A Fishy Recipe For My Dear Miranda

Due to popular demand (yeah, it’s that good), I am posting a recipe for a Moroccan-inspired fish stew that is WELL tasty. And so easy!

You will love me forever. Miranda does.

(Serves 4)

Ingredients:

500g White Fish

1 tin Chickpeas (drained)

1 tin Chopped Tomatoes

1 Large onion, sliced very thinly

250ml water

2tsp Cinnamon

2tsp Turmeric

2tsp Cumin

1 tablespoon (or more) of hot chilli sauce

2 vegetable stock cubes

salt to taste

Handful of chopped parsley

Juice of half a lemon

Method:

Sweat the onions in a bit of oil or water. Once they are soft, add the cinnamon, turmeric and cumin to the pan and make a paste. Then add the tomatoes and the chickpeas and the stock cubes and the water and the chilli sauce, bring to the boil. Once the broth is boiling, add the fish and cover. Once the fish is cooked, remove from heat, add parsley and lemon juice. Et voila!

I normally serve it with rice, which I pre-fry with some garlic, and if you want to make it EVEN nicer you can throw some cardamom pods in too.

Yum.

The Impostor.

My son’s creativity has started to really blossom lately. He keeps on inventing elaborate and often bizarre stories about a variety of real and imaginary characters. I had been finding this hilarious, but I think now he is experiencing some kind of end-of-Summer school holiday fatigue. Maybe he’s getting bored of my face, because the little rascal’s only gone and made up an imaginary mother.

Her name is Steak.

She has red hair and blue eyes.

She can drive and has a red car.

She lives just down the road and has two other kids (Stetch and Daniel, apparently) who he can play with everyday.

She has a dog called Tommy.

She ‘does working’ and goes to a different gym to me.

And yesterday, just to add insult to injury, he said ‘she has more moneys than you’.

Part of me thinks this is really funny, and part of me worries he’s making up for my shortcomings as a mother (and even as a human being).

The blasted woman’s got it good! She didn’t give birth to him for 18 hours, she doesn’t clothe him, feed him, nurse him when he’s sick, pick up his toys, put up with his tantrums, scold him when he’s naughty, endure him when he’s whining. She doesn’t wipe his bottom. I bet she hasn’t even got stretchmarks, THE BITCH!!!!!!

I’ve got one thing on her though. HER NAME IS BLOODY RUBBISH.

The Magician’s Nephew

I seriously don’t understand why everyone gets so stuck on ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’. I was quite miffed when the new Narnia film series decided to begin with that one. And then, I was even more miffed when I watched the atrocious piece of junk they called a film and realised they’d managed to rape the magic out of that as well.

But the books start with ‘The Magician’s Nephew’, people!!! It’s probably my favourite in the series, and one that gets badly overlooked. Sort it out, fools! Rant over.

The best bit in the book, in my opinion,  is when  Digory and Polly find themselves in the ruins of the great city of Charn, and come across a mysterious bell and hammer. The haunting inscription on the pillar where they stood has stuck with me ever since I first read it at the age of 10:

‘Make your choice, adventurous Stranger;

Strike the bell and bide the danger,

Or wonder, till it drives you mad,

What would have followed if you had.’

(C. S. Lewis, 1955)

DEEEEEEEEP!!!!

Mother’s Milk

I’m sure many of you have read about the furore involving Gisele Bundchen’s interview to Harper’s Bazaar where she is quoted as saying ‘I think there should be a worldwide law, in my opinion, that mothers should breastfeed their babies for six months’. The model has since apologised on her blog, saying that the comment was borne out of her ‘passion for children’ rather than a desire to marginalise mothers. Technically speaking, her advice could save thousands of children’s lives worldwide, but it’s been interpreted as an affront to us, less perfect mere mortals. Whatever.

The thing is, breastfeeding is AWESOME!!!!!! Sometimes I think there are not enough people bringing this point home. I have friends who really struggled with it and had to give it up, and I couldn’t help feeling like they were missing out. The first two weeks, where one is still trying to get to grips with the milky boob mechanics, were really painful for me- bleeding, swollen, sore nipples; rock hard tits the size of a cartoonish Pamela Anderson’s; inadequate milk flow – But once I got over that obstacle I never looked back.

I’ve often struggled with competitive motherhood and it’s been the subject of many posts in this blog. So this is my disclaimer. No criticism is intended here.

