A New Year's Resolution of Food

I've decided this year that we'll eat less meat. I know that's not the best way to achieve an objective, just to put it out there as a blanket, unspecific, difficult-to-measure objective, but there we go.

What have I done about this?

Well, I've developed one of my old vegetarian recipes into one that contains meat. And not just any meat, but processed pork. Could there be anything more resolution-busting than this Chorizo Chilli Chutney Tart?

Yes, as it happens. There could be Cheeseburger Pie, or Layered Cottage Pie, or any one of a number of new meat-filled recipes that I've created this year.

Oh my, Cheeseburger Pie!

I'm being a bit mean to myself though, I've also been creating some delicious new vegetarian recipes, and on the whole, they've been pretty well received. I even made a Rice Salad. We had it with the Chorizo Chilli Chutney Tart, but a big whatever to that, they went well, and that's the end of it.

One thing they never really mention in recipe books is the things that don't go right, and how to fix them. I made a leek and potato layered thing, but I didn't have enough cream, so I just topped it up with milk to the same volume. It required about an hour extra cooking time, but in the end, seemed to work out okay. For a while I was looking at some sort of peculiar leek and potato soup, though.

Experimentation also abounds: a wilted spring green, bacon lardons, and avocado salad was thrown together when Andrew and the girls had already eaten and I needed to use up some vegetables. On paper I thought it would be great, but in practice, I used too much and the wrong type of vinegar. I am going back to the drawing board with balsamic instead of red wine vinegar in this one, I think.

Festive Rice Salad

However, as we left January and entered February I'm pleased to report that we are back on track with reducing meat intake. Laregly because I have zero money, and meat is expensive, but who cares? On track is on track.

This delicious Leek and Potato Soup, Andrew's recipe, has helped enormously!

Nostalgic Munchings

I can often be found in the kitchen trying to work out how to recreate the smells and tastes of my childhood in diabetic-friendly form. I think that the things we eat when we are children stick with us our whole lives, but the things we make as children perhaps stick with us even more so. For that very reason I have a soft spot for those cake mixes that come in packets, you know, the ones with the rice paper toppers on them. At my parents' house near Forfar we were often snowed in in winter, at which point my Mum would undertake "lessons" with us. I always asked for a cookery lesson, and one winter all she had was a packet of cake mix with Disney toppers. In memory of those lovely snow days, this Saturday while preparing for Lori's birthday party, I couldn't resist picking up a Hello Kitty version. She loved them, but sadly, I forgot to take a picture.

Andrew doesn't often ask for things that he had as a child (possibly because I have an aversion to cooking fish), so when he mentioned Milk Fadge for about the 5th time, I took the hint (and the recipe!) and decided to add it to my repertoire of bread-like baking. It's not particularly diabetic-friendly, being made with white flour and lard, but there are worse things you could eat.

I had never really heard of it before, which is strange because I have read so many recipe books over the years, but this one had passed me by. I was intrigued to see what it tasted like.

Fadge is probably a better-known term in Ireland, where it is a potato bread. But here in Scotland, fadge simply refers to a round loaf of bread. I think that's why I hadn't heard of it, although I grew up in Scotland, my parents are not Scottish. My fadges turned out to be more oval than round, but let's not quibble over that. Andrew had described it to me a few times, but mostly with adjectives. Adjectives are all very well, but they only really describe how the person feels about the food, but don't actually help you to understand what it should taste [i]like[/i]. Turns out, once I'd eaten it, that all he really needed to say was: it's like a scone without sugar. In fact, what it is very much like is an American biscuit as it's made with lard rather butter, but as neither of us has had an American biscuit, we can't be sure of that. Any readers from the US out there who would like to enlighten me further on the validity of my milk fadge = US biscuit assertion would be most welcome to chip in in the comments.

It's great with butter and jam straight out of the oven, and it's also good once it's cooled down. The first time I tried it, I misread the recipe and forgot to add the salt. The second time, I followed the recipe, but we both felt it was a little too salty, so in my recipe for Milk Fadge I have suggested reducing the salt a little.

Talking about nostalgia, I am sure that I did this craft in primary 5. It's a great way to introduce children to the concept of embroidery, and start them along the road of making patterns of neat stitches. I remember my card quite vividly, it had a robin and tree scene on it, so when I saw this blackbird and tree scene I knew I had to recreate it with Josie. You can find full instructions here.

Just One Thing!

Andrew was diagnosed with diabetes just before Josie was born, and since then I’ve been experimenting with various ways to make sweet recipes more diabetic-friendly.

There are a few different schools of thought on doing that. One is, don’t bother. A small amount of sugar in your diet every now and then, even for a diabetic, is not that much of a problem. That school of thought would keep on baking in the tried and tested manner. 

Another school of thought: why bother? Just cut out sweets, cakes, and more entirely and give up as a lost cause the fight to make them more diabetic-friendly. They never will be anyway.

This is not me. Ever. This is Andrew. All the time.

My school of thought? Might as well have a bash a trying to bother so Andrew can actually have his cake, and eat it. As sugar substitutes have become more widely-available, cheaper, and more like the real thing it’s become easier to try to replace sugar in recipes.

There are still some things that fake sugar never works for, prime among them being a meringue. I love meringues. If I were to list my top 5 desserts meringue would probably feature in at least 3. Pavlova for one, or Eton Mess*. Bless those ridiculously-dressed Etonians – I value them not for their political adeptness/rich Daddys who have propelled them to take the last 50 million Prime Ministerial and Cabinet posts, but for their clumsy meringue-crushing dogs who, in a most apocryphal way, smashed up a Pavlova and turned it into the Eton Mess.

