Category Archives: Children

Light ‘n’ fluffy vanilla ice cream

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Never underestimate how hard it is to be a food photographer.

There are two people I discuss ice cream making with. My father and my friend Lucy. Recently Lucy told me about an unassuming little recipe she had come across for vanilla ice cream that was different to the way we usually made ice cream: instead of the custard method (which uses just the yolks of the egg), it used the whole egg. This was of particular interest to me as I make lots of ice cream and my freezer is overflowing with egg whites. There are only so many madeleines I can make.

This vanilla ice cream recipe is also great because it’s quick, easy and makes a lovely light vanilla ice cream that scoops straight from the freezer and children, in particular, seem to love. I would probably go with my more luxe version if the ice cream were being served at a really posh dinner party, atop, say, some exquisite piece of patisserie.

I’ve adapted the recipe slightly (lowered the sugar from 100g to 80g and slightly changed how you make it).

4 eggs, separated
80g icing sugar
teaspoon of vanilla essence
300ml double cream

Get three large bowls. Separate the egg yolks and egg whites into a bowl each. Put the cream into the third bowl.

Add the vanilla essence to egg yolks. Do it NOW or you will forget and without it, you have Fior di Latte ice cream, not vanilla. Add the sugar to the egg yolks too.

Take an electric hand held whisk. Whisk the egg whites until stiff. Then the cream until it holds itself properly, like a well trained ballerina. Finally the egg yolks, sugar, vanilla essence.

Now gently fold the cream into the egg yolk mixture and finally the egg whites. Put in ice cream maker. If yours is very small, you may have to do this in two batches. I have a Magimix and I put it all in, it comes right up to the top but it reduces as it’s being made.

You can of course have this on its own. Make tiramisu with it, it goes great with a fruit salad. Or fold in some chocolate coated popping candy for something a bit Heston.

Fantastic, fun, outdoor chalky crayons

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I recently took advantage of having four strapping men round to lunch (with their partners) to move our very large outdoor table off the patio. Revealing a moss, alge covered set of paving stones which I am currently blasting with a pressure washer (Karcher, fabulous). I intend to turn this into a back yard kinda thing for the children to play in. I am all about giving my children more fun, outdoor things to do. It has, of course, absolutely nothing to do with them but everything to do with the inner child in me who was brought up in a two bedroomed flat WITH NO OUTSIDE SPACE.

Anyway. The therapy has been booked and I’m working through it. In the meantime, when I went to some friends for lunch recently they had a set of giant crayons and the children were going crazy graffiting all over the yard (I love the word yard, it featured large in my childhood stories of Mrs Piggle Wiggle). I got these which are really bright chalks rather than crayons (not sure why they are called crayons) but all you need to know is that they are REALLY BRIGHT, fun, and it says washable but I like to live dangerously and haven’t tried that yet.

I paid 10p under £7 for a packet of 15 from Amazon. I think these are a perfect thing for your children to do in the autumn.

You’re welcome.

2016 note: for some reason the crayons above are now £63 from Amazon which is, of course, madness. I think it’s because you can’t really get them and they have been replaced by these.

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Onya Bottles

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Onya water bottles

I first came across Onya bags six years ago, when I was co-running the parenting website http://www.iwantmymum.com (now no longer, so don’t looking for it). Onya bags (so named cos they’re always ‘onya’) are reusable bags that scrunch up small and have a clip so you can attach them to your keys/bag/whatever. I think they were made of old parachute silk before, but now they’re all made out of recycled plastic bottles. (Technology pioneered by the sportswear company Patagonia some fifteen years ago.)

Lovely Onya bags

Anyway. They made great little presents, these little bags that folded up really small, came in bright colours, and then folded out to make useful shopping bags. I featured them in my Guardian Personal Shopper column and got to know Dan a bit over the phone. Onya bags had an awe inspiring back story which I shan’t share here as it’s not mine to share. Suffice to say it’d make you cry. I happened to go on Jeremy Vine’s Radio 2 show one day – this was about five years ago – when I mentioned Onya bags, saying I didn’t know why the big supermarkets didn’t use them, putting their logo on. (I felt that, hitherto, all reusable bags were either too small or too big, or just not right, but Onya bags seemed to have pretty much carved out a place as the best sort of reusable bag.)