But breastfeeding is AWESOME! The health and post-partum slimming benefits are well documented, but for me it was a pretty magical experience.  I didn’t have to carry all sorts of fiddly and expensive feeding and sterilisation paraphernalia everywhere; my milk dispensers were easily portable, healthy and always the right temperature. Maintaining something that resembles normal life after you have a baby is pretty challenging and breastfeeding helps a lot. And also, just relax! If occasionally your baby needs to have a bottle for any given reason, why the hell not? It’s only the one. Don’t lose sleep over it. Your milk supply should be just fine.

Did I mention… BREASTFEEDING IS AWESOME!!!

The absolutely most incredible thing about breastfeeding is how it made me feel. It is a continuation of a physical bond between mother and baby that starts at the moment of conception. It’s a very feral, instinctive thing; a constant reminder of the human being as animal. In a way, it’s a continuation of a sexual bond. Breastfeeding your baby is a unique and intimate ritual in a similar way to sex. I’m going to sound like a right hippie here, but both work on a physical and an emotional level: In sex, the physical objective is procreation. In breastfeeding, once procreation has already happened, the physical objective is nutrition. But in both, the ultimate emotional objective is LOVE!!!

See, I told you I was going to sound like a hippie. But those hippies were onto something. They were usually also on something, but that’s beside the point.

Breastfeeding feels like falling in love.

And that’s fucking AWESOME.

But then, many of you might feel a bit grossed out by my explanation. We don’t like to think of sex and babies as somehow linked… But they are. You’re not the Virgin Mary, love.  And a lot of people can feel a bit shy about breastfeeding because of this too. However I was really surprised to hear that Denise Van Outen, no stranger to posing for lads mags, gave up breastfeeding at 3 weeks because she feared being photographed while doing it. Eh? Where’s the logic in that? I’d hate to be followed by photographers everywhere, but still. Furthermore, if you don’t want everyone to see your boobs while you’re trying to feed your baby, just use some kind of shawl or something. The end.

Don’t Pill the Rappers

Yesterday morning I walked into my kitchen to be greeted with a harrowing sight.

I saw the buoyant carcass of my son’s black goldfish, Sharky, being mercilessly devoured by his tankmate, the ever-so-dull Nemo. Sharky had been showing signs of ill health for a while. His erratic and distressed swimming had me tearing out my hair with concern. Once Google explained that this was most likely due to fish constipation I decided the fatty should go on a strict diet; he improved but he wasn’t quite the same vivacious, charismatic goldfish he once was. And now this.

Horrified, I diverted my son’s attention and scooped out the mortal remains, diligently disposing of them in the bin. I made the decision to deceive him in a fraction of an instant. Act now, I thought, and work out some explanation for Sharky’s sudden disappearance later.

I referred to our wet pet’s sad passing and my subsequent pondering on Facebook. One friend encouraged me to tell the truth, retrieve Sharky’s half-eaten rotting cadaver from the bin, and give him a proper burial befitting of how much joy he single-finnedly brought into our lives. I could see her point, but couldn’t bring myself to do it. I rather preferred another friend’s suggestion to say that Sharky went on holiday and then replace him with an identical fish later, but the former friend pointed out that I might have to prepare for questions such as ‘How did he carry his luggage? Has he got a passport? Will he need suncream?’. I confess I began to concoct fairly plausible responses in my head.

I have written here before about the lies we inevitably tell children as they grow up.  While I know I can’t avoid the death chat indefinitely, I didn’t feel quite ready to do it just yet, particularly because I am very much grieving at the moment. I can’t make sense of death myself, let alone explain it to a three-year-old. So it’s not just sparing the poor child from a trauma, it’s sparing myself from confronting some difficult facts. I think I’m going to invest in an impostor, buy myself some time and address the matter in a more appropriate way once Sharky the Second kicks his bucket too.

The fact is that this is not actually my son’s first encounter with death. The other day he came back from a weekend in the countryside relating that him and his Daddya had gone to ‘Pill some rappers‘.

What? Pill some what? Pill some rappers? Wtf? Imagine my confusion.

‘Me and Daddya went to Granny and Papa’s stables. And Daddya had Papa’s gun, and I had my bubble gun, and we pilled some rappers.’

EXCUSE ME?!!

I turned to the ex, or shall we refer to him as the Exterminator, and demanded an  explanation.

