Tag: someone

Oat and raisin cookies

I occasionally get emails from people asking me for childcare advice – normally about sleeping and eating (what else is there, after all?) – and sometimes these emails are from people who I assume have all the answers about kids already: doctors and teachers, basically.

One was an obstetrician worried about what her under-1 was eating. And I thought YOU DELIVER BABIES surely they are just not a subject you need help with. But she did. And she said “I just needed to hear someone else say it.” I get that a lot. “I just needed to hear someone else say it,” they say when I tell them to stop eating if they want to be thin, or stop rocking their kid to sleep or to stop breastfeeding if it’s making them suicidal.

Yesterday I needed to hear someone else say “You need to do controlled crying with Sam.” And my heart sank – right into my socks. But I knew they were right.

Controlled crying is the worst thing you have to do as a parent, I think. Is there anything else? MMmm, no. It is absolutely horrible. And it only looks and feels right and sensible from a distance. It never feels anything other than the most horrific, inhuman crazy reckless selfish evil thing you’ve ever done when you’re actually doing it. There are fewer darker places to be, as a parent, then listening to your child cry and doing nothing about it.

I mean, come on! To leave your child fussing, or wailing or even fucking screeching the house down? Well that’s just a thing for social services surely? You’re no better than Baby P’s mother! The parent of that poor Polish boy who starved to death! YOU ARE A MONSTER! These thoughts loom large in the small hours.

But there comes a point when it is time to get a grip and have some perspective. And I think that controlled crying is in fact a thing that you are doing to yourself, not something you are doing to your child.

Very few parents go for controlled crying as Option 1. When I had to do it with Kitty it was only after days and days of trying other things. And with Sam I have spent the last three months trying everything else when he wakes at 5am: patting, stroking, popping in a dummy, taking him in bed with me – all that. And he doesn’t want it, it makes it worse. If all I had to do with him was hop into bed with him at 5am every morning and give him a cuddle and he would fall back to sleep until 7am I would do it. Happily! But it doesn’t work. Neither does the dummy. He just spits it out half an hour later.

And I’ve been fretting and fretting and fretting about it for weeks. What to do? What to do? Then yesterday someone said “Just let him cry.”

And I went :(((((((

But this morning as the clocked ticked over to 0500 and Sam began his dawn chorus of snuffling and whimpering and going “ehhr ehhr ehhr ehhr ehhr” which turned to “waaa waa waa waaa” I got out of bed, taking a watch with me, shut the door on my husband, shut Kitty’s door and went up to the nursery. I straightened Sam in his cot, as he was headbutting the sides, gave him back his muzzy thing, gave him a pat then went out to sit on the stairs.

A watch is completely vital when you are doing controlled crying. With nothing to mark time it feels like they have been crying for hours, days, YEARS. In reality I let Sam wail and fret for 1min 30secs, then went back in to give him another pat. Then I went outside and left him again for just under 4 minutes. Then he went quiet again and started up for just under 2 minutes. Then he went completely quiet and I went back downstairs and got into bed and didn’t hear from him again until 7.20am. The whole thing had taken 15 minutes.

As I sat and listened to Sam wailing I noticed a thing about his cry that helped me whenever I had to do it with Kitty: he didn’t really mean it. Or rather, the cry didn’t mean the thing I feared it meant. What I fear it means is: “I want my dummy” – and am then baffled when he spits it out half an hour later.

But I realise now when he is wailing at that time in the morning he is saying “I don’t understand why I am awake. I don’t want to be awake. I want to be asleep but I can’t really get back to sleep so I am going to just go WAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH until I pass ou…” This is why the dummy doesn’t help (because he doesn’t fall asleep with a dummy) and why patting doesn’t help (get the fuck off me) and taking him into bed doesn’t help (what are you doing?!?!?! put me back in bed!!!)

Anyway that is my story and I am sticking to it. At least I’ve got a plan, now – once you’ve done controlled crying once and it has worked and they wake up the next morning alive and well and give you a huge gummy smile, it’s never as bad again. And with any luck quite soon no-one will have to listen to me going on about how fucking tired I am anymore.

Continuing the theme of baking for Kitty’s nursery bake sale day, yesterday we made some oat and raisin cookies (a classic).

They worked very well and were very simple and I recommend them to you.

Oat and raisin cookies
Makes 12

1 egg
50g butter
50g sugar
50g plain flour
1tsp baking powder
1tsp ground cinnamon
1 tablespoon Golden Syrup or runny honey
80g rolled oats (like Scots Porage Oats)
50g raisins

Preheat your oven to 170C

1 Grease a baking sheet

2 Cream together the butter and sugar then beat in the egg, then the golden syrup or honey.

3 In another bowl mix together the
– flour
– cinnamon
– baking powder
– oats
– raisins

then add to your butter mixture.

