In which we build Gateshead Central Library out of cake...

Preamble

It seemed like a good idea, way back in about March when the EAT festival announced that they were looking for people to build Newcastle and Gateshead landmarks out of cake. My friend Kate (who has a collection of cake tins to rival Fenwicks) agreed to help. The kids (M, P and J) will enjoy doing that, we thought.

Part 1

First, you'll need to make 14 birthday cakes. That's right, 14. Obviously not all at once, unless you have a *very* large oven.


We used Nigella's buttermilk birthday cake recipe, and managed to get through 42 eggs, 3.5 kg flour, 2.8kg sugar and rather a lot of butter/marg. And a lot of small people licked a lot of bowls clean.

Thankfully, the cake (a) holds together fantastically and (b) freezes really well.

Part 2

For this bit, you'll need a nice husband who happens to like architecture. He spent a while on Google Earth, took lots of photos of the library, and planned out what we needed to do.


He even built the library out of boxes for us.


Part 3: Saturday pm

We defrosted the cakes, Kate and Adam lent us their dining room, and we got to work. First of all, it was foil time.


Then, Rob cut the cake to size, to match his diagrams, and we glued it onto the foil with melted apricot jam. Sticky, but good.


A couple of hours later, most of the cake was attached.


Now for the tricky bits - porticos, lintels and Tunnocks tea cakes.


Part 4, Saturday teatime

Adam, who had done a sterling job amusing the kids while we played around with cake, went off to BBQ some tea. We attempted to stop eating the offcuts of cake.


And then we started work on the icing. It was ready roll fondant icing, which Kate coloured in three batches: brick red, stone and grey for the roof.



Then, it was time for a BBQ, and, very importantly, a glass or two of cold rose from the fridge (which may explain my slightly wonky icing placement later on).

Part 5, Saturday evening

The icing was quite tricky to get onto the cake, especially as we made the first few slabs quite thin as we were worried we wouldn't have enough. We put brick red went round the sides, grey on the roof, and stone on the porticos and embellishments.

Here's M and P spreading more jam to stick everything together.


And here's us, attempting not to swear as the fondant icing tears or sticks to the table for the 95th time:

Part 6, Decorating

Rob and the kids made windows out of rice paper, and stuck them on with jam. They also made balustrades from curly wurlys, pillars out of cafe curls, and drainpipes out of matchmakers. There was much tasting of the spares.


Then, it was time for the scaffolding...matchmakers and ice cream wafers. And a rather lethal gas lighter, which set light to the matchmakers.




By this point, it was 10pm, and well past everyone's bedtime. But we'd finished!!

Final photos tomorrow, at the grand unveiling in Saltwell Park. Wooooooo!

Weddings are such fun

especially the disco bit in the evening...

Spot the difference

April 2010



May 2010


At last! Some summery weather. So we headed down to the allotment, and did battle with the weeds. Everything's grown remarkably well over the last couple of weeks while we were in France - lots of green strawberries (hopefully turning red shortly), some gooseberries that are nearly ready to become jam, and the best chard I've seen for a long time:

France

In which I meet Annabel Karmel...

As you may have guessed from yesterday's post, I had an exciting day in London on Wednesday, when I headed down to the launch of Annabel Karmel's latest book (Annabel Karmel's Top 100 Pasta Dishes).

I'd never been to a book launch before, so had no idea what to expect. Thankfully for a book launch all about food, it involved lots of cooking (and most importantly - eating!).

When M was small, a friend gave me Annabel's Complete Baby and Toddler Meal Planner - and it was excellent. It's really good for giving you ideas of things you can mix together in purees, and for giving you an idea about quantities - I'd no clue how much a 6-month-old baby could eat, or indeed how many carrots/bananas/apricots that would take.

But since M was a year or so old, we've all eaten together - so I've never really gone back to any of Annabel's baby/toddler recipes, or thought to hunt any more of hers out. So it was interesting to see some of her more family-oriented food at this launch.