As it happens, his parents’ stables are currently infested with rats, and they’d asked him to shoot some to cut down numbers. Now, I am no vegetarian, nor am I averse to culling, but I was pretty darn cheesed off with the idea of him taking our 3-year-old son shooting with him.

‘Relax! I think it was a nice thing to do, go out shooting with his dad. It will teach him about life and death, and to have respect for guns’

‘But he’s THREE! He doesn’t understand! We live in London, we’re going to struggle to keep him innocent as it is, without you taking him bloody shooting! As far as I’m concerned he doesn’t have to have any contact with guns at all.’

This all eventually descended into an argument, of course. One which we haven’t quite settled yet.

My point is that this exercise hasn’t really taught the kid anything about life and death. He doesn’t understand that once the rats stop moving, they don’t ever start again. He doesn’t have any emotional bond with the rats to be made to rationalise it, or make a connection with his own life. He’s just lost a grandfather and doesn’t really grasp the concept. The cancer was like the bullet; he stopped moving and never will again, just like the rats. The mechanics may be similar but the emotional significance is radically, overwhelmingly, different. The grief is the very reason why I can’t face a death chat at this moment in time.

But I can’t suppress my smile when I think he might go to school and tell his poor teacher that he and his daddy got some guns and went out ‘shooting rappers‘…

The horror, indeed.

Too Pikey for Paris

Last night I found a very eloquent little poem I wrote about my first trip to Paris, which took place in March 2008.

Paris is lovely to look at.

Paris was meant to be romantic.

Paris was a rip off.

Knowing your pint cost you a tenner drains the magic out of drinking it:

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Too Pikey for Paris

too tired to care

L’amour, bonjour

nice to breakfast you

My hotel has a view

of La Tour Eiffel

And each romantic rue

Smells.

But no wine bottle has a screwcap.

I found a rose’, but screw that

I ain’t gonna pay ten quid for that.

There’s Depeche Mode on German MTV.

WRONG.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

A rather charming little billet-doux to a city which, in my experience, rings the death knell to any ailing relationship. Don’t you agree?  Ah, I knew you would.

This is me in Paris:

Well classy.

Wok ‘n’ Roll

I haven’t posted a recipe here for aaaages.  I find that now I’m single and living alone(apart from the sprog, that is), cooking has become a bit of a challenge. I end up eating with my son at ridiculous times (11am and 6pm), and often just make very child-friendly food. I miss having someone around to dine with, especially as I am yet to master the art of cooking for one.

This here is probably my favourite new invention, and it’s dead easy to make it just for myself, or increase the size for more people. I decided I wanted to try and make a Vietnamese-y inspired noodle soup because I miss going up to Kingsland Road and gorging on Far Eastern flavours. I’m sure there’s nothing authentically Vietnamese about it at all, but be easy on me. I am just a single mum in South London, for crying out loud. The quantities below make enough for one very hungry person or two not very hungry people. Don’t you just love my precision?

Twinkle Twinkle Little Steiner (continued)

MAN! I feel like I’ve landed on a polemical goldmine!

It was no mistake I ended my last post where I did. I simply had no time or energy to continue on what is a difficult subject, especially one so close to my heart. I fear I might have presented myself as entirely won over by Steiner schooling.

Still, the replies have kept flooding in and everyone has a story to tell. To those of you who feel you have been unhelpful: please don’t. I am grateful for the opportunity to see this whole schooling fiasco in a multi-dimensional way. The premise is that we felt completely out of the loop with regard to how to secure a decent State funded education for our son. I guess it’s a side effect of coming into parenthood when we had not prepared for it.

A CUT ABOVE THE REST?

We both had misgivings about the possibility of introducing our kiddie to an ‘alternative’ method of teaching  right from the moment we stumbled upon Steiner.

The first that springs to mind is that ‘safe’ and ‘protected’ are both synonymous with ‘sheltered’.

Ok.

Yet this is a stereotype which is commonly applied to all private school education in the UK. It is so easy to paint everyone with the same brush.

Both me and my ex (I’m tired of referring to him like that – From now on, he is  ’Daddya’ – see my post ‘Swings and Roundabouts‘) have been educated privately and in UK State schools at different points in our lives. Since I moved here many years ago I’ve seen how bitterly resented this division in British society is – and now, having no real resources to fund a creme-de-la-creme education for my child, I can see why, even though neither is a guarantee of future success.

