10 things

• About a month ago I realised that working as a nurse feels completely normal now, rather than strange and new.  This is A Very Good Thing, as it means I no longer feel overwhelmed, but I still retain my excitement and enthusiasm.

• I have just nine shifts left as a student.

• I am making time to run, although I am starting to realise that I can't always go running exactly when I want.  Such is life though - anyone working or looking after children, or both, has the same problem.
• Yesterday, when the coach at my running club said that our session for the evening was "Chats", I assumed that this meant running and chatting.  So I set off, cheerfully chatting to the person next to me.  It turns out that "Chats" is actually a loop of over 8km, which includes the long Chatsworth Road in Hackney.  And it also turns out that the lady I had started chatting to is very experienced, races competitively most weekends, and runs at a much speedier pace than me.  My good manners and sense of pride meant that I couldn't bear to either stop chatting or drop away from her, so I ended up running over 8k at my 5k pace, whilst discussing analytics methodology in the publishing industry.  An amazing achievement.
• I bought some new lunchboxes from Lakeland.  This yogurt-and-granola pot is my favourite, and means I can quickly re-fuel with much needed carbs during my 15 breakfast break at work.  Plus, how cute is the tiny honey pot?

• Cam is in Year 10, and has test after test at school at the moment.  Some of them are progress tests and some of them are official GCSE assessments.  He's characteristically laid-back about it all, but it strikes me as being pretty relentless.  I made him a chocolate cake yesterday, and when he came home from school and ate a big slice with a big grin on his face, I was so pleased.

• I read Gone Girl last week and didn't like it one bit.
• I've had some good walks lately - just locally around Epping Forest, Hackney and Walthamstow Marshes and the Olympic Park on my days off.  The damp, misty, golden autumn colours and smells just take my breath away.

• One of the first things I am going to buy when my salary comes through in January (the first money I've earned since 2009 - oh my), is a new pair of walking boots.  Mine are ten years old and the sole is coming away from the boot on the right foot; they are not really very waterproof anymore.

• There is obviously a very long list of Things I want To Buy when I am earning again.  

10 things

• Graham and I celebrated our third wedding anniversary.  We went camping again - and Olivia insisted on doing a photo shoot of us snuggling up on a bench together.  She took close to 400 photos, just by holding the button down on my phone camera and telling us to smile.  There was just one I liked.  We took an anniversary selfie instead, which I am much happier with.  Sorry, Olivia!

 

• The children and I went to Brick Lane, ate pakoras in the sunshine as we wandered around, and came home with a huge bag of bagels for the weekend.

 

• Cam likes his bagels with kippers for breakfast.  I like mine with avocado.

 

• I did my first parkrun in my new running club t-shirt this morning.  Rumours that I chose this club because I find the shade of blue on their shirt particularly pleasing, are entirely false.

• We have a new dishwasher.  It is so quiet, it purrs.
• Olivia sewed herself a top.  This is the first time she has done any dressmaking, and I was so impressed with the results.  She did everything herself, and all I did was explain some unfamiliar terms on the pattern.  The pattern is the Oliver + S Ice Cream Dress/Top, in the age 12 size.  It comes out quite short on her - she is a couple of months shy of turning 12, but is very tall.  She is keen to make another, and add a few centimetres onto the length.

 

• I did some dressmaking too, and made myself a new dress - another Lisette Portfolio dress.  It has a seagull ribbon trim on the hem, which I bought in Whitby, and contrast fabric inside the pockets.  It may be my most favourite dress I've ever made for myself - or it may just be that whatever I've made most recently is my favourite.

 

• I am keen to make more clothes while I am still on my long summer holiday.  Perhaps the Lisette Diplomat Dress, which I have the pattern for, but have not yet made.  Or maybe this Everyday Skirt?
• My sister and her two small girls came for a visit.  The littlest cousin was completely unfazed by the two big teenagers thrusting their cameras at her every time she smiled, did something cute, or moved.

 

• I made 22 raspberry madeleines yesterday afternoon.  There are only five left this afternoon.