She started off the session by cooking pork and beef meatballs with tagine sauce - which looked dead easy. I loved the fact that the sauce is made with chopped tomatoes and butternut squash (one of my favourite vegetables, but one that M hates - cannily hidden here by blending). However, the final dish was too bland for me - the spice content would definitely have to be upped in our house.

Next, we had a go at cooking along with Annabel, making pasta salad with marinated chicken and roasted peppers. Here's the three stooges (hello Nova and Young Mummy!) chopping peppers and trying not to laugh at the absurdity of having your every move followed by a camera crew and photographer:


I have to say, the pasta salad was delicious (and I scoffed the lot on the train home later). It'd be great for lunchboxes (my next delight once M starts school in the autumn), and had one of my favourite veg (pea shoots), and a lovely marinade.


Next, we watched Annabel produce some pasta , and make spinach and ricotta ravioli. I've got a pasta machine that's currently gathering dust in the cupboard, and had forgotten how much fun making the dough is. Mind, I realised on the train home that you could just make ravioli by finding some very thin fresh lasagne sheets - which would make the recipe even easier. Here's Annabel and a very long piece of pasta:


We had a go at making the ravioli too, with some pre-prepared sheets of pasta. Here's my attempt (which sadly died on the train journey home, so I have yet to report on how it tastes):


All in all, it was a great session, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Here's me, and a teeny-tiny Annabel (if I'd known there were going to be so many photographers/film crew there, I'd have slung a bit of lippy on, but there you go):



I reckon it's a good book - lots of interesting recipes that you could cook for everyone. I would never have thought of buying it for us (I have several hundred cookbooks, most of which don't go down the 'family' angle), but we'll definitely give some of the recipes a go - especially the more 'lunchbox' variety. It'd also be really good for folk who have fussy kids (start 'em on pasta - who knows where they'll end up?), or who are looking for recipes that can feed a toddler tea before a grown-up one.

Drawbacks? The portion sizing isn't particularly clear (it's easy enough in the baby section to see that it's 4 baby portions or whatever, but in the general recipes there's no clue given as to whether you're feeding 4 adults, 4 toddlers or a mixture of the two). And the other half wasn't particularly enamoured of the look and feel of the book (it's apparently something that dads would definitely not pick up off the shelf) - although the photography is great.

It'll be interesting to see what angle Annabel does next - she's written 19 books, and shows no signs of stopping...

Annabel Karmel book launch

Here's Annabel Karmel demonstrating some pasta recipes at the launch of her new book yesterday (she's making meatballs here, by the way). I've got a whole blog post to come about the launch (including a terrible picture where I look like a giant - Annabel is teeny tiny, it's not just me), but here's a sneak peek for you:

Books, books and more books (part 2)

The lovely people at Random House sent me and M another book to review last week. You remember the fantastic Box of Tricks? Well this is by the same author, the very talented Katie Cleminson. Called Wake Up: It’s going to be a busy day… it tracks a little boy through his daily routine from getting up to going to school to going to bed – accompanied by elephants, hippos, lions and cats.

The drawings are beautiful (the cat was a huge hit with M), and the juxtaposition of the animals, boy and daily life provoked gales of laughter – especially the tea time scenes. I loved the boy/cat stretches as well. She’s not the best writer of rhymes (I suspect Julia Donaldson wins that crown hands down), but the drawings are so charming that you forgive her the occasional bump in the text.

Thoroughly recommended, anyway, by M (age 4) and me (age 36).

How to encourage small children to swim (not)

We tried out the new x-million pound Gateshead Leisure Centre yesterday - and came away not very impressed. It tries hard....but fails on lots of counts if you're wanting to get a small child to swim.

On the plus side, the water's far warmer than it ever used to be (Byker pool, take note). And everything's clean, bright and obviously reasonably well-specced. But there's some glaring problems that make you think that whoever planned the refit really didn't think about small children:

(a) Signage. Now I know small children can't always read - but for the poor parents trogging around carrying towels, bags, small children, it would be really useful if things like the pool, toilets etc were properly signposted. There's a couple of signs, tops.

