Making Toast For My Daughter Interesting…

Tags

Cooking, Eating, food, fun, kids, love, Parenting, school

I make my daughter her ‘quatre heure’ – or after-school snack – each day. This involves fruit, a drink and two small slices of toast, one with butter one with organic chocolate spread. I got bored one day and, with the aid of a pair of scissors, cut the pieces into heart shapes for her. She liked that. She liked that so much that she then refused to eat it unless I cut it into heart shapes for her each time.

Then I got bored of cutting heart shapes and tried my hand at other ‘designs’. They won’t win any art prizes, but she likes them and it’s quite fun for both of us. These are all first time efforts as I’m still ‘honing my craft’ but I will upload more photos one day when I think they are worth sharing. So here we have: Heart and the Eiffel Tower, Big Ben and the Arc de Triomphe de l’Étoile, Pacman chasing a ghost (I realise for accuracy the ghost should really be blue, but I try not to feed my daughter blue things) and Jaws chasing a school of fish.

Family Viewing Time: Restaurant Impossible…

Tags

Celebrity, Chef, Cooking, entertainment, Family, food, fun, funny, Humor, Restaurant, Restaurant Impossible, TV

 

We have a new addiction, a family-wide addiction. It may come as no surprise to you that the title of said addiction is watching Restaurant Impossible. That’s because it’s right there in the title of this blog. And there’s even a picture with it directly above this paragraph for those of you that are slow on the uptake. I was going to title it ‘Guilty Family Viewing Pleasure’ but then I realised that I hate saying anything is a ‘Guilty Pleasure’. Why should you feel guilty about something that brings you pleasure just because you think others will deem your taste somehow inferior? Taste is subjective after all, no one person’s taste is any better than anybody else’s in my opinion.

This addiction came about because i was looking for something to fill the void left by Gordon Ramsay, another proponent of this type of show. However we got turned off from him due to the heavily scripted nature of his shows. So I was drawn towards Restaurant Impossible, another heavily scripted show, with another English chef, but at least the host, Robert Irvine, actually appears to care about the people he’s helping.

The show’s USP is that chef Robert will fix the restaurant’s food problems, repair splintered relationships, give the owner a new backbone, and get it back looking ship-shape on the design front, all in two days and for ‘ten thousand dollars’ (I’m putting the price in inverted commas as it’s just impossible (HA!) to do what he does to these places for that amount, if you factor all the man hours and equipment-hiring into it. But hey, I’m not here to pick holes.)

As a family we love it (my son has gone off it a tad though, and now prefers to read or colour) and it has become something of a ritual. Cook our meals, get everybody settled in front of the television and off we go. We all question the title of it though. Even my daughter, after a mere two season’s worth of viewing, pointed out that it should be called ‘Restaurant Possible’.

We especially like it when Robert smashes things with a sledgehammer, which he does A LOT. He does this a lot because he looks like the Incredible Hulk decided to stop being angry and went to cooking school. He’s all bulging muscles in a tight black polo top (always tight, always black) and what better way to show off said muscles than by smashing things up?

We also love how he helps these financially struggling restaurants by making them prepare nearly everything on the menu for him, only to then spit it all out and throw it on the floor. Still, as long as he’s paying for it, eh?

We are on season six now (Robert’s hair is grey, as opposed to the jet black he started with, although I suspect he does occasionally dye it)  and he is beginning to exhibit signs of the overt focus on emotional drama that turned us off Ramsay’s shows. The nadir of Gordon’s series for us was when he took a family into a church and used the confessional booths to get to the bottom of their issues, placing himself in the role of the priest. Robert hasn’t sunk that low yet, and I’m hoping he never does. Otherwise it will be a swift turn off and I will be back hunting for the next thing for us all to watch together.

For the moment though, Robert and his bulging muscles are keeping us all entertained, even though his Restaurant Impossible ‘missions’ never seem to fail.