    

The best breakfast

I finally found a granola recipe that is quick and easy to make - no tedious removing from the oven to stir every five minutes - and which doesn't require me to hand over my entire month's food budget to Holland and Barrett in order to buy ingredients: this recipe - from the brilliant Jack Monroe.  

• The recipe uses ingredients that I always have in the house: oats, peanut butter, honey and a little pat of butter.  That's it.
• It took me about 2 minutes to mix and then just 15 minutes to cook.
• It made the whole house smell amazing while it baked.
• Cam did a quality control test once it was cooled, and I had to physically remove the spoon from his hand in order to stop him from eating the WHOLE BATCH.

Granola jars

 

I had some for breakfast this morning with yogurt, banana and fridge jam.  It was one of the nicest breakfasts I've had in months.

A very fine breakfast

The fridge jam is a cross between a sauce and a jam.  It needs to be kept in the fridge, and is a lovely thing to have on hand as the basis for a fruity breakfast, a smoothie or a pudding.  This one is made from half a punnet of blackcurrants - left over from an enthusiastic session at the PYO farm last week - a few shakes of caster sugar, and two tablespoons of water.  I put everything in a pan, brought it to the boil, and left it to bubble for a few minutes before cooling and putting it in a clean jar. 

Blackcurrant fridge jam

It is nice and sharp, and a wonderful colour.  You can make this from any fruit, but berries and stone fruits work particularly well.  The key to making fridge jam is just to use a very small spoonful or two of water in your mixture.  Proper jam uses much more sugar and no water; stewed fruit (or fruit compote) uses less sugar but more water - fridge jam falls somewhere in the middle.  

I love blackcurrants so much - such an interesting, feisty fruit.  This jar of them tastes  like distilled summer.      

Evolving appetites

Graham is training for a marathon again.  He came home last weekend after a long (over two hour) trail run, and his Garmin showed that he had burnt nearly 1,800 calories while he was out.  Which is an eye watering amount of calories for a single run - over two thirds of the recommended daily amount of calories for a man.  Unsurprisingly he parked himself down at the kitchen table and devoured vast platefuls of food, washed it all down with a banana and oat smoothie and then took himself off for a long nap.

The children too are eating vast platefuls of food and sleeping a great deal.  They are growing almost in front of my eyes...Cam is now within a centimetre or so of being taller than me, and Olivia already taller than her grandmother.  Teenage appetites have arrived in the house with a vengeance.

And so suddenly I find that my years of experience in cooking for four people don't count for much.  My previously precise quantities are all out of kilter, and what used to feed us all comfortably with second helpings and leftovers now barely feeds the children.

Toad in the hole

Baked oatmeal

Potatoes - ready to be roasted for a corned beef hash

Would you like some porridge with your syrup, Olivia?

Cherry and almond cake

I have gone back to doing a big brunch on Sunday mornings, which gives me a break from what sometimes feels like endless cooking and feeding of squawking baby blackbirds.  While Graham is out on a run, the children can lollop on the sofa watching tele, and I can leisurely potter about in the kitchen listening to Radio 4 in peace while I cook and bake.  I try and make at least three big, filling dishes that everyone can help themselves to, and come back to during the day if they feel hungry.  I don't bother making anything for lunch, and then we have supper a bit earlier than usual.  It makes the whole of Sunday feel lazy, indulgent and slow, which is just what I want.

Here's what has made it onto the brunch menu during January:

• corned beef hash
• herb omelettes with spicy tomato sauce
• Amish baked oatmeal (recipe here)
• banana and apple muffins
• huevos rancheros
• lemon and raisin pancakes
• savoury bread-and-butter pudding (grated cheese and bacon instead of the sugar and raisins)
• soda bread
• breakfast pizza (homemade pizza with breakfast-like toppings eg. mushrooms, bacon, tomatoes, eggs)
• spicy burritos
• oat and raisin muffins

We eat brunch at about 11am, but the children can't last that long without food.  While they are lolling and tele watching they are also eating fruit, toast or porridge - whilst waiting for brunch to appear....so basically they have breakfast AND brunch....

