Yoghurt bread

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Bert’s first loaf of bread (with a bit of help measuring) – he’s very proud.

Two hours after this photo was taken he was naked in the kitchen, slice of warm bread in hand, singing ‘go mummy! Go mummy!’ as I chased a fly around the kitchen with a fly swat muttering I will beat you. Making memories.

Makes one loaf

350g strong white bread flour

250ml hand hot water

1 teaspoon caster sugar

1 teaspoon salt

7g (1 sachet) dried yeast

75g Greek yoghurt

Mix all the ingredients together and knead for about 5 minutes or till stretchy. Cover and leave for an hour then tip onto a lined tray to form a mound and bake at 140/ gas mark four for an hour. Have a slice, still warm, in your pyjamas (or, indeed, nudie).

This is a Jack Monroe recipe.

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Courgette fritters

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I thought this was worth a try and tried to sell them in as ‘big, round chips’. Fail. 

Here he is, complete with the hot pink manicure nursery gave him today (I’ll miss their sweet, random activities when he leaves – it’s like the kids run it. The other day all the children came up with a list of rules, like they live in a tiny commune – most involved trying to resist the urge to be violent). It was film night, Bert’s choice; Boss Baby (don’t bother).

Makes 4

1 small courgette (from our garden!), coarsely grated 

Leaves of a spring of mint, finely chopped

25g (about a tablespoon) plain flour

1 egg

25g grated Parmesan 

Salt and pepper 

2-3 tablespoons vegetable oil for frying

Mix everything but the oil together and heat the oil in a large frying pan till it’s good and hot. Drop in spoonfuls of mixture, flatten and fry for a couple of minutes on each side till golden. 

Roast rhubarb puree

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Another attempt to bring fresh fruit and veg back into Bert’s life. Bert refused to eat it – I went away, stirred half a teaspoon of strawberry jam in and he declared it ‘very nice’.

We just spent two weeks at a friends house on an island off the coast of France, stopping for the night on the way at a chateau with a pool, swings, a trampoline, and bunk beds behind a hidden door. The highlight of Bert’s holiday? ‘The iPad’.

Serves 2

80g rhubarb, cut into 2cm pieces

40g golden caster sugar

30g butter

Roast at 180/ gas mark 4 for 10-15 minutes, till softened, then puree and stir through Greek yoghurt, custard or whipped cream.

Courgette macaroni cheese

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We’ve just got back from our holiday where Bert ate, over the course of two weeks, two family-size packs of crisps, the inside of half a baguette, half a jar of nutella, 14 ice creams, 30 yoghurts and one grain of rice.

I’m trying to get him back on decent carbs and protein before he loses his characteristic sturdiness and the dimples on his knuckles.

He also invented a new card game he called Mojo (the opposite of snap – shout Mojo when the cards don’t match) [me, feeling sure I’ve never said the word ‘mojo’ in my life: where did you get that word from? Bert: blank face], learnt to swim with a float vest on [me: you’re really good at that! Bert: yes I am really good at that], and invented a chilling game with the toy sword that we found in the pool. The latter involves stabbing a person or toy repeatedly, then saying ‘it’s cutting time’ and cutting across their jugular with the bottom of the sword, announcing ‘I’m going to eat you’ and then slicing down the stomach and bending over to eat the entrails. [Me, in a high, tight voice: where did you hear those words? Bert: blank face]. Maybe reincarnation is a fact and Bert was once… a cavalier soldier? A cannibal? A zombie? Or maybe nursery carry out some awfully vivid history sessions.

Anyway, it’s courgette time!