In the taxi on the way home, Dan rang me to say that Tesco had rung him, wanting to place an initial order of 500,000. I think you can work out that this would be pretty life changing for anyone. But Dan turned Tesco down. That’s just the sort of guy he is. He never publicized this amazing show of integrity.

I kept in touch with Dan, and what Onya bags were doing over the years and the whole range has come on hugely. There are now ruck sacks which unfold out of small bags, lunch rolls (really rather good, Dan sent me two free and they work brilliantly for small children as it also provides a surface for them to eat off when you’re on the go), little pouches to keep your dog-poop bags in.

But the piece de resistance, for me, came when they introduced stainless steel bottles. This was right in the middle of the story that was following another water bottle manufacturer around as it couldn’t confirm its liners were BPA free. Onya bottles are all stainless steel – no liner – and they come in a variety of sizes and the great thing is that you can put anything in them – water, juice, cordial, hot drinks, cold drinks (they are not thermal however). In lined aluminum bottles you can’t put anything like fruit juice as the acid would erode the lining over time. I was also glad of how industrial they looked, as I was a bit over cutesy fairies and farm animals by this stage.

We all have them from the 350ml size to the 1000ml size; with the neoprene sleeve and lanyard they make a great cycling companion. My eldest takes hers to school every day. They come in various colours, but note that the coloured ones that I bought chipped in places over time – but that’s okay as there’s just a plain stainless steel bottle underneath. Also various ways of drinking from them: you can even get a ‘teat’ for a baby. My prefence is for the screw off cap as I like to drink my water straight from stainless steel and not through plastic (I’ve never found any sort of plastic lid you can drink through that doesn’t slightly make the water taste different, and this is a pet hate of mine). But if you do choose a drinking lid – and they’re great for children – then I recommend these flip and flow ones. You can also get adapters so you can use these on your bike.

I now buy the 350ml size for my friends whose children are starting school. It’s a boring, but useful present. My eldest has been using hers every day since she started school four years ago and it’s still like new (with a few tiny dents in it). Prices for the bottles start at £8.50.



Note: Dan gave me a discount on some of the Onya bags he sold me about six years ago, and he sent me two free Onya Lunches, quite unbidden, a while ago. Other than that, I paid for everything at full retail price.

Hula Hooping

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I am on a mission to get some core stability/strength back, by doing stuff that doesn’t involve leaving the house (I have two young children). I run three times a week, which is great. But not so core specific.

I’ve long wanted to hula hoop as I have a friend who does and raves about it. And then, after seeing  Grace Jones hula-ing at the Jubilee concert...well.  Being able to hula hoop became my summer holiday challenge. I had bought my eldest a hoop in the toy shop and neither of us could master it. This was because, someone told me on line (and I’m so sorry I can’t remember who otherwise I’d credit you!), hoops sold in toy shops are…toys. Too light, too small, and virtually impossible to hula with. She said I needed a weighted hoop and one that, when held vertically, came up to approximately my belly button. (In fact you can see, when she brings it on stage, the hoop Grace Jones uses is big.)

So I bought one, from the The Hoop Dance Co. I got this one – plain, £11.99 (do you NEED flourescent? Do you NEED striped? I don’t think so) in 38″/625g for me and the 30″/550g one for my eldest. The smaller the hoop, the harder it is, so go bigger if you are in doubt.

Within 24 hours my daughter was hula hooping like a pro. And I can do 30 seconds without stopping. Major CV work out…I am half tempted to post a video of us hula-ing.

But no.

Staedtler gel crayons

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Staedtler Gel Crayons, £9.25 for six. Not cheap, but worth it.

