“Gourmet Challenge” Quiche

On October 7, 2018October 8, 2018 By bumblebee3londonIn Awesome Recipes, Everything!!!Leave a comment

When my children were tiny and right up to their teens, we often spend the summer in our family hideaway on the Sierra Tramuntana on the isle of Mallorca. Here, for the blissful weeks of summer, we would live and eat simply. What’s lovely is that over the years, many friends joined us at Melcion and the love grows.

Photo: my father and my son Jack.

One of our favourite family games at Melcion is Gourmet Challenge. The premise of the game is very simple: you have to rustle up a gourmet feast just from the ingredients you can find around the house and the garden.

10711107_439886469485351_7876228415534036994_n

The idea is quite simply Waste Not, Want Not. I abhor gratuitous trips to the supermarkets just to pick up one or two missing ingredients – what a waste of petrol, what a waste of time and what a waste of money, because you always end up buying more than what you set out for.

And the best thing about a Gourmet Challenge is you never really know what you’re going to get, and it is fun!

Photo: my little gourmets.

So, on this rainy day, I made a “Gourmet Challenge” Quiche. I found an old bag of spinach in my freezer that had been thawed and refrozen so many times, a leek (slightly off), two tomatoes and half an onion. I had the usual staples in my house – milk, cream, cheese, butter, eggs, garlic. I even made the pastry from scratch!

Preheat the oven to 180 deg C/350 deg F.

For the pastry:

100g unsalted butter, straight out of the fridge
200g flour, sifted
6 tablespoon cold water.

Cut the cold, hard butter into small cubes (save the wrapper for greasing the flan tin). Rub the butter and the flour until they resemble breadcrumbs.

Add the water. Knead the dough, but not excessively, because you are not making bread! Shape into a ball, wrap the dough in beeswax wrap (or cling film, if you don’t have it) and chill in the fridge for 30 minutes.

Grease the flan tin with the butter wrapper. Lightly dust your work surface and rolling pin with flour and roll out the dough. Line the greased flan tin with the dough. It doesn’t matter if your dough crumbles – you can see from this photo that mine didn’t come away neatly in one large piece and I had to patch it up!

It is highly recommended that you pre-bake the flan before adding in the filling, but I didn’t. If you wish to do things by the book, here’s how (as my mother would):

Line the pastry with foil and weigh down with baking beads or beans. Place the tin on a baking tray, then pop in the hot oven for 10 to 12 minutes, or until lightly golden. Remove the beans and the foil, then return to the oven for a further 8 to 10 minutes, or until golden.

For the filling:

Here’s the thing: baked cheese tastes good, no matter what. This quiche that I made was especially yummy because I crumbled garlic Boursin into it (such decadence).

3 large, organic eggs
50g grated cheddar
1/4 a garlic Boursin
6 tablespoon creme fraiche
Approximately 50ml cooking cream
Salt and pepper

Mix all together until you have a thick slurry – adjust the volume of cooking cream used. Season generously.

These are the possible vegetable filling for your Gourmet Challenge Quiche (only the first four ingredients are important, the others are up to you):

Olive oil
4 cloves garlic, chopped
One red onion, sliced
Half a bunch of thyme
Few rashers of bacon
Frozen spinach, thawed, and water squeezed out
Leeks, sliced

Saute the garlic in olive oil until fragrant. Add the rest and continue to saute until thoroughly coated with the garlic-olive oil. Pour this into the prepared flan dish and finally, pour in the cream-egg-cheese slurry.

Bake in the preheated oven for 10 to 15 minutes, or until the filling is almost set. Leave to cool slightly, then carefully remove the flan tin. Delicious either hot or cold, and lasts for a couple of days in the fridge….enjoy 🙂

My cookbook, The Ca’n Melcion Cookbook which chronicles the food of those magical summers, is available on Amazon. Click on this link for a free preview.

“Blueprint” – genomics and our children, and what we cannot change

On October 3, 2018October 3, 2018 By bumblebee3londonIn blessings, Everything!!!Leave a comment

A few years ago, shortly after my parenting book was published, I was sat next to a child psychologist, waiting to give my talk.

He flipped through the pages of my book and laughed.

