. He has a scooter, which was pristine on Sunday afternoon and is now totally caked in mud from some serious off-road scooting. He's also had a lovely puzzle and some new books.  When I asked him a few weeks ago what sort of cake he'd like for his birthday, he replied " A digger, and a fire engine and a street sweeper cake!"  For the record, I am not the world's best cake decorator (see: The recipe that started the blog)   But I really wanted to make 2 out of 3 wishes come true.  So this past weekend I made the fire engine masterpiece:

Which actually was not as hard as originally anticipated. Time consuming? Yes. Hard? not so bad. This weekend, I attempt digger! I will be using the same cake recipe for that.

So for everyone whose son is asking for impossibly difficult birthday cakes, I give you my best 13x9 inch recipe for a chocolate cake that builds well.

Chocolate Fudge Cake

1 1/2 cups sugar

2/3 cup oil

2 eggs (one day I'm going to try replacing with 1/2 cup soy yogurt and see what happens)

2 tsp vanilla

2 2/3 cup plain flour

2/3 cup cocoa powder

2 tsp baking powder

2 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

2 cups boiling water (straight out of a fresh boiled kettle)

Preheat oven to 180C/350F. Grease and line the 13 x9 pan with baking paper, leaving overlap on the edges if you are going to build with this cake so that you can get it out easily.

Beat together the sugar, oil, eggs and vanilla.  Mix together all the dry ingredients.  Then alternate mixing in dry ingredients and water to the sugar/oil mixture. Blend well, it will seem quite a liquidy batter. Pour into your prepared pan and into the oven. Bake for about 45 minutes until it springs back when touched or a toothpick in the middle comes clean.

Cut and serve!  OR

If you want to make a fire engine, cut the cake into thirds. (I used Betty Crocker ready made frosting to 'glue' it together and then stuck ready to roll colour regal icing all over it.)   Stack 2 of the 3 sections on top of each other for the back of the truck. On the third section cut two pieces of equal size for the cab, leaving one small rectangular piece to be the 'connector' between the cab and the truck.  Decorate with regal icing and black decorator's icing and job done.



The face of cheeky

Today is now over. Both boys are sleeping(time check: it's 9:45pm!) and I have a cup of tea and have just mowed down 4 caramel cuts (the cake of the day and sweet treat because I'm worth it)  So today. Today I would describe as a hair's breath away from a total train wreck. And so, I now impart what I have learned, to you, my dear friends.

1) Supervise breakfast more closely.  It started at 8:40am with a request for a piece of chocolate cake from Joel. Along with his request for 2 boiled eggs and 'lots of toast mummy'. So I gave in to the cake request while I made the eggs, because where I come from, a chocolate donut is a breakfast food, not a dessert. Anyway, while I'm busily making eggs and toast I hear Joel talking to Luke saying 'It's yummy baby Luke' and I turn around to find him stuffing small pieces of cake into the baby's mouth. I leap across the room, finger sweep out all the cake, while Joel looks totally mystified as to why I would deny Baby Luke such lovely cake...

2) Be excruciatingly specific when giving instructions. For the record, "Go to the car and get in your seat" is not good enough. 1 pair of trousers later I learned that "Don't jump in the puddle, go to the car and get in your seat" was also not good enough. 2 pairs of trousers later I learned that "Take your truck to the car, don't jump in the puddle, just go to the car and get in your seat" -- also, not good enough. 3 pairs of trousers later "Pick up your dump truck, hold it in your hands, it does not need to go in the puddle, you are not wearing welly boots so you must not jump in the puddle, we need to go to the car, so come hold my hand and let's go get in your seat" resulted in only minor water damage to the cuffs of the trousers. good enough.

3) Glitter, when glued to a baby's head, does not come off with the first wash. It will take several.

4) Your child, when seeing another child eating chalk, will decide to take a bite and try it.  Then they look at you with a look of indignant betrayal, like "why did you let me do that??!"

5) Glue, glitter, cotton wool and feathers is never a good craft combination. Thank you playgroup.

6) If you watch Peppa Pig in Italian enough, you'll start to understand the plot.  Though, I was dying laughing watching Peppa Pig "Potato City". If you have not had the pleasure of seeing this, go look it up on youtube now. So worth it.

7) The phrase "Look Mummy, I doin' wee wee on the floor" is never good.

8) These little faces still make me smile.

Caramel Cuts

Like brownies, but toffee flavoured. Quick, easy and worth it.

Grease a 9inch square pan and preheat oven to 170C/325F.

1/4 cup margarine
1 cup light brown sugar (you can mix dark and light if you don't have enough light)
1 unbeaten egg
1/2 tsp vanilla
3/4 cup flour
1 tsp baking powder

Melt the margarine in a saucepan big enough to hold all the ingredients. Once melted add the brown sugar and blend together well. Take the pan off the heat and while the mixture is still warm add in the egg and vanilla and give it a good stir. Then add in the flour and baking powder and stir those in. Pour into the pan and bake for 20mins. They'll be lovely and golden and toffee and yummy and I doubt you'll even wait till they cool to get one out.

black midnights and bright mornings

I am a sucker for a warm piece of cake straight out of the oven. I have difficulty waiting for it to cool before slicing off a 'tester' piece. (It's very important to test before giving it to others. You may find you need to test quite a few pieces, this is essential for quality control.) Today I adapted Betty Crocker's classic 'Black Midnight Cake' -- If you hunt down one cookbook in your life, hunt down the old school 1969/1972 version of the Betty Crocker cookbook. It never lets you down, always has a brilliant recipe for whatever you want and has a fab vintage/retro feel, largely because it is. 

