As I sit and write this it’s Boxing Day. I have a fridge full of leftovers and a camera roll on my iPad filled with great pictures of my family sat around the dinner table enjoying their Christmas dinner. I have a few snaps of me, my dad and my brother sat making balloon animals, just like we used to when we were children. Pictures of my son opening his presents, photos of him bouncing on the bed with joy on Chrostmas Eve and pictures of him discovering floury footprints by the fireplace in Christmas morning. A camera roll full of memories sat on a virtual cloud somewhere.
But the picture I’ve chosen it probably one of my favourites, taken at the Christingle service at church, attended by lots of his school friends; carols were sung, Merry Chistmasses wished and I shed a little tear. December has been a long hard slog, but we got there, we made all the way to Christmas unscathed and excited for the days ahead. Christingle always marks the start of our Christmas and we went home and our family celebrations began.
Merry Christmas everyone, hope you’ve had a good one x
It’s not often I have a guest post to share with you, but when Bobble Bardsley tweeted a picture of his Mincemeat Vol au Vents I knew it was a stroke of genius that needed to be shared. I dislike pastry so I struggle with mince pies, but the idea of a Mincemeat Vol au Vent is fantastic. They have all the traditional mince pie taste but with considerably less of the claggy pastry. I am definitely going to try these out! Over to you Bob….
These delicious morsels were an accident – we ran out of fillings for our vol au vents one Christmas (in the 2010s, not the 1980s!) so the mincemeat came out of the cupboard and we filled the last few pastry cases with that.
It was a revelation. If you find homemade mince pies a bit too chewy, or your pastry always goes ‘caramelised’ (AKA burnt) these are a great alternative, and can be made from scratch within about 15 minutes.
Mincemeat Vol au Vents
If you find homemade mince pies a bit too chewy, or your pastry always gets burnt these are a great alternative, and can be made from scratch within about 15 minutes.
Instructions
Remove the vol au vent cases from their packaging, wash with milk or egg so they go golden brown when baked, and arrange on a baking tray with a small gap between them.
Bake according to the packaging instructions – I used Jus-Rol vol au vents, and the instructions were 220C for about 13-15 minutes.
With a few minutes spare, remove the vol au vents from the oven. They should already be golden, and very nearly cooked.
Push down their ‘hats’ to create a hollow, and add a teaspoon of mincemeat to each one. A dozen vol au vents will take anywhere around 150-200g depending on how much you fill them.
Return to the hot oven for a few minutes until the suet has melted and the mincemeat has ‘relaxed’ into the bottom of its pastry nest.
Remove and allow to cool. At this stage I used a flour sifter to dust them with icing sugar. If you don’t have a sweet tooth, the mincemeat and pastry alone are delicious together.
Notes –
I prefer to glaze with milk rather than egg. Be generous, so your pastry is quite ‘wet’ when it goes into the oven.
Have a palette knife or sharp-edged silicone spatula ready to prise the pastry cases off of the baking tray once they’re done. Alternatively use non-stick baking parchment if you have any.
Be quite frugal with the mincemeat. They might not look very full, but you’ll be glad of that when you take a bite, and the flaky vol au vent pastry starts to collapse. It’s much easier to just shove the whole thing in at once and then reach for another.
Don’t let ANYONE tell you vol au vents are old-fashioned. They’ll soon change their tune once they taste one of these. Mincemeat vol au vents are the future!
If you enjoyed this recipe, you might also like to try these mincemeat flapjacks.
A straw poll of my friends tells me that most of them will be taking a family holiday this year. During the winter months, I can’t think of a better time of the year to jet off for a winter sun break; warm your bones and enjoy some time away from the hectic festivities. A summer family holiday can come in all shapes and sizes. We like to hire a cottage in Cornwall for a few weeks, or hop on a plane for some guaranteed sunshine.
Sadly, I often think that trying to grab a break away with the family can feel like more trouble than it’s worth. By the time I’ve done all the washing and sorted out all the things you need to pack, I’m almost entirely fed up with the idea of going away.
Whether you’re going near or far, here are my top tips for packing and also keeping your kids entertained on planes, trains and automobiles.
Packing for your family holiday –
1. Keep a packing list on your computer, the things you always need to take, clothes, underwear, hairbrush etc. print it off and use it each time you go away as a check-list.
2. Travel light, or as light as you can. If there is a washing machine available you can plan to do a wash or two while you’re away. Yes it’s a domestic chore but I’d rather wash than pack half of my wardrobe.
