Love Is In The Air.

                                                     Clarrie and Jas, recently betrothed

Clarrie and her son Todd have featured in several of my posts this past year and previously in my Two Mad Cow blog. Several of my friends have been hugely supportive of my blogs and have come on the journey with me in their quest to understand more about the food we are consuming and how we can feed our families well.

Clarrie and her lovely partner became engaged yesterday and it was uplifting news for myself and all their friends and family alike. I spent the day with Clarrie today and as usual our conversation turned to food, like many young mothers, Clarrie is constantly concerned about her families diet and always looking for ways to improve it.

What was especially nice about today was that we had the company of Clarrie's grandmother and her many words of wisdom. She pointed out that not so very long ago consumers relied on their common sense regarding the food they bought and ate, meat was purchased from a butcher with no use by date, likewise fruit and vegetables and dairy produce. Women stored their food in larders as fridges were uncommon until the 1960s and if they spotted some mould on cheese they would scrape it off, or if the outer leaves of a lettuce were discoloured they would discard only the offending leaves.

Today we rely on 'experts' to tell us how to eat, we have bought into the farce of use by dates, a human being deciding what to eat without guidance - something Clarrie's nan and generations before her have been doing, with notable success - is seriously unprofitable to food corporations.

The novelty of the Western processed diet - cheap - quick - effortless and disposable is far from the money saving meals lovingly prepared by our grandmothers. Cheapness and ignorance are mutually reinforcing, not knowing what is happening in the food chain amounts to not caring and the substitution of quantity over quality has become the norm. Why worry about the welfare of animals? As long as one egg looks pretty much like another, chicken like chicken or beef like beef, if it's cheap enough we have no qualms about binning it.

We are constantly being warned that we are eating too much meat, there is strong evidence that those eating above average amounts of red meat have increased risks of cancer, in 2007 the world cancer research fund recommended a limit of 500g per person a week. Clarrie's grandmother, much like my own grandmother and mother, bought meat with a sense of reverence, shopping was a ritual of little, often and fresh, nothing was wasted, people rarely overindulged and food was appreciated.

As a child I remember steak as being a luxury and a rarity, normally reserved for adults on special occasions. To this day I rarely eat steak and still consider it a luxury. Of course, getting engaged is certainly worthy of a steak dinner and Clarrie treated her and Jas to a nice piece of grass fed-free range sirloin steak.

Grilled steak

Recipe
1 sirloin steak per person
Olive oil cooking spray
3 large potatoes, peeled and cut into chips
Salt and pepper

Before grilling remove steaks from the fridge and leave to sit at room temperature for 20 minutes

Preheat oven 200c/gas mark 6
Blanch chips in a large pan of boiling water for 3 minutes, then drain well

Spread chips over a baking tray and spray with oil, season and place in oven, cook for 30 minutes until golden and crisp
10 minutes before chips are ready, heat grill to high
Spray steaks with a little oil and season liberally
Place steaks under the grill: 1 1/2 to 2 minutes each side for rare, 3 minutes each side for medium, 4 minutes each side for well done
Allow steaks to rest whilst you dish up the chips
Serve immediately

                                                               Romantic setting a deux

                                                  Clarrie's beautiful diamond engagement ring

'The very first moment I beheld him, my heart was irrevocably gone.'
- Jane Austen.

Love Donna xxxxxxxx

The Fabulous Baker Boys

                                                         Mark and Ryan baking with dad

When I first started working in special needs education I was placed in a class with a young teacher named Angie. We hit it off immediately, Angie's style of teaching was very innovative and the onus was about having fun. Myself, Angie and Cathy worked together and were a great team, we shared a common bond of loving the children, kindness and a mutual sense of humour which made for a very happy class.

To this day, Angie, Cathy and I remain good friends. Much has changed in all our lives since those halcyon days. Angie is now mum to two gorgeous boys and still teaches. Cathy is a grandmother and a stalwart at St Francis, and I now write for a newspaper.

