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Well hello little blog of mine. It has been over a month since I provided an update on life's current happenings. I am still here and life is still proceeding as it has been since last month. Before I get into life, I want to share someone with you guys... This is my amazing boyfriend, Johnathan. A little over a month ago, we made it "official". I can honestly say that I have never been happier. If you read my blog (or haven't yet, you can go through the archives) you know that 2014 has been an extremely difficult, productive, hard, exhausting year. However, I have grown tremendously as a woman and as an adult. Though it was a difficult year, I pushed on and tried to do the best that I could. Patience is not my virtue, but this year, I did not have a choice but to live patiently -- optimistically hoping that everything would eventually fall into place. It has. Life has been wonderful, but busier than ever. I have been with my best friend every single day. It is so ref...

Italian Fried sage with anchovies Sage on the balcony is growing visibly. Strangely is one of those herbs that I use very little, if not in the classic preparations like butter&sage or saltimbocca. Sometimes I prepare the mice of fried sage that I like particularly stuffed with anchovy paste. Some people in the batter puts a whipped egg white, me I gave up for lack of eggs at home. Definitely not a new recipe for you readers Italians, but for those American might be a nice novelty:-) Ingredients  60 sage leaves anchovy paste in a tube 120 grams of flour 1 tablespoon olive oil salt 1 glass of beer oil for frying Preparation Prepare a batter with flour, olive oil, salt and beer. The consistency should be semi-liquid. Wash and dry the sage leaves. Put a little 'of anchovy paste between two sage leaves, dip in batter and fry in hot oil. Enjoy this little Italian classic recipe!

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I often read a blog called "Cupcakes and Cashmere", which is written by a gloriously Californian control freak and tells you how to do your nails, how to "braid" your hair, how to make teeny tiny sweeties or lovely brunches or "style" your coffee table. Style my coffee table!? A problem I never knew I had! Whoop! The blog has taken quite a ribbing online, most notably from The Huffington Post (those killjoys, unless you are Sarah Koenig you're dead meat), who declared that blogs like Cupcakes are "bad for women". I see where that sentiment comes from, but do you know what's bad for women? WOMEN ARE BAD FOR WOMEN. As in, we seek this stuff out. We like pretty things. We are competitive. We fucking love it . Sorry but it's just a fact. For my part I am really relieved that Cupcakes and Cashmere exists. I am visually inarticulate and inept. Given a choice I dress as if I have fallen out of a bin and my home decoration would extend to my ...

Apologies for the unforgivably crappy piping here - I was listening to Serial at the same time and so was distracted  Gingerbread is the most terrific stuff. It is easy to make, easy to handle and then takes and keeps a good, clear shape when cut and baked. Not all doughs are like this. It explains why gingerbread is used to make the men, the houses and so forth - you can cut and re-roll without too much heartache. Anyway if you have a big tub of excellent Christmas-shaped cookie cutters lurking about somewhere and fancy it, this is a really good dough to get creative with. Alas, I do not have any novelty biscuit cutters, only 1 single rather lame star-shape, but I do so resent giving over space in my kitchen to something that is only going to be used once a year. The star-shape gets a good year-round work-out. This quantity of dough makes easily enough for an entire class or a healthy contribution to a bake-sale, even if you cut out your shapes reasonably thick. This recipe is fro...

I came up with this recipe for Parsnip Mash on my new blog but thought I'd would share it here as well because it would be absolutely fantastic for babies too. Very simply made and even easier to eat, this would be great for adults or first weaners. Check out the recipe for Parsnip Mash by clicking on the link!

A more onerous task than a Boxing Day Buffet I can't really imagine. But for many of you this year, it is a reality. How do you feed many people, of wildly different ages with basically zero prep time? Because the day before Boxing Day, if you hadn't noticed, is a bit busy and there's not terribly much time to get anything done. The answer! Is the same answer as in every mass-catering question and that is: a LOT of very few things. So, an ENORMOUS quantity of a single meat dish. An ENORMOUS quantity of a single vegetable dish and an ENORMOUS quantity of a single carbohydrate. Do not faff about with one quiche, one pie, one of this sort of salad one of that sort of salad. You will go completely crackers. What I always recommend to anyone who asks me is: 1 A glazed ham 2 Jamie Oliver's Winter Coleslaw 3 Mini baked potatoes (by mini I mean about the size of a five year old's fist - not actually tiny, but not a giant Spud-U-Like jobby) 4 You could also have a coronation...

My husband has discovered a way of cooking pork belly that produces the lightest fluffiest, crunchiest crackling ever. I think he stumbled upon this by accident, though he claims to have known about it all along, but I swear I've never had crackling this good in the past. Anyway, I'm not going to press him on this issue because if you corner my husband, he comes out swinging, which is enough to give anyone a fright. Okay so what you do is take a goodly portion of pork belly (about 500g), score the skin in a diamond pattern and then rub a lot of sea salt into it and leave this to sit at room temperature for 1 hour or more. Then you put it in on a greased baking sheet or tray or pan or whatever and put it in a pre-heated oven at 140C for 3 hours. Then when that time is up, you turn the heat up to absolute top bongoes and cook it for another 30 mins. Then you rest it for 20 min. And the crackling bubbles up like packing noodles, only in a much more delicious way. Try it! I have st...

The most extraordinary thing has been happening to me over the last few weeks. I have been feeling, for the first time in my life I think, broody . I know! I know! The madness of the thing. I have spent the last four years bitching and moaning and complaining at length about pregnancy and babies and small children and then just as Sam lets up, stops being quite such a staggering life-destroying, joy-seeking missile, I start to think "Hmm, maybe it would be nice to have more children?" I have been regarding myself in this moony phase with some wry, critical distance. Enjoying your life again and enjoying your children as they are in their current phase after some years in the wilderness, is not the same as wanting another baby. I think it's easy to confuse the two feelings, thinking that this must mean that you want more. Feeling that Sam is just too insanely adorable with his little fat legs in their corduroy bags and his chubby little feet and his tiny baby voice and his...

I've been too happy to write anything recently. Before this, I was too miserable to write anything, now I'm too happy. My life is too much like an advert for ... something. Cashmere socks? Sometimes, some mornings, I wake up of my own accord because it's 7.20am and both children are still asleep, having slept all night without waking me up. This is a miracle. This has not happened for an entire calendar year. And, I can enjoy it because I'm not and - let's face it - not going to be pregnant again. This is it, this is my life now. It's actually okay again . Up until quite recently my life was fucked because I was pregnant with a toddler or I had a baby and a toddler or Sam was such a living nightmare. Now Sam is absolutely the opposite of a living nightmare. He is a delightful little boy. And you know that's true because I would say - I have said - if he was not being delightful. I actually look forward to the mornings, now. I do not look at the clock from 3p...