However, I take the view that despite some formidable schooling being offered on the State, you get what you pay for. It’s just the way it is. For example, I buy Sainsbury’s ‘Basics’ smoked salmon; it tastes fine but comes in smaller pieces, almost like salmon mince. It does the job pretty well on my toasted bagel but it’s not quite up to the standard of the Wild Alaskan ‘Taste the Difference‘ range. OBVIOUSLY. We can grumble about the difference in the quality of public and State school education until we’re blue in the face but it doesn’t change the fact you are likely to get more if you are prepared to part with the cash. Sucks to be skint like me, but that’s life.

I think this bitterness underlies a lot of the prejudice against Public school educated children in this country. Are plenty of them sheltered? Of course. Are many of them snobs? Naturally. But that will never be the whole picture. It’s as ridiculous as saying every State educated child is down-to-Earth, unprejudiced and well-integrated. NONSENSE.

But then, there’s sheltered and there’s completely, harmfully alienated…

Twinkle Twinkle Little Steiner

After our applications for a State school place were declined a few weeks ago, me and my ex found ourselves confronted with the disheartening prospect of our son falling behind on his education. We decided to reapply to the remaining schools in our borough – the only ones that weren’t ridiculously oversubscribed, for all that may imply. Desperate times, desperate measures.

It was upon visiting one of these schools that our hearts really sank. It just seemed wrong. As lovely as the two kids who showed us around were, the fact that this was an oversized inner city dump where there were no longer any toilet seats just could not be disguised. ‘Perhaps‘, we thought, ‘we’re being a little pompous and unrealistic‘. The truth is that children all over the country attend schools such as this and worse and hopefully turn out fine. The Ofsted report gave it a grade 3. Furthermore, parental involvement is integral to any child’s overall education and we both care too much to let him miss out.

But to send our baby to that place felt like sending a  little lamb to slaughter.

(I sound like a mum!)

So we decided it was time to change our tactics and start researching our local private schools with the hope that we might be able to send him somewhere, somehow, someday. They all seemed like shining beacons after what we had seen, and they were all hideously above our budget. And that’s when we stumbled upon Waldorf Steiner.

At £4.055 per annum for their kindergarten (ages 4-7), it was a lot cheaper than any of the other prep schools we had looked at. Still a stretch, but one that we could just about cope with.  The memories of the inner city dump made the local Steiner school’s website  seem a wholesome and rustic idyll. But upon closer inspection we began to realise that this was not your average school, nor your average educational ethos. Something about it reminded me of what I’ve heard so far about the Montessori method, but Steiner seems to go beyond that. Thus began our investigation.

The Waldorf Steiner method of education was formulated by Rudolf Steiner, according to his personal philosophy of Anthroposophy.  It began when a friend of Steiner’s asked him to open a visionary school for the children of the workers at the Waldorf cigarette factory in 1919. You can find more about Steiner’s life and beliefs here, as I cannot pretend to have any expertise on the matter.

ANTHROPOSOPHY AT FIRST SIGHT:

Anthroposophy was not a completely alien concept to me as my best friend in Brazil and her husband have been very keen to bring up their 5 year old daughter according to some of its teachings. Anthroposophy means, literally,  ’wisdom of the human being’.

Well, I’m sure I can’t claim to be that wise because I found it all a bit radical and puzzling. Their daughter was not allowed any plastic or electronic toys; television and computers were forbidden; even recorded music was a no-no. When I landed in Rio with a 9 month old baby I felt slightly intimidated by this determination to occlude modern living. My son loved toys with flashing lights and music and I really couldn’t see how they could be so sure it was harmful. He was one of the happiest, most settled babies I have ever known —and I am not saying that just because I am his mum.

On my last visit to Brazil it was clear that they had had to relax their grip; financial and social constraints meant that raising their kid in an exclusively anthroposophical way became a bit of a nightmare — I think it also partly contributed to their break up last year. Clearly all this gave me a negative bias toward this philosophy, but I would be lying if I said I knew enough about it to refute it. All I am saying is that it probably didn’t come to me in the best light.