I love Pavlova. A lot. So much, in fact, that I once made my Mum defrost a pavlova in the microwave because I couldn’t bear to wait for it to defrost naturally. She was taken very ill about 3 hours later, which she initially blamed on the hastily-thawed whipped cream, but thankfully once the paramedics arrived they diagnosed as acute appendicitis. Which was a relief, because I was concerned if the Pavlova turned out to be the culprit that I would never be allowed the dessert again.**

Is that a triple-layered Pavlova? Oh. Hello.

Anyway, meringue-based desserts aside (I fear they will never get the diabetic-recipe overhaul) I have learned some valuable lessons from my culinary experimentations. The first, the foremost, and the one that you must never break if you hope to create repeatable recipes is this:

Change only one variable at a time.

I probably should have learned this in Standard Grade Chemistry, but it turns out I did not. I have now. It is important. 

Without rule number one, how do you know whether that slightly bitter aftertaste in your otherwise delicious banana bread comes from the wholemeal flour (to replace the plain) or the Stevia (to replace the sugar)? Answer: You don’t. 

And so you have to bake the whole thing again, resetting one of those variables to the base recipe to understand why it just tastes so weird. At which point, you might realise that you misread the recipe the first time, and that those 4 TABLESPOONS of bicarbonate of soda should actually have been teaspoons and that neither of the aforementioned variables had any effect in making the banana bread taste so, so bitter and it was actually just your own incompetence.

But, raising agent disasters aside, the principle should still be observed. And I still break it. For instance, in a recent banana bread experiment, I used orange-juice infused sultanas and peel instead of normal, which made it just taste a bit odd. Delicious, but odd. Which meant I couldn't really assess how successful the fake sugar was in it. It’s my own fault, of course. I broke rule number one. Never mind. I'll just have to bake it again!

This is Andrew eating all the banana bread.

*For the record, in no particular order they'd probably be: Pavlova, Lemon Meringue Pie, Queen of Puddings, Chocolate Mousse, Lemon Posset.

**Obviously, she is fully recovered now and so I can talk about her misfortune with an otherwise inappropriate levity.

A Few of my Favourite (Scottish) Things

Burn's Night isn't a very big deal in our house.

So far, Lori and Josie have had to learn a few poems, and I have cooked haggis once. That was last year, and I only did it because the girls were interested in what a Burn's Supper might taste like. I made whisky sauce to go with it, but it was a bit gross.

This year Lori has been going around singing My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose at every opportunity, which Josie is particularly displeased about.It is a truly unique rendition of the song, which doesn't mean it is good, and I am saving all your eardrums (although it might only be audible to dogs lately) by not sharing it with you. You are welcome.

However, quite by chance, and nothing to do with the approaching celebration of some random Scottish poet whose work I mostly hate, I have been making a few recipes that have a distinctively Scottish culinary twist.

The Millionaire's Shortbread one was particularly popular with everyone who tried it (me, me, me, me again, me, me for 6th helpings, tiny sliver for whining child, ME!).

Millionaire's Shortbread

I had to make this. Had to. I had some caramel in the fridge, left over from Christmas. I had some white chocolate, left over from Hallowe'en. And I had some shortbread, left over from New Year. I love shortbread. There's something quite delicious about its rich butteriness combined with sugar and a slightly salty flavour.

White Chocolate Millionaire's Shortbread

Treacle Tart

My Mum makes a lovely treacle tart. This isn't her recipe. Treacle tart usually calls for breadcrumbs, which I didn't have, but I'm always up for experimentation as a cooking technique. And that's where the Burns/Scottish reference comes in, as I substituted the breadcrumbs for porridge oats. I also didn't have treacle, but I had some molasses and it's not too dissimilar. I think this one came out very treacly, possibly because of the molasses, but it certainly was much more like a treacle toffee tart than the syrupy ones my Mum makes. It tasted better than it looked. The girls each had a slice in their packed lunch boxes, but they sneaked them out to eat at break time as a snack, and reported much enjoyment.

Treacle Tart with Porridge Oats

Happy New Year (and a folio of festive food)

What a pleasure it is to cook in my own kitchen and with all my old things that were far too long in storage. Nithsdale has been great for revivifying my culinary creativity this year. I have tried out a lot of new recipes over Christmas this year, as well as going back to some old favourites. And others…well, others were old recipes adapted into something completely new.

Plenty of visitors to Nithsdale brought their own recipes or brought gifts that were turned into ingredients or simply were the inspiration for a menu item. Oh, and as an aside, I am going to keep on referring to Nithsdale by its name at every opportunity. Indeed, I may never get over the excitement of having a house special enough to have its own name, even if they name wasn't my choice, it does sound suitably MiddleEarthish to satisfy me.

So, it was my brother James's feedback on the Salted Caramel Torte that turned my thoughts to orange in the Jaffa Torte. It was my Mum's old recipe for Mackerel Pate that I turned to on Christmas Day, although I did have to improvise by using mascarpone instead of Philadelphia cream cheese. Mascarpone doesn't work as well, by the way, although Andrew, Josie, and Lori professed not to notice, so it might do in a pinch. I haven't got a recipe online for Mackerel Pate, but my old school-friend Claire Winlow does, and it is pretty much the same as mine. You can find it here. And it was the fine gift of a panettone from Marianne and Mark that made me realise I needed to do something with the panettones that was more interesting than just slicing them up for tea with a touch of jam. Although, don't get me wrong, I am absolutely not averse to the Jamettone option.

