A little bit of encouragement

I accompanied my hubby to an annual awards ceremony of a charity that helps struggling teenagers reintegrate into mainstream education tonight. Not only was it good to hear about the lives raised from hopelessness through the good works of this charity, I was rather cheered up by a comment made to me when I was asked what I did - I went through the usual introduction about my husband's work, and my role as a stay-at-home mum (NOT housewife Pe-leeease) to support the home-side of things. The lady I was conversing with positively beamed and said, basically, 'it's a very important role what you do. If there are more women like you there wouldn't be any need for charities like this dealing with children struggling in their lives and missing out on education.'

Yes I SO believe that I have a stake in what my hubby does, albeit indirectly, just because I am there for the children and the home. For one thing, who'd be there to make hot meals for his workday lunch otherwise? It positively fuels his creative juices!!

Great international array of food for babies and young children

With our family background and mix of cultures I'm rather proud (in a good way I hope) to say that I try to introduce a good range of international food in the family. Chinese food surprisingly doesn't feature too much in my daily repertoire, but yes we do do Asian food - Vietnamese, Thai, Japanese, Korean, Indian (British curry really...), European - we like Spanish, 'Italian' as far as I am able to replicate at home, and some Ecuadorean dishes. There's a firm family favourite of ours, a lebanese eatery, that's made us go back time and time again. It's all got easier since our older boy grew out of his baby allergies (egg, fish, dairy), thank God, and he does have strange tastes, such as lemon juice, and he did put an awful lot of black pepper with the pepper mill this evening when we were sampling the spaghetti carbonara I've just mentioned in the last blog post.

At E's nursery every parent does a shift on a regular basis and I love the idea. At times we have a 'food' shift, which involves preparing a snack and a lunch (main course and dessert) for 15 young children and 3-4 adults at a time. With different parents comes different cooking styles and we (in the vast majority) try to cook healthy food from scratch. Vegetarian food is served and we do have to make allowances for food preferences and allergies of the children in attendence, and this process has really challenged me to make up great vegetarian recipes that both children and adults would like, including using ingredients like quorn (not as bad as I thought it'd be), polenta and quinoa, the South American Andean grain.

Our local children's centre is offering healthy cooking classes to emphasise the importance of lowering salt and sugar content and using spices and natural ingredients instead to flavour your family cooking. I'll be looking forward to join those next month. Let me do all the cooking, and I'll be a happy woman as long as the dishwasher is in perfect working order!

My favourite QUICK spaghetti carbonara recipe

This recipe keeps working so well that I feel I ought to share it with everyone. It's a lovely comfort food in our family and has a lot of dairy and (raw) egg in it, which our 2 and 9 month old boy adores. It's not so good for babies who are just beginning to be weaned, so I put together the cooked spaghetti and bacon with a swish of olive oil instead for our younger one before serving the rest to others in the family. Yummy though it is!

Spagetti Carbonara

280g bacon sliced thinly

80 ml cream

a pinch of paprika

1 egg and 1 egg yolk

60g grated parmesan cheese

250g spaghetti

olive oil for frying

extra parmesan for sprinkling

1. Cook bacon in frying pan until cooked.

2. Place egg, egg yolk, cream, paprika and cheese in bowl and beat until combined.

3. Cook spaghetti until desired consistency and drain.

4. Immediately pour egg mixture and bacon over hot drained spaghetti over low heat to combine. Switch heat off before the mixture curdles (due to presence of egg).

5. Serve with extra parmesan and sprig of parsley immediately.

Enjoy!