New Arrivals

1 February 2013 20:16

A couple of months ago I mentioned that we were expecting an addition to our extended family, and not long after Victor arrived safely I got a card with the news that I have a new great-niece in the Netherlands. That one was a complete surprise to me, and strangely enough it’s another V, for Valerie this time. Honestly, after never having any Vs in the family before I’m half expecting a third one to turn up now. Anyway, after years and years of never visiting the kids department of any stores, I found myself back in them and having the problem of what to choose.

The trouble is that there are so many gorgeous dinky wee things around for babies and youngsters but as often happens it was Marks and Spencer which came up trumps. If you have a look at their new collection you’ll see what I mean. I’m especially partial to dungarees for boys, I just can’t resist them. Anyway, I eventually made my choices (too much) and even got the cards and wrapping paper. Job done.

As I had two boys myself I missed out on buying girls clothes and you might not believe it but the only time I’ve ever felt the need of a daughter was years ago when I saw a particularly pretty dress in – yes, it was Marks and Spencer again.

I must admit that I was one of those soppy mums who held on to things as reminders of my wee ones, not so much memory boxes as memory suitcases, just small ones mind you. It’s normal to keep their first shoes and their fancy shawls but I also couldn’t part with so many other things and as I’ve actively been trying to get rid of ‘stuff’ recently (we’re empty nesters and are hoping to downsize soon) I had a look at my stash of memories. I still have favourite babygros, dungarees, sun hats, winter pom-pom hats and teeny wee mits and of course definitely not forgetting their first matinee jackets and the most gorgeous multiple tartan patchwork shirt which belonged to my youngest when he was three years old. They still smell of baby, in a good way. Oh and I had forgotten that I had kept their first snowsuits. So sweet, especially when I think that my two are great big hulking men now.

I wonder if any of my recent purchases will end up in memory stashes, they’re certainly cute enough.

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Categories: Family, Nostalgia, Personal

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Soup, Words and Doughballs

19 December 2011 00:27

We have a family birthday on Christmas Eve and I always cook a meal at home rather than going out to a restaurant because they’re always busy with works’ nights out at the moment, so I spend a lot of time in the kitchen around now. There really ought to be a law against people giving birth around Christmas time!

So I’ve been thinking about what to have for the birthday meal and as we’re all keen soup people I’ve decided to give Kinloch Castle Tomato Soup a go after seeing the recipe over at Peggy Ann’s Post. Have a look at her recipes here. It sounds tasty and should look nice and festive.

If you look at the Newfoundland Soup recipe above that one you’ll see a recipe for soup which I’m fairly certain originated from a Scottish soup because that’s the sort of soup that I make all the time – winter and summer. (What summer?! I hear you say.)

Mind you I don’t often put dough balls/dumplings in my soup, I tend to keep those for winter warmer stews. But you’ll see that the dough balls in Newfoundland have the name ‘dough boys’. That’s quaint and interesting I thought, and then a couple of days later I found myself having a bit of a smile to myself because it had come into my head that it’s one of those wonderful transatlantic mistranslations that happen over the years.

Obviously it was originally dough buoys! I think that in America those floating markers in the sea are pronounced boo-ies or something like that. But in English – bouy is pronounced boy and obviously dough balls/dumplings do behave like buoys in the sea as they bob about and float on the surface of the stew or soup. I think it was Winston Churchill who said: Two nations divided by a common language. Well I was always told that he said it anyway. Whatever, I’ll be thinking of them as dough boys now!

My husband tells me doughboys was a nickname given to US soldiers in World War 1. (He’s interested in that sort of thing.) Apparently it dates from an even earlier US war. Who knows what the origin was? But I like to think of them as markers in a sea of stew or soup.

If you watch the film of Annie Proulx’s novel The Shipping Forecast you can see that there still is Scottish influence in Newfoundland where they are keen consumers of Tunnock’s Tea Cakes and Snowballs. It shows up in the book too, lots of Scots seem to have gone there at some point and stayed, probably coming from Scotland helps you withstand the terrible weather they have there.

Anyway, if you haven’t already visited Peggy Ann’s Post why not hop over now! Her most recent recipe is for pizzelles, which I’ve never even heard of!

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Categories: Family, Recipes

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Another Birthday!!

20 June 2011 00:37

To be precise, it’s now 16 minutes past my 52nd birthday as it was on Sunday. I’ve been so busy I couldn’t get around to blogging until now. We celebrated by going out for a meal last week, a joint celebration because Laura and I have our birthdays so close together.

Today we started off by going for a walk around a local park and then the family turned up and as it was Sunday I spent about half of the day in the kitchen, not that I’m complaining because I love having everyone back home again and sitting around the table. So it was just a traditional family Sunday roast dinner, however, I’m now shattered and I’m going to be having a lazy day tomorrow with my feet up and my nose in a book.