Panettone. Not Jamettone. 

Anyway, thanks to everyone who came to see us this year, and best wishes to those who have not yet made the pilgrimage North or Southwards, or who could not, especially my bestie Emmy, whose plans fell through because of a poorly elbow. Happy New Year!

The Folio of Festive Food

Chocolate Jaffa Torte

I’ve been making a Salted Caramel Chocolate Torte for quite a few years now. When I started, Salted Caramel chocolates were impossible to get in most shops, now they’ve become ubiquitious. Every sweet or dessert with caramel in it seems to be salted. Never one to want to follow the crowd, I decided it was time for a change, and so I unveiled the Chocolate Jaffa Torte. The caramel is replaced by orange curd, the rich, dark chocolate is tempered with milk chocolate. This is a jaffa cake on steroids, and it is absolutely gorgeous.

Lori is 8. Hip Hip Hooray!

A Boozy Cranberry Sauce

For a couple of years I've been making a Cherry Brandy Cranberry Sauce. As Andrew has diabetes was trying to find a way to make cranberry sauce with a sugar substitute. After a few goes I started adding the alcohol as a way to overcome the slightly too-sweet aftertaste which I find a sugar substitute leaves. The cherry brandy lends it a very Christmassy, almost-almondy, taste. However, this year I took inspiration from a Women's Institute recipe book that I got out of the library, and used orange juice, red wine and port instead. I think I like it better, but I'm going to need to make both next year to compare. The colour certainly went very well with our Christmas table.

Boozy Cranberry Sauce in Little Heart Ramekin Dishes

Pomegranate and Festive Fruit Rice Salad

I noticed these orange and spice-infused raisins, cranberries and mixed peel in M&S when I was doing my typical Christmas Eve last-minute shop. They were reduced, and I grabbed them along with many other impulse buys. I knew they'd be perfect for a Christmas recipe, but I expected it to be Rocky Road, not rice! The rice was a leftover from a Turkey and Chorizo stew, and I was lacking inspiration on what to do with it until faced by an extremely spicy Chilli Chutney Chorizo Tart. Something cooling was definitely in order: cue this salad, a concoction of orange dressing, festive fruits, and a family favourite of ours, pomegranate seeds. I was quite pleased with the results. We don't often eat rice salad, but this one has been added to the Law family repertoire for festive feasts. 

A Little Pot of Rice

Was there more? Of course there was more...there's always more!

Sadness and Loss

It's been a very sad week for anyone involved in education in Edinburgh, or anyone who has been aware of the news at all. On Tuesday, Keane Wallis-Bennett died when a wall collapsed at her school, Liberton High. I was shocked and appalled when I heard the news, a stark message from the BBC on my phone: child dies in Edinburgh school.

I'm sure many other parents reacted in the same way I did. My heart pounded, my palms immediately prickled with sweat; I leapt to my keyboard and went as quickly as I could to the BBC website. Panic rushed through me: was it one of my daughters? And of course, as soon as I found out it wasn't their school, I felt a rush of relief. Almost immediately followed by guilt. My daughters were fine, but one family would never feel the rush of relief that I did. For them, they are now in a waking nightmare, one which will not end.

I am not sure what to do in this situation. What can I do that would help them? As the parent representative on the Education Committee I have been called upon to comment on the tragedy in a number of newspapers and also television bulletins. I have repeated the same things, "we were aware of the condition surveys, and assured by the Council that the appropriate action was being taken", "parents have an expectation that their children will be safe at school and I would urge the Council to immediately review the condition surveys to check what else might have been missed."

It feels so little. It's addressing the future, what we do next, how do we ensure this never happens again. But it can't change what has happened to Keane, and what her family are going through. I want to be able to fix that. But I can't. It's heartbreaking.

Victory!

Although Josie and Lori have moved school, I've been keeping in contact with the parents at their old school. That's partially because the girls have friends there, partially because I have friends there among the parents, but also because of an ongoing campaign that I feel very passionately about.

That campaign was to stop planning permission being granted to turn the building next door into flats. Well, I say next door, it actually shares the playground. What that would have meant was that single-aspect studio flats would have a clear view into the playground, at ground level, which was just unacceptable for the children's privacy. That wasn't the only issue with the development, but it was a very sizeable one.

I was involved at the start of the campaign, less so latterly, but the baton was taken up admirably by other parents, with the support of local councillors, especially Nick Gardner, and our local MSP, Malcolm Chisholm.

Today those mentioned above, among others, spoke at the development committee where planning matters are decided. The result, despite the recommendations of the planning department, was a vote against permission being granted. It was by the narrowest of margins, but it was still a victory, and I am so pleased for the parents at Broughton Primary who have worked so hard for this result.

You can read more about it here.

Well done to everyone involved!

A New Adventure in Coding

Learning New Things

Games Review , the site that I edit on Hubgarden.com is going quite well, and starting to build some momentum. I'm also building up a library of articles as a writer on Weekend Notes and MyKidCraft, However, I don't want to just edit and write for other peoples' sites.

So, I've decided that if I want to start my own website, then I need to learn how to code, if only to understand what the challenges will be and how little I actually know. It's a stroke of luck, then, that my blogger interface doesn't appear to work with this version of IE and so I have to use the HTML tab to write the thing. I'm going to continue to thinking of it as a stroke of luck, as that stops it from being so annoying that the admins won't let me have a decent browser.

