Anyway. This wretched cake mix has been sitting on the kitchen side for ten days since a friend gave it to her and she had to watch it, stir it, add ingredients to it, etc. My apologies if you are the parent of one of her friends, since she split it up and distributed it to some of her friends too, so now they have to have cake mixture sitting around in their kitchens too… better than some other chain things I suppose.

And he tastes delicious

However, the reason for this is that we simply don’t have time this week to cook and sit down together, so I wasn’t quite so enamoured with the concept – not for a whole week! So if you want to be very bored hearing about the various reasons, read on …

Monday
Steve was out for tea anyway – Water Lane’s fortnightly ‘directors’ dinner’. Had to laugh as I pulled up in the car on the way home from Sainsbury’s at 5.30pm as Steve was going out again having dropped Anna home – we wound down the windows and had a minute-long conversation, which may be the most we manage today!

Josiah was meant to be doing a recording session with choir at school; in the end it got cancelled because the recording engineer was stuck in Europe somewhere unable to get back due to volcanic ash. But they still had a practice instead, so he had to eat and be back out by 6.10pm. Abbie has a drum lesson on a Monday too, so she needed to be ready on time. Of course by the time we’d all got home it was 8.30pm, and everyone was a bit tired.

Tuesday
This should have been another recording day for Josiah – but that was cancelled again. Usually when things are cancelled I breathe a sigh of relief but actually today it was just more hassle to have to make arrangements for him to come home (I’d booked him in to school for tea!). We changed plans, anyway; he got picked up by our friends round the corner and went home with them to do homework before walking home.

Steve came home a bit early to start the Pick and Mix scrum during the tail end of piano/cello lessons, and I got home from my staff meeting as soon as I could. Lessons finish at 6.15pm and we had to leave immediately to get Anna back to school. The evening’s entertainment was then provided by St. Margaret’s and their summer concert. Anna plays in about a hundred ensembles (okay, only 5 but it seems like a lot!) so she was on and off at various points. This was the first outing of the black performance dress which we struggled to buy – the one we found looked lovely in the end though. And she played well – apart from losing her music to one piece so photocopied the score at the last minute, meaning lots of unnecessary page turns, oh and apart from pretending to be a bass flute which doesn’t actually work that well on a bassoon, but never mind. So pleased that we made the school move, it’s such a relief to actually have that many groups/ensembles going on for her to join in with. Wind Band was the best but I didn’t get any photos of that – couldn’t see Anna in it anyway as she was hiding at the back.

Wednesday
Day at work/school for all of us. Did I mention it’s SATS week for Abbie this week, just to add to the stress? I was in with the very youngest nursery class, lovely but very hard work. Early start for Steve and the posh school two since over the past two days Josiah has managed to leave a shoulder rest and an entire set of school clothes at school, so Steve went in to try and retrieve all of that!
After school we came home in dribs and drabs. Josiah and I ate first, in order to get to violin on time. From there I took him back to the cathedral for his recording, then went on to a concert by a visiting German Choir, here for ECO’s 40th Anniversary Celebrations. I have the dubious honour of being chair of ECO’s committee so therefore felt obliged to attend as many of the festivities as possible, despite the fact that I don’t really do socialising! Anyway, tonight we were in charge of refreshments so nothing too onerous.
Meanwhile the girls had tea and then went out with Laura for Wind Group, while Steve was on pickup duty for the boys. I ended up finishing at the concert at the same time that Steve was waiting for the boys so we landed in the Cathedral at the same time and brought home one boy each – no tired arguments that night!
Late-ish night all round as a result – so all getting a bit tired now!

Thursday
Oooh excitement on Thursday as we might all be home in time to have tea together – but no, Steve and I were going out to a party with food – so pick and mix for the children again. Then again we thought it might be an idea to eat something before we went, just in case, so we picked a bit too
Changes to the programme (no evensong because of the 3 nights of recording previously, which of course didn’t all happen but evensong remained cancelled for the boys anyway) mean changes to transport arrangements; fortunately we managed to share taxi runs with our friends around the corner. This was almost scuppered by a cricket match that I didn’t know about but thank goodness all turned out ok. Amazingly in the end we were all home by 5.30pm, and the nice thing was that it meant Josiah had time for a much-needed bath!