I just can’t believe that another year has gone past so quickly, it doesn’t seem possible!

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Categories: Family

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Just Some Ice-Cream

13 June 2011 00:14

We all went out for a meal on Friday night to celebrate Laura’s birthday, well it was really a joint celebration as my birthday comes a wee bit later on in the month. We all enjoyed the meal that we had when we visited the Dil’se in Dundee for our last family celebration so we took ourselves off there again. It’s an Indian/Bangladeshi restaurant and it’s always busy, which is a good sign.

I have to admit that I’m a bit of a curry coward so I usually have a korma but this time I thought I’d plump for something different and I had a chicken chasni, which was daring for me, but I enjoyed it. Unfortunately we were all so busy getting stuck into the feast that I forgot to take any photographs.

We were all feeling fairly stuffed but determined to find space for some pudding. Ice cream doesn’t take up much room I thought. Everybody else had fresh mango or kulfi but I fancied some pineapple and this is what I got!

Pineapple boat

It was larger than all of the other puddings put together, which was a bit embarrassing. But I tackled it – womanfully – and despite the fact that there must have been a whole banana in it as well as half of a pineapple and mango, lots of ice cream, cream and chocolate, I did just about manage it all! I had to leave three wee bits of fruit, just to be polite. I am now quite a bit heavier than I was last week!

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Categories: Desserts/Puddings, Family

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Decorating

2 June 2011 00:16

It’s a good long while since I prepared Duncan’s old bedroom for decorating. That’s the bit which I’ve always hated in the past. Stripping wallpaper is a horrible job and no matter how careful I am at tidying up as I go I somehow always end up with wee bits of wallpaper being dragged all over the house by my feet.

Somehow I just couldn’t summon up the enthusiasm to get on and do the decorating so I more or less shut the door on the room and forgot about it, until today. No, I still don’t feel like wallpapering but it just had to be done, so today I’ve been up to my elbows in wallpaper paste. Gordon, our youngest son wrote his name and the date on the plaster of one of the walls when he was just six years old, as other folks have done in the past. It adds a bit of history for future owners of the house, but it has been papered over again today. It used to be Gordon’s room but for some reason they did a room swap years ago.

People always seem to think that cottage style houses are so cute looking with their sloping ceilings upstairs but coomb ceilings are literally a pain in the neck when it comes to wallpapering. It wouldn’t be so bad if I was doing something which I really admired because it’s great when you see a new room emerging bit by bit with each strip of wallpaper which is put up. But it’s desperately boring when you’re only pasting heavy duty lining paper which is just going to be painted with magnolia paint eventually.

I’m taking a tip from the so-called experts and keeping everything really bland and inoffensive so that when we come to put the house up for sale, hopefully next year, we won’t frighten off any possible purchasers. In the past we’ve had a lovely Chinese yellow hall and staircase and jade green walls in the dining-room but for now I’m just going to have to put up with magnolia.

So that’s how exciting my life is at the moment. Duncan’s room is almost completely papered now and after that is finished it’s time to turn my attention to Gordon’s old bedroom. Maybe when they are both finished they won’t seem so much like ghost rooms. It still feels very strange not to have them inhabited by boys.

I hope you are managing to do something more interesting than I am at the moment!

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Categories: Family

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Spring – today anyway

23 March 2011 23:48

It has been lovely the last few days with bright sunshine and a warmish wind. So I’ve been busy making the most of it, just in case we get snow again at Easter, it wouldn’t be the first time.

I’ve been hard at it in the garden and I’ve even managed to get around to painting the woodwork in Duncan’s old room which I’ve been putting off for ages. The paint tin boasts that it is one coat, quick dry gloss paint. Well, it isn’t and I’ve had to give it two coats, which took forever to dry out.

And you know what it’s like, as soon as you spruce up one part of a house it immediately makes everything else look shabby. The downside of the sun actually shining is that it makes the place seem – I have to admit it – manky!

So I’ve also been washing windows, inside and out. What an exciting life I lead. It should all help to keep me fit anyway. I did take some more garden photos though and I hope to have a garden blogpost tomorrow.

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Categories: Family, Weather

Christmas Day

26 December 2010 00:36

I hope everybody had a great time at Christmas. Here we are in our very congested dining-room, we were lucky enough to have the family with us. A goose was cooked but it isn’t on show.

I’m on the left and by that time I was shattered and far too hot, in fact we all look quite miserable I think but a good time was had by all. Both ‘boys’ weren’t feeling all that great, there are so many bugs going about at the moment.

We will probably be moving from this house in a year or two so the photographs are really a sort of family posterity thing because we don’t have many digital photos of the house.