Angie has always been a food conscious girl and a strict vegetarian, she often sends me snippets of information because like myself she is horrified by what's happening in our food chain and constantly educates herself about what she's feeding her family.

Eating has become complicated, the complexity that attends this once most natural, creaturely activity has become a minefield. Whilst many of us are familiar with the health risks posed by E numbers or trans fats, and many of us boycott the most obvious forms of processed food, few are familiar with the 6,000 food additives found in everyday products.

Additives and flavourings, glazing agents, improvers and bleaching agents lurk within many of our foodstuffs and our food chain is awash with stories of processing and intervention that their labels do not reveal.

As a mother to young children, Angie has concerns regarding how much sugar her children are consuming and is always searching for information on how she can reduce their intake.

                                                         Sugarswaps.change4life.co.uk/

Baking with children is a great bonding experience and a good vehicle for communication and having fun, added to which, homemade cakes don't contain hydrogenated fats, additives, preservatives, artificial colours and flavourings or high levels of salt.

Mini apple and banana muffins

Recipe
150g plain flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
50g caster sugar
100ml milk
1 free range egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
40g butter, melted
1 small apple, peeled, cored and chopped
1 small banana, mashed

Preheat oven 200c/gas mark 6
Sift flour and baking powder into a bowl

Stir in sugar

Put milk, egg, vanilla extract and melted butter in a jug and beat

Add to dry ingredients with apple and banana and stir gently until just combined

Spoon mixture into 12 paper cases

Bake in the oven for 20-25 minutes until risen and golden
Remove from oven and cool on a wire rack

                                                             And then jolly well tuck in!

 'There is absolutely no substitute for the best. Good food cannot be made of inferior ingredients masked with flavourings. It is true thrift to use the best ingredients available and to waste nothing.'

- James Beard

Love Donna.............Mark and Ryan xxxxxxxxxx

Gousto

                         

                                    A selection of measured portions from a Gousto food box

The main problem I encounter regarding my recipes is that whilst many of my readers love the idea of cooking from scratch, they lack time to go shopping for ingredients and revert back to the same old meals over and over again.

In 2011 two friends, Timo and James, were experiencing exactly that problem, they liked good, nutrious food but navigating their way through a florilegium of recipes, often found they didn't have the necessary ingredients to complete the meals they desired. Like many busy, working people, they lacked the time to shop for fresh ingredients on a daily basis.

In 2011 they started a company called Gousto, originally selling their food boxes from market stalls. Proving popular the company grew and the food boxes are now accessible via their website. Each week the chefs upload a new menu, the boxes provide ingredients measured into the right proportions with the accompanying easy to follow recipe, these dishes can be anything from basic recipes to rather more exotic and innovative dishes.

Everything is fresh and tailored to the seasons. The vegetables are all organic, the fish responsibly sourced, the meat from high animal welfare farms and the eggs free-range. Gousto have been awarded by compassion in world farming, receiving the Good Egg award. Most of the packaging materials are recyclable and the amazing wool cool liners (used as insulation in the recyclable cool bags) can be disposed of in the compost bin.

The couple's box for three meals costs £42 or £39 for the vegetarian option, I found that the couples's box fed three of us amply. Whilst this might seem expensive for three meals, when you compare this with £5 a head for a McDonald's meal for example, or an average takeaway meal costing £20 for two, you realise these boxes are extremely good value for money.

These scrumptious meals take away the faff of trying to find those fresh herbs or exotic spices that add pounds to your shopping bill, how many times have you had to source mirin or shichimi or some other elusive ingredient never to use them again. The measured ingredients enable even the novice cook to feel confident and most importantly the produce is excellent, no nasty unnatural chemicals or additives.

I ordered the vegetarian box, customers place their order on Wednesday evening for delivery the following Tuesday. For busy working people who want the stress taken out of shopping - preparing and cooking whilst wanting to eat fresh, delicious food, Gousto is invaluable.