That’s only on the show though, in real life, following the broadcast of the episode, the majority of these restaurants do actually show that they are fallible as the majority of them have closed within months (many, bizarrely, after having been hit by a truck, like there is some sort of serial-restaurant-killing truck driver out there). In fact we have a ritual where we all vote on whether or not we think the restaurant is still viable. We take a vote and then I toddle off and dig up the answer.

It’s usually closed, which is why we all generally vote ‘closed’.

Hey, he’s only a man at the end of the day. Nobody can work miracles with two days and ten grand, and as long as Robert keeps understanding that he’s not a miracle worker, I think we’ll all keep watching*

 

(*even though one of his oft repeated mantras is ‘This place needs a miracle’)

Sandwiched Between Indifference…

Tags

Family, food, fun, funny, Humor, Humour, kids, stay-at-home Dad

On tonight’s menu in Mr Mum’s house we have a veritable feast of delightful foodstuffs, all lovingly prepared to cater to the needs of the individual’s requirements. It may be only sandwiches, but no corners have been cut (literally BOOM BOOM!) in the efforts of the Michelin starred chef that has created this bounty of bread-based, bite-sized taste-bombs, that will surely set the tongues of the tasters alight with joy.

 

For Her

Carefully sectioned into quarters, this sumptuous feast features only the (supermarket) freshest ham available, and with all the fatty bits trimmed off and shoved in the bin, there remains only the choicest pieces of ham to ensure the palate is treated to a veritable pork-based party.

Cucumber has been loving rinsed for three seconds and then sliced to make it look slightly posher than it actually is, and the segments have each been painstakingly, and liberally, salted, to avoid cries of ‘SALT! SALT!’ as has happened from time to time.

Fresh (ish) tomatoes have been added for a little variety, and also because there’s nothing better than cleaning the seed explosion from off of the sofa cover (purchased to protect the sofa underneath from seed explosions*  (*and other things)) when madam bites into them like some kind of animal.

The whole dish is served up on a dazzlingly blue plate emblazoned with Ella and Elsa, or Sarah and Sue or whatever they are called, from the tragi-comedy that is ‘Frozen‘.

 

CRITIC’S RESPONSE

Grunts and chewing noises can be heard and there seems to be a word emitted from the thing on the sofa. Could be ‘Merci‘ or ‘Thanks daddy, I love you‘ or ‘This is delicious, I’m so lucky to have you making this for me‘ but in all likelihood it’s probably ‘Where’s my water?‘.

 

For Him

Eschewing the needless frivolities of cucumbers or tomatoes, this dish is served up in as bare a bones style as possible. This suits the needs of that most exacting of connoisseurs: my son. Who has rigid rules, very much like Fight Club.

These rules basically boil down to:

1. I don’t want any fruit
2. I don’t want any veg
3. I just want ham
4. With bread
5. Or sometimes pasta

With this in mind the meal for sir has been carefully prepared on seedless brown bread – oh yeah, rule number six, I forgot:

6. I don’t want any seeds in my bread

Again all traces of fat have been removed from the ham to ensure only the best meat passes sir’s lips. The resulting mix of bread and ham and butter has been loving shaped in to what one hopes resembles a face. Six consecutive attempts were made to try to lovingly shape it into this, after the first five were what could lovingly be described as ‘nightmare-inducing‘.

The whole meal is beautifully presented on a random beige plate due to sir’s ‘Marvel’s The Avengers‘ plate being out of commission due to an earlier incident involving chocolate.

 

CRITIC’S RESPONSE

‘What’s that?’ (after being told it’s a face) ‘No, it looks weird, it doesn’t look right…where’s my water?’

I Don’t Care What Time Of Day It Is, I Hate Clowns….

Tags

Clowns, Family, fear, food, funny, Humor, Life, Phobia, Scary

They all bloat down here…especially if they have TWO Big Macs

We go to McDonald’s now and again. I might have mentioned it. People will frown about that. They will say things like ‘Consumerism’ ‘Frankenstein food’ and ‘I hate McDonald’s’. And to them I say ‘Yes, but have you tried the bacon double cheeseburger?’.

