Easter Accomplished

Easter has passed and had barely a dent on our budget thankfully! Through careful planning and a little bit of preparation everyone who required a present received one and we had an action packed easter break with quizes and crafts and lots of roast dinners mmmmm.

With Easter fast approaching and only a fiver to spare from the budget, since we've been topping up isa' and such i need to especially sagacious this month.
I love celebrating festivals and not being particularly religious i find that we can have a very loose easter. So on a budget of five pound where's the money gonna go?
We have 8 eggs/ pressies to buy. I think these will be homemade chocolates, as these cost about 25p per box. so that's 2.00 straight away, but i should have some left over for the easter egg hunt. I have enough in the storecupboard for a simnel cake and gingerbread houses. I will use junk modelling for decorations and homemade easter cards, i have also been given a great suggestion for birch twigs covered in feathers from a swedish lady, from where it is a traditional swedish decoration!
So the great easter make starts tomorrow.

Gingerbread men

My eldest boy is learning about the gingerbread man at school and came home on friday wanting to make a gingerbread man. I foolishly agreed and so on sunday afternoon having already made a roast dinner i found myself arm deep in gingerbread dough with two excited little pixies running around my feet.

the recipe-

Ingredients- makes 25 ginger bread men

125g Butter or Baking fat (much cheaper and in this instance tastes fine)

100g Muscovado sugar/ brown sugar

4 tbsp golden syrup

325g Plain flour

1 tsp Bicarbonate of soda

2 tsp ginger

1. Preheat Oven to 170c.


2. Melt butter, sugar and syrup in a pan over a low heat


3. Place the rest of ingriedients into a bowl


4. Add the melted mixture to the dry and mix thoroughly until it forms stiff dough.


5. Roll out to about 5mm thick and cut out your shapes.


6. Bake for 10 mins or until golden brown


7. Cool on a wire rack.


8. Decorate.

Personally i added a touch of cinnamon too. i also only made 6 gingerbread men because they are very fiddly and we turned the rest into houses and a sun. They all took the same amount of time to cook and remember that they comeout soft and harden as they cool. As you can see the kids loved decorating them, as did hubby and i. We used supercook icing tubes that are about 1.78 for 4 tubes. Not very cheap but will last about 3 batches and worth it for entertainement value. We ended up with a gingerbread street!

I think i was possessed by germaine greer yesteday, it happens occasionally. I get all Vaginas and bad men and everything turns into phallic symbols. It soon passes and i turn back into a more liberal and easy going me. The scary thing is that as i get older i'll become more like the germaine greer me.
Here's a lovely recipe for Beef Curry i havent cooked it yet but i've no doubt it'll be lovely.

Serves 2+ 2 little uns

1 frying Beef steak tenderised and sliced thinly
6 Tomatoes fresh and diced
1/4 big bunch of tesco fresh coriander, chopped
2 onions diced
4 carrots sliced thinly
1 pepper sliced
6 mushrooms sliced
1 1/2 pints of water
1 beef stock cube
1 tbsp Plain flour
1 tbsp mild curry powder
1tsp ground allspice
1 tsp ground cloves
1 tbsp tom puree

1. Fry the beef strips in a little oil for 3 mins,
2. Add the onions, carrots and peppers. Fry for 4 mins.
3. Add the toms, mushrooms and coriander and fry for futher 3 mins.
4. Add the remaining ingriedients minus the water and stir through.
5. Add the water and simmer for 5 mins.

Serve with rice or poppadoms.

Babies and the dark scary cave!

Last night i watched Dawn gets a Baby. As i have already mentioned i'm a really big fan of dawn porter, and i found last nights episode to be just as honesta nd informative as the others. Having had 3 babies though i am constantly infuriated by owmen who are ridiculously squeamish about there own bodies.
I actually had a woman telling me that she would rather opt for a cesaerean as she did'tn want her 'bits to be out of shape' ! Really i was very shocked. Why is she bothering to have children if there not even worth giving birth to? Having had 2 natural labours and normal vaginal births it really pisses me off when women say that. Do these women prance around in front of mirrors with they're legs akimbo admiring they're vaginas or something? Because unless your particularly partial to looking at yourself does it really matter if it looks a little different. I presume then that they are worried about this myth that sex after having a baby is not as good. If these women just thought even vaguely logically then they would realise that

1. if it was so awful to have children then people wouldn't have more than 1 and consequently the human race would die out.