“Children come to us almost ready cooked,” he said with a broad grin. “Whatever parents and educators like to think.”

We went our separate ways after that, and I continued to spread my philosophy of imbuing our children’s childhood with love, light, laughter, kindness and all the good stuff, in the belief that how children are brought up will shape the adults they will become. Indeed, it is still my core beliefs in parenting, namely how we live our lives as parents and the words we speak to our children become their norm.

Sure, Nature plays a part, but NURTURE can shape Nature.

But now, years later, Robert Plomin published a book that states the contrary, bringing to mind my conversation with the child psychologist of long ago.

Plomin is a geneticist and psychologist, and a Professor at Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King’s College London. This book took him 30 years to write.

According to Plomin, the key to personality traits does not lie in how you were treated by your parents, but rather in what you inherited biologically from them: namely, the genes in your DNA.

Whoa!!!! While there has always been widespread acceptance that genes determine our physiology for good and bad, much greater controversy has surrounded the subject of our psychology – our behaviour and personality traits.

And read this, dear parents and teachers: Plomin’s argument is that, in a society with universal education, the greatest part of the variation in learning abilities is accounted for by genetics, not home environment or quality of school – these factors, he says, do have an effect but it’s much smaller than is popularly believed.

Indeed, there are many opponents to Plomin’s controversial views, but perhaps that comes from our still immature understanding of genomics – as explained by my daughter – the science of how the complete set of genetic material influences the whole organism (namely the study of interaction between genes). After all, it was only introduced in 1986 by Tom Roderick.

But pieces are emerging to debunk my long-held beliefs, though who knows what the “real” story is. Maybe there is more than one. Maybe it is a combination. Who knows. There is certainly a very strong genetic influence (mine) when it comes to my fifth child. Despite being of mixed race, she looks exactly like me. She also has my affinity for mathematics beyond what that can be taught, my impatience, my flash temper. Her father and I certainly did not nurture those three traits (especially the latter two!!) but she is certainly walking around with them, though she has her father’s sunniness, strong work ethics and stability. And his smile 🙂

I remember another conversation I had on the grounds of Priory Clinic in London about 4 years ago with a psychologist who told me, “I believe cruelty can be inherited.”

I had laughed at him then. “So you think one should interview the parents and grandparents before choosing a life partner?”

“Yes,” he had answered sombrely. “Human beings are just breathing, walking, talking, living bags of inherited genetic material and we spend our lives trying to over-ride our inherent nature.”

Sobering thought. But I believe that even if Plomin & Co’s research and expertise are correct, we should still endeavour to create a loving, supportive and kind home for our children, without the expectations that it will lead to greatness (if neither of their parents are Einsteins). After all, one of the true values of parenting is that we become better people ourselves from the parenting process.

Plomin’s book sounds like a good read. You can read an article about his book and his thoughts here.

E-version of my book is available here.

Eat like a King, cheaply, seasonally

On June 29, 2018June 29, 2018 By bumblebee3londonIn Awesome Recipes, Everything!!!Leave a comment

Inspired by Tom Hunt’s article, How to eat like a chef for less than £20 a week, I ventured out to the lively North End Road market to see what bargains I can find:

Despite my son getting his motorbike stolen by yobs in the market (London is becoming increasingly lawless), I was pleasantly surprised to find a whole array for fruits and vegetables on offer, even exotic ones. This place is such a cultural melting pot – it feels as if the world had arrived at the outer fringes of Fulham:

I bought:

Rhubarb £1.50 for 1 kg
Strawberries £2 for a large punnet
Raspberries £1 for a small punnet
Blackcurrants £1 for a small punnet
Red peppers £1 for 4
Large Aubergines £1 for 3
Button mushrooms £1 per bag
Red onions £1 per large bag
Avocados £1 for 4
Rocket leaves £2 for a very large bag
Spinach £2 for a very large bag
Garlic £1 for a bag

I popped into the supermarket:

to buy Brie (on offer) for £1
a loaf of seeded loaf 65p
one tin of chopped tomatoes 50p
Beetroot 60p

Total cost of shopping: £17.25.

Challenge: to feed four adults with big appetites who are spoilt when it comes to food (i.e. steak and truffle mash are common fare).

