A Small update

Okay, it’s been a long holiday and quite honestly, exhausting, yet invigorating. Today we had another late night invasion of the living room (5 nights running now), but the reason was not Caleb removing his nappy and smearing the contents over his bed, rather Thor had removed his and rubbed his little smear of poo over the ‘Paw Patroller’ (you need to have little ones who watch paw patrol to understand what that is)! I went up and managed to clear up a little of the mayhem (with baby wipes), that had kept them up until after 9pm. But I had to scorn them when Aaliyah simply threw her empty nappy at me and marched off to her bed! Well there’s gratitude. Tara and Amritsar should also know better at their age.

Enough said, all is quite upstairs now. I will now recount last night and why they were justified in staying up late. We had our babysitter Nikki booked in for 8pm and though we were going to watch fireworks over the neighbours hedge from 8pm. Our table at our relatively local, favourite Michelin started restaurant was booked for 8.45pm. Nikki arrived, as did one of our neighbours, back from Christmas in France, as we all stood, all five children in their Jim Jams, slippers and dressing gowns at the front door, a mass of hysteria happened on the lawn in front of the house and our not so famous five ended up covered in mud, well dressing gowns and slippers at least. The fireworks didn’t happen and we had to flee in order to get to the restaurant for our allotted time. Thank you Nikki for getting them up to bed. The meal was great, though yet again I chose the rib eye steak and triple cooked chips. I always frown at a menu when you end up ordering the steak option. Their menu certainly deserves the Michelin star, but the butternut squash risotto simply didn’t appeal. You know what it’s like!

Talking of food – WOW! Tonight’s dinner of spaghetti and meatballs using 50% pork and 50% finely diced brown turkey meat was sublime. Only breadcrumbs, fresh herbs and seasoning added. Please reassess turkey leftovers and consider meatballs (or meatloaf) as a real option? Maybe next year at least. On Christmas Day I immediately froze the two turkey legs, simply because that way, you get to choose what to do with them considerately at a later date. And today my regular meatball recipe just slightly tweaked, as I realised the perfect ‘turkey leftovers’ dilemma we are all faced with year after year. Just make sure you roll the meatballs as small as a chocolate truffle? Time well spent and practice makes perfect. The taste (opposed to using pork alone) was amplified and I didn’t even think I was consuming turkey leftovers as the texture was soft and tender. Job well done. Off to bed now, signing off.