Parties: Steve and I really aren’t good with parties. Even less good when we really don’t want to be there and are only going by virtue of the fact that I’m chair of the orchestra committee. However, I did buy a dress for the occasion …
Thankfully there was no dancing, instead just a lengthy performance from the choir. When asked ‘do you want an encore’ we didn’t have the heart to shout ‘no!’. Hmm. Got home around 11.15 and fell into bed. Now *really* tired.

Friday
Woke at 4am stressing about tonight’s concert. Got ready this morning and wrote myself a list of stuff we needed to remember tonight, as it’s another day when only some of us will make it home at all before 10pm! First though, a day at school for all of us. In my favourite class today at least – being exhausted before you start isn’t ever a good plan but hey ho.

After school Abbie and I dashed about getting ready, packing teas, gathering up clothes, instruments, and folders, Caitlin & Riona turned up and we went into town for the concert. Picked up Grecians clobber from some friends en route for the Exeter City March that Richard has re-worked, which is going to be used as a bit of a theme tune for Exeter City FC, so we had a Grecians themed piece with football rattles, whistles etc.

Class moment in the piece when Joe’s friend whirled his rattle around and hit Josiah in the head with it! Joe had lost it by the end of the concert which was a bit of a shame as he missed the beats badly on the last piece, but never mind – it was 10pm by then, he’d been at school/choir/orchestra since 8am and he is still not quite 9!

Anyway, the concert went well, I think I managed to do a decent job of looking after my recording engineers as well as the Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress, and the Germans seemed fairly happy too. We over-ran by half an hour, oops. Our family managed to win a squash racket, perfume set, paddling pool, and £25 BSO vouchers in the raffle – and Grandma won a plant too! Home after a lengthy clear-up job at around 11.15pm again. Fell into bed but watched Outnumbered on replay before falling asleep.

Today we had to be up early anyway as Steve has gone off racing for the day (weekend) while Josiah went off to choir as usual. Anna got up and opened a letter to find she has an audition for SWMS in a couple of weeks – she’s pleased about that. So, anyway I am going to clean the house, cook dinner for our first family meal in a week, and then sleep.

So we’ve tried a few recipes from the file this week … I am ashamed to admit that when we’re all busy with school etc. then I just don’t have time or energy for all this cooking, but it’s nice to make time for it when I can.

Monday was Rumbledethumps, which we had with bacon for those who like it. I liked the name, everyone liked the dinner.

On Tuesday we had Turkish Soup, which everyone moaned about but then ate and enjoyed it anyway.

Wednesday was Root Veg Crumble, something I’ve done before but made up the crumble bit myself – this crumble topping was really nice.

Thursday – leftovers from the last two nights!

Friday ended up being rice cakes, cheese and wine. We all got home late and no-one was that hungry!

On Saturday we had Fennel, Mushroom and Parmesan Salad with some ham for those who eat it, followed by Chocolate Pavlova with poached pears. (I had a glut of pears!). Noses were screwed up at the salad, though it did get eaten relatively quickly by most people, it was dubbed ‘too strange’. I liked it – don’t know what they were all moaning about. The pavlova was delicious though!

Planning to try Cauliflower, almond & nutmeg soup next week, as well as a leek & cream risotto – they were the two meals on the menu for Thursday and Friday but we didn’t need them in the end!

Marmalade and Banana French Toast
(serves 4)
4 x eggs
4 x tablespoons thin cut orange marmalade
225ml milk
Pinch salt
8 slices bread
Butter to cook
2 x large bananas or 4 x small

Put the eggs in a bowl with the milk and 1 tablespoon marmalade, add the pinch of salt and mix well.
Transfer to a shallow dish.
Dip the bread into the egg mixture and fry in a little butter in a heavy based frying pan, you can probably do two at a time, depending on the size of your frying pan.

Slice the bananas.
In a small saucepan warm up the remaining marmalade, add the sliced bananas and warm through.

Serve the bananas on top of the French toast.

Yum!

Today was the shoe shop stop; trainers x 2, school shoes x 2, and shoes to go to the prom in (and therefore totally unsuitable for much else). Very Expensive. Still, everyone was happy and if I’m lucky they will last into the autumn term too.

Anna has now reached the same shoe size as me; I’ve been waiting for this for ages! Now at least every pair of shoes I buy for her, I can borrow back if I ask nicely!

Visited DVLA to get tax (oh, and a quick geocache), then I delivered a car to my parents in the afternoon, so drove up to Gordano to meet them half way. I like a good drive, especially on my own, so didn’t mind. The kids sat around watching iPlayer and playing games while I was gone.

