Uncategorized – a geriatric mother

A very quick post before I forget…

Christmas Eve

Starter was home made (by my mum) chicken liver pate with freshly made melba toast, followed by slow cooked pork shoulder (marinated in a soy sauce and tahini mix, based on a Nigella slow cook recipe) with boulangere potatoes, cabbage with nigella seeds (also a Nigella recipe) and mixed green veg. Dessert was a gingerbread cake (recipe from BBCgoodfood) made by my 13 yr old daughter. All finished off with cheese and tiffin.

Christmas Day

Traditional turkey with all the trimmings, following a starter of Smoked Salmon (always supplied by Springs Salmon in West Sussex) and traditional christmas pudding, this year supplied by the Ultimate Plum Pudding Company

Boxing Day

Left over cold turkey, cold ham, home made winter coleslaw (a Jamie Oliver recipe), green salad with honey and soy dressing and jacket potatoes. Dessert was Ottolenghi flourless coconut and chocolate cake (from Sweet) as it was my Dad’s birthday

27th December

Tartiflette made with leftover jacket potatoes and ham and mixed with some gently fried onions and topped with a mixture of cheese, heated in the oven and then grilled to crisp the topping

This brief post and listing does no justice to the hours of searching through recipe books that I did in early December 🙂

Some of the dinners we had this week:

Thai Red Chicken Soup

From Jamie Oliver’s latest ‘5 ingredient’s book’ – super easy, as long as you remember to put in on in advance, and liked by the whole family

Chilli – with all the trimmings

My chilli is a bit of a cheat – I use the schwartz packet mix and follow the instructions on the packet, although I did it with casserole steak and slow cooked it for the afternoon, to mix it up a bit. For us, chilli is as much about the bits that come with it. We always serve it with sour cream, grated cheese, chopped avocado, tortilla chips and a tomato, red onion and coriander salsa

Chicken and chorizo veggie fried rice

Just me and D2 one evening, who loves chorizo, so I fried up some chicken with some cooking chorizo, added a pack of whole grain microwave rice, some sweetcorn, chopped carrot and broccoli adding a bit of sun dried tomato paste mixed in water to make a stock to keep it all moist whilst cooking

Pasta with oil, garlic, chilli and parsley

A quick recipe that came in the magazine that accompanied my Hush clothes delivery last week. Very quick and tasty.

Chicken in sesame seeds

Another Jamie recipe – this time from his family superfoods book. Butterflied chicken breasts, coated in a little oil grilled, then sliced and sprinkled with sesame seeds, served with rice noodles and broccoli.

Slow cooked pork belly

Today’s snow meant we were housebound, so I marinated a piece of pork belly in tahini mixed with soy sauce, lemon and lime juice and then it cooked for 3.5 hours at 150 deg C, followed by 30 mins at 225 deg C to crisp off the crackling. Served with egg noodles and broccoli and edamame beans. The pork belly is a Nigella recipe – called slow roast pork belly, from her Kitchen book.

I think I might do a variation of this for Christmas Eve dinner. Same marinade but on a slow cooked pork shoulder and will serve with boulangere potatoes (which I can cook in advance and then heat up at the last minute) and probably the broccoli and edamame veg mix

D1 is sitting her mock GCSEs and I like to make some treats for her to come home to. I decided to give Jamie Oliver’s chocolate cookies from his latest ‘5 ingredient’s’ book. They were super easy and delicious – a bit of a cross between a cookie and a brownie and included rye bread as a hidden ingredient instead of flour. Needless to say, not many left 🙂

PS I definitely need to work on my styling

I’d agonised about setting up a blog for ages and kept putting it off for a variety of excuses – I didn’t have time, I didn’t know how to set up a site, I couldn’t think of a name, I couldn’t decide on fonts and pictures, who would want to read it and so on and so on and I eventually took the bull by the horns and figured that I just needed to get started – not to dwell on the minute details, as whatever I decide now I will want to change at some stage in the future.

So the name….it’s not very catchy, or very flattering, but the words ‘geriatric mother’ written in black marker pen across my medical records when excitedly pregnant with my eldest daughter, have always stuck in my mind. And of all the things I’ve been lucky enough to do, see and experience, being a mother is undoubtedly the BEST thing ever for me, so that’s what I am – a geriatric mother!

Category: Uncategorized

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A geriatric mother….so what’s in a name?