Serves 4

1 courgette, coarsely grated (peeled too, if you’re living with a massive veg avoider)

1 dessert spoon each of butter and olive oil

2 cloves of garlic, crushed

Macaroni (about 400g for 4 servings)

1 spring mint, leaves finely chopped

Salt and pepper

300g creme fraiche

125g grated mozzerella

60g grated parmesan

Finely grated zest of a lemon

3 tablespoons of breadcrumbs to top

Gently fry the courgette in the butter and oil with the garlic until soft (about ten minutes) while you cook the pasta. Add salt and pepper to taste, and the finely chopped leaves of a spring of mint (I debated this ingredient since Bert can spot a strand of green a mile off, but I figured he eats pesto so I threw it in). Combine with creme fraiche, mozzerrella and half the parmesan and tip into an overproof dish. Top with the breadcrumbs, lemon zest and the rest of the parmesan.

At this point I left it to finish off later.

Pre heat the oven to 180/ gas mark 4. Cook for 10-15 minutes, if cooking straight from prepping it while it’s still warm, or 20-25 if cooking from cold.

We had ours with green beans; whole, boiled veg being less alarming than those drenched in sauce.

After moaning that he didn’t like it, he ate it all.

Mango muffins

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Here’s Bert at an outdoor performance of The Wind in the Willows (or The Wind in the Willies, as my phone desperately wants it to be called).

When I asked him if he enjoyed it he said, ‘yes and no’. The muffins were a yes though.

Makes 12 muffins

240g plain flour

160g golden caster sugar

1.5 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

75g sunflower oil

4 tablespoons plain yoghurt

2 eggs

250g fresh mango, diced (about one of those lazy, ready prepared punnets – you’ll need to dice it a bit more finely though, into 1cm cubes, more or less).

Flaked almonds to scatter on top.

Preheat the oven to gas mark 5/ 190 degrees and grease your muffin tin or fill them with muffin cases.

Mix together the dry ingredients and then stir through the beaten eggs, oil and yoghurt. Mix in the diced mango (or diced tinned peach, if you prefer). Spoon carefully into the muffin holes and sprinkle with flaked almonds. Bake for 25-30 minutes. 

Bert ate six of these.

Lemony hummous

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We allow Bert’s tummy to say no to more food if he’s full, but recently his tummy’s been on a power trip, losing all sense of justice and prorportion – today it’s said no to saying sorry, having a bath and switching off the TV.

Homemade hummous can be a bit sticky and heavy. Adding a bit of water gets the lighter, whippier texture that the shop-bought stuff has. But still Bert’s tummy said no. Mine said yes.

Served me

1 tin chickpeas, drained

1 clove garlic, peeled

Juice of half a lemon, finely grated zest of half a lemon 

3 tablespoons olive oil

Salt

Splash of water from the tap

Put everything except the water into a blender and blend till smooth. Then add a splash of water and blend again till smooth and whippy, adding a little more if necessary.

Pesto, bacon and tomato pasta 

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Or green dinosaur and meat pasta as we call it.

Today Bert discovered he could run out of the back door and climb back in through the living room window. He declared himself ‘amazing superhero window boy’, and every time (there were about 50 times) he attempted to climb in, I was instructed to say, ‘there’s no way Bert could climb in the window. He’s just a boy! Unless…’

We were all assigned personas – I’m bookandtea-man (realistically my best fit superhero), Tony campervan-man (ditto) and Ray lead-dog (he’s less thrilled).

This is campervanman’s favourite crime fighting pasta dish.

Serves 3-4

2 little packets of diced pancetta or diced bacon, fried in a little olive oil

1/2 punnet cherry tomatoes, halved

1/2 bag of pine nuts, dry toasted in a hot pan

Cooked pasta

3 dessert spoons pesto

Parmesan cheese, grated

Combine the cooked pasta, pesto, pine nuts, tomatoes and bacon, and top with cheese at the table.

 

Egg fried rice

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At music group today Bert had three tantrums, threw a plastic cuckoo clock at his best friend’s head and refused to apologise. When his dad asked him at dinner if ‘Tadpole Tunes was good’, Bert replied with a flat ‘no’.

When I was trying to convince him to leave the house at lunchtime, I said ‘you can jump off the back of the sofa and then we’ll leave. Deal?’ He laughed, said ‘No deal!’ in a high-pitched voice and dived, head first, off the sofa.