(b) Small pool: yes, it's beautifully clean. But there's nowhere to put towels/bags etc apart from on the (damp) floor. It's freezing cold when you get out of the water with a small child - you need something to wrap them up in straightaway (given that you'll be wandering the corridors for a while to find your way back to your locker - see above).

(c) While I'm on the subject of lockers - it's a complete rip-off that you have to buy a token at reception for 20p on top of the price of the swim. Why not just include it in the price?

(d) Showers. Lots of 'em. Good....apart from the fact that they're set way too high in the wall, and spray water indiscriminately. You try getting a freezing cold small child under one without it wailing.

My verdict? Could do better. We're going back to Birtley (until it too is refitted out of existence).

UPDATE: I emailed Gateshead Customer Services, and was called back very speedily by Brian Hewitson, the centre manager. We had a great discussion, and he's thinking about the issues above (especially where to put your towels by the small pool, and the signage). Apparently the disabled showers (which would be useful for small children) were installed last week, but ripped off the wall on Sunday... (I sometimes despair of Gateshead residents).

Anyway, a great example of (a) how commenting/complaining/making your point heard can see results and (b) good customer service on behalf of Gateshead Council.

Lots to do

My to-do list for this weekend is ever-increasing. So far, it reads:

• review the latest Katie Cleminson book which the lovely people at Random House have just sent to M
• get down to the allotment and start on the endless weeding, or else it'll just be a jungle down there
• keep up with my French tapes (ah, the wonders of Michel Thomas...shortly to be followed by some BBC French and possibly some free Open University stuff)
• work (boo hiss) - a little light proofreading, and some updating of e-learning materials
• hoovering (yawn)
  
• knit the sleeves of M's new ballet wrap (which will be ready by December at this rate)
• keep up-to-date with the election news
• sleep

Somewhere, I also need to fit in cooking some meals, playing with M and having some grown-up conversations with her dad. I might even want to watch some telly.

Argh. I'll get back to you on all this....

Nice bits of Paris

The farmers are revolting

Here's the latest in political reportage from Paris - tractors!!


I know there's only two here at the Bastille, but there were around 1,300 of them, apparently. We must have stood and watched about 400 of them go past, with lots of beeping of horns, waving of flags and victory salutes from the crowd. It's safe to say they're really not very happy with Mr Sarkozy...

Eiffel Tower

The view from the top was definitely worth the wait for the elevators (and the inevitable tussle with grumpy Italian teenagers about the finer points of queue etiquette).



In other news, I appear to have bought an Eiffel Tower biscuit cutter from Dehillerin's. Oops.

Paris!

We've been sailing on the river (looking for houseboats with cars, gardens and patios on deck - oh, and the odd monument, natch) and cruising the Tuilleries for carousels. The strange woodland chap below was hiding out in the Tuilleries too, waiting for passing small children.

All the fun of the fair...

Ryton Rugby Club had a mini Hoppings last weekend, so M made good use of the Pony Express. It had to be a pink horse, of course...

Ol' Lunnon Town

...was looking rather photogenic on Monday night. I was staying near Millbank for a conference - this was taken from Lambeth Bridge. Westminster's not an area I've really been to before (I'm usually a Kensington or King's Cross/Holborn/Covent Garden girl), so it was good to have a wander round somewhere new. I was quite taken with some of the warren of streets behind Millbank and near Westminster Abbey - there were some rather fantastic hidden churches, and lots of lovely (and no doubt very expensive) houses.

You say potato...

We've had a bit of a potato fest this week. First of all, M planted some with her Grandad on Monday, then we did these at the allotment on Friday, and today we've been helping some friends do theirs. And we had roast potatoes and potatoes dauphinoise for tea. I'm potatoed out.

Spring is here! (part 9,487)

As you can tell, I get pretty excited by gardens in spring. It's all about bright lime green colours, an abundance of foliage and beautiful bulbs.

