What I've Loved This Week....

...is nostalgia. For me, blogging has been a very off and on business, and this certainly isn't the first blog I've written. If you're interested, and you've got a little bit of spare time, then do please go off and have a look at my previous ones - you can find me having a tantrum here, and having it all here (but please remember to come back!)

I often think I was born in the wrong time - in my heart, I know I was meant to be waltzing with a dashing young man who's arrived at the ballroom in a carriage and Jane Austen's chosen me as her main study. Or I'm a lovelorn governess with a crush on her boss. Or Anna Karenina. Take your pick really. It often means though I don't necessarily always grasp the current culture, I'm constantly astounded by fashion, culture and hairstyles, and I'd still quite like to wear a gypsy top. Do you remember them? It's a bit of a sign of age that one.

When I first started blogging, there were only a few blogs I knew about, and there certainly wasn't any sort of network of the same size as British Mummy Bloggers. Well , there might have been, but if they existed I didn't know about them and I probably wouldn't have been accepted as a member. Wife in the North had got her book deal, and some of my Open University buddies blogged if they were doing a Creative Writing course, other than that you just sort of waited for people to find you, and you found them by looking at comments on other people's blogs. And I look back on those days quite fondly, I wasn't aware of it being such a big deal as it is nowadays, and probably we danced in cornfields and the sun always shone as well. And in this spirit of looking back:-

this week I've loved shabby. I came across this gorgeous shop while I was in York, and they do a lovely mail order service. How could you not love this gorgeous santa envelope? Or this beautiful lamp? Or these pretty jugs? Frankly I could buy up half their supply, if only I had the money. (And no, this isn't a sponsored post, they haven't offered me any incentives, I just happen to love the shop.

This week I've loved blogs. One of the first blogs I read in great big huge chunks, and still read now is Big Blue Barn West. Aims has had an incredibly difficult life, she has tales to make you laugh and cry, and she's one of the bravest women I'll ever have the pleasure to read. She's also a very talented crafter and although she doesn't blog as regularly as she used to, she's still a writer who will draw you in to her world. In a bid to look to the new as well, I've discovered a gorgeous new blog called Karen and Nigella. She has the most mouthwatering photographs of food, and she's working her way through Nigella's cookbook. I shall personally be hoping to follow her on the journey, literally if necessary, just to get my hands on some of that food.

So that's me done. What have you loved this week?

Edited to add it's no use at all me telling you I used to write other blogs and then not giving you the linky loo la's so you can have a look at them. I can only apologise and blame someone who isn't me, defeinitely not, no sirree bob.

Not Old Mother Hubbard

I’m not really like Old Mother Hubbard, I’m the very opposite. Unless of course you take it very literally as there are no bones in the cupboards at all. At least I don’t think there are; I don’t really look in the backs of the cupboards, but I think I can fairly confidently say that it’s unlikely there are any bones in the cupboard. There are however plenty of other things, like maple syrup, bicarbonate of soda, hundreds and thousands and white wine vinegar. Some of them have been there for a long time. I try not to think too much about the sell by dates until I start a new recipe and need a particular item which I know I have in my cupboard, only to find out it’s not only past it’s “sell by” date and it’s “use by” date, but it’s now well into the “this is destroying your cupboard” date and the “this will kill you and several thousand people in your immediate vicinity if you remove the lid” date.

Part of the problem is I’m a bit of a cookery book fanatic. I have a lot of them, and I mean a lot. If I go to a book fair, a food fair, or probably a fun fair, I’ll return with a cookery book that contains the one elusive recipe for the absolutely perfect dessert that none of my other 25 recipe books contained. I’ll then choose a recipe I like the look of, discover I’ve got less than one tenth of the ingredients already and make my way to the local supermarket. I’ll then be staggered every single time when I walk round only to discover they don’t stock sheep’s milk cheese, fresh rosemary or dried bat’s blood, which is the absolutely essential item for the recipe and which I end up substituting with chicken stock or vanilla essence depending on the sweet or savoury nature of the dish. Almost invariably. I then potter off back home, make the recipe, and don’t get me wrong, it’s usually lovely, but I end up with a cupboard full of boxes, tins and bottles where I’ve used either a pinch or 3 drops and I never, ever come across any recipe ever again which contains them.

This isn’t the only problem I face when I go food shopping. The other half and I had a swish round Waitrose the other day, and I was overtaken by the spirit of a woman who wants to buy a lot of things in pretty boxes, which smell nice, and either say “organic”, “original recipe” or have a quaint little brand name like Fiddledeedee Pies. (If ever someone calls their range of pies that, someone needs to tell me, because I’ll be owed a lot of money). We walked round, I tried to plan meals for the entire week ahead, and we thought we’d got it well sorted, but then arrived home with no eggs which were kind of one of the very important ingredients.

When you’re making an omelette.

The problem, we decided, was that we didn’t use shopping lists. I rarely use a shopping list unless I’m going on one of the aforementioned specific recipe trips, but I associate them with a generation different to my own. I remember all too well being sent on shopping errands by my mum who had a, well let’s say, unique style. Until I learned better, I never looked at the list until I got into the supermarket, then I’d stand there while I tried to decipher what on earth she meant. Trolls were one of my favourite items which appeared regularly, and it took a while to work out that it actually said t-rolls, shorthand for toilet rolls. My other abiding memory is fininger, but I’m sure even the best educated of us could forgive my mum the slightly eccentric spelling of vinegar.

Still, it all makes for a slightly more interesting shopping experience, but if anyone can source me a recipe which uses whole nutmegs, peanut butter, dried suet, pickled red cabbage and lemon curd, I’d be eternally grateful.

The One Where I'm a Mum

Anyone who knows me will tell you I love my food. I don't have a particularly sweet tooth, but I very much enjoy eating. In fact there are few things I don't like to eat. My son has grown up with a similarly robust attitude to food, he'll volunteer to try all sorts of things and sometimes he'll like them and sometimes he won't. Unfortunately he's also cursed with a sweet tooth, but then I'd imagine there are very few 12 year olds who aren't.

When I saw a headline in the news (and I'll let you read the full article here if you haven't already) about a mother who had restricted her daughter's calorie intake to 700 a day I was flabbergasted. But also it made me stop and think about how much of our own issues with food is passed on to our children.

I'm almost constantly trying to lose weight. I know I weigh too much, not enormously so, but still overweight. Particularly if you examine the little person on the Wii Fit representing me who looks like a little orange bouncing across the screen with twig arms and legs. Depending on my own weight, and how I feel about it, the family meal changes accordingly. Unfortunately, I still equate good mothering as feeding everyone very well and seeing happy faces round the dining table, so on numerous occasions my internal calories counter goes out the window for the price of a home made lasagne or key lime pie.

And it makes me wonder what sort of influence I'm having on my son. He's a strapping lad as they say, almost as tall as me and what I would have referred to in the past as well built. He loves his food, but plays rugby and badminton at school and goes swimming twice a week. All of which is more than I do, as my exercise is currently limited to using my fingers on a keyboard. I'm not oblivious at all to the fact that we need to eat a healthy diet, I ensure that everyone eats fruit, cuts down on sweets and chocolate and vegetables aren't as scary as they might be. But should I be eating in a more healthy manner so that this rubs off on him? Should I be restricting his calorie intake without him knowing, to prevent weight problems in the future? Or do I risk having a child who's so consumed (if you'll pardon the pun) by the calorific value of cake that he grows up with an entirely unhealthy view of food?

How do you tip the scales on this one?