about me so much of my time is spent preparing food that i feel i need to compile all the useful, simple recipes in one place so i can find them easily. i want to develop my own recipes and involve my kids in the cooking and be a better mum and find new inspiration and share ideas and write about it all here. i love good food, coffee, home-made beauty, movies, music, dancing, good wine... most of all i love my hubby and my kids.
as a mum of young kids i tend to look at any recipe with too many ingredients or too many instructions and feel exhausted before i have even started - the mental effort of finding all the ingredients and then following complicated instructions is too much. with little time to shop or chop or even think, let alone go to the toilet, i often adapt recipes to simplify them for my own sanity and so that i can involve the kids in the cooking. alternatively i make up my own recipes for ease and speed. i even turned to kids recipe books recently for simplicity and again so the kids could help out and follow along with pictures.
despite all this simplifying (why not just buy ready-made right?) i do have a couple of strong ideals: for as much as possible to be home-made and for the kids to enjoy cooking. i feel like there is too much available to us in the supermaerkets and it all has "stuff" added to it... all those foods that are so readily available that i'm sure our parents made from scratch for us.
but with little time to myself and low energy the thought of making them at home felt overwhelming and exhausting and where do you start? i didn't even know how to make simple gravy for a roast chicken.
my mother is an amazing and inspiring cook and everything WAS home-made and she didn't cut corners - she followed all the details of the fancy and delicious recipes. but i couldn't match her. i needed simpler - i needed to cut corners. my husband used to often say "oh my mum used to make her own mayonnaise. it was delicious." and i would feel very inadequate, especially in light of the fact that she had SIX children! i would get a mental block with something like quiche that should be a doddle - it is always on offer in the supermarket and when i tried a nice looking recipe it would take me HOURS.
I started going off the flavour of supermarket foods and wanting better quality for my family. The kids also got a little bit older so i had a bit more time and energy and it was easier to involve them. So i set to making stuff at home but keeping it simple and manageable. And oh man how much better does home-made quiche or bread or pizza or pesto taste than the supermarket stuff!
baking has also been something to pass the time. my little boy has always loved cooking and baking and especially while his little sister naps, it is a nice activity for us.
so here is my collection of recipes that are super super simple.
so here is my collection of recipes that are super super simple.
here are my super-healthy kids... actually today they had a packet of hula-hoops each for lunch, as we raced around the supermarket.. so not so super healthy after all! they are delicious munchkins though
sweet rabbit Kit
who only sometimes poos on the floor
and super hero hubby
Sam & i have been married for seven years
we have both lived in london for 10 years
and have recently moved to a town in the countryside
that's about all