Now I have the kids full time on a Wednesday (thanks to French president Mr Macron, and I really do mean that) we often head there, especially if it’s raining.

It was raining on this grey and miserable Wednesday, so guess where we ended up?

Our trip to McDonald’s today was made more memorable as we were ‘entertained’ by the real-life, in the flesh, French Ronald McDonald, walking around saying bonjour, cava etc.

In case you didn’t notice the picture at the top of the page, he looked liked this:

Note suspicious glare from kid in bottom right of pic

He was walking around chatting away, smiling/grimacing at and cuddling people, with a balloon person accompanying him, making balloon animals for the kids, as if this would in some way alleviate the sheer terror that his form brought out in them and the adults as well. Especially adults like me.

It’s broad daylight, in a busy restaurant, yet this clown, squeaking around in his big red shoes, has got me quaking in mine. I hate clowns, yet have a perverse fascination with them, and have watched every horror film featuring them.

Some of the kids lapped it up, but some reacted like me and so there were plenty of scenes like this one:

I can say, with hand on heart, that he was at least 200% more sinister than the already-creepy-as-fuck UK ones that I used to see from time to time. I can also say that I have never seen my daughter turn away from something as quickly as she did when he approached our table today and tried to engage her in conversation, she was having none of him, his red shoes, his balloon animals or his ghastly painted face.

It was a pity, as the kids really did want one of the balloon animals – my son specified a dog, any colour but pink – but they were not prepared to endure having this painted creature interacting with them in order to get one.

He left half-way through our meal, probably had other venues to terrorise. We did not mourn his passing, and are not looking forward to him being there again.

Shame about the balloon animals though.

Team Cucumber VS Team Cheese

Tags

Cheese, children, Cucumber, Family, food, funny, Humor, kids, Relationships, stay-at-home Dad

Aside from the cucumbers this has absolutely nothing to do with this post.

 

‘Bleuuuuuurgh’ I look at the frowning face opposite me. ‘Oooooh that’s disgusting, eurghh!’ the frowning face’s eyes are now desperately looking for something to take the taste of this ‘disgusting’ thing away from the frowning face’s mouth.

The frowning face belongs to my partner, she’s sat opposite me, next to my daughter, at the dinner table. The cause of her frown? She’s just dipped her bread in the delicious sauce that was on my daughter’s plate, accompanying her meal. A delicious sauce that she herself cooked. So why the long face? Well that’s down to the addition of cucumbers to my daughter’s plate, their flavour has infiltrated the delicious sauce* and this has caused her revulsion.

You see we now live in a house divided. One which hopefully will stand. On the one side we have team cheese – my partner and my son. On the other side sit us, team cucumber, comprised of my daughter and I.

I’ve been waiting for an ally to join my side, in my love of cucumbers, for many years. I think my daughter’s love of cucumbers may even go beyond mine.

My partner also hates bananas.

My daughter loves bananas.

I can take or leave bananas.

That’s why this blog is called ‘Team Cucumber VS Team Cheese’ and not ‘Team Bananas VS Team Apples’.

My son is similarly repulsed by cucumbers, but I’m sure I can persuade him one day to try them. Maybe when he’s 26, and drunk.

Very specific about his food is my son – it has to fall into one of four categories:Bread

     1. Bread

     2. Ham

     3. Potatoes

     4. Cheese

Anything else and he is simply not interested.

So we have divided up into our two camps, and even have special call signs. They are very inventive. My team is called ‘Team Cucumber’ and eats cucumbers, and their team is called ‘Team Cheese’ and eats cheese.

The problem for them is that I also eat cheese.

They don’t like this.

They think that because of my sick love of cucumbers I should be banned from eating cheese.

I laugh in the face of their rules.

HA! I say to them as I eat a Babybel.