Here's my patently-not-very-abundant-as-yet new herb bed (rosemary, lemon balm, bay, sage, mint, curry plant and lavender). I got fed up of trogging down the back steps in the rain to the back yard to pick slug-ravaged plants, so I've installed them all in the front garden instead.


In fact, the slugs are going to have to make do with raspberry canes (which they don't appear to like), and mint (ditto). Sorry, chaps.

Easter decorations (part 2)

The chicks might not be the most sophisticated cake topping, but they made us all smile. No matter how you carefully arranged them, that one on the far right insisted on leaning at a drunken angle.

Recipe for the phenomenally chocolate-y tart over at Recipes for Millie.

Easter decorations

1. Take several twigs from the garden (I cut some from the lilac, eucalyptus tree and winter flowering jasmine).

2. Stick them in a vase with some water (the leaves will eventually unfurl).

3. Add some vintage Easter decorations (these ones were given to me and my brother when we were small), a random selection of chicks (some listing rather badly due to cat-inflicted injuries) and a large Easter rabbit (courtesy of Lidl, 99p).

4. Voila!

Kite flying at Low Newton

It was surprisingly warm and sunny at Low Newton by the Sea. We dug sandcastles, flew kites, and marvelled at the air-sea rescue helicopter people who waved at us as they flew past.

Spring is here (part 4)

Which means it's time to plant some seeds. Here we have courgette, tomato, chillis and sugar snap peas, plus an unidentified bulb that I found at the bottom of my gardening box. Egg boxes are definitely the way forward...

Spring is here (part 3)

One of the best things about a sunny day in March is that it's finally warm enough to go outside and blow some bubbles...

Today we have mostly been...

...eating licorice.

Well, not all day. I did some work this morning, and me and M went to a ballet lesson this afternoon (not that I was allowed to do ballet with the four-year-olds, you understand - my duties were strictly confined to sitting outside and knitting the interminable pink ballet wrap).

But we did spend a while eating licorice. That's quite unusual, I grant you, but we were sent some cherry licorice to try (see above) by the lovely people at Panda. Not one to pass up such a momentous opportunity, I assembled a rigorous group of testers (two four-year-olds and a two-year-old), a couple of adults to take notes, and we gave it a go.

Each child was issued with one ration of ordinary licorice, and another of the cherry variety. Raisins were on standby for those who found the whole thing a bit much.

After a lot of chomping, it was a pretty unanimous thumbs down for the cherry version (sorry Panda). Everyone liked their ordinary licorice, but only M loved the cherry variety. I blame her Grandpa - he's got a sweet tooth too. As the other half said, it's a brilliant sweet, but only as long as you're not expecting it to taste like licorice.

Tomorrow, we rigorously test fizzy drinks. Just kidding. They all live on local organic free-range stuff farmed by dolphins by moonlight the rest of the time, you know.

Robots!

It's never too early to get your small daughter interested in geekery. Here is the drawbot she and Orb made at Maker Faire, part of Newcastle Science Festival. M has now announced plans to build a robot cat...

Captain Jack addresses the masses

Apparently, the posts from the fruit cage at the allotment are the perfect spot for declaiming to one's fans.

Arts Corner: March is film month as well

I know, I know…you spend ages not watching any films, and then a whole load of them come along at once. Not content with the delights of February, this month I’ve been to see a couple of grown-up films.

First of all (courtesy of the lovely people at SeeFilmFirst), I love you Phillip Morris. This is the (true) tale of con-man and four-time prison escapee Steven Russell, who fell in love with his cell mate Phillip Morris.

I can’t quite get my head around this film. There’s something not quite right about it, and for once, it’s not Jim Carrey.

I can’t stand him, normally – The Truman Show is about the only film of his that I’ve ever enjoyed. But in this, he’s excellent as the con-man Steven Russell – most of the Carrey-isms are reined in, and towards the end, he puts in a really powerful acting performance. Top marks (although I could have done with a *lot* less of the naked Jim Carrey…).