This is what I rustled up:

Breakfast:

Oat porridge with berries (and some stewed rhubarb for that extra kick)

Lunch:

Brie and rocket sandwich with a large salad bowl

Dinner:

Aubergine and pepper stuffed with garlic mushrooms, onions and aubergine on a bed of creamed spinach.

Dessert:

Stewed rhubarb with leftover strawberries.

Verdict: “Yummy, but not everyday please, Mum!!!!”

So we are back to this (great book, by the way, my all-time favourite, it beats Delia and Nigella hands-down)… but it’s expensive to cook from this book of family favourites.

Conclusion:

I’m still a long way off from being as accomplished as Tom Hunt when it comes to budget cooking 🙂 So here’s my challenge to you: what is the minimum you can spend for a day of healthy and yummy menu for ravenous, growing folks?

Pint of milk – a lesson in love

On February 19, 2018 By bumblebee3londonIn Everything!!!, LoveLeave a comment

We live at the top of a steep hill, and when the sun is high in the sky, you’d be drenched in sweat by the time you climb to the top.

Yesterday, my daughter opened the fridge and there was no milk. She wanted to make a smoothie.

Immediately, her father said, “I’ll walk down the hill to get some.”

“She can do it herself,” the Asian tiger mum in me chipped in automatically. “She is a big strong girl.”

He waved me off. “No, I will,” in a tone that brooked no argument.

When he came back with the two bottles of milk, he was sweating profusely and slightly out of breath.

“You should’ve let her walk down for the milk,” I grumbled. “Look at you.”

He beamed at me. “No, no, I needed the walk. Good cardio exercise and I sweated out the alcohol from last night as well.”

I know he was just saying this, for who on earth would go walking up steep hills at the height of the midday in the tropics?

Except if it is for love of the purest kind. One without conditions or resentment.

And so, this reminds me of something beautiful in my favourite book that I read on Valentine’s day,

Let all that you do be done in love.

Especially in parenting ❤

How to cuddle your teens (and grown-up children)

On August 10, 2017August 10, 2017 By bumblebee3londonIn Everything!!!, lightLeave a comment

I fight with my 17-year-old. “Hellcats, both of you,” her father says in exasperation. We fight about everything, like two feral cats in a paper bag, in her father’s colourful terminology.

Yet I hold her close always. I mean physically close. Especially when words fail me. Our physical closeness nullifies our meaningless fights: immediately after a shouting match, she would huff at me and tell me I am annoying, but with that slant of a smile in her eyes, building up to a hug that makes everything better between us once again. I will worry the night she goes to sleep without hugging or touching me, or if I could not kiss her cheek, her hair, and feel her melt into me.

I notice this is an oddity, even in Western cultures, to be always touching and hugging one’s teenage child. Those who spout attachment parenting in early years are surprisingly non-tactile to their teens. My psychologist friend tells me that there is this belief that the teenage years is about “individuating” a child, that is to say, force them to become self-sufficient.

‘Ah,” I said. “Be tough to a child in order to raise a tough adult who will be successful in a tough world.” I understood. I have seen, first hand, the destructive effect of the mindset that values self-sufficiency and independence above all. I knew one woman who sneered at me, “You still run home to your parents, at your age?” She left her parents as soon as she could, never looked back and I suspect, she would not allow her son the luxury of this “weakness” of coming home to the family, of asking for softness. The son, a qualified pilot, is handsome, healthy and outwardly successful, but he is beset with something inside that made him break off a two year engagement because of fear of commitment rather than flaws in the relationship, have outbreaks on his youthful skin, and being unable to work in a career that he had trained so many years for.

From this example and others, I am convinced that emotional distance and lack of physical bond between grown-up children and parents is not healthy. Our adolescents and young adults still need to hear, feel, and know that we love them and enjoy being with them. Heck, I am almost fifty, and I blossom each time I hear those words! Thus, it feels good for me to be home in my first family’s home. I love the fact that sometimes, it seems as if my brothers and I have not yet left home. The closeness remains, despite the miles and the passing time.

Hold your children close, and I mean physically, because sometimes, this matters more than words. But how? I hear many ask. Teens are especially prickly to close proximity, especially if they have not been brought up within a touchy-feely framework.