I knew I was a grown up when I realised that I could buy my very own box of Caran d’Ache felt tip pens. When I was a child, the number of coloured pencils/markers you had were currency. She who had a whole box of them was top of the heap and you could pick your best friend. And Caran d’Ache was the very best you could get. I of course, never had a full set, just a disparate bunch of felt tip pens that I’d accumulated along the way (don’t feel too sorry for me, I had home made pizza every Friday night). I was about 25 before I realised I could buy my very own box of crayons/markers/pencils. And I did. I still don’t let anyone else use them.

I must point out here that I hate cheap crayons and felt tip pens and coloured pencils that hardly make a mark on the paper. 

The other day I got sent a package from John Lewis*. In amongst other colouring sticks – retractable coloured pencils, wax crayons – were these gel crayons. They are brilliant. There’s only six, so no shades of anything, but they are thick, so easy to use (the mark of good colouring stuff, the colours are rich cos they use good pigments), slightly glittery, but don’t go expecting disco balls. They’re not like normal crayons, but look almost like a fat lipstick. True to greedy form, I got them and when the children said “ooh who are they for?” I said, without hesitation: “Me.”

*If you think because I got sent them this is why I’m writing about them, think again. I get sent all sorts of crazy shit and I never write about it. I just don’t do that. No-one tells me what to recommend. But these are great.

Chewy scoop biscuits

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 These have just come out of the oven. They are crispy, salty, sugary, chocolately. But not sickly, because that would be wrong.

As I’ve mentioned in the past, I keep all my torn out recipes in Muji PP Portfolio books. I have about 12 of them covering different subjects like ‘Everyday’, ‘Pasta’, ‘Fish’ and of course one just for biscuits…

I had cut this recipe out of the Waitrose magazine some time ago and recently refound it. It was the word ‘chewy’ that got me, even though these biscuits aren’t, actually chewy (or I have not found them to be so).

Not that that matters, because they’re delicious, easy to make and – best of all, for me – you can make the dough, shape them and then freeze them so when you fancy home made biscuits you’re only a quarter of an hour away from them. It also means you can cook just a few at a time (important for greedy types such as me).

Anyway, here is the recipe. I didn’t have hazelnuts so I used walnuts. The three types of chocolate is really important, as is the salt (obviously all the ingredients are important. But what I mean is something that seems unimportant, like the salt, is actually crucial in my view).

I didn’t use an ice cream scoop, just shaped them with  my hands into walnut sized balls. My biscuits, as you can see, aren’t flat like those in the magazine.

I found 12 mins was plenty, but my oven is fierce.

If you want to freeze them – and I recommend you do as this dough makes loads, you just shape them and them freeze them spaced out on a tray or plate or something. When frozen, then you can bung them all into a freezer bag (if you bung them all in to begin with they will all freeze stuck together, and you don’t really want that), to pull out and cook – from frozen – whensoever you wish. If cooking from frozen, give them 15 mins.

Doughnuts, but not deep fried

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Hello! Doughnuts that are delicious. But not deep fried.

A new year ritual in southern Italy, is to make zeppole, or doughnuts. They are unbelievably delicious and my aunt would make them (whatever time of year I went, because I would nag her) and lay them out on dishcloths (to soak up any excess oil) – one cloth on the bottom, one on the top. As such she built up a sort of doughnut grid system after a while. I was immensely skilful because I would take them out strategically – whilst she was frying the next batch – so that the cloth didn’t sink to reveal any tell tale dips.

By the time she discovered there were gaps, it was too late. I was gone, out into the street to play ‘fazzoletto’. Innocent, greedy, slim days, when all excess calories were worked off playing outside til long after the stars were out.

My aunt would coat hers in cinnamon sugar. I’m not sure how I feel about cinnamon. It makes me feel claustrophic sometimes, all cloying and needy.