Shepherdess pie

                                                     Chop the onion and carrot

                                                    Sauté in a pan with garlic and allspice

                                                                  Soak the veggie mince

                                      Add the mince to vegetables with stock and puree
               

                                                          Chop and cook spring greens

                                                               Boil potatoes then mash

               Place veggie mixture in ovenproof dish top with mash and grated cheese

                           Cook in the oven for 20 minutes and serve with spring greens

                                     A big vegetarian thumbs up from my godson Paris

'Another thing cooking is, or can be, is a way to honour the things we're eating, the animals and plants that have been sacrificed to gratify our needs and desires, as well as the places and the people who produced them. Cooking something thoughtfully is a way to celebrate both the species and our relation to it.'
- Michael Pollan

Love Donna xxxxxxxxxxxx

Traditional Roast Beef And Yorkshire Puddings

Many of my previous posts have been on the subject of processed food which I know hasn't made for easy reading! Of all the people I've spoken to recently the overriding reasons the majority rely on ready meals are: lack of time, and confidence.

The tempo of modern life has accelerated beyond our grandmother's wildest imagination. We have  become increasingly out of touch with the biological rhythms of our planet, human time is no longer as strongly connected to the incoming and outgoing tides, the rising and setting of the sun, and the changing seasons.

Nowadays we all have an invisible stopwatch ticking away, even when we're supposed to be having fun. Cooking has been relegated not to the back burner but to the microwave! Consequently people have either never learnt to cook or have forgotten how.

Ironically technology should have freed up our time! A generation ago we didn't have all the mod cons, dishwashers, automatic washing machines, microwaves, computers. However, we live in a speed up society, always rushing to do the next thing, throw a dinner in the microwave, eat it as quickly as possible, stack the plates in the dishwasher, rush, rush, there's emails to respond to, facebook to look on, two hundred TV channels to watch!

I personally have found that the best way to scale back was to find more time to cook. Ok I no longer work so I have time on my hands, but in the evening as a way of relaxing I turn off my computer and mobile phone and set aside a couple of hours where I spend time in my kitchen cooking nice meals which we sit down to enjoy in an un rushed way.

We need to re learn slow can be beautiful, taking time to do things such as cooking a nice meal for our family should outweigh spending time on our computers and smartphones even if we can only accomplish this a couple of times a week.

I've spoken before about the average modern day woman's repertoire, spag bol, pizza, chilli.................roast dinners are a dying tradition and many young women are nervous of cooking joints of meat. Possibly the most famous of all English dishes, traditionally served on Sunday, is roast beef, Yorkshire puddings, roast potatoes and lashings of gravy. I'm not suggesting this as a midweek meal, although roast dinners are extremely easy to cook, they are time consuming, but as a way of kicking back and enjoying something that is 'heaven forbid!' Time consuming, assembling this delicious dinner is well worth the effort.

Roast beef and all the trimmings

Recipe
3 1b piece of boneless roasting beef
Olive oil
Salt and pepper

Preheat oven 190c/gas 5
Massage olive oil into the meat, season and place in a roasting dish, loosely cover with foil and place in oven
Cook for half an hour and reduce heat to 170/gas 3, the roast should take a further 1 1/2 hours
Meanwhile peel and chop 500g potatoes, cover with boiling water from the kettle, on a high heat boil for 8 minutes
Drain potatoes and set aside

Yorkshire puddings
1 mug of plain flour
1 mug of milk
1 egg
Put the flour, egg and milk in a large bowl and whisk
Add a little oil to a Yorkshire tin in each compartment, heat in the oven
When smoking hot, half fill each compartment with batter, place in oven for 15 minutes until risen and golden

Set Yorkshires to one side
When the beef has cooked for 1 1/2 hours remove foil, add potatoes to baking dish and baste in the oil and beef juices
Return to oven for 30 minutes until potatoes are crisp and golden

When the beef is cooked, leave it to rest tented in tin foil for 10 minutes before carving
Remove potatoes and set to one side
In the roasting dish stir in a tablespoon of flour, scrape up all the meaty bits in your dish and gradually, over a low heat, stir in a glass of red wine, turn the heat up and reduce by half, stir in 300ml beef stock, reduce heat and simmer until thick and shiny

Serve with vegetables of your choice which you can cook whilst the meat is in the oven. You can now plate up and return the plated dinners to the oven for 5 minutes to heat through before serving

I always add some port and cranberry sauce to my gravy to make it rich, sticky and delicious.