4 To make a cookie, blob a teaspoonful on the baking sheet then flatten down a bit as best you can as it will spread out a bit on cooking but not lots. If you just put a blob on the sheet you will get a sort of rock cake.

The mixture is very rubbly and sticky so manipulating it can be problematic. I think there is a thing you can do with flattening it with a wet spatula?

Leave some space between cookies as they will spread out a bit on cooking. You may have to cook them in two batches.

5 Bake for about 8 – 10 minutes then leave to cool on a wire rack. They ought to be be bendy when they come out of the oven.

It goes without saying you can add anything else you like to these to make them super-tasty: chopped orange peel, hazelnuts, chocolate chips: wevs, man.

pigtailsandcombatboots: I’ve been wanting to post this for a…

pigtailsandcombatboots:

I’ve been wanting to post this for a few days now, but there’s a lot of backstory involved and since I know I can get carried away with explaining things, I’ve been hesitant about trying to write a short and sweet summary. So here goes:

WARNING – I tried, but couldn’t make this short enough to appear readable at a glance (I know, I tend to skip reading long-winded posts because my ADD looks at them in horror.) I completely understand if you don’t read all or any of it. This has been in my drafts folder for several days now and I give up on trying to shorten it.

When I’m passionate about something, I throw myself completely into it. At some point I started watching Gordon Ramsay’s shows, andI discovered he wasn’t a jerk like the media makes him out to be. He is however, blatantly honest and straightforward, and has no patience for people that don’t try to always perform at their best. This perspective inpires me because I have a mediocre amount of motivation for anything, and I have a lot of difficulty using tact. Plus, tact is not very effective when it comes to motivating people, so why mess around and avoid getting right to the point?.This is the background of my passion for all things Gordon Ramsay.

Talented cooks amaze me, just like any other artist, except they do it with food, which at least to me, seems a lot harder. I enjoy watching cooking shows because I can’t comprehend how they can make something that tastes so good out of so few ingredients, in a limited amount of time. There’s so much technique and knowledge involved, I believe a very large part of it has to be instinctual. This puts me in awe.

I started watching Masterchef during season 2 and was hooked immediately. It’s like watching a REALLY interesting magic show (though I’ve never experienced a really interesting one), just without the illusion. I also enjoy seeing the varying degrees of passion and confidence in the contestants. I become involved in trying to dissect what can be interpreted from their psyches and their sources of motivations I don’t know how to explain it. It’s similar to the wonder I feel when I try to figure out how different artists see things the way they do, how they instinctually know how to mix colors, show textures, etc. It’s always interesting to know a little bit about the background of the artist to see what may have influenced their perspective. br />

As a result, I tend to ride the Masterchef wave with the contestants involved, and I was genuinely upset in season 2 when Ben was eliminated much earlier than I expected. His combination of talent and passion seemed the most genuine, but then the 3 judges Gordon Ramsay, Graham Elliot and Joe Bastianich know truckloads more than I do about food and cooking techniques, so by no means a source of an informed opinion on the subject.

At the beginning of season 3, they introduced the top 16 selected for the show with a little background about each one. Now, I’m always doing something else while I’m watching TV. I can’t just sit there and watch something, I have to be doing something like drawing or crafting at the same time, so I did a double take when I heard one contestant say he was from Brighton Park. Brighton Park is the little neighborhood I grew up in in Chicago, and where my parents still live currently. I chuckled, because the contestant, David Martinez, referred to it as “growing up in the ghetto”. There’s about a 10 year age difference between he and I and it wasn’t that bad when I was growing up, but the “ghetto-ing” was gradual. I went away to college at 17, but I came home every weekend to work for 7 years beyond that. I chuckled because my mom’s been calling it “the ghetto” for a long time, and I always thought she was being a tad bit overdramatic (as usual.) It’s harder to see when the change is gradual, I guess, but hearing David say it on national TV kind of smacked me in the face with the reality of my native ‘hood.

The point to all that is, neighborhoods are like badges of honor in Chicago. It’s not “I’m from Chicago”, it’s “I’m from Brighton Park/Gage Park/Lincoln Park/Wrigleyville/etc.” There’s over 200 of these neighborhoods in Chicago. It’s so rare to meet someone outside of the Chicagoland area that is from your neighborhood, and it’s even weirder to see someone mention it on TV. I immediately called my mom and dad and they started watching Masterchef in support of David, even though they have no idea who Gordon Ramsay is, because we support those that make it out of the ‘hood. (Seriously, not many do.)

Each of the Masterchef contestants have Twitter and Facebook accounts associated with the show, I’m guessing to help stir up interest. So, I sent a note to David on Facebook, basically saying, “Hey, I’m from Brighton Park too, small world, hope you win, etc.” He wrote back and via several messages we had some small convos talking about exactly where we lived, where we went to school, etc. I could ramble on easily here, but if you want to know more about David, here’s his Masterchef website profile – David Martinez.

