Domestic Goddesque » guilty pleasures

Guilty Pleasures: Hello

Domestic Goddesque — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 20:55:00 +0000

I worked as an au pair in Germany for an English family during a year out, which turned out to be the beginning of life as a childcarer in one form or another. I had changed a nappy before, but it was still a steep learning curve. To be honest I had no idea it would be so hard to live with people you weren’t related to. It had never occurred to me that other people would have a different way of doing everything, from cooking to ironing shirts. In many ways it was one of the best years of my life, though it certainly felt like the longest at points. With Germanic regularity, every week a copy of Hello! magazine and Country Life would arrive in the post from the UK, and I read them both from cover to cover once they were passed onto me by my benevolent employer. They filled my head with beautiful dresses, glamorous lives, fabulous houses. I don’t think I’d ever really considered these things could exist beyond Fairy Tales until then. I won’t say that the idea that I could marry someone wealthy and live in a house like that didn’t cross my mind, but it was more that the pictures of the rich and famous draped over kitchens and on stairwells, or nestled on sofas prompted independent thinking.

I have no doubt that this seems like a bizarre claim, but consider that I was a teenage girl, almost directly transported from a boarding school buried in the Yorkshire Moor. I was privileged to have such a wonderful education but I sincerely doubt that a lot of the thoughts I had on issues were not ‘created’ by those that taught me, since it is a teacher’s job to prompt and provoke thought. Outside of class I was surrounded by girls and therefore subject to the thoughts of those considered most popular: the ones who got to choose whether you were on the inside of the group looking out or the outside looking in. Frankly I wasn’t bold enough to want to rock the boat and strike out on my own…

But there I was, alone in another country. No-one knew me, no-one knew what I thought about anything. And it dawned on me that I could be anything I wanted to be. Free from the constraints of a teenage peer group I had the opportunity to find out who I was, and what I thought. And it began with the outfits I liked and disliked in Hello!(ironic, given that I am so not in touch with what is chic.) It continued with design features and decor I favoured in Country Life. From there, I started learning which food I enjoyed cooking and eating in the dozens of recipes books around the house in which I worked. I’d sit for hours drooling over the pages whilst I babysat.

I left Germany a year later. I still have a thing for shirts being ironed properly and still buy Hello! every week. I can’t help myself it seems: even when I left on honeymoon, I gave the Mothership strict instructions about purchasing my copies whilst I was away. I have tried OK! but it’s not the same: I used to say that it was too much Posh, but she seems to have upped her game and is more likely to feature in the fashion pages of Hello! these days. She’s been replaced by Katie Price who gives me the creeps. Besides, I prefer the recipes in Hello!

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Creamy dreamy Mother’s Day

Domestic Goddesque — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 21:33:00 +0000

I’m a closet fan of Fry’s Chocolate Cream. It’s kind of a guilty pleasure of mine. Before I went on maternity Leave I used to buy one at the shop around the corner from work to galvanise myself to go in there. One day I was standing outside the shop savouring every morsel when a youngish ‘chap’ (dressed in tweed blazer but with jeans, I’d say he was a ‘chap’.) stopped, backtracked, looked at the bar, then at me and said firmly “Good choice!” before wending his merry way up Fleet Street. It amused me all day. I rather like to think his surname was Fry!!

The love of fondants has been with me all my life. I blame my nan, for whom we regularly used to make Peppermint Creams for Mother’s Day. So this year, with two daughters, my family complete and the Mothership round the corner for the first time in years, I figured we’d make some for my children’s Granny. It was fairly simple actually, though to be honest I’ve eaten so much I now feel sick. But I’m overwhelmed with nostalgia: I’m hoping that the DH remembers how much I love Rose Creams when he dashes out tomorrow morning with my baby girls to buy my Mother’s Day present!!

They just need dipping in chocolate tomorrow!

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Guilty pleasure

Domestic Goddesque — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 09:13:00 +0000

PIcture Credit

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What’s in your wallet?

Domestic Goddesque — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 14:38:00 +0000

There was an interview on BBC Breakfast on Saturday with a man called Will Baxter. He travelled round the world and took photos of the contents of people’s handbags. It seems a very odd way to remember such a trip, but each to his own. Combine that with the fact that the man was bloody irritating, and I’ve no idea how he managed to persuade people from all walks of life to display the randomness of their bags in such a public way. He did it, it seems, as a way of “opening a ‘pilgrimage of discovery’ for him to learn more about the human race and what makes it tick”. Bollocks- he did it because he hoped that when he got back he’d get a book deal.