'Remember, 'no one's more important than people'! In other words, family and friendship is the most important thing- not career or housework or one's fatigue- and this needs to be tended and nurtured'
- Julia Child

Love Donna xxxxxx

Mother Can You Hear Me?

                                                       My beautiful mother Constance

Having spent time in Spain again I have been fascinated with the role of Spanish women within the family. Naturally, many of the younger women in the village have jobs, however, there is still a large female presence during the day of women shopping, chatting on doorsteps or playing with their children in the park, being a stay-at-home mother is not an unusual thing.

Whenever I broach the subject of stay-at-home mothers it seems to cause a bit of contention, it is, after all, a very divisive subject. The truth is, before this generation of mothers was even born, our society ranked staying at home and bringing up children way below going to university, securing a good job, having the ability to travel or go out socially at our leisure, honing ourselves at the gym or spending time networking on our computers.

The question is, are women better off and more importantly, are our children happier with this modern status quo?

I'm currently reading a book, 'Mother can you hear me?' Which is a story about the generation gap and the complexities of mother and child relationships. The story is essentially about a modern, working mother and her relationship with her own mum, who had made endless sacrifices for her family, consequently leading a repressed life of routine and drudgery.

At one point the elderly mother, who is staying with her daughter, says: 'You look worn out, you work too hard, on the go morning, noon and night.' The daughter responds 'So were you.' But the mother points out that she didn't have a big house or a job, she says 'All I know is that for all your fine house and car and so called modern conveniences you seem more worn out, rushed and impatient than I ever was. I had time for a cup of tea with my neighbours.' The final implication was that she had time and patience for her children!

My own mother was a stay-at-home mum and without question, although she was very intelligent and creative and could have chosen numerous professions, put us children first whilst we were young, consequently I had an idyllic childhood.

But it is a double edged sword. My mother in law, likewise a stay-at-home mum has inflicted a permanent sense of guilt on my partner (her son.) Underneath the seemingly delicate surface is a strong martyr complex, her passive aggressive behaviour makes my poor partner feel that he is never quite grateful enough. His mother exudes glumness and is permanently disappointed with his efforts, she uses pathos as a weapon and her son is torn between love and resentment, joyful giving and obligation. This is a legacy no mother wants to leave her children!

Personally, I think motherhood is a calling and not just a hobby, not something you do if you can squeeze the time in between your own pursuits. Motherhood is about sacrifices and selflessness, a very old fashioned notion and to be truthful an often boring, tiring option, but of course with the luxury of contraception there is always the choice for those truly career oriented not to have children.

Whilst in Spain my neighbours little boy, Alejandro, would knock most days and would come in for a snack or drink and I enjoyed his company......of course I was mindful of the fact that if he became boisterous or bored I could hand him straight back to his parents!

                                                               Alejandro enjoying a cake

One of the rituals most Spanish mothers partake in is preparing fresh tapas for their families to eat in the evening

                                              Patatas bravas and spicy mushrooms

                                                                     Albondigas

     These mushrooms were divine, I've scoured the Internet for the recipe to no avail! 

This next tapas is delicious, easy to make and great for vegetarians. 