2. Men would rather women thought that sex was worse after women have children so it gives the men more right to go and fuck someone else because the man is not recieving a tight enough pussy for his delicate needs!

Well i can honestly say that mine and my husbands sex life has only improved over the years as we've got to know each other better and having the children has often meant that we've had to stop for a few weeks at various intervals but it's never really been a very big issue to how good the sex is.
So i've dismissed the 'sex is shit after' myth as... well... shit. And as for the aesthetically pleasing side of things, i've really not noticed to much of a difference though please understand that my husband would be more of the person to ask and he's not devastated by the effects of children on my 'bits' so for now i wont seek any counselling for him.
Women are given the most amazing gift and thats to be able to grow and give birth to a new human being, so to moan about not having a super pussy anymore seems a little stupid, does it not? Respect the power of a womans body and stop fretting about issues that are irrelevant.

Is mince and onions enough for a roast?

The steak i was planning on using for the casserole was off, grr so i had to make mince and onions with gravy as the meat for the roast dinner today. That was so annoying. I felt like i was in the seventies or something. I dunno it just didnt feel like i put enough effort in. It tasted o.k, everyone else liked it, or at least they said they did, but it's much more satisfying carving a piece of meat. In general we have meat 3x a week. Normally i will roast a peice of meat, have it with a roast and however much i have left goes into various meals for the rest of the week. That means that by wednesday we're onto veg since i make a roast at the weekend. It's not that i dont like having just veg because i prefer veg to meat anyday (i've typed meat to much now all i can think of is cock). I like roasted veg and casserole and veg curry and dhals and all delicious things like that but theres something so right about a good roast at the weekend.

I made aubergines that were absolutely amazing last night. I find the best way to cook aubergines is to use a pastry brush and slice them thinly length ways and then brush on olive oil and fry them each side for about 3 mins. They taste amazing. Especially if you use the oil from olives of sundried tomatoes or peppers. I've even used the oil from tuna before , you know when you buy tuna in sunflower oil and you drain off the oil well if you keep it for cooking it's delicious and saves money!

Another little tip is if your short on time when decorating a cake then try grating on chocolate, it looks very professional and takes literally 2 secs.

The meal was lovely last night with the m-i-l though i feel an arguement brewing about potential scattering of ashes of my late father in law. She wants him buried and hubby wants him scattered and s-i-l i'm not sure about. It's such a tricky thing. Ultimately hubby and s-i-l have the final say so hopefully my m-i-l will realise that and back down a little. If you hace ever met my mother in law you will know what a proposterous suggestion that is.

Mothers Day

So with mothers day approaching we have a busy weekend ahead. The Wheat free chocolate cake is in the oven and smelling gorgeous, the pressies are bought, the meals planned and the cards are in the thought process. My m-i-l is over tonight for a meal, It's all planned

Starter

Aubergines

Main

Paella

Dessert

Chocolate Cake

Obviously all homemade. The paella recipe is the one used previously, The aubergines were 50p each at the market and the chocolate cake has been made from left over choclate at xmas. The chocolate cake will also cover tomorrows puudding, when the other half of the in laws are coming round. I'm really looking forward to seeing my little neice who i havent seen for almost 1 month!

The pressies for both my Mum and M-i-l is Chivas Regal which is a very nice blended whisky that's currently 5 pound off at tescos. In general my mum will only drink single malt but this blended is so nice you can make an exception.

Ohh i would just like to recommend my new book. Blind Willow Sleeping Woman, it's an amazing collection of short stories. I can always tell when i'm reading a good book because it makes me want to write!