Overtaxed children

Despite the title, this isn't a rant about the British financial system - we'll save that for another day.

I've been reading a great deal of late about the 'problems' of the modern childhood, and it seems that as a parent I'm caught between a rock and a hard place. If I ask my children to do a few minor chores around the house - at least teach them that the washing fairy won't put their socks in the dirty basket for them - and demonstrate the link between food shopping and tea on the table, then I'm depriving them of their time for fun, by foisting adult responsibilities upon them. On the other hand, if I bring up three kids who can't do anything for themselves and truly believe that we have magic self-tidying bedrooms in our house, I've clearly failed. If I ask them to do all the things the school require of an evening (lets count them - 15 mins reading, remedial writing because there isn't time in class, 15 mins spelling practice and "20 minutes a week homework" that often translates into a full hour, replete with tears and screaming), I'm pushing them too hard; but if we don't do those things, I'm not helping them achieve their potential.

I want them to have fun out of school too. I always swore I wouldn't drive them from activity to activity after school, leaving lots of time for drawing pictures, building dens, reading comics and just lying on the floor dreaming about stuff. But then, Little Miss started ballet last September.... and then Eldest showed an interest, so we couldn't dismiss it out of hand.... and now Middlingest has asked to try tap dancing.

None of this would be a problem, except the classes are Tuesday at 3.30 (Little Miss), Wednesday at 4 (Eldest) and Thursday at 3.30 (Middlingest). We don't get home until nearly 5 and then its a mad dash to do tea and homework and bath and stories and bed. The children end up stressed and miserable.

So what on earth do I do? Today, Middlingest announced he had tummy ache and didn't want to go tap dancing and although I suspect he's just tired, I let him. They're all watching Bugs Bunny on the video, and when that's over I shall shoo them out of the playroom to do something more interesting somewhere else while I get the tea ready.

It's all about balance, I'm sure. I just can't find it.

Using up the bits and bobs

I'm going to cheat today and post a couple of recipes I used over the weekend that are terrific for padding out and using up leftovers, providing they start unadulterated. By which I mean they won't help if you have leftover cauliflower cheese or lobster thermidore, but are great for the end of a roast and the leftover vegetables from the same meal.

Chicken caesar pasta

Very easy, this. All quantities are approximate.

Ingredients:
250g pasta
Left over roast chicken for 5 (on the light side if necessary), chopped.
Vegetables for 5 (anything that cooks quickly that you may happen to have about), chopped.
half a small tub of creme fraiche
a few grinds of pepper
parmesan shavings
balsamic vinegar.

Boil water for pasta and tip the pasta in once boiling; then put on the lid and turn off the heat. Set the timer for advertised cooking-time less 5 minutes; when it beeps, drop in the chopped vegetables and chicken and put the lid back on quick. Leave it for the remaining 5 minutes.

While you wait, put the creme fraiche in a big bowl and grind in a little pepper. Amuse yourself making interesting parmesan shavings using a block of parmesan and a vegetable peeler.

Drain the pasta and bits, plop into the bowl with the sauce, mix well and sprinkle with parmesan shavings. Serve with a drizzle of balsamic vinegar.

My 6 year old had three helpings of this!

Left-over lamb stew (based on the summer lamb stew recipe in Good Meals on a Small Budget by Gladys Mann, 1964).

Ingredients:
leftover scraps of lamb
a few carrots, chopped to baby-carrot size
a couple of spring onions, chopped
left-over spring veg of any other kind (peas, beans, greens etc)
Lamb stock
mint sauce

Put the lamb stock in a saucepan with the lamb, spring onion and carrots; bring to the boil and simmer for 20 minutes. Add the other veg and leave for 5 minutes with the heat off and the lid on. Stir in a teaspoon of mintsauce just before you serve. If you find the gravy a little thin, thicken with two teaspoons of cornflour and water. Serve with mashed potatoes.

I have also served the lamb with new potatoes cooked in the stew - just place small new potatoes in at the same time as the carrots and carry on regardless.

Fish!

Today's fish is trout a la creme. Or not, since none of the children (or His Lordship, come to that) will tolerate bony fish.

Fish is complicated in this house, because Middlingest child won't countenance anything that looks like a lump of fish, but will eat tinned mackerel, sardines, pilchards, tuna, salmon - you name it. Meanwhile, Eldest only really likes white fish and Little Miss just likes being difficult.

So, on fish days I cook proper fish for me and His Lordship (tuna steaks, tonight); fishfingers for Eldest; and sausages for Middlingest and Little Miss. Tonight, they are served with boiled potatoes, peas, broad beans and sprouting-broccoli-from-our-very-own-garden. There may also be baked beans for the nay-sayers. Needless to say I have to return the favour on sausages days, when Eldest (who does not eat sausages) must have fish....

I'm sure it's not quite what Parson Woodforde had in mind.

Spring pasta

There comes a point, around about the middle of April, when the potatoes have gone into their pots and the broad beans are sprouting nicely, that I long for something properly Spring-like on the dinner table - no more winter cabbage and wilted carrots. Because we are wildly spoilt and I do buy frozen vegetables, I was able to indulge this yesterday with a quick-and-dirty recipe that took all of seven minutes to get on to the table. I kid you not:

Ingredients (to serve 2 adults and three hungry children)
250g pasta (spaghetti in this case)
250g (one packet) of cherry tomatoes
4 slices of ham
Peas and broadbeans enough to serve the family (I don't measure, I judge)
Optional extras, depending on the children involved: black olives, sauteed leeks.