Six ways to cuddle your teen:

Cook unhurriedly together with your teen/grown up child. With cooking, you stand close, work in concerted harmony, learn to anticipate each other’s moves and yes, touch.
Rough and tumble. My children’s father still wrestles with his grown-up children – I have to remind the children not to be too rough with their old father! He is not 30-years-old anymore!
Do things for each other, such as massage, manicure, reiki.
Cuddle up together on a sofa watching a film. Slowly move closer.
End each night with a goodnight kiss. I miss my mother’s “No star” (goodnight in Welsh), the way she touches me gently as she kisses me.
Make time for each other. All of the above has to happen naturally.

A heart-warming tale about my family

On April 28, 2017 By bumblebee3londonIn LoveLeave a comment

My mother-in-law was married for over fifty years, and when her husband died, she was bereft. My son Jack took a month off school and moved in with her in her house in South East London.

Mum valiantly tried to pick her life up. She remained cheerful for her family, keeping up a brave front. Then her dog died.

It seemed that she had no more reason to get out every morning for a long walk in the park. It wasn’t sensible to get another dog, as she was over 80 years old by then, so she went to the pet shelter and got herself an old black cat.

The cat, Laika, was (is) a nasty cat. Laika never came whenever Mum called her, and she often scratched Mum when Mum was slow with her food. She fought with the neighborhood cats and killed birds and squirrels. She wrecked the sofa with her vicious claws, though Mum bought her a scratching post.

But Mum never gave up on Laika.

We had suggested many times to her to return Laika to the pet shelter and maybe get a tamer cat.

“No,” Mum said. “She reminded me of my old cat Satan.” Yeah, the name does say something, doesn’t it?

“And we don’t get rid of someone just because she is too much trouble, do we?” Mum said defiantly. “That wasn’t how I was brought up.”

Sadly, Mum sank into dementia very quickly, to the extent that she was unable to care for herself, let alone Laika. My daughter Kat, honouring her grandmother’s words, refused to send Laika back to the pet shelter.

Kat took Laika home to London, to the flat she shared with her brother, Jack. They both worked all day, and it was not unusual for them to come home to a wrecked home. Being used to living in a house with access to a beautiful garden, Laika did not like being locked up in a London flat.

In summer, when we were home, we would take Laika with us to our other son’s house in Southampton. “Laika’s summer holidays!” We would say cheerfully, despite the fact that it typically took us a lot of time and trickery to get her into the cat traveling box.

Then Kat and Jack moved to a garden flat. They thought Laika liked it better at the new place, but one day, Laika ran away from home.

Jack and Kat’s boyfriend roamed the neighborhood looking for Laika. Late at night, Kat’s boyfriend came home triumphantly, carrying Laika in his arms.

“That’s not Laika,” Kat said immediately.

“How do you know?” He asked.

“Well, for starters, she hasn’t scratched you.”

It wasn’t Laika after all. They kept an eye out for her, sad that perhaps she had been run over.

Then one day, Laika came back. She was wearing a collar! It meant that someone had given her a home! She looked well-fed and fine.

I think Kat was secretly relieved.

Laika still comes to visit Kat and Jack – she leaves shit on their doorstep each time she visits, as if to stick her finger up at the Perry family who kidnapped her from her happy house in the suburbs to live in a small flat in London.

Our last photo of Laika at the end of summer, ready for transportation back to London from her summer house in Southampton:

Magical childhood on a shoestring

On November 21, 2016November 21, 2016 By bumblebee3londonIn Everything!!!, Love, light, blessingsLeave a comment

When my children were small, it seemed as if their father invested all his spare resources into making their childhood magical. Never mind that we were broke and living in a rough council estate up north, amongst neighbours who were unemployed and stole our things, who got drunk and beat up their wives, or the police vans coming over regularly to take folks in the Barlow Hall Estate away for various drugs offences, petty thievery and other crimes. He built a magical home for our young family in the crime-ridden estate: our backyard was filled with adventures (and with rabbits with names such as Nitty-Fritti and Alvin Perry).