That's really all my chat about that. Well, not quite. I suppose I'd better illustrate that I am actually learning something, and put all this Codeacademy stuff into practice. So far, I've learned about:

• Titles, Headers, Paragraphs
• Image links and URL links
• Lists
1. Ordered Lists
2. Unordered Lists

So far, so surprisingly easy. It still all looks rubbish though, it took me 5 minutes to work out why I had a stray bullet point in my unordered list up there, and then get rid of it. So, how do I go from that, to making a site that looks more stylistically attractive? I'm not sure yet...but watch this space to find out when I do!

The Economic Barriers to Adopting Siblings

I was reading an article the other day about adoption and fostering, and I felt it missed a really important point about the economics of fostering and adopting.

The article talked about a set of three siblings. They had moved from foster carer to foster carer, and could only have got adopted if they had split up. The article talked about why it was difficult for three older children to be adopted together: emotionally hard for parents, would need extra bedrooms etc. It didn’t mention the financial issues of suddenly having three more children in the house. In fact, it didn’t mention the economic barriers to adoption at all. However, it made a pejorative statement when talking about the quality of foster parents: “some foster parents only do it for the money”.

Here’s the thing. If you foster, most local authorities will pay you around £130ish per week per child. That’s for two reasons: 1. To cover the additional costs of having another child 2. Because at least one foster parent is expected to treat the fostering as their full-time job.

It used to be the case that foster parents were simply willing volunteers, but that’s changed. Why do they need to treat it as a full-time job? Because the foster children often have complex support needs, some emotionally, some physically. You would not, for example, be expected to foster a child of under-5 and then be able send them to a day nursery and expect them to get on with it while you continue a full-time jobs.

So, the siblings are fostered, but the ideal for most children in long-term foster care is to be adopted permanently. But what happens if you’re fostering three children, with complex emotional and behavioural support needs, and you decide you’d like to adopt them?

Well, of course, you stop getting that money. The state doesn’t pay people to have children whether they’re your own, or adopted (with the exception of Child Benefit, but that’s not a huge amount). The addition of three extra people is going to be difficult to absorb into the household finances.

First – you need to give up your full-time job of fostering. Second – you can’t get another job because you’re now required to do your previously-paid full-time job for free.

It strikes me that the difficulty of placing siblings together is more of an economic issue than adoption organisations and councils have thus far admitted.

I know I couldn’t suddenly take on three more children without little financial support and at the same time need to give up a full-time job.

Despite what that article claimed, most people who foster do not do it “for the money”. I have known foster parents and they have done it for a variety of reasons. It’s not an easy job, and it’s not easy money. The foster parents I knew were not rich, but they did something they thought was right, often at great cost to their own families and even their own mental health. It is difficult to bring in a child, to form a bond, to do your very best for them and then later watch them be returned to the family that caused all the issues.

The article implied that more of these foster parents should be less money-grubbing, and simply adopt the children.

How? How would be that financially possible for the majority of people?

But what’s the alternative? Pay people to adopt children, and keep on paying them for years? I’m not sure that would solve the problem.

The problem with adoption is that the people who want to adopt siblings can’t afford it, and the people who could afford to adopt 2 or even 3 siblings don’t appear to want to adopt. Until either of those two things change, children like those three siblings will not get the permanent, loving home that they not only deserve, but that they have a right to expect.

Let Them Eat Cake

Yesterday, the Coalition government announced, with much triumph, that they would be offering free school meals for all P1-3 children in England. The Coalition are falling over each other to claim credit for this policy, with the Conservatives claiming it is all made possible by Michael Gove, and the Lib Dems claiming they got this policy through, "to ensure every child gets the chance in life they deserve" in the words of Nick Clegg.

 That's all very well, but who is really going to benefit, and why are the politicians all so impressed with themselves?

 The policy will cost £600m, and puts parents in the bizarre situation of being told they are too rich for Child Benefit, which many would have used for school dinners, but now are entitled to free school meals. It's a lot of money to spend on a theory, that school dinners are almost always more nutritious than packed lunches, which has been reported in an independent government review. Independent of the government, but of not of be food industry - two restaurant founders wrote it. It's not even as though this policy will be targeted at those with the greatest need - they already are entitled to free school meals.

 Wouldn't it be better if the government instead focused more on these children? They talk about narrowing the attainment gap between rich and poor, while at the same time making life easier for richer parents, and no less hard for poor parents. £600m could have funded a lot of other things.

It could have funded breakfast and homework clubs, where children from poorer backgrounds increase engagement with school and get a nutritious hot meal in the morning and the evening. Instead, it's going straight into the pockets of the food industry (because most local authorities contract out school dinner provision) and providing a state subsidy to more private business, who deliver sub-standard food to a captive audience. The lack of choice is appalling. In theory, the dinners might be more nutritious, but this depends on children picking the nutritious options and actually eating them. I've written about this before, and I'm not hopeful at all.

I don't underestimate how helpful this would be to an average family. It would have saved so much money if we had had free school meals in P1-3, or at least meant I could spend child benefit on something else. However, when housing benefit has been cut so children aren't even allowed their own room, I just don't see how they can justify introducing another universal benefit.

What do you think? Do you really need free school meals? Will you use them?

Sister Points

A couple of days ago, I spontaneously awarded Josie 5 Big Sister Points.

At the time it was just an off-hand remark, in response to her considerate comforting of her sister when Lori had fallen off her scooter for the millionth time that day, and I was too occupied with getting us all along the road in time for holiday club and school to give Lori the sympathy she felt she deserved.