You should see what I’m going to do next – I’m going to make a cheese and cucumber sandwich. I think my daughter might try a bit, but knowing her she’ll remove the cheese and just eat the cucumber.

Then I will leave the cheese out for my partner, she will see it, pop it in her mouth and then: ‘Bleuuuuuurgh’ I will once again see the frowning face. ‘Oooooh that’s disgusting, eurghh!’…..

Team cucumber don’t mind stooping to dirty tricks you see, mwa ha ha ha!

 

 

*I have to keep saying that the sauce was delicious because she reads these things and so I’ve got to watch my back or there will be no more delicious, delicious sauces

The Strange Food Contest…

Tags

cultural differences, Culture, England, English, food, France, French, funny, Humor, uk

 

We were sat outside in the fading light, enjoying a delicious meal at a local restaurant. I was busy shovelling a fruits de mer pizza into my mouth.

As another tentacle disappeared into my gob, my French friend commented on the contents of my meal: ‘English people eat some strange things’.

I looked at him, the setting sun glinting off my dark brown eyes.

I made the universal sound for a horse.

I made the universal sound for a frog.

I couldn’t make the universal sound for a snail as I’d forgotten about that one. Plus they aren’t very noisy.

Ha! I thought to myself, let’s see what my French pal comes back with now.

‘You know’ a voice piped up from my right ‘They eat crisp sandwiches in the UK’.

I looked at the owner of the voice, it was none other than the mother of my children, the light of my life, my moon and stars. Et tu Brute?

She then went on to describe, at length, how one makes a crisp sandwich, to the astonishment of my friend.

He looked at me aghast, asking with his eyes is this was true.

I held his gaze and said ‘The bread’s got to be white’, his mouth already yawning open, now stretched even further, coming within touching distance of the table.

‘And my favourite flavour is salt and vinegar*’ I added, without batting an eyelid.

I may have just lost a French friend.

 

*Actually it’s a toss-up between Seabrook’s Salt and Vinegar or Pickled Onion Flavour Monster Munch, but I think there are things that some people’s minds just can’t cope with.

How To Increase Your French Vocabulary At McDonald’s…

Tags

Family, food, France, French, fun, Humor, Language, Learning

We are in the middle of some seriously miserable weather here in our part of France. It’s basically a case of: Monday – Rain. Tuesday – Rain. Wednesday – Rain and wind. You get the idea. So, as crafts indoors will only get you so far before both you and your kids go insane and start trying to make a giant quilt made from string to cover your house or cat (or both), we decide to head to McDonald’s.

And by ‘We’ I mean ‘Me’. Well, until one of them learns to drive and gets a job I’m the dictator of this small state. At least between the hours of 9am – 6pm, Monday to Friday anyway. I then cede control to my other half.

I always bow down to a superior wage.

Especially when I don’t have one myself.

Anyway so I announce my intention to take us off to McDonald’s for a treat, and am met with happy shouts and cries of ‘Yes! Yes!’ ‘No more crafts!’ ‘Let me just finish stitching the third eye on this bird/crocodile thing!’. My daughter puts down her craft implements, and my son stops painting ‘NO MORR CRAfTs My THumBZ HUrT’ on his picket sign, and we head out the door.

I like our trips to the Golden Arches (TM), it’s not something we do often, for financial reasons as well as health reasons. The health reasons are more for me than the kids. There’s been a lot said about the nutritional balance now available in the meals, but at the end of the day it’s still chips and meat, and not much in the way of vegetables.

Unless you count the gherkins.

Also the kids never finish theirs, which means I invariably hoover up the detritus of their meals. I’m from Yorkshire – we don’t like waste.

So we roll up at the restaurant – eating in as usual as buying at the drive-thru, and eating in the car, is a recipe for everybody going insane. Going home with it isn’t an option either, as we are just distant enough for us to return home to some nicely congealed burgers, and some tepid fries.

