Cornbread anyone?

Thanksgiving! This has been a hit and miss celebration during our time in the US.  Twice Dom has been away, and last year I got a half turkey delivered so I didn't have to cook one. It ended up being dry and tasteless but since I was in my deranged post-partum state I can barely remember it. This year we are going to a pot-luck where I was encouraged to bring precisely nothing. Nothing? I thought this holiday was all about cooking and sharing?  There's a poster ad here for Newcastle Brown Ale which has a picture of a pint with the words, 'Making British food palatable since 1927'. The pot-luckers are obviously taking no chances with me.  I protested, and was given the task of producing some cornbread muffins. Knowing Dom likes bread sauce, I also suggested I bring some of that, in the name of cross-cultural diversity. We haven't made the bread sauce yet but yesterday I cooked up three batches of cornbread muffins, the first without wheat so as to be gluten free. These first ones turned out a little flat and fairly tasteless so I bought a mix, thinking if I baked them from a that, then I'd know how they should look and could work from there. Were they were meant to be all puffy with overhang like the blueberry muffins in Starbucks? Unfortunately I forgot the egg so the next dozen were just as flat and heavy.  Finally I made the last batch of cornbread just as the recipe suggested.  Certainly not light and fluffy.  Dom thinks they'd be better hot, with Marmite. Lucky we are not in charge of the turkey!

Dairy Diary

Yesterday we came back from a few days staying on a dairy farm north of the city.  We rented a bungalow that looked out over the run down farmhouse and out-buildings.  Everything looked like it needed some love, the paint was peeling on the barns, overhead wiring between the buildings looked perilous.  There was slurry on the roads and mud you could lose a boot in.  We arrived there in howling wind and torrential rain, but after such a relaxed Christmas, our spirits would not be dampened.  In fact the space and the farmland and the view of the sea was just what we wanted. The wind hardly let up - so much so, that it was sometimes hard to catch your breath - but the sun did come out and the light of the early sunrise and sunset was amazing. And our friendly farmer wanted to talk corn prices and agricultural politics and show us the farm where he'd grown up.  It was the perfect place for my puddle jumping, mud-loving children!
In the place where I grew up, my next door neighbour was a dairy farmer. The herd of fresians rubbed their necks on our garden fence, their black and white backs were dotted about the fields around our home, we smelt their muck and trod in their cowpats. In the spring we heard their braying when their calves were taken from them.  In the autumn, we picked the mushrooms that grew out of their manure. When we camped in the field once I was convinced they were gnawing on our guy ropes but the tent did not fall down so it must have been their noisy chewing of the cud.  So I have slept just yards from a cow but in spite of this proximity, I had never seen one milked.  And since I'm nursing at the moment myself, I had a new level of respect for these animals as we observed them from the 'pit' in the milking parlour. The invitation came from our accommodating host and was seized upon happily by all of us.  But when you are eye level with a swollen udder, heavy and veined, a few things happen. First, you realise how big a cow actually is, then you become extremely thankful you are not also a cow with their heavy gait and weighty milk-producing burden, and you promptly have a new appreciation for a simple glass of milk and vow never again to let it go off by leaving it out overnight or let it spill across the table from a clumsy hand.
Through a circular piece of glass you could see the milk pulsing out of the udders.  The farmer talked about the iodine used to prevent infections like mastitis. I winced with the memory of it.  He told us the herd were more productive if they listened to music they recognised.  A tinny sounding Latin jazz from the local Hispanic radio channel could be heard from a speaker strung over a beam on the ceiling.  Don't all the parenting books tell us, you nurse better when relaxed?  I looked on in awe, safe behind the iron rails that held the cows in place. Then I got a splash of cow pee and decided to retreat a little closer to the door of our observation 'pit' - poor Jack was strapped to me in a carrier after all.  Not deterred by any of this, Max and Oli wanted to see the calves.  Aged between two weeks and three months, they were being weaned in little tents nearby. Their coats were clean and fluffy as they jumped around their muddy pens. They stuck their noses through the fencing and sucked the farmers hands in the absence of their mothers.  Max wanted to kiss them. Oli wanted to put them on the BBQ. 'Me eat that cow' he said, pointing at one whose pink nose was spotted with black, as if she'd stuck it in an ink well.  'Me dream 'bout cows' he told us this morning and I didn't really think to ask what kind of dream it was.  We offered both boys a beefburger for lunch today and in contrast to Oli's gastronomic take on his farm experience, our future vegetarian declined for both of them, 'That's a waste of a cow' Max said.

Keeping the magic alive!