Josie did give her that sympathy, and it was helpful for me, and kind to her sister. So I awarded some points. I've never done this before, it's not like sister points are a thing in our house. But despite that unfamiliarity, Josie's affinity with them was immediate:

"Oooh. Sister points! And five of them."

Later on in the walk, Lori helped Josie in return. She got some too. They both jumped up and down, cheering:

"Hurray, we've both got five now!"

The concept of reward for helpfulness isn't foreign to them. We do have a pocket money system, which is based on the doing of household chores, helpful tasks, perfect play-throughs of piano tunes, and things like that. Pocket money can also be lost, through extreme naughtiness (not that much of a problem) or laziness (more of a problem, thay are little Laws after all).

Sister points are not like pocket money, I've decided. They can't be pre-awarded for specific tasks ("Share that toy, and you'll get a sister point), they can't be docked ("You weren't nice to your sister, 5 points off"), they're just a spontaneous and fun way of saying, "Well done!", which my two have really taken to. The important thing is that they are unexpected and not-looked-for. I don't want two girls who are only kind to each other for a reward, and we certainly don't have that at the moment.

So, it begs the questions...should I allow conversion of sister points into something tangible? Should I keep a formal tally of sister points? If I did, it would be a shared pool. Sister points are not a competition.

Or does that miss the point of Sister Points? Should I keep them just as a fun, light-hearted, and a bit of a silly way to gameify life?

Don't Pack In Our Children's Packed Lunches

Today a report has been published which calls for the government to consider banning packed lunches.

Apparently, parents are providing sub-standard meals, which aren’t as nutritious as the school meals being offered at school. Media reports are claiming that the report (written by owners of a restaurant chain) calls for packed lunches to be banned, and for school meals to be compulsory, and free for everyone.

On the one hand I applaud them for trying to improve the nutritional intake of our children, and doing it while also trying to reduce the cost of raising them. It is sorely needed. When I was on a zoo trip with Lori’s class one child had Nutella on white bread for their sandwich, with crisps, followed by a chocolate bar for afters. I’m mortified if I send my two in with only fruit and no veg, let alone junk food that’s so inappropriate for a child’s packed lunch that it would be funny if it wasn't so sad. On the other hand, for the majority of parents.

I think that a simple comparison between a packed lunch and a school dinner is misleading, and the proposed solutions address the symptom of a disease (parents provide bad lunches) rather than a disease itself (parents don’t know/don’t care what should be in a healthy lunch).

 I’ll confess, I have an inherent bias TOWARDS to school dinners, while growing up, I always had them, and I sent my children to school assuming that I would always buy them school dinners too. It was convenient, relatively cheap (only £1.75 a day), and they’d be assured of a balanced meal.

I was wrong. It was convenient and cheap, but over time I began to suspect that they were not getting a healthy, nutritious, and filling meal made to the standards I would expect.

To illustrate, let’s compare a normal Lindsay-prepared lunchbox with the reports I would get from the children on what they would eat in their school dinners:

Lunchbox: 1 wholemeal sandwich or roll, with a reduced sugar jam, ham, or cheese. Usually eaten
Ham label checked to ensure welfare standards met for piggies. Usually eaten.
Batons of fresh cucumber. Usually eaten.
Red Pepper strips: Usually eaten.
Banana: Almost always eaten
Yoghurt tube/fruit winder/biscuitty bar: Always eaten
Babybel cheese: Always eaten
Orange or apple juice, squash, or water: Always drunk

Anything that isn’t eaten at lunchtime is consumed at after-school club or on the way home under Daddy orders. There’s normally no wastage, and we know exactly what they have or haven’t eaten. This has been absolutely critical with 2 children who tend towards anxiety over eating food in rushed scenarios (and the school lunch hall is loud, and rushed, and stressful), but who are not cunning or naughty enough to hide food and pretend they ate it.

And when they go to school lunches?

Well, the comments below are real ones that I have had back over the course of my lunch investigations:

Josie: I had a quorn burger.

Wow. Processed soya on a white bun. Great.

Josie: I had a baked potato with cheese, but the cheese tasted funny and so I didn’t eat it. Mr Devine [the head teacher] had it too and he agreed with me.

So, she ate the potato bit then had a sponge pudding with custard for after.

Lori: I had a baked potato with cheese, but I got up to go to the toilet and when I came back it had been cleared away and I didn’t know who to ask for more so I just went out to play.

She had no lunch.

Josie: I had strawberry milk to drink.

Filled with sugar. There’s a history of diabetes in the family. I try to minimise these types of hidden sugars in foods that people think are “healthy”.

Lori: Sausages! I didn’t eat my beans.

Oh great. More processed pork.

Josie: There was hardly anything left by the time I got down to eat, so I just had mashed potatoes and sausages.

See above.

There wasn’t a single day where one of them came home and described a meal that had more than a tiny portion of fresh fruit and vegetables in it, or meat that I could be assured was good quality.

My own golden rule when I maked the packed lunches, that I never break, is that I always must put at least three portions of fresh fruit and veg in the packed lunch (and it’s usually 4 or 5), and my bread product must always be wholemeal. The same can’t be said for the school dinner provision: - they might offer fruit and veg, but no one is making sure the children are either:

a) Selecting the healthy option
b) Actually eating the healthy option

And parents don’t know, because anything uneaten is just tipped into a bin. Furthermore, my house has more rules: all eggs free-range, all milk organic, meat from suppliers who are committed to animal welfare.

With school dinners, I have no control over those choices I can make at home. And at £1.75 per child, I highly doubt their using free-range eggs in their muffins.