The kids – as usual – plump for the Happy Meal, and I input their orders at the self-service kiosk. You can say what you want about stuff like this, how it’s detracting from the customer-service experience; how it’s taking people’s jobs. Say what you will. For me, as an Englishman whose grasp of French isn’t quite there just yet, having all these nice photographs to refer to when placing an order makes it much easier, and less stressful. The kids can see exactly what they want to order too.

We sit down (at our set of three couple’s tables, that should seat six, but my children have dominated the area, much to the annoyance of the other people in the rather crowded restaurant) receive our food and tuck into it. Well, after opening up the toys that is. As with any kids, my children’s priorities are: Toys first, food second.

This week’s promotional toy is from the Mr Men range, the Roger Hargreaves designed range of humorous characters. There seems to be 90 in total to collect. I don’t know if that’s more or less than the total Pokemon.The kids have two each. They hastily swap out the lady and man from each of their bags so that my son is left with two Mr Men awhile my daughter has the two Little Missus. Or Little Mrs. Whatever.

My kids don’t go in for all this gender-neutral nonsense. He likes boy’s toys, she likes girl’s toys, and that’s that as far as they’re concerned.

Once we have finished we head on over to the craft station, a great little corner that is – surprisingly – always empty when we go.

This is where I see the following drawings for the kids to colour in:

In case you are thinking ‘But where are all the ladies? Maybe on the other side of the paper?’. The answer is no, there’s nothing but blank space. There was only one lady to colour in – but she was massive, if that helps:

I found this very educational – please bear with me on this – as along with the pictures for the kids to colour in, there were also guides to the names of the characters – both male and female. Now this may sound silly to you, but with my level of French, things like this are really useful.

The Mr Men characters have always been named after everyday feelings, and effects – like Mr Bump, or Mr Angry, Mr Happy etc. So having a guide, with pictures that correspond to the characters, and give you a clue to what the names mean is a fantastic help for me:

 

I take every bit of help I can when it comes to learning the lingo in this country.

But does that mean that I’m going to try and collect all 90 of the characters?

Non.

My vocabulary would definitely increase if I did.

But so would my waistline.

 

Oh No! It’s The Food Police!

Tags

children, food, food and drink, funny, Humor, kids, Parenting, stay-at-home Dad

 

My daughter looks at me as I step out into the glorious sunshine, I’m eating a lemon-sorbet ice-pop, just the thing to cool me down on a day as hot as this. ‘You’ve had two of those today’ she says to me ‘Why have you had two of those today?’. It’s like this all the time at the moment, my daughter has turned into a food policeman/woman/child (delete as appropriate). You can’t put anything in your mouth – nothing edible anyway – without her noticing and commenting on it.

 

I was making her some food the other day, one of her favourites, sausage and chips, and I – as is customary for me – took a small piece of the second sausage, for what I refer to as ‘Daddy Tax’. This is a tax I levy on all foodstuffs (except cauliflower, bleurgh!) that I prepare for my kids, just a little off the top to keep me sweet (It is not, I repeat NOT ‘protection money’ in the form of food). She noticed straight away.

 

‘Why did you eat a piece of my sausage’ she said, her dark eyes fixed on me from beneath a furrowed brow. Was she in the room when I ate that piece of sausage? I don’t think she was, and as I break her sausages up into pieces, there shouldn’t really have been any way for her to notice. But notice she did.

 

I suspect that at night, when everyone else is asleep, she creeps downstairs and takes inventory of all the food in the house. She notes down all the different foodstuffs, the different quantities and then, if in her eyes you go over your allotted quota for the day, that’s when the interrogation, the questions, the accusations…that’s when it all starts.

 

Or I could just be being paranoid.

 

She’s always there, whenever food is being prepared, and if she isn’t, she magically will be as soon as she smells or hears it. It’s like one of those horror movie cliches, you know when you open the fridge-door, and then close it and there’s a mass murderer waiting, where previously there was nothing. Except it’s not a mass murderer, it’s a two-and-a-half foot tall munchkin who wants to know what you are doing with that pack of ham. And if you don’t respond then the consequences could be as dire as in the horror movie.

