Wednesday 30 July 2008

Making her premiere appearance..


Today was our second daughter (third child) who is due to join us in December. Being the child of an aspiring photog of course she behaved perfectly, laying nicely turned to get everything measured and showing off her cute foetal tricks, thumb sucking, hiccuping, kicking and waving. She was so photogenic in fact that they asked someone else to come in to practice their scanning and measuring technique.

Well, long may it last, I hope she's ready to be posed for her newborn session, I have had a long time to think up cute ideas for her!

Tuesday 29 July 2008

Gluten free gooey-ness

Having time of to do things with the kids is great, unless its raining. Of course there are lots of other things you can go, baking used to be my personal favorite until I had to go on a gluten free diet and could no long join in licking the bowl.

So in need of amusement to the kids, some chocolatet gooey-ness for me and the need the mess up every surface in my kitchen I turned to Nigella Lawson to see which recipe I could adapt to a gluten free version and found gooey chocolate puddings, just whats needed on a dismal summer day!



If yo would like to try them, here's the recipe, its fast easy and not too expensive:


Ingredients:

125g good quality dak chocolate (its about a bar a a half when you're out shopping)

125g unsalted butter

3 large eggs

150gg caster sugar

35g Dove's wheat + gluten free plain flour

Butter and flour for preparing ramekins


Makes approx 6 250ml ramekins.


Melt the chocolate + butter in a bowl over a pan of simmering water.

Whisk together the sugar, eggs and flour.

Whisk the melted chocolate and butter into the egg, sugar and flour mix a bit at a time.

Set the mixture to one side to rest.


Grease your ramekins with butter then add flour to cover the butter and tapp off the excess.


Pour the mixture into your ramekins and place them on a baking tray.

Bake in a pre-heated oven at 200oC for about 10 minutes.

The tops should be firm and beginning to crack slightly and the edges set.


Serve hot with cold cream.


If you have extra left over (like us having only 4 ramekin dishes) cook the rest in something else, we cooked ours in rabbits until entirely set to make some bunny cakes for later!


Monday 28 July 2008

Fogged off + fogged on

Fog, along with the NHS, has been another virtually constant feature of our lives in the last 7 days. Causing disruption when my friends husband was fogged on the rig in the middle of the week when his eldest son was in and out of hospital and holding off the air show we had agonised over attending.

Having no turned on local radio we had no idea there was even any fog at all when we set off front our sun-bathed front door to set the red arrows however we soon realised the number of cars driving in the opposite direction did in fact have a good amount of significance.

So we opted for ice cream at the top of Marsden cliffs, where you couldn't see the bottom because of the fog and walk back to the car park, that again you couldn't see from the ice cream van.

My Grandmother would have serious words with me for taking my kids outside in the fog, she swears she got asthma from being outside in the fog...

Friday 25 July 2008

The highlight of an 8 hour day with the NHS....


Isn't it always to case, you offer to do nice things all the time and the one day someone take you up on it is the day your husband is at work and you've no cash in the house, its 20C and you ironed jeans and warm tops for everyone the night before...

Of course it is, it didn't make me hesitate when a friend asked for help today though, it did of course take me longer to get out the house. Opting to throw my 3 yr old into the buggy and instruct my 6 yr old to walk very fast rather than wait for the bus was the best option and we arrived quicker than expected. The friend in questions has had a seriously bad time in the last 3 weeks, having had a sick newborn for 2 weeks of in-ing and out-ing of hospital her 18 month old decided to take his turn and has spent this week back and forth to our local NHS foundation facility.

After a quick look over him from me and a phone conversation with his GP mum was advised to take him back to the hospital, again should I add? With the assurance that is she wasn't happy with the outcome the GP would refer to somewhere else. So began the day..

After calling my other half home from work to take care of our two we headed up to the children's day care unit. The day went surprisingly fast, little man slept soundly on one of our knees often and we swapped the kids back and forth as they got sick of the helping hand and needed mum. There were many conversations and misunderstandings regarding the various diagnosis, since Saturday when this merry band first graced the doors of the hospital (who's name I will spare the shame....) he has been diagnosed with; anaphylactic shock, uriticaria, erythema multiform, a viral rash, a bacterial ear infection, labrynthitis, and finally suggested myelitis or post-viral irritable hip. Poor little one has just about been through the dictionary.

So after another round of vampirism we wait to see what these bloods say, and the highlight of our day? An otherwise clean-looking cubible, where all the soap dispensers were empty and there were 2 disgarded syringes from the previous patient left lying in the cot. Nice touch I thought... and the ultimate irony? I was on the phone with the head of the woman's & children's services as I tried to get out the door resolving a complaint I had over the standard of care I had received......