Anyway, I bake to relax, to unwind and to think, and this afternoon was no different. I was reflecting on a good morning at church and enjoying spending time with God in the main meeting. This is no mean feat when you have 2 small boys and a husband who is up the front doing music or announcements or preaching, just generally leading- often a Sunday morning can feel something of a mini marathon. Now, I'm not gonna lie, it is hard to stay expectant for God to move in your heart when you are simultaneously spooning spaghetti hoops into a toddlers mouth while getting a fire engine sticker out of his hair, and with the other hand doing 'magic fingers' for a baby and singing "We bow down" while actually on your knees doing all these things!  But this morning I found that if I just kept one part of my brain quietly in love with God while doing all these other things, it was like being lifted out of a black midnight into a bright morning. For in God's eyes, I'm not a beleaguered mummy, I'm a beloved child, and in the words of one of my favourite hymns:

"Ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven,

Who like me His praise should sing."

If you hunt down one truth in your life, hunt down this:

"The chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever." (Westminster Catechism)

I am made not for myself, not for making cake, not for others, not for wiping children's noses, not for something nebulus, not for something unknown. I am made for this- to know God, to love Him, to live my life to glorify Him, to enjoy knowing him, to enjoy loving him. Knowing that truth, deep in my heart, makes many black midnights turn into bright mornings.



Black Midnight Cake (adapted)

2 1/4 cups plain flour

1 2/3 cups sugar (I make 1/3 of a cup dark brown sugar)

2/3 cup cocoa powder

1 1/4 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

1/4 tsp baking powder

3/4 cup dairy free marg (you can use butter or shortening)

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

1 1/4 cup water

Heat oven to 180C/ 350F. Grease a 13x9 pan. Pop all the ingredient in a big mixing bowl and beat together until smooth. Tip: add the water in stages so there's less of a splashy mess when you turn the beaters on.  Pour into the pan and into the oven for about 40 minutes or until a toothpick in the centre comes out clean. Cool in the pan, cut into squares and enjoy the fudgy yummyness.





the bungee jump of motherhood

Sometimes, I imagine that the leap into motherhood, is rather like bungee jumping off a bridge. You've heard about it, you probably know some people who've done it, you've read a little bit about it, watched some videos maybe, but nothing, absolutely nothing prepares you for the free fall 'O my life...what have I just done...can't go back....ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh' of actually doing it. The free fall may last seconds, minutes, days or months, but on the bounce back up you start thinking...
'I can do this, this is fantastic!'
There will be days that feel like just the free fall and days that feel like the bounce back, but you've jumped. And that means that you are brave, courageous and adventurous, you have a sense of humour, some serious faith in your own abilities, and you go for it.
I don't think its just one jump either. Everyday as a mother you jump again! You've no idea what the day will bring, what highs, what lows, what the bounce will be like, where the free fall will happen. You just jump.

I've had a really reflective day today, we had dinner with old friends last night (the boys were beautifully behaved, it was amazing, I could have crushed Joel with happy hugs he was so good at that restaurant) Anyway, at one point in the evening I was asked how I liked motherhood, because he'd heard a rumour that at first I regretted it. Not so much. I miss high heels, I miss showering everyday, I miss sleeping through the night, I miss finishing a cup of tea before its cold, I miss having the headspace to follow politics and remember what's going on because its been taken up with random knowledge about Bob the Builder and Peppa Pig, but I do not, not ever, regret it. 

If anything all day today I've been cuddling the little one close, watching him sleep, delighting in his little giggles because we've always said, 2 is our limit. And if 2 is our limit, then this is the last time I'll have a little baby to snuggle up in towels after a bath, to have stroke my face as he falls asleep, and smile up at me after he wakes up . I want to savour every bit of this, because these little boys are my little miracles, and even on the free fall days, I'm so glad I jumped.

I love watching them grow and develop, I love that Joel makes pretend games and uses all the cushions to create mountains and flat bed trucks (I'm still working that one out.) I love how he gets all muddy going through the 'deep cuddles' (he doesn't say puddles properly) I love that he eats certain letters of his alphabet shaped potato first, and that he has favourites (B, F and W) I love that he wants to hug Luke and when he does Luke giggles and giggles. I love it when Joel wants to have bathtime with baby Luke. I love it when he comes bursting into the kitchen saying "Its train time Mummy!" (Obviously.)  I love it that when he really wants something he goes all super polite: "Please read tractor book with Joel in Joel's bed Mummy" I love that he thanks Jesus for trucks, tractors and the sheep in the barn all snuggled up with blankets going sleep now. I love being a mummy. I love a house filled with laughter, and I love the quietness of after bedtime and the joy of some time to reflect, to pray, to read, to ready myself for another day of jumping...

"I will praise you, O Lord, with all my heart;..I will praise your name for your love and your faithfulness, for you have exalted above all things your name and your word. When I called, you answered me, you made me bold and stouthearted." Psalm 138:1-3