Anyway. Years ago, I bought a mini doughnut tray from Lakeland. Don’t go looking for it now though as they discontinued it some time ago; probably because it realised that, although the tray was perfectly good, the recipe that came with it produced pretty crap little cakes. They didn’t taste like doughnuts at all, just very average tasting, round little sponge cakes that weren’t even very brown.

Nevertheless, I kept the tin, and the recipe. And today, whilst my children and I were swinging in the pod chair in the garden, I had the idea of making some more.

Except this time, I thought, I’ll cook ’em and then shallow fry them for a minute or two. And what do you know. They are brilliant. I think they’d make great little accompaniments to a home made ice cream or served with chocolate ganache you can dip them into. Although, for me, nothing beats a simple doughnut simply rolled in vanilla sugar.

If you want to try these, you can get a similar-looking tray from here. (Update note: I now have two of these Judge tins and they are better than the original one I bought from Lakeland!)

This is how you make them. They are ridiculously easy and quick, so warm the oven up the moment you decide to make them.

For 12 mini doughnuts you need:

75g  plain flour
half a teaspoon of baking powder
quarter of a teaspoon of salt
55g caster sugar
60ml of milk (I used semi skimmed)
1 beaten egg
1 teaspoon of olive oil
half a teaspoon of vanilla extract

Put the oven on at 160C.

Grease the mini doughnut tray. Little fingers love doing this. Let them get on with it as it’s annoying.

Mix all the ingredients together, thoroughly, then pour into the doughnut tray. The mixture will come about three quarters of the way up.

Put in the oven. Cook for fifteen minutes. Take out the incredibly unpromising, anaemic looking doughnuts. (Test they are cooked: if you press them they should spring back.)

Heat up a frying pan with some sunflower oil.  You need only enough to coat the bottom, like a puddle’s depth. I have a cast iron frying pan (which I seasoned from scratch, because I am HARDCORE) so this retains the heat beautifully. Then  you just fry the doughnuts, about 1-2mins per side. Put on kitchen paper and as soon as you can, throw them around some vanilla sugar.

If you eat these warm, and you should as there is nothing nicer, they will probably give you rampant indigestion.

Tagalong bikes or trailer bikes

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The Roland Add-a-Bike

 

I ride a Nihola trike and have done for about four years now. It’s what I do the school run on and, aside from the harshest day in winter, I use it instead of the car for around town.

I will do a review on the Nihola soon, just haven’t yet. I don’t know why I just never seem to get down to it even though I love my Nihola more than is decent.

When my eldest got to eight years old, I thought it was about time she started to ride her own bike to school. Except. I wasn’t really ready for her to ride her own bike to school. I mean, she can ride, beautifully (we are Islabike fans) but we tend to let her ride mostly off road or just meander along. As a parent I realise you take all sorts of risks you’re comfortable with. I co-sleep with my children, which some consider a risk. I pick them up when they cry, which some consider a risk (that they will turn into monsters and be forever crying just to be picked up). I let them feed themselves, which some would worry about (the choking). I don’t Dettox everything and let them eat things that have fallen onto the floor (at home) and don’t always insist they wash their hands. I let them climb walls and trees. And I let my children use screens: iPads, computers etc. All of which some parents consider risky, irresponsible behaviour.

But I’m comfortable with all of that.

I’m not, however, comfortable with letting my eldest cycle to school, yet. So I thought a trailer bike was in order. You know the things? They hook up to the back of a normal bike, so the child gets a sense of being in traffic, she cycles, so gets valuable exercise (and believe me, this is a help when you’re cycling a Nihola with another child already in the box trailer up front) but is totally attached to the adult.

I’d written about tagalongs a while ago and done a lot of research. So I knew that the tagalong bike I wanted had to fit onto the pannier rack at the back of the adult bike, not onto the seat-post (the people I really listen to in cycling, none of them recommend that latter sort of fixing tagalong as it compromises the stability of the adult bike). The problem was that the only tagalong that did this was the Burley Piccolo which had gone out of production and second hand ones were fetching silly money on eBay.