Another sort of morning

I wouldn't want you to think that a nurse's life is all about early mornings.  I am working Long Day shifts at the moment, which are from 7:30am to 8:30pm (or 8pm to 8am if it is a night shift).  They are certainly long, tough shifts, with a very early start - but I only have to work three shifts most weeks, so I get plenty of time off too.  I rather like this pattern of working, and it fits in well with having older children - I still feel as though I see plenty of them, and can help them with homework, chauffeur them to ballet and nag them to do chores.

On my days off it usually pans out like this:

6:30am -  Graham's alarm goes off.  He gets up, brings me a cup of tea in bed, and I start to think about waking up.

7:15am - I wake up Cam and Olivia.  They grunt at me and try to hide under their duvets.

7:30am - Cam comes downstairs, eats half a melon and some toast and then goes to watch Youtube videos of other people playing computer games.

7:45am - Olivia comes downstairs and makes her packed lunch.  She eats a bowl of yogurt and some toast, then floats around trying to find shoes, hairbrush, school cardie and her green pen.

8:00am - I feed the hens and collect three eggs from them.  I have a cup of tea and some yogurt.

8:25am - I leave to take Olivia to school by car.  Cam leaves the house about 5 minutes after us and walks to his school.

8:55am - On the way back from Olivia's school I park the car at the edge of Epping Forest and go for a 5k run.  The gorse and the broom is in full flower - so bright it hurts my eyes.  I see a heron flying overhead, and listen to the Northern Exposure version of Last Train to Lhasa on my headphones - one of my all time favourite pieces of music.

9:35am - I get home and have a long soak in the bath, accompanied by a whole pile of magazines and Radio 4.

10:00am - coffee and a croissant in the garden, followed by the rest of the day to myself.

Good times

10 good things on a Good Friday

• All alarm clocks switched off.  I still woke up at 6:20 though - force of habit.
• A peaceful couple of hours in the kitchen, first thing.  Strong coffee, freshly baked soda bread, omelettes and spicy tomato sauce for breakfast.
• A solid three hours studying, while I listened to my iPod.  I need to make some more study playlists - I know the current ones too well.
• Graham and Cam watching Battlestar Gallactica on LoveFilm.
• A couple of new eye pencils - making my life that little bit more glamorous.
• Cam and Olivia gazing at Easter Eggs - embargoed until Sunday.
• Slobbery baby kisses with my niece.
• Playing trains with my nephew.  I am impressed I still know my Percy from my Toby, and can even tell Annie and Clarabel apart.
• Forgetting about cardiovascular disease for a little while, and heading to the pub for a quick drink with my friend.
• We had whitebait as a bar snack - I LOVE whitebait!

Cheers!

  

New Year's Resolution

Just one New Year's Resolution for 2013...

 

...eat more smoked salmon.

Happy and lucky

As a Friday treat I left my flask at home and bought myself a cup of coffee when I got to the campus early this morning.  I settled into a window seat, with a view over the square (the same square I ate my breakfast in during the first few weeks of term), plugged myself into my iPod (listening to this, which always reminds me of lying in the sunshine at summer festivals) and finished off a piece of work.

 

 

And as I sat there - with beautiful music, a glorious view, a hot cup of coffee and interesting work - I thought how very lucky I am to be this happy at 8:30 on a Friday morning in November.

The new breakfast routine

Of all the new routines that are emerging, one of my favourites is my picnic breakfast, sitting on a bench in the square in front of the main University buildings.

I have a flask of hot coffee, and a foil parcel of wholemeal toast and peanut butter.  There's no time to eat at home - and it's too early anyway - so I bring it with me.

I watch the squirrels and the pigeons pottering around the square, and see the other nursing and midwifery students starting to arrive for early lectures.  I admire the beautiful old windows in the terraced houses around the square and turn my face to the sky to soak up a little of the early morning sunshine.