To me, to ban packed lunches is completely missing the point about what the issue is: teaching parents on budgets how to feed their children healthily, and cheaply.

If some parents aren’t providing their children with healthy and nutritional packed lunches, then educate the parents and treat the underlying issue in the family!

 Don’t penalise the parents like us, who are trying our best to give our children fresh fruit and vegetables, and a healthy attitude to food. We aren’t being helped at all by a privatised school meal system which is failing to provide a decent standard of food, and our children would get much worse food if you forced us to take school dinners.

Further, if you don’t fix the underlying problem, what happens when the children go home? Sure, they might get one vaguely nutritious meal a day at school (and I am not convinced they would anyway), but if the family keeps on eating nuggets and chips for dinner every single day then it’s not really helping much.

Ultimately, plans to ban packed lunches smacks of big business dressing up their interests as a welfare concern. I’m sure all those school meal providers would be rubbing their hands with glee at the idea of millions more captive consumers, paid for by the state, all of whom have no opportunity to opt out or object if the standards are poor.

The Taste of Victory

When you’re trying hard to balance a proper, grown-up career with the challenge of being a good Mum to two children, sometimes things become a bit overwhelming. It’s easy to feel a bit down-hearted when something goes wrong, and even though I know there are things I could do to make it easier, I just really don’t like making packed lunches before I go to bed.

Which is silly, because every parent knows that time passes much more quickly in the morning that it does at night. 07:25 becomes 08:25 in far less than an hour, I’m sure of it. My children don’t exactly help. As my own mother would have put it when I was growing up:

 “These children have two speeds. Dead slow and stop.”

Andrew will attest that this is absolutely true. While other children might actively source their own clothes, my two just seem to sit there, and wait. And wait. And wait. I’d do an experiment to see how long I could leave it before they actually got their own clothes and got ready, but I know it would be futile. We’d be late. Every day.

I’ve tried lots of things: no TV until breakfast is finished and clothes are on, no reading until the same, but they don’t really work. The only thing that does is constant chivvying, and that’s quite wearing on me and them:

“Eat up. Drink up. Get your clothes. Where’s your school bag? Have you remembered your homework folder?”

It just goes on and on and on.

So, this morning, because it was holiday club, not school, we adopted a slightly more leisurely approach to getting ready. Didn’t work. Lori ended up in floods of tears because I wouldn’t let her wear her ripped, dirty cat outfit to Carnival Day, and Josie selected a pair of trousers that, at my primary school, would have led to taunts of “Half-masts!”.

Undaunted, I cheered Lori up with proper half-masts, and a bandana that makes her look like a pirate, and then we tumbled on to a very rare thing for us in the morning: a bus.

I felt quite smug. 6 different fruits and veg in the packed lunch (count ‘em: cucumber, tomato, red pepper, raspberries, banana, and a plum), and as a treat, a reduced-sugar jam roll. A bus that meant I wouldn’t be late for work. And two adorable children pretending (Lori) and actually (Josie) reading about Andy Murray’s victory in the tennis and then telling a lovely old pensioner how Mummy had paid for Andy Murray to win Wimbledon (not true, but my employer has been one of his sponsors right from the start of his career, and they had noticed the RBS badge on his shirt and this was Lori’s interpretation of that fact).

Bus over, and smugness lasted for about 5 seconds. Which is how long it took me to realise that something was a bit different about Lori.

“Where’s your rucksack?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

“Aaaaaaaah!” she replied, “It’s on the bus!”

I delivered her to after-school club, and they said they would source a lunch from the shop down the road. But I wasn’t satisfied. I had made that packed lunch, and it had 6 different kinds of fruit and veg in it!

I couldn’t wait for it to be picked up from the depot. So, I set about finding the bag bus with the aid of the Lothian bus timetable, and the Bustracker app. The 09:23 36 at Broughton Primary School gets to Holyrood at 09:52. The next 36 after that to leave Holyrood is 10:02. The bus driver would be the same, because I know they change outside the Primary School on the way back, and they aren’t on a route that goes passed the depot. On its way back, the 36 goes right past my work. All I needed to do was work out which bus it would be, and wait for it out there. I figured it would be the 10:29, just off Dundas Street, so I ducked out of my 10 o’ clock meeting a little early and went over to wait.

And what do you know? There it was. A black Hello Kitty bag with white stars, and a very surprised bus driver.

No-one had ever tracked down their own lost property on his bus before. But 6 fruit and veg!

I called After-School Club, in some jubilance, to arrange a drop-off, but they hadn’t believed that I would get it back. They’d already bought her a ham roll and some more fruit. No need for me to drop it off.

Never mind. I know what I’m having for lunch today, and the taste of victory is sweet (well, reduced-sugar jam sweet).

Collaging

Have you heard of a site called Polyvore? It’s along similar lines to Pinterest, except instead of just pinning one image at a time, you put images together to make collages, and it's much more about clothes and style.

They provide templates, and the you slot your own images into them. Here’s my first attempt at filling a template with my own images.

Or you can create your own from the backgrounds and graphics available on the site, or that you’ve uploaded yourself. Here’s my first attempt at creating my own collage.

I was looking at it a while ago, because I wanted to send a picture of an Anne Fontaine waistcoat to Lauren, from Filing Jointly...Finally to help her to protest at Rule no.10: No jaunty vests in public (she’s from the US, so I’m pretty certain a vest is waistcoat. If it’s not, then I cannot even begin to imagine what a jaunty vest would look like.)