If he’d come across me in the wilds of South America, the beaches of Goa or even downtown Bromley, this is what he would have discovered in my bag- a jolly nice brown leather affair I recently purchased from TKMaxx to replace the one with the straps that kept falling off. Note that there will be no accompanying photo!:

Pack of tissues with pictures of shoes on them.
Lipgloss- Stila Berry- obviously from the last time I went ‘out’ somewhere. I don’t wear make-up every day.
Maglite torch- you have no idea how useful this has proved to be.
Half empty pack of Tic Tacs- the white ones.
Tub of Carmex lip balm.
Emergency flapjack- for when hunger strikes- getting a bit battered round the edges.
Dry Cleaning ticket- note to self: must remember to pick up Dry Cleaning.
1/2 tsp sand-no idea how that got there.
Set of house keys on new heart-shaped fob.
Sainsburys’ receipt.
New Prescription from Boots Opticians.
Application to join Tescos Baby Club.
Notebook with elastic band round to hold in all the random bits I tear out of magazines and newspapers.
Pen that my mum gave me for Christmas
Photocopied list of telephone numbers for DHs office
Business cards.

Make-up bag in funky apple print that I bought at Greenwich Market, containing:
Purple emery board
Hand cream- Nivea Q10
Wet wipes
Another pack of tissues with cowgirls on.
Wallet of assorted plasters- you never know when you might need one.
Pack of paracetamol caplets- easier to swallow that capsules
Half a strip of Orange Strepsils
Mini sewing kit from the LA Peninsula hotel
Mirror, which I never use
Hair bobble
Spray hand sanitiser
Eye drops
Sample pack of face cream from a magazine
Stick of Lavender Cologne- very old lady style but smells soothing and is cool on your temples when you have a headache.

Tan-coloured leather wallet, a stocking gift from DH last Christmas, containing:
Booklet of 1st class stamps, five left
Five European stamps
8 Air mail stickers
Receipts for new glasses, lunch on Saturday with my mum, bus fare, haircut, pet store, M&S refund for a pair of pjs DH didn’t like.
Loyalty cards: Boots, Nectar
Golf Range Card
Next Refund Card- has approx £20 on it. Don’t know if I can still use it…
National Trust Membership Card
Maternity Exemption card
E111 card
Library Card
2 Debit cards
1 Credit Card- pink!
93p in change
£20 note
Driver’s Licence, both parts
Lady’s Card
Another Dry Cleaning ticket that I had forgotten about.
Scratch card for National Lottery- need to collect £2 winnings
Card from nice restaurant we recently went to in Broadstairs.

Oh, and my Blueberry.

I used to have to clean out my mum’s handbag when I was a kid. I also used to clean out the tupperware cupboard, and her sewing box. It’s probably where I got my organisational thing from. I used to love it. I particularly enjoyed ‘doing’ her handbag because it was an eternal source of embarrassment. Now I’m beginning to wonder if it’s just an age thing. When we were sitting in the restaurant having lunch on Saturday, she asked if she could have a plaster. I’m a little bit worried about myself.

Feel free to follow my lead and take up the handbag challenge.

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What’s in your wallet?

Domestic Goddesque — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 14:38:00 +0000

Oh, and my Blueberry.

Feel free to follow my lead and take up the handbag challenge.

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What’s in your wallet?

Domestic Goddesque — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 14:38:00 +0000

Oh, and my Blueberry.

Feel free to follow my lead and take up the handbag challenge.

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What’s in your wallet?

Domestic Goddesque — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 14:38:00 +0000

Oh, and my Blueberry.

Feel free to follow my lead and take up the handbag challenge.

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The baby wants fish pie for supper…

Domestic Goddesque — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 19:18:00 +0000

People have been asking me whether I have been having cravings for anything weird now that I am halfway through the pregnancy. They seem desperately disappointed when I say that I haven’t really felt the need for something so badly that I’ve dispatched the DH to the 24 hour garage at 3am. Then I caught myself eating pickled onions. From the jar. With my fingers. I have been buying a new jar every few days. DH is quite grateful is nothing more….refined.