The film falls down on three counts, I think. First of all, it can’t quite decide if it wants to be a comedy or a drama – there’s moments of both, but it’s all so jumbled up together that there’s a lack of coherence in the general mood and feel of the film.

Second, Ewan McGregor is woefully miscast as Phillip Morris. His accent wobbles all over the place (mostly via Scotland), and he just comes across as far too wet. Yes, Phillip Morris was a nice guy – but Ewan McGregor never fleshes that out at all – his performance is very two-dimensional.

Thirdly, make that pretty much every performance that’s two-dimensional (apart from the aforementioned Mr Carrey). It might be inevitable in a film that focuses so firmly on the two lead characters, but the rest of the cast are never rounded out as characters, and you care even less about them than the leads.

Sad, really. The subject matter’s great (and I suspect the book is fascinating) – but it’s just not been translated well into a film.

In other news, I've also been to see A Single Man (following on from my Colin Firth spree in Nanny McPhee).

All I can say is: Colin Firth. Julianne Moore. 1960s architect-designed houses in Laurel Canyon. What’s not to like?

This film is fab – a beautiful, moody and very sad depiction of the last day of college professor George Falconer – and has a stunning central performance by Mr Firth. Who also wears some rather good shoes, and manages to look effortlessly cool and nerdy at the same time. College prof-style is obviously the way to go (Orb, take note).

If I had any criticism, it's that the soundtrack is a little bit overbearing at times. There's only so much strings/orchestra tugging at the heart strings that a girl can take.

Spring is here (part 2)

We toddled down to the allotment today for the first time in ages (I suspect it was last October, actually). The ground's still frozen (we managed to chisel some beetroots out, but failed miserably on the leeks). Much fun was had photographing Captain Jack in a variety  of locations, searching for non-existent worms, and generally getting muddy. Roll on Easter, then we can plant our potatoes...

Spring is here!

It must be-the bulbs are starting to peep through...

Chinese lantern festival

More lanterns last night, at the Chinese lantern festival at the Oriental Museum in Durham. We hunted for tiny tigers (ingeniously hidden everywhere from the display cabinets to the tops of doorways), coloured in lantern pictures, ate fortune cookies (apparently prosperity is just around the corner - hurrah!) and generally had a fabulous time.

Well done that museum - it's one of my favourite places anyway to go with small children, but this was a brilliant small-scale, low-key event. Other places take note - an event doesn't have to cost a fortune (for the museum to put on, or for families to attend) or be particularly hi-tech to be entertaining!

Recipe roundup

We've been hard at work trying out some new recipes this month. My selection seems to get stranger (and by that I mean less coherent) - maybe that's because so many of the regular recipes that we make are already documented in Recipes for Millie, so it's only the fancy new ones that get blogged about. There's over 250 recipes up there now, which is scary!

So far this month, we appear to have eaten:

Pasta with anchovies, broccoli and stilton
Ginger cheesecake
Kipper flan (this was a real 1970s throwback!)
Wheat tortillas
Carrot and marmalade muffins
Seville orange marmalade
Fish pie
Pork and olive stew

Still to go up: szechuan pork, hot cross buns (no, I don't think we ate them together!). I think my favourite so far was the ginger cheesecake (warning, if you're coming to eat at our house any time soon, this may well show up on the menu!).

Still to try out: I was given the Rachel Allen book, Bake, for Christmas - and there's an apple cake in there with my name on.

Arts Corner: February is film month too...

...courtesy of the £1 a ticket showings at Empire Cinemas on a Sunday (it's just a cheap excuse to go into Newcastle so we can go to the Chinese bakery afterwards, I suspect), and the charity shops of Gosforth (it's amazing what you can find on video for 10p).