Anyway, I digress...back to Polyvore. Lori and Josie were hovering like little piranhas, and they pounced as soon as they saw the site:

“Oooh, what’s that?

“Can I  have one of those pretty dresses?”

“Can I make a collage too?”

They seemed to like the idea of computer collages. The site, which appears to be aimed at an audience who reads Glamour magazine, struck a chord with an eight year old girl. Hmmmmm. Says a lot about the way young women's magazines seem to want to keep these young women in a state of perpetual childishness.

Anyway, I’ve found the site a bit finicky, and I don't really love clothes so much that I need to turn them into collages.

I haven’t used it much since I signed up. Although, I do wonder whether there is anything similar (although not quite so gender-biased) out there for children as they seemed to be drawn to it,

In the meantime, Josie had a jotter to decorate, so we made a collage, for real life:

It was about a million times more fun than collecting clothes on Polyvore.

Cooking for a Diabetic

As Andrew has had some bad news about the progress of his diabetes (sad face), it seems to be about the right time to start eating a little more healthily again.

A few weeks ago I was discussing the difficulties of balancing a full-time job with eating as a family in a healthy, nutritious, and (most importantly) time-efficient way.* In the course that conversation my friend mentioned that she had started her family on a reduced-meat set of meals.

I won't go over all the arguments for this again here, but you can read the following article in The Guardian if you are curious:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/feb/18/halve-meat-consumption-scientists

So, I started to do that this week. The result? I just seem to have made dishes with cheese and egg in them. I don't think that's quite the point. Not only is it still an animal product, it's not at all healthy for a diabetic at increased risk of heart disease. I blame Nigella Lawson because the recipes are mostly from her Nigellissima Italianish cookery book. The macaroni cheese had four different kinds of cheese in it! It was the most delicious macaroni cheese ever, but still, four... Which four? Parmesan, mascarpone, mozarella, and mature cheddar, since you ask. It was actually supposed to be Gruyere, but my Tesco didn't have any, so I used mature cheddar instead. Seemed to work.

I also ran out of food to make meals with by Tuesday. Clearly my skills with shopping and cooking with less meat need work.

Back to the drawing board for next week!

*If you're wondering why I chose to use an Oxford serial comma, then I will direct you to Bigglethwaite and Windermere's Guide to Proper and Exquisite English. . The context seems to fit their rules.

Awkward Questions

It's been another busy few weeks in the Law household.

I had the Focused Women (the bank's gender diversity network, of which I am chair in Scotland) annual conference this week, and an Inclusion conference last week (with a networking evening the night before), and then another Education committee up at the Council (most interesting 2 hours of my week, no question), and my last Parent Council meeting as chair of Broughton PC (*sniff*). These all conspire to take me away from my day job, and often away from Andrew and the girls later on into the evening.

I couldn't do half of the things I do without having a husband who is as supportive as he is, so as it's coming up for Father's Day I thought I would give him a  little shout out on the blog.

And that brings me on to the awkward questions - I regularly get asked at events a question along these lines, "I read your bio and you seem to do so much - how do you manage it?".

That's a very awkward question to answer, my self-effacing side wants to say, "Well, I don't do half the things I do as well as I should, and I have a very untidy house" but that's not strictly true. I don't do things if I don't think I can do them well, and some of the house is quite tidy (mostly because of Andrew!).

So, I usually say, "Because I have a very supportive husband who does all the things that I can't do."

This week, I made that reply, and the woman asking me told me that she too had a husband at home, and it didn't really seem to make things that much easier. That was awkward. I wasn't sure how to respond!

I also get asked, with alarming regularity, "Do you ever see your children?", to which I have to resist the urge to snap, "Of course I bloody do. Do you think I would do half the things I do, if I didn't actually have time with them?"

Instead, I explain about the way we chose to live on the way to school so I can drop them off in the morning on my way to work. And how Andrew and I have alternate lie-ins on weekend days, so basically the whole of Saturday is me/Jo/Lori time, and Sunday is relaxing family time.

Funnily enough, I don't often hear the Dads at work being challenged on whether they spend enough time with their children.

Labyrinthitis and a Rest

It doesn’t feel like it, but it’s been over a month since my last blog post. Writing doesn’t just write itself, it turns out.

I’m not sure why I stopped, but perhaps it had something to do with a feeling of general overwhelmedness that I’ve been feeling for the last few weeks. That culminated last week in a bad cold, which turned into sinusitis, which turned into labyrinthitis. Labyrinthitis is not pleasant, but it’s also not completely incapacitating.

You know that feeling you get when you get off a roundabout or from spinning a child round and round in circles, or from doing too many pirouettes without spotting properly? It’s like that, except ALL THE TIME. Except when lying down in a semi-darkened room, or walking really fast, bizarrely.

That was me, all of last week. I think my body just gave up in a huff, and decided that my balance system was probably the best way to gently incapacitate me.

I’m back at work today, and I feel a lot more positive. The overwhelmedness has lifted, a little, although the news that our landlord is planning on selling our temporary accommodation before we are ready to sell Flooded Flat, makes me panic a little every time I think about it.

It seems I will be spending a lot of my time over the next few weeks packing boxes, chasing contractors and insurance companies, and panicking over where we’re going to live in June.

The Crockpot

In a previous post, I mentioned that I was going to start using my slow cooker over the Easter holidays. Which I have!

So far, I've made three dishes, all from very different parts of the world.

The first was Pork Paprikash, a Hungarian dish. Andrew really liked this one, but I was not as keen on the intense paprika and green pepper flavour, although the pork was quite tender.