He did eat this, on condition that I spoon feed him. 

Winning at parenting; as Bert would say, ‘I nailed!’

Serves 4

Cooked rice, left to cool (works even better if cooked the day before) 

4 eggs beaten with 2 tablespoons of soy sauce and 1 of fish sauce 

Thumb (what else!) of ginger, grated

1/2 small white cabbage, finely sliced to ribbons

Handful of frozen edamame beans or peas

6 spring onions, finely sliced

Leftover chicken or pork, shredded, or some frozen prawns (or a combination of these)

4 tablespoons sunflower oil

50g salted peanuts, bashed into chunks

Heat half of the oil in a wok and cook the cabbage and ginger for about 5 minutes, till wilting, then add the cooked meat, onions and beans and cook for another three minutes. Remove to a bowl.

Get the rest of the oil smoking hot in the wok then add the rice, stirring quickly till it’s coated with oil. Add the egg mixture and stir rapidly till it’s completely coating the rice, then keep stirring and cook till it’s starting to brown and caramelise in places. Stir the rest back through and serve, sprinkling the peanuts on at the table.

From the National Trust Family Cookbook. 

Tomato-plus soup

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I’m having a bad mummy day. A shouty, irritable day not a fun, whisky swilling, swearing, Bad Santa kind of day. This photo, complete with iPad, shows that even by lunchtime I’d decided to pick my battles, for both of our sakes.

At bedtime I said, ‘have I been really grumpy today?’, beautifully finishing off a bad tempered day with a bit of neediness. ‘No,’ Bert said, ‘it was my fault.’ Which of course made me feel even worse.

When Bert spoke to his dad at dinner time I was hoping he’d mention the fun stuff we’d done rather than say I’d been shouting at the dog then apologising all day. But no: ‘we played and then I felt something moving in my punny and then a poo came out!’ ‘Great!’ said his dad with the level of over-excited cheer that seems to be everyone’s standard response to poo news. ‘Where? When?’ ‘On the chair!’ Tony’s smile became just a touch more fixed.

Luckily it’s a leather chair. 

This is week five of Bert’s dad working away and while I don’t want to moan about parenting someone I wanted and love dearly, single parents, whether they are better people than me or just have to tolerate a lot of feeling like a shit parent days or both, have my deep felt admiration.

Serves 2

A portion of cooked veg, primarily orange-hued (we had half a large carrot in batons and a couple of spears of broccoli left over from Sunday dinner, but I’ve also used a tin of drained sweet corn combined with a handful of frozen peas in the past)

A large teaspoon of butter

A clove of garlic, crushed

1 tin of tomatoes and half the can of water

A teaspoon of light brown sugar

1 tablespoon of cream

1 egg yolk

Seasoning

Melt the butter, fry the garlic for a few seconds then add the veg, tomatoes, water, sugar and seasoning. Bring to a rapid simmer. Puree then stir through the egg yolk and cream, check seasoning and serve.

Bert took a sip through his bowl’s in-built straw and said, ‘mmm, it really is tasty!’ How could I be impatient with such a boy?

Spinach and cashew pesto

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Green things Bert approves of: dinosaurs, traffic lights, broccoli and now this. Green things Bert does not approve of – salad; ‘you eat leaves?! That’s kind of crazy.’

I thought he might help me make this in the ‘milkshake maker’, but no, instead he sent his dad about a hundred texts of emojis that he toils and sweats and weeps over like he’s writing a novel.

Makes a couple of small jars (you may get one in the post, Mum)

75g spinach

75g cashews

35g grated parmesan (an earlier edit read garlic – I apologise to anyone who cooked this and still has garlic breath)

2 cloves garlic

2 dessert spoons chopped basil

2 dessert spoons chopped mint

Zest, grated, and juice of a lemon

190ml olive oil

2 teaspoons sea salt (1/2 teaspoon table salt)

Blend the lot and keep in the fridge for a couple of weeks.