Giving up for good?

As part of our family doing some lent activities inspired by 'love life live lent' today we took public transport for a journey we would normally use the car for.

Well, I can't claim that to be totally true I suppose as what would normally actually happen is that I would moan my husband into taking a couple of hours of holiday time so that he could drop us all off at the appointment and avoid trekking out with 3 children, minimizing our public transport use to a one way trip only.

As we set out I can admit the mere thought of going out (literally) into the freezing cold, rain and wind with three children on my own on the bus and metro train fills me with total dread, but not being the owner of a driving license I actually normally have no other option. It had taken approaching 15 minutes just to get the older two to cooperate in getting their shoes and coats on, by which time my 3 month old was screaming rather hysterically.

Fortunately my kids actually love actually being on a bus or a train so the journey it's self is normally fine and it was on the way there.

On the way home, in the freezing rain, once I reached the ticket machine I realized that despite the extortionate fares (today cost me over £6 in fares for a journey that takes 10-15 minutes by car, it would have been more except my daughter gets free travel due to her disability) the ticket machines do not take notes. So I then had to drag the kids back into the shops to get change, but be very careful how much I spent otherwise I wouldn't have enough money to get home!

Then of course the bus home was 15 minutes late, and with 3 young children in the rain every minute feels like about a week, at least. I was just at the point of screaming at the kids that I have NO IDEA where the bus is or when it will be coming so please stop asking when a very kind woman pointed out it was approaching!

All in all we are not public transport converts, despite the fact we use it almost daily to get to and from school, I am now dreading the next school run as today's experiences have sincerely put them both off using buses and trains and they are now asking whether daddy can do all the school runs from now on. I guess its back to the AA driving school for me, sadly the only thing I hope to be giving up for good is in fact public transport.

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!