For my friend

Because I know Alice likes her French patisserie, I went to the boulangerie this morning.

I wasn't sure if she would prefer a croissant, a toursade au chocolat or a pain au raisin.

So I bought all three, and made the family wait while I photographed them.

Bon appetit!

Amish baked oatmeal

I can't remember where I first came across this idea, but it captivated me right away. 

Baked oats and fruit - a sort of solid, fruity, spicy porridge.  Eaten for breakfast, but with echoes of pudding.  All the recipes I found for it are American, and most refer to it as Amish oatmeal. So the recipe has an old fashioned, healthy German-Swiss heritage to it, which really appeals to me.

Oats are mixed with eggs, milk, a little sugar and loads of fruit and then baked in a pie dish the oven.  My final recipe below is an amalgamation of loads of different ones I found online.  I reduced the sugar content to a fraction of the American versions, because I really don't like my food very sweet, and I upped the fruit content to compensate.

The whole family adore this, and what should feed about six people disappears between the four of us in about ten minutes flat.  G, C and I like ours with natural yogurt on top and O likes hers plain.  Yesterday both G and O had third helpings.

Amish baked oatmeal

Dry ingredients:

• 3 cups porridge oats
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 2 tsp cinnamon or mixed spice 
• 1 cup chopped fruit or berries (I used blueberries)

Wet ingredients:

• 1 cup stewed fruit (I used apple)
• 1 cup milk
• 2 eggs
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 100g butter, melted or vegetable oil

Mix all the dry ingredients together in a big mixing bowl.  Stir all the wet ingredients together in a large jug.  Pour the wet into the dry and mix together until thoroughly combined.  Pour into a large pie dish and bake in the centre of the oven at Gas 4 for 50 minutes to 1 hour.  Check that it is done as you would for a cake: poke the middle with a cocktail stick and make sure that there is no wet mixture left.

This is so easy to make that you could mix it all up while you are half-asleep and then go back to bed with a cup of tea and the new copy of Mollie Makes while it cooks.  For instance.  The smell while it cooks will drive you crazy with desire, and eventually force you out of bed and downstairs so that you can eat great, greedy bowlfuls of it for breakfast, washed down with another cup of tea.