A HOLISTIC EDUCATION:

Nevertheless I can still see why an anthroposophical approach to education is appealing, particularly in the early years, which is the category my son falls into. It is certainly more caring and constructive than I imagine the nightmare State school could be. At best, it could help my child come on leaps and bounds in his personal development, for all that might represent. At worst, at this age, it wouldn’t harm him. I like the idea of play-based early learning; and I understand this is much of what he’d be doing at a State nursery at reception class – if he ever got into a decent one. My biggest concern over our lack of State school offers is that he would miss out on social interaction and structured activity if he was forced to spend the next year alone, particularly with mother dearest over here. Part of education is learning to be a social and moral being too and I like the Steiner focus on this aspect.

There is no doubt in my mind that the Steiner method is caring and that my son would have plenty of fun and human interaction — What else can I expect at the age of four? At a glance, kindergarten seeks to develop the senses through different kinds of play, giving the children a fair bit of autonomy with regards to their own development. Parents of young children see new milestones being reached on a daily basis and supporting these achievements makes a lot of sense. The focus on exciting children’s natural curiosity and satisfying their instinctive desire for learning is something you don’t hear often on the national curriculum. This was all interesting so I began to ask around.

FLOODED WITH FEEDBACK:

I must have been living in a hole all my life. As soon as I mentioned Steiner, people started coming out of the woodwork with their experiences and opinions. The overwhelming majority used adjectives such as ‘well-rounded’, ‘creative’, ‘free-thinking’, ‘academic’ and ‘social’ to describe Steiner kids. The educational methods were perceived as ‘effective’, ‘revolutionary’ and ‘caring’, if a bit ‘too idealistic’ and lacking in technology. At university level, a broad and unconventional approach would set Steiner children apart as scholars too. However, another friend related that some of her own Steiner friends suffered breakdowns in their late teens because they found it difficult to adapt when the ‘real world isn’t all nice and reassuring, and doesn’t value individuality or creativity’. This same friend mirrored my own concerns when she said ‘In theory, I am completely pro-Steiner philosophy, but it’s worth thinking that school needs to prepare kids for life in the real world’.

The huge response I had on the subject is one of the reasons I decided to write this all down in blog format. This has been very thought provoking on several levels, hence the length of this post and my decision to break it up into smaller segments. There is certainly a lot to be discussed and I can only hope to scratch the surface here. My realist and idealist sides have been struggling against one another. The next step in untangling what I’d heard through the grapevine was to visit the school itself…

To be continued…

The Chicken, The Egg and The Syringe.

This morning’s BBC Breakfast News brought to light a charitable project currently active in the US whereby drug addicts are being offered cash incentives of as much as US$ 300,00 to undergo long term contraception or sterilisation.

I can barely think of anything more controversial. The word ‘eugenics’ has cropped up several times during this debate. On one hand, the defenders of the project present horror stories of children badly neglected, abused or abandoned by their addicted parents; on the other, the opposition argues that addiction does not necessarily equate to bad parenting and that with support many addicts can raise families successfully.

I can see both sides of the dispute. While an eugenics programme is a mistake (‘Lest we forget’), many people  are incapable of meeting their children’s basic needs; and other people, damaged though they may be themselves, remain remarkably caring parents. There will always be a dichotomy in this respect. The one point of view I noticed was absent from the BBC Breakfast News’ coverage is the element of choice.

To force somebody to undergo sterilising treatment against their will is nothing short of committing grievous bodily harm. But I find it courageous and humane to offer vulnerable people birth control when they might find themselves in situations where they are too high to think about contraception. It is necessary to look at the matter head on, without hypocrisy. Even sober people mess up on birth control. I feel certain that the majority of addicts who have participated in the programme so far did not actually want to have children depending on them whilst they are incapable of bringing them up adequately. Let’s also not forget that the US does not boast of a National Health Service, and undergoing some of the procedures outlined would be costly to people who would rather spend their money elsewhere. The cash offered is an incentive to those who would not get round to it otherwise. Another point in question is that sterilisation is not generally irreversible; there are many long term contraceptives(such as the coil or subcutaneous implants) that last for years yet are easily removable. Even vasectomies and tubal ligations can be reverted.  In short, if any of the subjects decided that they were ready to start a family it would not be out of their reach.

I look upon this matter not only through the prism of drug addiction. In Brazil I grew up with the hypocrisy of the Catholic State. The poorest families conceive again and again, to their despair, because sterilisation and long term contraception is out of their reach. To make children is very easy, and there are too many people who feel it is out of their control to stop.  I feel projects such as this give people a choice, as well as prevent more children from being born to people who do not and cannot want them.