Via convos and posts, I discovered that David was moving to Phoenix, oddly enough, this past week. I also discovered that Monti, another Masterchef contestant and another big fave of mine had already moved here and was now the morning host on one of the local radio stations here – “Monti in the Morning”. This past weekend, they both joined up with Season 2 contestant Ben Starr (my fave from that season, as I mentioned above) to host a fundraiser for Phoenix Children’s Hospital at Dave and Buster’s in Tempe. I wanted to meet the 3 of them, especially David, since we had been communicating online, and for the fact that he’s automatically my “neighborhood bro”.
‘
The fundraiser was scheduled from 11am-1pm and was $10 to get in, with raffles, free banana splits donated from Cold Stone Creamery and a free all-day gaming pass at D&B’s (score!) There wasn’t a lot of people there at the beginning, because it’s kind of a niche group of fans. Plus, they’re not celebrities, they’re real people with tons of amazing talent, which unliike a lot of people, is more of a motivation for me to meet them than any “celebrity status”-type.

The three of them walked up to the front door of D&B’s together where a few of us were standing because we weren’t allowed to go in yet. They put their stuff inside and then came back out to hang out with everybody and take pics. Before they went in, David saw me and subsequently ran over and gave me a big hug, saying that he thought it was awesome that we (me and Doug) came out to hang with him. We chatted, and that’s about the time we took the above pic, which is from left – David, Monti, me and Ben. (Ignore my hair, the misters at Tempe Marketplace were on so high, it was being in a scene from “The Fog”. Also, ignore this statement because I’m embarassingly self-conscious about photos and I hate that fact.)

We went in, bought a bunch of raffle tickets, got our banana splits, and had a seat by David’s wife because he said he wanted to sit with us after he made his rounds of meeting everybody. All I can say is that during those 2 hours I think I talked more than I have during the last 5 years of my life put together (I’m not by nature, “social”). David and his wife (who’s from Germany) are so down-to-earth, we clicked immediately. David is hilarious, much different than he’s presented on the show because of selective editing. It was like hanging out with 2 old friends, something we all agreed on at the end of the function. David gave us his phone # and we all promised we were going to hang out once David and his wife, Bee, were settled into Phoenix, which wouldn’t probably be until Sept. because of obligations back in Chi and such. David starts work on his PhD in September at ASU so he has no choice but to be back here by then. 🙂 He suggested we do a weekend thing together of quad-riding, barbecuing, etc. sometime soon when the temps get cooler. One of the raffles we submitted several entries into was for a prize of Monti and David coming to the winner’s house and cooking for them. I thought that would be so cool, because I could see the “magic” up close and David and Monti are both really fun people. When we didn’t win, and I made a sad face, David said “Eh, I’ll come cook for you guys, no biggie. Don’t worry about it.” I really can’t say enough about how nice he is.

We chatted a bit with Monti and Ben at the end because Monti was basically the hostess of the whole thing since her radio station sponsored the function. They’re both really down-to-earth as well, and sincerely grateful that people came out to see them for the purpose of this fundraiser. (Eventually the place was packed, standing room only in one of the party rooms.)

After David, Monti and Ben left, Doug and I hung out and made good use of our all-day gaming cards. So much so, that the next day my right shoulder and arm were sore from shooting invading Terminators and playing marathon sessions of air hockey. (I’m a tough air hockey-er.) 😉

Last week and this week’s episodes of Masterchef were reruns because of the Olympics. (Apparently the corporate sponsors realize more people will watch the Olympics if there’s nothing new on TV competing against it.) So after the high of meeting David, Monti and Ben, I didn’t get to watch a new episode a couple of days later, so by the time a new one is on, I’ll have forgotten most of this and it won’t be as interesting. That’s how my brain works. If not fed continuously with stimulating activities, it quickly moves on to find them elsewhere… which is also why I hop on and off social media so much, and why I’ll probably avoid it for at least a few days so I can work on my multiple unfinished art projects. 😉

Macho salad

A thing that surprised me after I got married is that people treat you differently when you’ve got a husband. I don’t know if it’s the same for men and I can’t quite put my finger on it, but I suppose the closest word that springs to mind is respect: you get more respect.

I didn’t realise that I wasn’t being treated with respect until suddenly I was getting some. Even though Giles and I were living together – even after he was my fiance, it wasn’t the same as saying “my husband.” Once you say to someone “my husband” something in their manner shifts. It is as imperceptible as any kind of prejudice, but it is there.