Cheesy mushrooms

Recipe

250g cheese suitable for melting, gruyer or emmental, cubed

Large punnet of mushrooms, sliced

2 tablespoons butter

1 cup of milk

Sea salt and black pepper

Melt butter in a large frying pan over a medium heat

When butter is bubbling add mushrooms, season and stir frequently to evenly cook

When golden remove from heat and set to one side

In a small pan, pour in milk, add cheese and begin melting over a low heat, stir frequently

When cheese is melted add to sautéed mushrooms

Spoon into individual oven safe dishes and place in hot oven for 10 minutes

Season on top and serve immediately

Eat with crusty bread to mop up all the cheesy sauce.....delicious.

'This is what we do, my mother's life said. We find ourselves in the sacrifices we make.'
- Cammie McGovern.

Love Donna xxxxxxxxxxxxx

Shrove Tuesday.

                                                 The Easter procession in Jacarilla

                                   The church in Jacarilla, a central part of the community

I started writing Donna's Pink Kitchen one year ago exactly, on this day, Shrove Tuesday, my how quickly that year has passed!

Then, as now, I had spent time in my second home in Jacarilla, Spain, where there is still a very religious, celebratory connotation to Shrove Tuesday and lent.

Lent is a very important time for Spanish Christians, particularly Catholics and as with all celebrations, a great coming together of the community. In Jacarilla the Church is very central to the community, the bells ring out each Saturday evening and Sunday morning calling the flock to mass. Whether you partake in religious celebrations or not, you cannot fail to be caught up in the sheer drama and magic of the customs and processions and the overwhelming sentiment of everyone involved.

Whilst we see Shrove Tuesday as 'pancake day' probably mostly without knowing the origins or religious connotations, the Spanish understand the lenten period to be one of prayer, reflection and penance before Easter. Shrove Tuesday is the last day before the penitential season, a period of 40 days and 40 nights where Catholics abstain from luxuries such as meat, cakes, bread and sweets, it is also a time to try to add virtue to their lives.

As with many celebrations in Spain, they differ from region to region, and even village to village. However, the celebration of lent has a common theme and on Shrove Tuesday the pantry is cleared of meat and bread. In many regions young people go from house to house, asking for eggs, chorizo and bread. Neighbours exchange food for a song (the songs sang by the youths are passed from generation to generation.) The youths then gather all the ingredients together and prepare a meal, usually in the village plaza, where the community gather and eat the meal together.


Pancakes, frixuelos in Spanish, are often made with a variety of fillings - sweet or salty. The crepes can be filled with anything from egg custard, fresh orange slices or whipped cream, to scrambled eggs or melted cheese. I had chocolate frixuelos in a typical village restaurant which were extremely good.

Chocolate pancakes

Recipe
100g plain flour
15g cocoa powder
1 free range egg
1 free range egg yolk
1 tablespoon of vegetable oil plus extra for frying
250ml milk

Sift flour and cocoa powder into a bowl
Add egg and yolk and oil, gradually whisk in milk until smooth
Heat a little oil in a pan, add 2 tablespoons of batter and swirl over the base of the pan
When the underside is set turn the pancake over
When cooked slide onto a warm plate and serve immediately
(Alternatively you can cook several pancakes and pile them up and pop them in a warm oven for a couple of minutes before serving)

                             Delicious dusted with icing sugar and served with fresh strawberries

It would be lovely to teach our children here in the UK a little about abstinence. For many British children their daily lives consist of an abundance of junk food and computer games, we as a society rarely expect them to reflect or go without, in fact I have just read an article regarding a 12 year old boy, the youngest in Britain, who has had to have a gastric band fitted! The article hi lights the increasing problem parents in the UK seem to be having, ie not being able to deny their children anything. One mother, whose four year old daughter is obese and has had several teeth removed due to bad decay caused by her sugary diet, laments 'I like to have an easy life and giving in to Talulah makes my life easier.'

The Spanish have a saying: 'Sol que mucho madruga, paco dura.' 'Early ripe, early rotten.' The meaning: precocious children will mean much trouble later on.

So, I hope as you all tuck into your pancakes you will spare a thought for the virtue of abstinence and share this with your children.

Happy Shrove Tuesday
Love Donna xxxxxxxxxx