Method
1) Cook your pasta. We've been having a lot of success with slinging it into boiling water, then putting the lid on tight and turning off the heat and letting it sit for the designated cooking time. It doesn't actually need to be boiling after all!
2) Heat the grill, the halve the tomatoes and put them on a baking tray, cut side up. Drizzle with olive oil and salt and pepper, and put under the grill for 5-10 minutes, until they start to burst.
3) Boil a pan on water for the other vegetables. When the water is boiling, drop in the veg, slam on the lid and turn off the heat. Let them sit for 5 mintes.
4) Slice the ham roughly.
5) Drain the pasta and vegetables and tip the whole lot into a bowl altogether. Add a little olive oil and mix well. Serve

This went down particularly well with a dribble of balsamic vinegar each too; and has the advantage that if you have really fussy eaters, you can break it down into individual componants and serve what each person likes (with caveats like 'you must have one green thing').

A New Recipe Book

The time has come to start writing down some of what I feed to the tribe on a regular basis, or we get stuck in a rut. I was going to do this in a card file - I do like new stationery and I rather fancy little white cards to write on in my best handwriting, with my best ink-pen, and not get dirty, ever, by doing anything so silly as cooking near them.... Wait a minute, that defeats the object, doesn't it? Then I thought I might be able to cross reference the receipes so I could search for individual ingredients, or the main carbohydrate element, or the season, or the protein, or whatever. Then I thought it might take forever to build that sort of system, until His Lordship uttered the magic word 'metatags'. Does it all for me, in one easy move.

So, back to the Parson Woodforde idea that started this blog - recording what we had for dinner!

The changing face of shopping

I've never really bought into the idea of 'the dying High Street' until now. 'The changing High Street' perhaps, but not the dying High Street. Partly, this is because I've always been lucky enough to live somewhere relatively prosperous and vibrant. Now, though, even in the Affluent South, it appears to be really happening - but this time it's being accelerated by our own stupidity and snobbishness.

Take our very own High Street here. When I was growing up, a trip 'into town' (no, not London) was an exciting thing to do on a Saturday and where you always went for birthday presents after you'd exhausted the two newsagents in the village. You could find two card shops, a big newsagents, a record shop, an old-fashioned sort of haberdashers (material, notions, lace & ribbons, lingerie, gloves, stockings, swimwear, silly frilly things) and a big Woolworths. It filled the gap between village and major shopping centre half an hour away.

Now, what do we have? Woolworths closed, like the rest of the them, at the end of December. In the last three months I've thought 'I need to go to Woolworths' at least once a week every week (like I used to when it was open, before accusations of hypocrisy are levelled). Woolworths for us meant birthday presents for small friends, children's undergarments, photo frames, pegs, stationery, gardening bits (where is this year's new apple tree to come from now?), emergency school uniform and much more. Now it's gone, I have to leave town to find all of those things, and the other shops are suffering accordingly - if I'm not going to Woolworths, I don't stop at the bakers; I drive to another Post Office; I buy birthday cards at the supermarket or online.

In the meantime, the slow demise is being hastened by some frankly snobbish decisions by the local council. Our Budgens supermarket has been replaced by an M&S Simply Food - wildly expensive food that has been mucked about with. I wouldn't, by choice, cook with anything from there. And the ready meals are vile. Now, the suggestion is that the town really needs to close its branch of Iceland (so downmarket, darling - people from the (whisper it) council estate shop there you know) and reinvent it as a Sainsburys - a much better class of faffed-about-with food at a much higher price. Baby clothes can be bought locally, but only if you're prepared to pay £35 for a dress that will be muddy and grown out of in about three weeks. Which I'm not.

So where does this leave us, in shopping terms? Frequenting the market every week for fruit & veg that at least makes an attempt at seasonality; using Iceland while we still have it; walking a mile in the other direction to go to the butchers (fine on the way there, a long way on the way back with a month's worth of meat); ordering clothes we can't repurpose (now there's a buzz word) or make ourselves over the net. And the High Street slowly dies, because it's can't provide what a family need anymore - although there are two mobile phone shops, five coffee shops, two charity shops and a travel agent. I predict a pedestrian precint made of nothing but coffee shops within 5 years.

Snow

Well, I really can't avoid talking about it any longer, can I? It's snowed. No really, proper snow. Apparently the worst since 1991 which is, come to think of it, the last time I went sledging. The children only made it to school on Wedsnesday and Thursday this week, and on Thursday we went by sledge. The snow is still falling now - about three inches settled, on top of yesterday's frozen slush - and predicted to fall for the rest of the day.
It's interesting that the country is getting so het up about this snow and the 'lack of a precise forecast'. Since when has telling the future been a precise art? We were much happier, I'm sure, when people just sucked their teeth and stared at the sky and waited to see what the weather would do. If this week has proved anything, it's surely that our obsession with controlling all the variables in our environment is pointless. The weather is. Live with it.
I think it also helps to take the long view. In the last century or so, we've had a really hefty winter every 20-25 years or so - 1947, 1963, 1991 and 2008/9. Why is this year a surprise? Anyone with their eye on the calendar properly should have had an inkling this was coming.

It's also raised some interesting points regarding how we live and work. As a family, we are are very lucky - we both work from home and live a mile or less from the children's schools. We can get to school and to the shops, whatever happens, although this working week has been wiped out for me by the schools closing. The schools have been closing 'because the roads are too dangerous to ask teachers (and pupils) to travel'. When I was a child and we had six inches of snow, the only person who couldn't get to school was the headmaster - because he lived in Harrow, not within the village. All the teachers made it even though the school was down one Chiltern hill and up another one for some of them, because they came on foot. I never missed a school day through snow, although I do recall one cancelled birthday party because two friends in rural Hampshire couldn't get off their farms.

But enough of this. I'm off to shovel children into waterproof trousers and play snowballs.