So far, we've seen:

Bolt: on DVD, which we were given for Christmas. It was the first full-length feature film M ever saw, and just as exciting to revisit. Good storyline, accents that can be understood by a four-year-old, and, for once, a thoroughly fabulous heroine. Penny doesn't wear pink, she isn't obsessed with being a princess - she's a proper action girl, who has the best scooter ever. I may have had to pretend to be Bolt the dog running round the park more times than I would like, but hey, it's worth it for less princess/fairy/kitten nonsense.

Sound of Music: 25p on video from the charity shop. A special edition, with original intermission, no less (including lots of pictures of the lovely Austrian countryside). I'd forgotten there were so many good songs in this film - my favourite has to be Raindrops on Roses. I'd also forgotten just how *long* the damn thing is...we had to watch it in two sittings. M loved the children and Julie Andrews, and was completely bored by the love story. I sat there in a haze of nostalgia, remembering when I played Sister Margaretha (complete with habit and fishnets) in the school production. My little brother's never really got over playing Kurt (I think it was the long socks and shorts that did for him).

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs: at a proper cinema (hurrah for the large screen!). This was excellent - far better than I expected. It was funny, had lots of jokes for adults (including lots of references to other films, apparently, which I didn't get but which Orb thought were hilarious), and some fantastic special effects. And the love interest is a geek weathergirl. How cool is that?!

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang: another charity shop purchase, which we watched while munching hot cross buns. I can't quite believe (a) it was made in 1968 - the special effects are still rather good (b) how bad Dick Van Dyke's accent is - although not as bad as his cockney Mary Poppins one and (c) how scary the child catcher is still, even as a grown up.

Next on the cards: more charity shop purchases (including James and the Giant Peach, and Ice Age), and maybe a trip to the cinema to see Colin Firth in A Single Man.

Chinese lanterns

We've also made a Chinese dragon puppet and a tiger mask (it is Year of the Tiger after all. And it's freezing cold outside, so I wanted a nice indoor activity - after two hours at the park this afternoon, my fingers had turned white).

The lanterns were dead easy: take 1 sheet of A4 (or whatever size) paper, and fold in half lengthways. Starting at the fold, cut lots of vertical lines that stop a couple of centimetres from the end of the paper. Unfold your paper, bend the short edges round to each other, and staple. Use a strip of paper to make a handle across the top.

(there's lots of diagrams here: www.show.me.uk)

Why I hate February

And, no, it's not the whole Valentine's Day debacle. I'm quite looking forward to that, actually. I rather like the overload of kitsch cheesiness as the whole country takes leave of its senses for a day. And we're planning on having foie gras, salad with seared scallops, and ginger cheesecake for dinner (probably with a bit of fizz). That should be suitably cheering.

So that's not the issue. It's the whole dark, dank, dismal month that's the problem. Every time I go out of the house it's raining, or dripping, or foggy. M and I took a walk down to the parade of shops in the middle of Low Fell today. Aside from pretending to be Penny and Bolt, we spent our time looking in everyone's gardens for signs of spring. There were precious few - a couple of patches of snowdrops, and several frozen-looking primroses were our lot. Everything was damp, soggy and slippy underfoot - and we were hailed on on the way there and back.

Roll on the spring proper. I want to go to the park and not have to retreat after an hour because we can't feel our fingers, no matter how much 'explorer' mix (nuts and chocolate) we eat to give us energy. I want to see all the bulbs in the pots in our back yard poke their heads through and start shooting up towards the light. I want to see a bit of blue sky.

Until then, I'll have to make do with baking cakes, booking summer holidays and eating curry.

Books, books and more books!

The lovely people over at Random House sent me a couple of children's books to review this week, which was very kind of them. Both are picture books, so me and the girl settled down at bedtime to have a read.


First up was Little Croc's Purse by Lizzie Finlay. Sadly, this one was a huge disappointment.

Little Croc finds a purse filled with money, and has to decide whether to do the right thing and hand it in at the police station, or spend spend spend on lemonades and some rather natty new cowboy boots. Not surprisingly, he does indeed give the purse to the police crocs, the owner is traced in a mysterious manner, and Little Croc is rewarded for his honesty.