Once back I made a quick veggie lasagne for more friends who came for dinner. We tried to watch Heston’s Feasts on replay but it wasn’t working; had to resort to watching it on the laptop after they’d gone (amazing, wish I had been a dinner guest!).

Very relieved on behalf of home educators that the proposals for changes to home ed legislation have been dropped tonight – had a drink alongside many of my friends this evening (any excuse!). On the other hand I’m still praying for the best outcome for a good friend’s baby at the moment; seems odd and slightly wrong to be blogging about normal stuff when life hangs in the balance.

Anyway, after that we dashed home and I made some rather nice roast parsnip soup, so there was a choice of that or Heinz tomato soup from a tin when my parents and brother came for lunch. They’re down to look at a car or two at the garage this afternoon but decided to come and see us too

As I write, Joe’s singing his way through a Passion Service; I did want to go but I’ll have to save it for next year. Hoping to pop in for evensong instead. In the meantime, the girls are baking simnel muffins for when Grandad and Nanna come back for a cup of tea, and I think I might watch The Sound of Music!

Must admit I quite like this newfound enthusiasm for baking; she made a rather nice looking Easter Bunny lemon cake yesterday, and we haven’t been allowed to cut into it yet!

As an aside, I was surprised to find that I haven’t used Good Friday as a post title before now, in 7 years of blogging – strange, but I haven’t!

In other news … er, there isn’t much. Anna tried out a new youth group just down the road last night, and met a few old friends there, so I suspect that will become a regular, at least if all homework is done!

We’re preparing for impending school changes by sorting out uniform (mainly from 2nd hand shop so not too bad) and getting more nametapes. Annoyingly only saw these little button things on a different website *after* I’d ordered standard woven nametapes … now trying to persuade myself that they’re just a gimmick and probably not as easy to apply as the video would have you believe …
Also sorted bassoon lessons – same teacher has been organised to visit the new school, meaning I don’t have to break the contract with him, phew. Was worried about that for a little while!

Having a few niggles about mornings – we have all been struggling to get up in the mornings and it reached traumatic levels this morning when Steve and Joe were only just on time to leave, having both been in a rush to get ready because they didn’t leave themselves enough time. So they took the car I should have taken instead of the one which failed to start. Only problem with THAT was that Anna’s blazer and school bag were in it – of course she didn’t notice because she was still in bed; had she been up she might have missed her blazer before Steve was all the way across town. So I dropped her to school in the last car we had in the drive (fuel light on, of course ), and left her with her bassoon, freezing in just a school shirt, waiting for Steve to drive back with her stuff.
This MAY teach a few people a lesson about getting up a bit earlier …

So far we have made:
Pumpkin Pie – we used this recipe but having tasted it, half a cup of sugar would have done the job, it’s way too sweet!

Pumpkin Cake – this recipe looks fabulous, although I haven’t actually tasted it yet. This recipe, meanwhile, tastes ok, but wouldn’t come out of the tin in one piece so NIL POINTS for that one.

Tomorrow will be soup and scones, and I guarantee I will still have a 2l box full of pumpkin flesh to go!

It’s been a nice day, just pootling about with the kids, and I didn’t get enough days like this in the week, could totally have another week off … ah well.

So anyway, last week when a colleague at school wandered through the corridors clutching handfuls of artichokes that she was trying to give away, I leapt at the chance to take some off her hands and let my family try them! She ended up giving me 5 green globe artichokes, and also 5 smaller purple ones which were more oval in shape – not sure if they have a special name or not, but they tasted pretty similar!

My memory told me to steam them, and when I googled for instructions I found I’d remembered correctly. We cut the stalks off and steamed them for a good 45 mins, then I set out a vinaigrette, mayonnaise, and also melted butter as dips for the leaves. I knew the girls would prefer butter, while the boys preferred mayonnaise, and I had the french dressing to myself!

Don’t think the kids really *liked* the taste but they all had a good go at trying them, and we had fun taking them to pieces – totally incredible when you get to the heart and pull the hairy bit off. You have to wonder whoever first thought of eating one! I enjoyed mine, and Steve ate all of his too

She’d picked up the recipe card in Sainsbury’s ages ago and it had taken me ages to get round to buying rhubarb for it (I kept hoping we’d get some in our veg box!), but finally did this week. It was totally gorgeous. Plus I think that Abbie is wonderful for being sensible enough to leave at home making a crumble in the first place – and she tidied up the kitchen afterwards!