I had thought that our recent two rounds of building work were so trouble-free because I was better with builders, more honest and upfront and less apologetic. But I think the fact was that I had a husband. Not a boyfriend, not a live-in lover, but a husband. God only knows why it makes a difference, and maybe it doesn’t make a difference to everyone, but it made a difference to me. It’s so sad and fucked up, it says such awful things about us, as people – but I think it really might be the case that if you are married, everyone just backs off.

And I exploit it, shamelessly. “Oh” I hoot grandly but politely down the phone to anyone who’s asking for anything “my husband makes all the decisions like that. I’m afraid I simply couldn’t possibly talk to you any more about it or all the cotton wool in my head will catch fire from the friction of my three braincells rubbing together.”

It’s a terrific laugh.

Having children is more complicated when it comes to respect. Day to day, as A MUM, you get no respect at all. You’re just a nuisance with your fucking buggy and whining, pissing, shitting, puking baby/toddler. You’re in a shit mood. You very occasionally forget to say thanks when someone holds open a door because you’re in the middle of a Technicolor daydream about murdering the bus driver who was a bit mean to you just now, and you then form the basis of that person’s lifelong prejudice against mothers. “I once held open a door for this woman with a buggy,” they will say at dinner parties, “and she didn’t EVEN say thank you. I don’t know what’s wrong with women once they’ve had kids. It’s like they think they’re so special.”

It’s also tricky between women who do have children and women who don’t. You can connect, and get on and laugh at each other’s jokes. But there’s a gap there. When you are with another mother, you can get out a packet of chocolate buttons and aggressively bribe your child with them. You can stick Peppa Pig on for 2 hours so that you can sit down and bitch hard and in peace about someone else’s new kitchen extension. You can shriek “Christ another poo? What the hell is wrong with you?” to your child. You can get ever so slightly tearful because child #2 just nodded off for 20 mins in the buggy on the way home and so won’t do it’s lunchtime nap today.

You can do all that without suspecting that the child-free woman is sitting there, looking at your walls covered in scribble, or floor studded with Play Doh and ancient peas going: “Fucking hell, get me out of here,” or “Fucking hell if I had kids I wouldn’t do it like this.” Even if she is not thinking that, she might be and that causes the faintest of discomforts, like someone, not far away, playing clusters of wrong notes together on a piano.

Another mother, even if her parenting methods are completely and totally anathema to yours, will rarely, unless she is a total monster, judge you too badly for it. I mean, she will judge you, because that’s what we all do – we’re either starry-eyed with admiration (“her house is so tidy, she is so organised“) or we judge (“I don’t know how she can live like that.“) But it’s done so internally, quietly and subtly that no-one will notice, not even for a millisecond. The most powerful and detectable thought other mothers have is usually: “Whatever works for you, man.” And that is, in its own way, a sort of respect.

But society, in general, likes MOTHERS, when they are not in the way, or moaning on about being tired, or expecting anyone to admire their revolting, dim children. If you’ve got children, somewhere, then that’s a good thing. And the more you have the more people defer to you on everything. I mean, up to four children. Five or more children and people assume you have some sort of addiction.

The greatest thrill I get these days is when I am out in town without Kitty, looking extremely pregnant and I come across someone who assumes it is my first child. It might be someone with a baby, or a toddler, or just a random person who wants to acknowledge that I am up the duff (which is fine). “You all ready then?” they’ll say. Or the mother will say “you’ve got all this to look forward to.” And then I smile sweetly and say “It’s my second”. It is the female equivalent of pushing up a shirtsleeve to reveal a tattoo on the forearm that reads “légion étrangère”. Maybe it’s because I have a horror of being vulnerable, being patronised, of being weak, which could probably do with another six weeks with therapy. Or maybe, deep down, we all just want a bit of respect.

Food needs respect, too. And a thing that rarely gets any is salad. We have started eating in this house for dinner a thing I have named Macho Salad. I may have got this phrase from somewhere else, but I don’t know where. But anyway, macho salad is what it is. And what it is is a salad that will do for an entire dinner, that a man would not be ashamed to be seen eating.

It consists of assorted leaves, meat or fish, some sort of thick dressing (probably made partly with mayonnaise, or blue cheese) a good scattering of firm beans – like soya beans, maybe some shards of parmesan? Nuts and seeds (sunflower is good), avocado? Chopped or quartered egg? And of course a scattering over the top of croutons, for crunch.

Last night I made one that consisted of 3 chicken thighs roasted for 45 mins (the fourth was eaten by Kitty for her tea) and chopped, a bag of mixed leaves plus dainty strips of beetroot, cucumber, a dressing of mayonnaise, olive oil, lemon, vinegar and a lot of salt, avocado, soya beans, croutons and sunflower seeds.

We ate it while watching Friday Night Lights, feeling very butch. But then we ruined it by having an alcohol-free beer apiece. Because you’ve got to draw the line somewhere.