Our holidays were all about going home to their grandparents’ houses to be spoilt, because we couldn’t afford anything else. But grandparents’ houses are magical because grandparents are. Those long summers were the highlight of our annual calendar when the children were young – endless days of being on the beach with their cousins, eating nanny’s cakes, exciting uncles and endless cuddles.

But life was magical almost on a daily basis, not just the summers. When it snowed, he would take our kids up Headington Hill in Oxford to toboggan down the snowy slopes. He made those toboggans out of pieces of wood and they were the best.

Yes, my children’s father succeeded in giving them a magical childhood on a shoestring. He did not earn much in those days; I was on a student grant as an undergraduate at Manchester University, and later, a full academic scholarship at Oxford. Money was never abundant in our household, but never mind, we didn’t need much. Daddy wasn’t good at making money, but he was darn good at being a magical Daddy.

This Christmas advertisement from John Lewis reminded me of those days. He used to say to the kids, “Let’s go fox-hunting”. It’s a gentle jibe at me, for his version of ‘fox-hunting’ was arming the kids with torches and telling them, “We’re going for an adventure!” And they would walk the dark neighbourhood alleys at night, looking for urban foxes with their search lights. For small children, it was a very big adventure indeed.

My children are indeed blessed to have a father like theirs, and I am so very grateful for the privilege of being a part of this beautiful family life for 30 years. I see the magic of childhood in my children’s eyes and the love that their father had so tirelessly put into their hearts and souls over the years. They are the physical embodiment of his love and magic, of days like this:

Our Supermoon

On November 15, 2016 By bumblebee3londonIn Everything!!!, lightLeave a comment

Last night was supposed to be a special night. The moon was supposed to be the largest it has ever been for decades. Our friends had booked romantic dinners with their partners at various beachside locales, poised to be in the right place to get the best view of the Supermoon.

My sixteen-year-old daughter G wasn’t particularly fussed about the Supermoon. She was more concerned about the piles of homework yet to be done for the next day. But her father insisted that she walked up a little hill with us to look at the Supermoon. She protested whilst he insisted. “Homework is just homework, whereas you will remember this moment forever,” he had told her. “Something that you can tell my grandchildren about, you seeing the Supermoon with your parents on Andaman Hill in Phuket when you were sixteen.”

After some screeching on her part, she reluctantly came outdoors with us. The moon was tiny! And it was clouded over! I waited for her to jeer at her father, but instead, she said kindly, “I bet it was larger earlier on, Daaad. Remember the huge one we saw in Devon last summer whilst we were camping? Do you remember? We have seen some amazing ones, haven’t we, Daaad?”

At that moment, I thought she was the most magical child, the way she could transform herself instantaneously from a grumpy teen to a human being wise beyond her years, who has the capability of creating enchantment for her father with her words. For her words had taken him someplace special, to a place where the moon was huge and luminous and studded with love.

And so, we stood there on this magical night, just three of us, chatting about basketball, school, the weekend, standing in the glow of a very small, weak moon. But for us, it was magic all the same, if not more. Magic and Supermoon exist every night, if you have the eyes to see them. It is indeed a postulate of physics that things come into being only when we are here to witness their existence.

As for the three of us, we will certainly remember this November night in the year G was sixteen, standing on Andaman Hill, watching our Supermoon. The moon was shining magnificently in us that night ❤

FullSizeRender-94 copy.jpg

Raising my girls to be strong women

On August 23, 2016 By bumblebee3londonIn Everything!!!, LoveLeave a comment

I have been asked, given my traditional views on parenting, if I raised my girls to be subservient to the boys, their protectors. Do I raise my girls to know how to cook, clean and be good parents? Yes, in the same way that I raised my boys to know to cook, clean and be good parents.

But in addition, I raised my girls to honour their evolutionary biology. Our strength as women is not gained from trying to be ‘better’ than the boys and beat them at their own game. Physiologically, women are weaker. Biologically, women have periods in their lives when they are reliant on others (during pregnancy and nursing). Emotionally, women are peacemakers and homemakers to ensure the survival of our species. Why change something that had served us so well for so many millennia?

Our great strength lies in our ability to cooperate with each other. Women need to trust and work together rather than regard other women as competitors in the fight for men and top jobs.