This is the sitting-room which we used to decorate with a massive real christmas tree but this year as it’s so cold we decided not to bother because we probably wouldn’t be in that room much. The fire in the living-room is much warmer.

I just decorated the mantelpiece. This photograph was taken with the flash.

And this quite scary looking photograph was taken without the flash.

So now that Christmas is over we just have Hogmanay to look forward to – and more hours spent in the kitchen!

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Categories: Family

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Busy, busy.

24 December 2010 23:49

I’ve been up to my ears in it for the past few days. My husband decided to pop into the world on the 24th of December, quite a lot of moons (decades) ago.

So I’ve been cooking a special birthday meal today, after all it’s still his birthday even if it is the day before Christmas. We have both of our ‘boys’ and Laura here for the next few days, which is great because we couldn’t wish for anything more at this time of the year.

We’re lucky that they live fairly close to us. I wish it could be the same for all families.

Tomorrow I’ll probably have some photographs of our Christmas dinner. Any vegans and vegetarians – please avert your eyes. We’ve gone for a traditional Dickensian meal – goose. I did feel a bit guilty about it though as two lovely geese flew low above us on the way to the shop. How did they know?

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Categories: Family

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Almost Empty Nest

28 November 2010 00:02

Duncan just got the keys to his flat yesterday, he’s one of the few first time buyers to be able to get a mortgage at the moment, so we just got one son moved out of Dundee a few months ago and now we’re busy moving Duncan into Dundee. It isn’t my favourite place in the world, it seems so remote and far away from what I think of as civilisation, but it’s as close to St Andrews as any normal person can buy a place nowadays and his drive to work won’t be so long now.

It’s going to be really weird having no ‘children’ in the house, after 24 years my husband and I are going to be on our own again. Tonight we had them all around the dinner table though and they’re going to be with us over Christmas and New Year as usual.

So for the next few days I’m going to be running around furniture shops because despite the fact that our house is overflowing with antique furniture, mainly inherited, he wants his place to be new and modern – what a pain!

I just had enough time yesterday to get a quick look at The Guardian G2 section and read this article on Little House on the Prairie and Laura Ingalls Wilder

I watched the tv series as a youngster and although the whole frontier thing really attracted me I seem to remember that I was driven round the bend by the whiney youngest girl. Was her name Amy? As the youngest of 3 girls and with 2 older brothers as well, I was nothing like her at all and she seemed to me to be really spoiled so I don’t think that I ever read any of the books. Did I miss something and are they worth reading as an adult?

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Categories: Books, Family

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Toffee Cake

8 November 2010 23:14

This is the cake which I baked for Gordon’s birthday and it’s based on a Marguerite Patten recipe. It was a nice change from a completely chocolate cake. Although the ingredients specify using castor sugar I usually just use normal white sugar. The brown sugar can be any kind from Demerara to dark soft brown sugar depending on how strong you want the toffee flavour to be.

6 oz brown sugar
5 oz butter or marg.
4 tablespoons milk
2 oz castor sugar
2 eggs
8 oz self-raising flour

Put the brown sugar, 1 oz butter and 4 tablespoons of milk into a heavy based pan and stir until the sugar has dissolved. Then allow the mixture to reach the ‘soft ball’ stage.

Cream the remaining butter and sugar together until it’s soft and light then beat in the warm toffee syrup gradually to stop the mixture from curdling. If it does curdle just add some flour.

Beat in the eggs and then the rest of the flour.

Put the cake mixture into an 8 inch cake tin which has been well greased.

Bake for about 50 minutes in a pre-heated oven at 170 C, Gas mark 3 or 325-350 F. Remove from oven and run a knife around the edge of the cake tin, the cake should come out quite easily. Leave to cool on a wire rack.

This cake tastes lovely on its own but I decided to cover it with my own version of buttercream icing. This is quick and easy, no faffing about with butter and cocoa powder required.

Nutella Topping
Place about 3 heaped tablespoons of Nutella into a glass bowl with a sploosh of milk, about a quarter of a cupful, and microwave for about 30 seconds on medium or until the Nutella mixture has melted. It depends on the strength of your microwave.

Stir the mixture until the milk is well incorporated then add about 4 heaped tablespoons of icing sugar into it. Be sure to sift the icing sugar first otherwise the icing will be lumpy.

Mix well and quickly spread it over the cake and down the sides if wished. It sets fairly fast so I couldn’t get the top of my cake as smooth as I wanted and I ended up taking a rolling pin to a bar of Aero to disguise the top. No disaster. Chocolate on top of chocolate isn’t exactly a problem.

We were half way to Stirling before I realised that I had left the birthday candles behind. So we had to improvise with a tealight. Well, he could still make a wish, which is the main thing.

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Categories: Family, Recipes

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