The fabulous Islabikes used to do a trailer bike (I use the term tagalong and trailer bike interchangeably, they are the same thing), but I rang and spoke to Isla herself who told me that although she would probably do them again, there was a problem with sourcing one of the components and for the moment, she wasn’t making any new ones. A visit to eBay showed me that her trailer bikes were also exchanging hands for about the price of what they’d cost new.

So I was stuck. Then I rang Brixton Cycles and spoke to the fabulous Barnaby who has always been super  helpful and straight down the line honest with what he recommends, even if he doesn’t sell it. And he told me about Roland add-a-bikes which fix onto the back rack and are sold by Bikes and Trailers.

I think it was Sean I spoke to and the service was excellent.

So I got one and it is brilliant. I can’t comment too much on the stability because of course, my Nihola is a trike. But it comes with its own pannier back rack (so if you already have one, you’ll have to take it off) and the actual bike slots into the back quite easily. You can take it off if you do the school run and leave it there and then re-fix it when you pick up in the afternoon.

I umm-ed and ahh-ed about getting one with gears (it comes in 3 or 7 gear versions), or not. In the end I decided not to to keep the cost down. The one extra I did get (retrospectively, but wish I’d got it before) was the kick (two-legged) stand. It’s really useful if you regularly taken the trailer bike off and it has to stand on its own, because it can’t stand on its own otherwise…I hesitated because it’s not cheap at £34 but some things are just really useful and you have to bite the bullet.

If you were to transfer this bike from one adult bike to the other regularly, then you’d really need to also get the extra back rack. You can’t use the Add a Bike without it.

Just to add to this: I spoke to Isla last week to ascertain what was happening with her trailer bike, before I wrote this blog post. She told me she had no immediate plans to re-introduce it but it’s something she would think about doing in the future. She did however tell me that the Burley Piccolo is going back into production. I’ll keep you posted.

In the  meantime, we cycle to school now looking like a giant cycle crocodile. My youngest in the front in the Nihola box, me on the Nihola and my eldest on the back. The Nihola box allows me space for one more child and lots of shopping…who needs the gym.

One important point to add (thanks Claire), it’s not relevant for me with all the passenger space, but you can still use this tagalong and fit a child seat on the back of the adult bike. If you look at the Bikes and Trailers website you can see.

Sun-San Sandals

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Navy Salt Water Originals

Really, for quite a long time now, I’ve been looking for “Jesus sandals” that were popular in my youth. I couldn’t think of a more perfect sandal for a small child.

But they were nowhere to be seen. The closest I ever got were Birkenstocks, but, in truth, I was tiring of the overly large foot print.

Then, quite by chance, @sunsansandals started following me (@AnnalisaB) on Twitter and there they were. My perfect child-hood sandals: Sun-San. Which I hadn’t imagined at all. (And the style I remembered is called Surfer, shown in red below.)

They were American, but date back to the 1940’s. They came to the UK last year and they’ve become, I hate to say this, the sandal du jour for children. I don’t mind this since they are

a) incredibly practical – they can withstand salt water and can be washed in the washing machine
b) sensible – I’m not a Lilli Kelli kinda mum
c) gorgeous looking in that understated way – I’m not insane
d) proper sandals, therefore not cheap (average price: £34) but comparable with StartRite or Birkenstocks.

(Otherwise I just hate following trends, I am so contrary.)

Although I wanted to get both my children a pair – how cute would a three year old look in the Surfer style in red or tan? – in reality the youngest has some already that are perfectly okay and I can’t justify spending £70 on two pairs of sandals.

But I did want to get my eldest some, since she needed something for the summer anyway (and Birkies, what she usually wears, cost the same). Today we found ourselves in Liberty with her Godmother who, so so kindly, bought her a pair. We got the Saltwater Original, which weren’t the actual Jesus sandal I had planned on getting for her. But I left it between my daughter and her Godmother. Some transactions a mother shouldn’t interfere with.

