bigfoodiemama

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I love my children, I love the seven dwarfs, I love the Mad One and her brood, I love my nephews and nieces, I love parties. Put them all ( 15 kids and 8 adults) in the same room for 3 hours, with that room being in my house on the occasion of the babies first birthday and my favourite things combine into a kids party ie. hell on Earth !Now I don't think any parent would disagree with me on this one. Kids parties are total madness. For weeks beforehand you debate what fabulously inventive party menu you will create and browse through kids cookery books,google cakes and recipes and scour the shops for bizarre ingredients and edible decorations. Then things like work and everyday life get in the way and you realise with 12 hours to go that all you have is a pile of the type of sweets you totally disapprove of at parties, you still have to make a cake because you think you should, when you should have got one in Tesco and your husband convinces you that Chicken Nuggets and Chips as al...

Ok so we lost the big one. On Monday I went out and bought a perfectly shaped, perfectly orange large pumpkin. GASP did the honours, cleaning it out and carving it beautifully. Eldest son was delighted when we lit the wee candle and christened him "Paddy the Pumpkin". All good....until this morning ! Paddy had gone blind in one eye due to an infestation of mould ! Like plastic surgery gone bad, next to collapse was the bridge of his nose but before his whole face caved in we sent him to the compost heap leaving eldest son in tears. Jaysus, I wish I had never started this pumpkin thing. Last night I used pureed pumpkin flesh to make Pumpkin Muffins.....they were crap ! Let's face facts pumpkin is tasteless. The reason you add every spice you can think of and vast quantities of sugar to every pumpkin recipe is to cover the taste of the pumpkin !For you own sake substitute every mention of pumpkin for carrot or sweet potato and life will be alot better. I have promised to bu...

It has been a very tough week. It's bad enough that we lost two of our baby pumpkins but now the big mama has bit the dust....a tragic loss. She now rests on the compost heap so at least her life was not in vain ,and others may benefit from her generous donation in the future, but I was heartbroken. I broached the subject very gingerly with the 5 year old , who simply said " sure we'll buy more seeds Mammy and grow some more". The young can be so harsh !We now have one small, lumpy pumpkin left after months of prayer, love and attention and it looks like my encyclopedia of pumpkin recipes can be reduced to a pamphlet.This would all be bad enough in itself, if the Teacher had not decided to post photos on facebook of his offspring and his children....magnificent orange pumpkins of varying sizes and the two children in ecstasy posing beside them.....oh the sheer insensitivity of it ! How could he ? I thought we were friends. GASP is not impressed that there is someone o...

The weather is responsible for an awful lot. Thanks to the dry hot spell in June followed by the recent torrential downpours and humidity, our vegetable garden has taken off. This evening the eldest son wanted to stroll outside to have a look at the veg, so off we went barefoot and found gorgeous fattening pods, full of petite delicious green peas. Every time I turned around eldest son had knicked another one, but I must admit I sampled a few ,myself, Dad tried some and gave our two toothed youngest son one..it took him a while but he managed to mush it up with a green grin. Even more exciting was when I pulled back the vast expanse of pumpkin plant to find our first baby pumpkin...ok so it is the size of a cherry tomato but it's a start. Eldest son advised me that "the chinese" cut eyes and mouths in theirs and put candles in and what were we going to do ? I came up with pumpkin pie, but all he wanted to know was what colour it would be when it was finished. Once I said ...