 

That’s if you equate being stared at for ten minutes, with the phrase ‘Can I have some’ repeated 278 times, to as bad as being stabbed to death by Michael Myers/Jason Voorhees/Freddy Krueger (delete as applicable).

 

She can also hear packets of crisps being opened from up to a mile away. I once opened a packet, downstairs in our house. I was alone, everybody else was off doing something else (together I should add, we don’t let our three and six year old wander the village on their own – we wouldn’t put the villagers through that). I hadn’t put one crisp in my mouth when I turned to see a pair of dark eyes staring at me through the patio windows.

 

They were my favourite flavour too.

 

I’m in the house on my own now too, and I think I might have an ice-cream. I’ll be ok though, she’s at nursery today. There’s no chance she can get me. Is there?

 

Hang on…I think I heard something….

Cultural French/UK Differences: Salad Cream

Tags

angry, cost of living, food, France, French, funny, Humor, shopping

Tuesday’s discovery on the shelves…

 

 

And Tuesday’s phrase of the day….

 

 

 

The Internal Struggle Of A Six-Year-Old Boy, As Depicted By A Charity-Shop Triceratops

Tags

children, food, funny, Humor, kids, musings, Parenting, toilet

I saw this in a charity shop the other day whilst out brunching* with my daughter:

 

 

Every boy loves dinosaurs, don’t they? The scariness of them, the viciousness, the simplicity of their existence (eat, sleep, reproduce, terrorise Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas-Howard). Show me a young boy without a dinosaur in his collection and I’ll eat my hat.

 

 

What immediately struck me that this toy dinosaur though – aside from the cheap price and bizarre pale make-up of its face – was that it perfectly encapsulates an all-too-common occurrence in our household.

 

 

Note the crossed legs – I don’t believe any toy dinosaur ever represented, so accurately, the internal struggle between my six-year-old boy’s need to go for a wee and his desire to play just one more level on Super Mario 3D World.

 

 

Has anyone in the history of parenting ever asked their child if they needed a wee, and actually gotten the response ‘yes’?

 

 

Every time I ask my dancing, jiggling, shuffling, legs-crossed son if he needs a wee he says, emphatically, ‘no’. He then stops dancing, jiggling and shuffling, and un-crosses his legs.

 

 

For at least ten seconds.

 

 

It seems to me that, right up until their bladder is fit to explode, six-year-old boys NEVER need to wee.

 

 

Then they do and it sounds like someone’s pointed a jet-wash at my toilet and pressed the trigger. Oh to have a young prostate again….

 

 

I must say he is dedicated to his gaming/crafts/whatever else he may be doing while he so clearly needs the toilet. I have timed him doing his little ‘I don’t need a wee. oh yes I do’ dances for up to 30 minutes.

 

 

That must be excruciatingly painful, or maybe at 6 we don’t yet have the receptors ‘down there’ that make these matters that urgent.

 

 

I was once stuck on a train, with no toilet facilities, in London for 2o minutes, with a full bladder. At the end of those twenty minutes I would have happily given all my worldly possessions for a toilet to empty my bladder. Or even a dark alley. Hell, an empty bottle of Evian would have been a godsend.

 

 

So how he can do it for such long periods of time is beyond me.

 

 

Maybe it’s the dancing, jiggling, shuffling and crossing of the legs…maybe that’s the trick to prolong the pain. I will try that next week when I feel the urge.

 

 

Not sure my co-workers will approve though…

 

 

Oh, he also tends to grab his crotch, towards the end of his dance, like this man used to:

 

 

Now I know my co-workers really won’t like that…

 

 

I’m going to do it anyway.

 

 

*Brunching, for the uninitiated, is a meal eaten at around 11-a.m and is between breakfast and lunch – hence, ‘brunch’. It sounds posh but it’s really just me and my daughter eating sausages, beans and toast. Well, I do most of the eating, she tends to wreck the place.