Next up was a New England Pot Roast, no prizes for guessing where that came from. A familiar set of English flavours, in a New English style of cooking. We both enjoyed this, and with the addition of Yorkshire pudding, and some Dill and Horseradish Cream, it was delicious.

Finally, I tried some Cowboy Pork and Beans, with rice. I didn't have a few bits and bobs that this one needed, so I improvised with some leftover Cajun spices - it was about the same in the end. For some reason, the sauce came out quite thin, but it was still flavoursome, and the pork just melted away.

No picture of this one, but perhaps some more posts to follow, as I have bought a whole load more stuff this week! Recipes can be provided, if anyone wants them

Welcome to the Golden Age

The post title is not sarcasm. It is simply fact. Despite what the gutter press would have you believe, the institution of a welfare state circa 60 years ago has not led to the gradual devolution of our country into a sad reflection of a once golden nation. There never was a golden age. At every point in the past of this country more people died, of illness, violence, poverty, and general ignorance, than they do now.

And, in fact, the welfare state has been a significant part of ensuring that we live in what can only be considered a golden age of humanity, certainly in comparison with every other era that has gone before us, and many countries who currently co-exist with us.

However, that's not what many right-wing commentators would have you believe. They are convinced, and subsequently want to convince you, that this society is rotten to its very core. It's populated by scroungers, murderers, layabout, wastrels, and worse, all brought into existence because we have a state that supports the poor, the ill, and the disabled.

Any complaints to the contrary, like, for example that the welfare state supports the aforesaid groups, and that actually, there are bad apples in every society (whether it has a welfare state or not) is met with a chorus of derision.

"Pffft," they say, "You damned leftie. How could anything possibly be worse? Surely, if the state wasn't there to support these people, then they'd have to start working harder? Surely, if we weren't so soft on crime people would stop murdering and thieving and defrauding"

Well, would they? Would they?

Let's have a look at the evidence. And I don't mean someone on benefits splattered over the front page of a trashy tabloid, which proclaims (while lasciviously listing the intimate details of that person's sex life, you know, to show how depraved they are) that they are poor, and ill-educated, and just a bad sort because, because there is a state that supports them.

I mean the long-term evidence about what life is like in this country. Because without that, we can't possibly know whether "things are worse now", can we?

And who knows, perhaps I'll find that mythical Golden Age, and then we can all petition our MPs to return to EXACTLY the same laws, social circumstances, and voting rights that we had then, because obviously, it doesn't matter if child mortality rates have fallen, racism and sexism and homophobia are no longer tolerated by law, more children are educated now and to a better rate than they ever were. It doesn't matter if we now have a minimum wage, or universal suffrage, or a system which supports people who are unable to work through disability, and who would once have had to turn to begging or prostitution.

None of that matters. Do you know why? Because none of that sells papers.

What sells papers is a man with 15 children, who has threesomes with his neighbours and concocts a stupid scheme that kills 6 of his children.

But that doesn't mean the system is wrong. Just because one family didn't work doesn't mean the whole system doesn't work. But that doesn't sell papers.

What sells papers is a blistering attack on the welfare state, which directly equates welfare to why this man killed his own children. Because that's easier than confronting reality.

Which is this: those parents were failing. They received money from the state which they failed to turn into nutritious food, warm clothes, and a rich and loving environment for their children.

And so what do we do?

Choice 1: Take away state money from every other family who needs it. From every other family who is poor and struggling, but who takes that state money and turns it it into food, and clothes, and an environment filled with positive experiences. Take that away, just in case a minority of people abuse it. Knowingly consign children into poverty because of a moral outrage whipped up by the gutter press?

Choice 2: Keep the welfare state. Support families who need support. Don't consign children into poverty and crime, simply because the right-wing media wants more money for the millionaires.

Let's take Choice 2. Choice 1 looks like the rest of human history. It sees the elderly dying of cold, parents choosing to let their children eat rather than them, children bought and sold by people desperate to make money. It sees people choosing between food and medical bills, in a competitive system that is supposed to make it "better for consumers". The ability to make Choice 2 was bought for us by the solidarity of our ancestors, who refused to accept anything less from the ruling elite.

Don't let their sacrifices be for nothing. Don't let the richest in our society fool you into thinking that you will gain from the loss of the welfare state. Don't believe their lies.

Today I Am...

Do you ever do that thing when you watch a TV programme, and then become convinced that you have whatever it's portraying?

It works hypochondriacally, intellectually, and physically. It's like TV magic.

Last night, I watched a show about taste, because the trailer for it suggested they'd found some magic way of making things sweet. And with a diabetic husband, I am all about the magic, healthy sweetness.

Anyway, they introduced the concept of a super taster, who taste things much more than ordinary people on account of the extra taste buds.

I have, obviously, now decided that I am one of these. It explains everything. I have told Andrew this at every opportunity since.

Me: You know how I don't like wine?
Andrew: Yes...
Me: I think it's because I'm a super taster.
Andrew: Really? Maybe you just don't like wine.
Me: Yes, and that explains why I don't like coffee too, because the lady said that super tasters don't like bitter things.
Andrew: Really? You love lemons.
Me: Ah...but they're not bitter, they're sour. See, you'd know the difference if you were a super taster, like me.

Some hours later, in Mimi's Bakehouse (mmmmm):

Me: And I've never like fizzy juice, because it hurts my tongue. I must have so many taste buds that they're just too sensitive. See. I am a super taster.
Andrew: -----

So, what do you think? Are you a super taster? Or do you just taste in pastel?