Tag: People

Two dads, five children and two dogs

Outright Revolt and Outright Outrageous

10.10am and we are still having trouble getting our not so famous five to do their school work. We managed to get Amritsar to read 5 pages of her ‘Swallows and Amazon’s’ novel! Yes, she is now reading novels at 7 years old! Tara on the other hand has chosen a David Walliams book ‘First Hippo on the Moon’! But she has now retreated to her tablet in the dining hall, looking like she thinks I can’t see her!

Thor and Caleb are refusing to wear anything bar their underpants, simply refusing to get dressed. Aaliyah is also sucking away on her fingers merrily. We have asked her to wear a woollen glove these last months! But any chance she gets, she slips it off for a sneaky suck. It’s an ongoing thing!

The lessons still sit on the kitchen table awaiting some enthusiasm. I will have to come back to writing today’s post in an hour or so and let you know how things go. Wish me luck!

(An hour later…)

OMG, that was a real struggle! Namely Thor screaming because he could not draw unicorns. But Aaliyah’s unicorns were perfect. An oval, a small circular head, four stick legs and a little horn! Caleb persevered, so a jelly baby for him also. I bit my lip! Was today going to be the day of Thor’s expulsion!

Amritsar and Tara applied themselves to their maths questions, though I helped Tara so much, I may just as well have filled in the answers myself and claimed the credit (and the jelly baby)! But I know, that’s not supposed to happen, is it?

Thor finally settled down a bit and scribbles for unicorns had to be accepted as effort. He got his jelly baby.

We have normally (though nothing is normal at the moment) managed to keep their attention for something just shy of an hour. Today we might have clocked up 25 minutes.

On a slightly unrelated matter, John’s parsley plants arrived this morning. Consider that the supermarket sells fully grown parsley plants at £1.25, John tells me his 2 x parsley plants cost £3.50 each! I am now sounding like one of the girls mathematics questions (oh dear)! Okay, eBay has done it again! Negative feedback is on its way. Some people are unscrupulous, outright outrageous in fact!

Happy Birthday Mum

Jean Eve Paradise was my Mum. She had three boys (Paul, Brandon and me) and a daughter Shae. Today is the 14th May, her birthday. My mum passed five years ago this coming September. She is missed very much, but we always remember ‘Grandma Jean’ with colour and theatrics. She was in the movie ‘Charlottes Webb’, an extra in a number of scenes, but a few closeups in a few scenes too. She also acted in a number of commercials in Australia. The main one being shot in Melbourne for a national jeans brand ‘Just Jeans’. Odd that her name was also Jean. Well today would have been her birthday and today’s photograph is of a pink orchid. Something I would send her every year on her birthday. She loved the colour pink and she adored orchids as they are beautiful and have a good shelf life. One year I broke the model and sent her yellow tulips. She was horrified. She called me and inquired ‘why would you do that’? I had to apologise and swear that it would never happen again…

I miss you Mum. You are fondly remembered.

Late in The Day – What Can I Say

The children’s dinner just done! Daddy tapping away at his laptop. Gracie snuggled on the sofa besides me. Remus nowhere to be seen. Thor and Aaliyah sat opposite on the other sofa looking at daddy’s iPad. Thor shouting very loudly. Good shouting, he is happy and talking about ‘Jelly Beans’! Aaliyah looks to be in a good mood. She turns to Thor and smiles. ‘I’ve still got 11%’ she says. Must be the battery charge on the iPad. All I hear from outside in the dining hall is the theme tune to ‘My Little Pony’. However it is Tara looking on and enjoying the episode on her tablet. Aaliyah certainly has lead the crew to embrace that show. For me however – giving me a bit of a headache. Amritsar and Caleb are sat close to Tara, watching on contentedly. Now Amritsar is coming in here to plug in her tablet and watch something different. The television has thus remained silent all day long!

Remus is in fact inhabiting the spare room. I think he is thinking of it as ‘Remus’s Room’ nowadays. Ever since his exile from Daddy and Dadda’s room, he has been hanging out up there, like a moody teenager. I think that he finds the relative organised chaos of the children a little too much sometimes. Gracie on the other hand still loves Aaliyah’s occasional hugs, at least one every hour! So she generally stays close to the family hub.

