Cakes, cakes, cakes!

Ah, the half-termly PSA cake sale. The letter sent out too late, the last-minute change of setting, the clash with various clubs... But we all love a bit of cake, don't we? And at 30p each (four for £1), you can't argue. Especially when they're as amazing as this!

But all offerings - including, and, in fact, especially 'confectionery applied to breakfast cereal' as a friend of mine described her own contributions - are gleefully, and remarkably indiscriminatingly pounced upon by hungry children craving sugar. So we beg, implore and bully people to bake some cakes if they possibly have time (people start to back away in the playground when they see us coming), we bake, we ice, we eat several too many of the ersatz chocolate decorations we've bought, we breathe a sigh of relief when we see children other than our own heading to school cradling plastic boxes and biscuit tins.

You say baby food, I say soup...

Soup. Not baby food. OK?

It's disheartening, isn't it, when you think back to all the lovely vegetables your small babies ate when they were first eating solid food. Lovely purees of sweet potato, butternut squash, spinach and potato. Delicious risotti, stews and casseroles... they couldn't gobble them fast enough. Fast forward to now: "I'm not eating THAT", "I think I'm going to be sick", "Is THAT what's for tea???"

All of which is, clearly, a ringing endorsement for a blog that claims to be about feeding kids well (I'll get me coat...)

Sunshine, birthday cake, pageantry

Here's what's been up with me recently.

Hiking in the glorious, sunny Yorkshire Dales. Careful not to look at those white legs for too long, you'll go blind.

Fabulous Flapjack

The chair of the kids’ school’s Parent Staff Association is a lovely woman called Alison who – among other things – bakes cakes and treats for a good independent local coffee shop. To entice us to attend a meeting a couple of months ago she baked some of this amazing flapjack. Under its spell, we agreed to help organize a fundraiser. Seriously, it was just that good.  A buttery, sugary, fruity festival of fun (rather than a health food, which the presence of oats might otherwise lead you to suppose, or at least hope). I have adapted it slightly - the chocolate on top is mine, all mine! Feel free to experiment until you find a combination of fruit that you love – this is great for using up odds and ends!

What's for lunch?

Look, I know I don’t need to tell you about quesadillas, but I’m gonna, anyway. It’s the school holidays! I don’t know about you, but I’m halfway up the wall with all the (play) fighting (which always ends up the same way as the real kind), the mess and the lack of any kind of volume control, not to mention the destruction of neighbours’ property (don’t ask). Of course the upside is the weather has been gorgeous, we've had some lovely trips out, and we can all still be in our pyjamas at 10am if we like...

That Yummy Sauce

Kids are funny lil’ ole things aren’t they? (Though, if you have them, ‘funny’ may not be the adjective that springs immediately to mind.) One day they like something, the next they turn their noses up. Incredibly honed instincts enable them to tell on sight whether they like something or not, no morsel need pass the lips. Combine a set of ingredients in one way and it’s a big thumbs up, combine the same ingredients and present it in a different format and, well, good luck.

Not a recipe, a rant

I ordered some single cream from Ocado and instead they bought Elmlea. I didn’t know what it was, so I didn’t give it back to the driver. I think I assumed it was just branded (as opposed to supermarket own-label) cream. It was with a growing sense of (what? Outrage? Is outrage too strong?) let’s just say outrage, tinged with disgust, with perhaps a soupçon of sadness that I read the label.