Side view, you can just see the fringes of my mother’s incredibly ornate carpet
You can find stockists here. Although I’d personally advise trying them on in person first if possible: we tried them on in white first and they were huge, same size in navy fitted perfectly; otherwise pretty true to size I’d say. They range in price from £34-£40 and come in six designs/twelve colours, sizes 0-adult 3.
Apparently they are way cheaper in the States so if you know someone who lives there or are going there, that may be a way to save some pennies!Update: I couldn’t resist and bought my youngest a pair too. I don’t regret it, they are gorgeous and make me happy every time I see them.

I love these sandals so much I want to eat them.
An update in late August 2012. Well Sun San has now launched its own online shop, which should help with the stock situation. I relented and bought myself a pair, in silver (£55 which included p&p). Me and my girls have worn almost nothing else but our Sun San sandals all summer and I cannot tell you how brilliant I think these sandals are. We have gone in the sea with them, gone surfing wearing them, built sandcastles and they look like new.
Weirdly, also, considering I find really flat shoes hard to wear all day, my feet don’t hurt (anymore than they would anyway walking all day) in these. I get asked about them all the time and my friend Wendy bought seven pairs (or thereabouts) the moment the shop went live.
You do need to buy them so they are slightly tight I think. I’m a true 37 which is a 4.5 UK and I was unsure whether to get a 5 or 6 in Sun San. When I first tried on the 5 they felt too tight – as in not wide enough (obviously the length has to be right, they don’t get longer!) I also tried the 6 and they felt really comfy from the off. But instinct told me the 5 would stretch and they did. Plus once you get them wet – and I recommend you do – and they dry on you, they’ll be no more rubby bits. I never once have had to wear any sort of plasters with these.
Is it clear how much I love them? And just so you’re absolutely sure no-one is telling me to say this let me assure you that I have accepted no freebies or discounts in relation to these sandals *
The sandals after surfing
My sandals.
A family of Sun San sandals. Now we just need a men’s version.
* Well, this is no longer true. The UK distributor gave me a pair for free as a thank you (she had tried to give me a free pair in the spring and I said no) and I’m afraid, this time, I said yes thank you. Because I’m greedy, and a little bit broke after all the shopping I’ve done.

Wee bags, for toddlers, for when they just have to go..

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Wee-bag closed, fits into palm of your hand like this unless you have unnaturally tiny hands

The same open. Note jolly pics…

I’m not usually a fan for making a simple process more difficult. I mean, I like a bit of kit as much as the next person, but, especially where babies and children are concerned, you can be sold a lot of stuff you just don’t need.

With potty training, some children like to go on a potty (my second learned to go on a potty, but would only perform, for the first week, with my pashmina over her head), some like little toilet seats. Some a combination of both. All fine. When you go out you may take a potty or the trainer seat or just hold your child particularly carefully whilst their tiny bottoms perch on an adult toilet seat and you try not to get freaked out that their hands are all over a public toilet seat.

But sometimes, especially when they’re still very new to it all, you’re not near a toilet or a potty, and they really need to go. Great if you can balance your child over a discreet bit of grass (one of my earliest memories is being held over the gutter by my mum, just by Paddington Street Gardens in London. I can’t pass there without remembering…surprised there’s not a plaque up there commemorating it…). But, you can’t always, or they don’t like it.

This is where these gizmos come in: TravelJohn Junior Disposable Urinal Bags. They’re portable piss bags, basically. There is gel inside, so no spillage and you can, theoretically use them til they’re full (they hold up to 600cc), but in truth they start to stink after a day or two. The top has a plastic shaped bit that you hold up to the child’s groin. You can be really discreet using them too.

You probably won’t need many, but they come in packs of three and I think they’re great for emergencies. We keep on in the car, one in the pram, one floating around. (They fold up really small when empty, so can even fit in a pocket). I got mine from Amazon for £5.07 for three, so nearly £1.70 a bag. Not cheap but for when you have to go: really worth it.

Here‘s a piece I wrote for The Guardian about potty training.