I am just thinking, I have completely forgotten what day it is! That’s bad isn’t it?

Weather not great. Still grey, though a few moments of sunshine today.

Oh! Look whose just swooned into the living room! Remus! Now what does he want I ask myself!

Thor has just asked me to video him! Just why, I really don’t know. He is a funny boy!

Thanks for looking in.

A Spontaneous 2 Minutes

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Jellof Rice of West Africa

Today’s morning lessons sent to us from the children’s school were initially embraced with loud screams from the little ones and downward looks and silence with the girls.

This isn’t going to be easy I mutter to myself. Right! Divide and conquer I think. The first class I gave to Aaliyah, Thor and Caleb.

We firstly look for the number ’11’ around the kitchen. A game to see how many times we can spot 2 straight lines sat next to one and other. The screams soon settled into a hive of excited wonderment. Okay, I then mistakenly start them on the girls (year 2) ‘geography’ lesson and we look at foods from around the world. A lot of countries were covered, many foods were thought of, quite a few from their experience of Dadda having actually created them for their dinner in the past.

We ended up in SubSaharan Africa. Now this memory takes me back to the time that John and I met. As well as designing for a clothing company just north of Soho in London (Noho), I also worked late afternoon in a hostel for young homeless people. I was their evening dinner chef. I had to pretty much forget everything that I had learned at catering college and research the wonders of international cuisine. This was partly due to the hostels embrace of multicultural London.

I did in fact re-educate my knowledge of Indian, Chinese, Thai, Mexican, pretty much all cultural foods! Yes, including the Caribbean and some west African wonders.

I befriended one of the hostels staff members Dora. Herself from Ghana and a very keen cook. We spent many hours cooking, just as West Africans would have done. Traditionally meals would be cooked in a pot above a fire, later on a gas hob. I learnt spicy meatballs (with corned beef), served with hot tomato sauce, groundnut stew with chicken. Sardine omelet and a west Africa staple, Jellof rice.

I loved Dora’s surname! I believe it is a popular name in Ghana, Dora Owusa Ansah. That is such a great sounding name. It is a poetry of sounds to the ear. She was a lovely woman.

After not having cooked these dishes in years, today’s ‘geography’ lesson took me right back. The children and I talked about this great dish and I promised to make it for lunch.

The dish is flexible as different family’s all have their own recipes. So this is my take on this amazingly tasty dish of Africa. I have updated the simple one pot cooking option to make it my own. I am going to use a frying pan to cook the spice out with the meat and onions, but I will be using the microwave to cook the dish to perfection.

Ingredients:

Meat (your choice)

Onions

A Tin of Tomatoes

Basmati Rice

Salt

Spices (feel free to experiment)

I remember Dora just chose what was available. I thought about the flavours I remembered and came up with:

Dried coriander, cumin, garlic, ginger, chilli (dried or fresh), paprika, celery salt and a little season-all.

You want your meat tender, so you could cook it in advance. Stewed beef for instance. Chicken is ideal. Just cook it in a frying pan with your spices first. Oh! And I finely chopped some cooked garlic mushrooms, just because they were there! My meat choice today was bacon lardons from the fridge. This is a main course meal on its own. But this is your party so play around… Frozen peas!

Cook your meat with the spice. Add your chopped onion and continue to cook until tender. Add your tinned tomatoes and cook a further 10 minutes.

Place in a large microwaveable bowl with your rice and about double the volume of boiling water. Season well. Place a lid on your bowl or use a plate to cover. Microwave on full power for 10 minutes then carefully stir the contents. Cook for a further 10 minutes and recheck the contents. At this point most of that flavoursome cooking liquid should be absorbed by the rice. If not, cook a further 5 minutes.

Very carefully remove the bowl and empty the contents into a baking tray with plenty of room. I do this in one fail swoop. Baking tray on top and flip over. Your rice should come out with ease and look like a solid block. Break this up with a fork and pull clumps out to the side of the tray, allowing the rice to become more flaked and separate. A lot of steam, so be careful. Once you are happy there are few clumps, serve.

My crew went wild for the extremely invigorating taste and moorish texture of this most famous West African comfort food ‘Jellof Rice’. Not a single grain of rice remained on any of their plates.