Now I have cottoned onto it though, I have been using the baby to my advantage. Every year, right after the post-Christmas sales, the Easter fare gets put on the shelves, and I am drawn to the shiny individual egg shaped confectionary dreams that are Cadbury’s Creme Eggs. Of course the packets are a nightmare to scan, the contents are a nightmare to keep break-free, much like real eggs, and it’s a nightmare to eat the buggers, but God, I love them. The chocolatey shell that conceals something that looks vaguely lie uncooked egg but is sickly sweet and so comforting as it slips down the throat. It is such a joy to bite off the top then slowly, and revoltingly, suck out the fondanty oozey centre, slowly nibbling round the melting chocolate edges to allow better acess to the yellow and white goo. I have no taste. But I love them!!!And now, coincidentally enough, so does the baby. S/he also adores marmite, hot chocolate and smoked salmon, just like mummy does!

But there are surprises, such as today’s recent unquenchable urge for fish pie. My enjoyment of fish as a child was strictly limited to fish fingers. Not so good given that I grew up on a Mediterranean Island. I didn’t do fish, no matter how hard people tried to make me enjoy it. Then one day, just before I met DH coincidentally, I decided that I was a grown-up and should like fish and damn-it, I was going to make myself like it. And I did. And I do. I even handle raw fish. Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t gut them, I don’t do heads and I don’t do bones. I get the fishmonger man to make them look as un-fishlike as possible. But I do cook it, and pretty well, I think.

Fish Pie

Ingredients
· 1 leek
· 175ml double cream
· 1 glass white wine
· 2 bay leaves
· 1 egg
· 1 kg floury potatoes
· Approx 200g white fish
· Approx 200g smoked fish
· Approx 12 large prawns
· 1 carrot/1 small tin carrots

Method
1. Pre-heat oven to 160C.
2. Peel and chop potatoes, put in a large pan and boil until soft. Once the water is boiling, add the egg, unpeeled, so that it cooks at the same time. Also add the carrot, peeled and halved lengthways, if using fresh.
3. In a separate pan, melt a tsp of butter. Add the trimmed, sliced leek and cook until soft.
4. Add wine and reduce, then add a glass of water and half a stock cube.
5. Pour in cream and add bay leaves and simmer very gently for a few minutes.
6. Put prawns and skinned chopped fishes into a deep oven-proof dish. Remove part-cooked carrot from pan and slice. Add to fish, or add tinned carrots.
7. Remove egg from potatoes, which should now be soft. Drain potatoes and run egg under cold water then peel and chop into 8 pieces. Add these to fish.
8. Remove cream from heat, then pour over fish and carrots. If the liquid does not cover the fish, veg. and eggs, top up with milk.
9. Mash potatoes very well with a generous knob of butter until smooth and creamy. Distribute evenly over fish. Mould into soft peaks with fork then place dish on baking tray/in roasting dish (if you are anything like me and only vaguely follow recipes, this will undoubtedly bubble over whilst cooking and burn onto the base of your oven meaning that everything you cook for the next few weeks will make the kitchen and food smell of fish…trust me) smother with a good layer of grated cheese and bake for about an hour.
10. Serve with frozen peas and ketchup!

Dh received this text between steps nine and ten: Fish pie in the oven. Bring Creme Eggs! xxwoof

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Guilty Pleasures 3

Domestic Goddesque — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 15:59:00 +0000

Growing up as an ex-pat-brat, you get exposed to things that you wouldn’t ordinarily come across in suburban British life: language, activities, erratic driving, picnics on central reservations and foodstuffs. When we lived in Brussels- in a little suburb called Tervuren, home to the awesome African Museum- we lived next door to a family from Lesotho. The lad struck up an endearing friendship with the boy next door, who was called Pabalo, and practically lived i our house. Further down the road were an American family with young children, one of whom was called Kelly. She introduced me to the elixir that is Marshmallow Fluff. In short, it is a jar of refined sugar and, at least on paper, sounds revolting. But I fell in love with my first taste.

Alas, leaving Brussels spelled the end of my love affair with this heavenly white stuff- it could not be found on the shelves of shops in Cairo. And for years I forgot about it, though it always remained in my heart. Until the day I found it on the shelves in Waitrose. To be quite frank, I think it’s a waste of time actually doing anythimg with it….though the jar does recommend adding it to a Peanut Butter and Jam sandwich (something that will never happen in this lifetime, since I really am not fond of Peanut Butter, unless used by DH in his amazing Thai Peanut Chicken Thing.) There is only one way you should enjoy this sugar high. From the jar, by the spoonful.

I know, I am a sick soul and I need help.

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Guilty Pleasures 3

Domestic Goddesque — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 15:59:00 +0000

I know, I am a sick soul and I need help.

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