I mean really.  What's not to like about winter when you've got this to get you going in the morning?

~~~~~~~~~~

This would be amazing with any combination of fruit.  I've seen many different permutations online:

• stewed rhubarb and chopped apple, with ground ginger in place of the cinnamon
• stewed blueberries and chopped peaches
• stewed apple and mixed frozen berries (no need to defrost them first)
• stewed plums and chopped apples
• stewed apple and chopped pears

You get the picture.

Saturday morning brunch

I have been thinking a great deal lately about how our family routines have evolved as the children have grown older.  Evening mealtimes have changed the most - from high tea for the children at about four o'clock when they were very small, and a later evening meal for me and G, to late afternoon family teas when C and O started school, to an after-school snack and then a proper evening meal all together nowadays.

The latest big change to our family mealtimes started last autumn.  Graham began his ironman training, C started doing the local Park Run each Saturday morning and O was bought tickets to a matinee at the ballet once a month.  Suddenly I found myself on a Saturday getting breakfast ready for everyone at completely different times and yet eating mine by myself, getting started on lunch as soon as the last breakfast was eaten, ferrying children around instead of baking a nice cake, and moaning at certain ironmen when they wolfed down two bananas and the last of the bread after a bike ride, and were then too full to eat supper.  I felt like I spent the whole day cooking for three permanently hungry, busy people, and not doing anything nice for myself.

So we started Saturday morning brunch.  Brunch is usually eaten at around 10 o'clock - after the early morning runs, but before the bike rides, ballet shows, swims and essential shopping trips to the yarn shop that must all happen during the rest of the day.

I potter around the kitchen peacefully for a couple of hours, with a cup of coffee, Saturday Live on Radio 4 and nobody to disturb me.  It has come to be one of my favourite parts of the weekend.  Graham and C are usually out running, and O is stretched out full length on the sofa in the front room, like a cat, in sole charge of the remote for once.

I always cook something hot and savoury, some muffins or buns, and something fruity, and make sure there is bread for toast too.  This morning we had diced potatoes, onions and sausage, baked in the oven and then liberally seasoned with black pepper and parsley.  I also made my favourite bran and buttermilk muffins, and there was granary toast and some gorgeously ripe pears on offer as well.

After all that I don't make any lunch, but there are leftover muffins and pieces of fruit for people to nibble on during the day if they are hungry.  I cook us a big, hearty family supper for the evening and we catch up on what we've all been doing during the day.

The table set for brunch

Granary loaf and bran & buttermilk muffins

Diced potatoes and a muffin recipe

Cook's treat

O likes muffins

We always need Lurpak and Marmite

Other successful brunch dishes we've had over the last few months have included:

• slow roasted tomatoes with garlic and chilli
• apple spice muffins
• omelettes
• cinnamon rolls
• pancakes
• scrambled eggs with chorizo and coriander
• bacon butties
• burritos
• diced potatoes and green pepper, roasted in the oven
• stewed rhubarb and yogurt
• banana muffins
• bagels
• devilled mushrooms on toast
• Welsh rarebit
• baked eggs
• freshly made soda bread
• carrot muffins

I also have plans for kedgeree, kippers, devilled kidneys and cornbread (not altogether).  My muffin recipes all come from this brilliant little book, and other recipes are usually from Hugh F-W's River Cottage Everyday, BBC Good Food magazine, various Rachel Allen books or just out of my head.

Then after a chatty, satisfying, filling brunch we are all free to go about our days in our own ways - whether that is reading the Saturday papers and doing a little bit of knitting in a sunny spot in the sitting room, or cleaning mud off your trainers and going on a four hour bike ride.

You know which one's me, right?

Spiced raisin bread

Okay - as requested, here is the recipe for spiced raisin bread!

I usually make this dough in my bread machine and then transfer it to a loaf tin and leave it for a second rise before baking.  You could of course do the whole thing by hand or the whole thing in a bread machine.  More details on method follow below.

Ingredients

• 1/2 teaspoon dried yeast
• 400g strong white bread flour
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1 tablespoon milk powder (optional)
• 15g butter
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 heaped teaspoons mixed spice, allspice or cinnamon
• 6 tablespoons raisins
• 280ml water

Method

If you are using a bread machine, bung all the ingredients in, in the usual order (for my machine, it is yeast, then flour, then other dry ingredients, then water - but machines do vary).  Put on a dough setting, then remove and knead briefly.  Put into a 2lb loaf tin (see here for my thoughts on imperial sized tins!) and leave to rise. 

If you are making by hand, combine the yeast with the water (from the hot tap), sugar, salt and milk powder.  Leave for 5 minutes to activate the yeast and then stir into the remaining ingredients with a wooden spoon.  Tip out onto a floured surface and knead until the dough is smooth and elastic.  Put the dough into an oiled bowl and leave to rise until doubled in size.  Knock back and transfer to a 2lb loaf tin for a second rise.

Once the bread in the tin is risen, transfer to a hot oven (Gas mark 7) and bake for 35 minutes.  Tip onto a wire rack to cool.

I love this bread toasted and spread with just butter.  O likes it with honey, and C favours it with apricot jam.  G will eat it with anything!  It makes awesome bread & butter pudding, and I have high hopes for the French toast from it tomorrow.  Enjoy!

Good things

Good things on a sunny Friday:

• Quilt progress.  I have sewn dozens of leaves already, and am not sick of them yet. This is promising.

• A backlog of Americana and Food Programme podcasts on my iPod to keep me company while I sew.
•  A lemon drizzle loaf cake for the weekend.

• This really lovely spice mix, from Anna.  I've been adding it to everything I can think of.

• But mainly spiced raisin bread.  This is the last of the midweek loaf, and today I made another so that we can have spiced raisin French toast for brunch this weekend.

Good times.