The pictures are great (the design of the purse really stands out), and there's some lovely in-jokes for the grown-ups (the cafe is called Croc Monsieurs, for example) but the story is awful and preachy. I know, I know, we should be teaching children that honesty is the best policy - but can we at least have some decent dialogue/plot?

Having said all that, M loved it, and wanted it read again. It's one of those annoying books that children like but make you want to scream. I'd recommend borrowing it from the library, and then getting someone else to read it to them.


Our second book was Box of Tricks by Katie Cleminson. And it *was* completely magic - one of those breathtakingly simple books that you could look at for hours.

Eva is given a box of tricks for her birthday, and becomes a magician (complete with rather fantastic cape). She conjures up a pet (Monty the polar bear - who is rather larger than she thought), rabbits out of hats, and a fabulous party complete with cakes and magicians. Eventually, when everyone's worn out, she clicks her fingers and they all disappear. Or do they?

We both loved the beautiful ink illustrations. And fell about laughing at the bit where Monty appears, and where the rabbits are playing cards and pulling more rabbits out of hats. It's completely charming - especially the dancing rabbits.

And what else is so nice, is that it's a book about a girl who isn't sparkly and pink and faffing about with fairies. The colours in this book are gorgeous, strong reds and blues - and Eva's a pretty strong, imaginative character. It's great - thoroughly recommended. We can't wait for her next one.

Now we're back to George's Marvellous Medicine (you can't beat a good bit of Roald Dahl), except that I'm not allowed to read it because "Daddy does the voices better". That's my dreams of reading Book at Bedtime dashed, then.

Cheap days out (3): The supermarket

Not necessarily where you would think of for an afternoon of fun, but it can be done. Not only do you get your weekly shop done, it's educational into the bargain!

First of all, get your small child on board with the idea. Let them decide what to have for tea (M usually picks sausages, or pasta), and write a shopping list of what they'll need. In our case, it turned out to be toad in the hole, so we needed sausages, eggs and milk (we already had flour). M's into writing words, so she wrote the list, and drew pictures of the things as well. I then issued her with a shopping bag, and put £5 in her purse so she could buy the ingredients.

It then helps if you have a small shopping basket, or one of those little plastic shopping trolleys. Sling it in the car, and tootle off to your local friendly branch of Sainsbury's/Morrisons/Lidl etc. Collect your grownup-size trolley, and let your small companion wheel theirs next to you. This should give the staff and fellow shoppers a bit of a giggle.

Proceed with your weekly shop, making sure the small child is looking for the things on their shopping list too. It's excellent for looking for food beginning with a particular letter, reading words on boxes and packets, finding special offers (and explaining why 2 for 1 is a bargain). Don't forget to look at the deli counters for free samples...

At the checkout, let your helper unload their trolley contents and pay using the money you've given them (which hopefully you didn't have to raid the piggy bank for). Load all the shopping into the bag you gave them earlier, and check the receipt (it's never too early to start on this one, plus you get to plug how reading is useful for all kinds of things, not just books). The receipt is strangely popular in our house. Not sure why.

Take your food home, unpack, and then cook your tea (I guarantee this escapade will take all afternoon, and you'll probably be in need of a little something by the time you get back).

In the pile by the side of my bed...

...are several books which I got for Christmas, or have acquired by nefarious means. As you might have guessed, they are mostly food-related.

• Delia Smith's Frugal Food. This is something of a first - I've never owned a Delia cookbook until now. It's not bad (the egg and bacon pie is rather spiffing), and it's hilarious to see what we were cooking in the 1970s.
• Nigel Slater's Tender. It's Nige. Say no more - it's brilliant, and I can't wait for volume 2.
• Rachel Allen's Bake. Good pictures, nice recipes - her soda bread one was excellent. I'm desperate to try making pretzeln - I've not had a good pretzel since working in southern Germany in 1995.
• The Great Allotment Cookbook. Duff index, great recipes. It will come into its own during The Great Courgette and Gooseberry Glut.
• The Allotment Gardener's Handbook. Had you forgotten I had an allotment? Never fear - the endless photos of tiny runner beans will reappear later this year.
• Claire Tomalin's biography of Samuel Pepys. This is completely marvellous - Claire Tomalin is my heroine. She makes what could be dull history fascinating, and most importantly readable. Mr Pepys was something of a lad, which also helps.
• Isabel Allende's Ines of my Soul. Picked it up in my local library, and it's pretty good. It's quite nice to have a novel on the go, as well as all the other lot.