I remember going for a walk with my aunt once.  We walked over the cliffs, and to keep her two younger children engaged and more importantly walking, she cooked an imaginary cake. We pulled the seed heads off tall grasses and threw the sugar into an invisible mixing bowl. We cracked acorns for eggs and blew dandelions for flour. We put the cake under a gorse bush cooker and by the end of the walk we pulled it our from between a gatepost. And, here's the best bit, when we got home, there on the centre of the table was a floral plate with a marzipan topped Battenburg cake on it. I was just old enough to know the ruse, to know that Battenburgs only came from Asda, but I was young enough too to get caught up in the magic of an imaginary cake becoming real.
So earlier today Max was asking if we could do 'pretend cooking with real ingredients'. I think he worked out that cooking up the left-over turkey from Thanksgiving was as much real cooking with real ingredients as I was going to manage for one day. There are lots of things I've been saying 'yes' to recently that I perhaps wouldn't have a few months ago.  Yes, because Jack is crying, yes because I can't think straight, yes, because otherwise it always seems to be no.  So letting Max have a few things from the cupboard to cook something 'pretend' felt fine. I'm happy to encourage anyone in the kitchen - you never know, in a few years time it might pay off! So while Oli napped and Jack nursed, Max took ownership of a small casserole dish and some select spices.  We talked about what might go into the making of a cake and decided that a pretend cake could have a pretend egg, not a real one this time.  But this boy had planned on making his pretend cake with real ingredients and he had the contents of the cupboard in mind.  He was very tacit about the whole thing though.  He came over to where I was sitting and asked if I could open a packet of mulled spice. I thanked him for asking and gave him a clove.  Then he came over and announced his cake needed some chocolate. Ha! Of course it did. Dom dug out the cooking chocolate and gave him a square of it. I assumed it would go straight in his mouth.
Jack stopped nursing, Oli was up from his nap and it was time for the beach. The casserole dish sat on the kitchen floor, the contents marinading while we got some fresh air and tried to avoid wet feet in the surf.  A few hours later, back home, supper has been eaten and we are closing in on bathtime.  On the sideboard there is a small casserole dish, half full of water. It smells mildly of cinnamon and has a brown scum on top. There's definitely a few broken lengths of spaghetti in there and a dash of milk.  I think there's some flour and there's even that square of cooking chocolate. I accept the amount of work that has gone into it and know I'll have to wait a bit before I can reclaim my dish.  Anyway, I'm back nursing Jack again and Dom takes control of Max and Oli, but with one eye on the cricket.
When I come downstairs half an hour later I find Max buttering a 9 inch by 4 inch cake tin.  Oli is watching his brother in awe, encouraging this gastronomic feat. Oli mostly likes 'Unny' these days (that'll be honey to you and I) but he looks like he has complete confidence that this brown scummy water could indeed become a delicious chocolate cake.  Australia have dropped a catch Dom tells me. He assures me England have a chance now.  I watch Max, face contorted, waiting for the mixture to spill across the floor. But no, he pours it into his greased pan and it is me that encourages him to put it in the oven. I twist some knobs and turn a dial pretending to turn the cooker on.
Later, far too late in fact. and in spite of my eyes being hot with tiredness, in spite of the laundry that needs hanging up, in spite of the bottles that need sterilizing, the dishwasher that needs emptying, in spite of my hair that needs washing, I know a cake needs baking.  I wash out the scummy water and make the quickest cake I know, a banana cake in a bread pan, and wonder if the magic will live on!

Baking *with apologies to opera lovers

We still have a few biscuits left (cookies if you're reading over here).  There was an operatic quality to their making.  With Max on holiday for the summer he has been pestering me to do some 'big boy' cooking. The way he went on, you'd think we never set foot in the kitchen together. The truth is we've baked several loaves of bread and dozens of cupcakes not to mention jelly and ice pops. In addition, don't I cook supper every evening? I'm not usually averse to help from small hands.
This latest burst of interest may have been prompted by our chalking out a hob on the deck and by me giving the boys an old, scratched non-stick frying pan that had been singled out for a yard sale. For a day or two, he and Oli were happy mushing up the quota of rice and lentils I had given them, and picking apart a bulb of garlic. Then I lost a good portion of cocoa powder to the project when I wasn't looking and I was none too happy.
The clamouring racket for big boy cooking became louder still.  I've only seen a few operas in my time, and, thug that I am, I can't say they are really my thing. But there was something in the rising libretto from my children, that reminded me of some sonorous operatic recitative.
We decided on an oat and chocolate recipe and set about.  The bashing of the chocolate squares into chips briefly dispelled the rising tension. The dough was mixed, first in a bowl. 'Can I lick the spoon' became the predictably cacophonous chorus.  After much effort I realised the electric mixer might do a better job than we were doing at breaking up hard butter. Dough covered wooden spoons were dispensed. Silence. Followed by the applause of the blender. Act 1 was over.
We transferred the dough back to the mixing bowl to fold in our broken chocolate.  Oli reached a stunning alto in his demands for more licking - spatulas, spoons, bowls, anything would do, no doubt mixing blades if he could have got his hands on them.  Luckily my normally ill-equipped kitchen was able to provide 2 spatulas. Silence again and the end of the second act.

For the final drama, the suspense was building over the licking rights of the large beige mixing bowl. Another 2 wooden spoons would be needed to keep things fair. Unsullied tablespoons of mixture did, incredibly, make it to the baking tray.  Was the oven door licked? I have a feeling Oli might have seen his mirror image in it, dough smeared, and wondered if he could lick it off his reflection.
Golden, the cookies emerge 20 minutes later. The opera is over but the players do not return for the final bow; satiated on uncooked sugar, butter, oats and chocolate (with evidence of this smeared across their clothes) they are seeking new excitement from trucks in the flower beds. It actually gives the cookies, and the chef, a moment to cool. Exit left.