“I am more of a man’s woman than a woman’s woman,” an Asian woman brought up in Germany once told me proudly. What does that mean? Does that mean you are more European than Asian, this ’emancipation’?

“I have no time for women,” this person told me. “I prefer the company of men. I have more in common with them.”

Oh, I see.

We gain so much more from working together, especially with other women. Our biology supports that. In the periods when you need to rely on others, that others do not have to be a man. It can be other women who form your protective blanket. When I was gravely ill, apart from my male partner, my strongest supports were three amazing women.

You might denounce this article as amateur psychology, but just look at the success of Grameen Bank founded by Mohammed Yunus that concentrates the bank’s microcredit efforts on women. Women work so beautifully together.

And thus, I raised my daughters to be great friends with each other first and foremost, to learn this basic quality that makes us stronger than tempered steel IF we honour our difference. This is truly our real strength, the inane ability to build and grow together.

Back to my daughters. There are nine years and a son between my two daughters. Their lives together started with Kat, the older one, nurturing and caring for baby sister G. Kat was like a little mother hen and a fierce lioness all at once, protecting her young. She was so proud and defensive of her younger sister.

But over the years, that role slowly evolved. Though still very much the respected one, Kat was relaxing her strictness towards her little sister bit by bit. They began doing things together like shopping for clothes and going to parties, though they are very different as individuals. They began having secrets with each other than no one else was privy to. And slowly, they became equals of sorts, evolving from mentor/protege to confidantes. You couldn’t find two young women who are closer friends, and that is indeed truly lovely to see.

Six ways of raising unfussy eaters

On July 26, 2016July 26, 2016 By bumblebee3londonIn Everything!!!, lightLeave a comment

My childhood home had too much food. My Ma is addicted to food. She uses food to celebrate and she uses food to commiserate. Food, food, food. At 48, I still feel jumpy if there is no food in the house. I am suspicious of women who can’t cook. I don’t believe that people can be genuinely happy without proper home cooked food. Yeah, inherited prejudices. And oh, my kids can push my buttons so easily when it comes to food.

Many of us have an unhealthy relationship with food and we unconsciously pass that on to our children. To compound our inherited problem, small children are pretty smart creatures who learn from a very young age that they can use as a blackmail tool. Does ‘if you eat another mouthful, you’ll get ice cream’ sound familiar to you? I was guilt of saying this once to my eight year old son Kit, “If you don’t behave, you won’t get another cup of Ribena until you’re 20 years old.”

This is what I have learned from my 30 years of bringing up five children:

START THEM EARLY

I am a great believer that children should eat the same food as adults, with some modifications, of course, viz-a-viz salt and spices. Eating is a natural part of family life and I love this old adage, a family that eats together stay together.

EAT AS A FAMILY

Eating should be a celebration, not a battlefield. Even if you are eating simple takeaways (seen here), make it a lovely experience.

Screen Shot 2016-07-26 at 12.52.06.png

MAKE FOOD INTERESTING

Involve children in the food preparation process. Make it child-play. Even boring food can appear interesting if (1) they enjoyed making it and (2) it looks funky.

Screen Shot 2016-07-26 at 12.52.29.png

THEM ABOUT FOOD

There is so much to learn and it is all very fascinating. Even for parents. And learning about food is wonderful thing to do because you learn about staying healthy and taking responsibility for wellbeing. I think the best way is to actually grow something, even if you don’t have a garden. Container gardening works very well for growing herbs.

Screen Shot 2016-07-26 at 12.54.30.png

ALLOW THEM TO EXPERIMENT

Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. But it gives children the opportunity of finding their own way to loving food. My daughter makes the most disgusting concoctions which she tries to get us to drink, expounding on the health benefits of her lethal sludges.

You could try new foods together, explore together. It is about you, too, after all.

Screen Shot 2016-07-26 at 12.56.41

TEACHING RESPECT

It’s about respect. If I respect your wish not to eat mushroom, you have to respect mine and eat carrots. I suggest having a “NO NO LIST” – allow your teenager to list six things that they have amnesty from. In return, they have to respect you back and eat what you painstakingly cook for them. It is a two way thing.

Bon apetit!

raisinghappystrongkids

Tag: family