Whether I finish all of these by the end of the decade or not, remains to be seen. Actually, I'll have to - I've got my eye on the next instalment of the Michael Palin diaries that I gave to my dad for Christmas.

Arts Corner: January is film month

Now the sledging season's ended, I seem to have taken up film-watching. I've caught more films this month than I probably did in the whole of last year - I suspect that's because (a) they're quite good for keeping small folk amused at the end of a long, cold day and (b) I've been ill, and there's only so much of Radio 4's afternoon play you can listen to before becoming slightly deranged.

So far, the list includes:

Fantastic Mr Fox at the Sunday morning cinema (followed by some rather excellent buns at the Chinese bakery). It was fantastic in every way - I especially loved the design of the sets, and the opening sequence when the two foxes chase across the farm.

Ice Princess, while swathed in blankets on the sofa. Don't laugh, it was quite good, especially if you're partial to a bit of ice skating. Might watch it again with the girl at some point.

Nanny McPhee, on a freezing cold Sunday afternoon while recovering. We made popcorn, and snuggled up on the sofa. I loved this - it was brilliant at working on grown up and kid-levels. M liked the silly things - the worm sandwiches, the toad in the teapot, the dyed lambs at the wedding (and, of course, the magic). I loved the set design again (gorgeous use of colours), and the timeless nature of the story (you know it happened sometime in the past, but it doesn't really matter when). Oh, and Colin Firth's quite watchable for an hour or two, obviously.

Up in the Air, at a real, grown-up cinema (the Tyneside). Comfy seats, mocha coffee, the works. Fabulous. And a fantastic film too - funny, not-too-schmalzy (I loved how the ending was relatively downbeat instead of the usual romantic nonsense) and with some great shots out of aeroplanes. Gorgeous George was pretty good too.

I'm not sure what's next. We found Moulin Rouge and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang in the charity shop for 10p, and got Bolt on DVD for Christmas...I'll let you know.

On sledging

Growing up in the middle of the Fens didn't do a lot for our sledging. Despite having The Best Sledge Ever (TM), which my Grandad made for my Mum back in the 1950s, it only came out on rare occasions.

Roman Bank (approx 2 metres high, and a few hundred meters away from our house) had a couple of small inclines, but that was really your lot. We used to head into Norfolk, all the way to Sandringham Woods, before you could get some proper downhill action (as long as you remembered to avoid the trees/stumps).

I think that was our downfall, the time we all managed to fit on the sledge. Grandad's sledge has a red slatted seat, cast iron runners, and goes like the clappers. You can easily fit three small children and a grownup on the back - and in this case, we'd sandwiched me, my brother *and* my mum and dad onto the hard wooden seat. We hurtled down from all of ooh, probably about 5m above sea level, at breakneck speed, until we hit a stump. The sledge slewed sideways, tipped over, and we all fell off in a heap in the snow. My mum's still not forgiven us all for it.

The sledge is still doing pretty well, 50 years on, and has been dragged out of the garage, revarnished, and posted north. This time we've got hills - so it's been out more times over the last couple of weeks than in my entire childhood. M is besotted - we've delivered Christmas presents on it, towed it up and down the street for hours, and flown from the top of the park down to the bottom (perilously close to the lake). Tuesday was perfect - one sledge, one grownup on the back for braking and three excited small children sandwiched on the front, shouting "wheeeeeeeee" in unison.

Even the lions in the back yard are starting to look fed up