3. Check the weather forecast before you go, it won’t be 100% accurate, but you’ll have an idea of what kind of weather to expect and consequently what kind of clothes you’ll need to pack.
4. Wherever you go in the world they will most likely have shops there. So it’s not the end of the world if you forget to pack toothpaste!
5. Don’t forget to bring a few of your child’s favourite things to help them settle. A book, a toy, a puzzle and their favourite snuggly for bedtime!
Entertaining kids on a journey –
If you’re in your own car then it’s often easier. You have your own space and you don’t have to worry so much about disturbing other passengers. We’re big fans of audiobooks and CDs for the car so we can have a family sing along. Planning a “spotting game” is always good. Ticking off when you see a bus, a lorry, a smoking chimney, that kind of thing. When all of your efforts are exhausted, we break out the portable DVD player. Nearly 2 hours of battery life and a pair of headphones are enough to restore tranquillity to the car.
Trains and planes are good for quiet games, such as the Shopping List game from Orchard Toys, Dobble or even Snap! If the kids are old enough some quiet time reading their favourite book can be good.
Whilst we do try and generally limit screentime; playing a game on a tablet, smartphone or hand-held gaming device could be a good way to wile away a bit of a long journey. Plus it will give you a break from endless games of I-Spy and Snap!
Travel is always a great learning experience for children no matter what age they are. Talking to them about where you are going and why, as well as what you might see or do there.
Getting the kids involved and invested in the planning of day trips and things to do whilst you are there is a great idea. It can help minimise whining if they’ve had to plan it. Showing them pictures of the famous landmarks in the area and maps of where you are going is good fun. Talking about currency and what the exchange rate is are all fantastic things to do. These not only get them prepared for their holiday but can also help to develop a whole range of skills and knowledge for later on.
Are you going away this year? What are your plans? What are your family holiday packing essentials?
Christmas is generally a time of peace, goodwill and impromptu visits to A&E. Each Christmas more than 80,000 people a year need hospital treatment for injuries such as falls, cuts and burns. I know in my family we can hardly make it through to New Year without a visit to the local Walk-in Centre or A&E; although with a bit of luck and a lot of care we may yet avoid being patched up by the NHS again this year.
Thankfully the NHS Choices website has lots of good advice for staying safe over the festive period; from taking extra care in the kitchen, reducing the hazards of fairy lights and candles; as well as suggestions for avoiding death by Christmas decorations.
I stumbled across this fun festive infographic giving elf and safety advice to Santa, which gives pretty decent advice for humans too. If working at height wear appropriate safety gear; don’t drink and drive (a sleigh); remove trip hazards and be wary of naked flames. It all seems very sensible to me.
When you think about it, Santa must be having an administrative nightmare up in the North Pole. What with being responsible for all of those busy Elves and their elf and safety (ho-ho); not to mention all the paperwork and responsibilities involved in being CEO of North Pole Enterprises inc. Santa has a really hard job, it makes you wonder how he manages to fit it all in.
A lot of the more unusual festive mishaps find their way onto the RoSPA lists of accidents. Some of the mishaps can make for amusing reading, unless of course you have been the victim of a festive accident yourself.
Of course being in an accident at any time of year isn’t a laughing matter. It’s best to try and take a bit of extra care; especially at Christmas time when we’re all a bit tired and many of us will have had a festive drink or two. Our usual levels of care and caution are less than they normally are, so do take care this Christmas. I don’t want to see you down at A&E too!
This picture represents quite a special memory for me. The small boy being five now was desperate to get a Christmas tree AND decorate it AND put a star on top. So, uncharacteristically bowing to pressure we bought a tree and put it up much earlier than we would have done under normal circumstances.
For me this is a lovely memory. It’s the first tree me and he have decorated together. We spent time making some nice decorations to go on the tree, and we talked about some of the baubles and trinkets we were hanging which came from my childhood and his dad’s childhood trees. For us this is a Christmas tree hanging with memories, some very old, some very new, but all of them precious, to us at least.
Merry Christmas, and thanks for visiting my blog, I do appreciate it. Love and luck for 2016 x
In the run up to Christmas we’re all busy going on nights out and being social butterflies. For most people a Christmas party is not the same without a mug of mulled wine or a glass or three of prosecco, but when the party is over how will you be getting home? I’m lucky enough to live near great public transport links, so it’s easy for us to just hop on the night bus home, but occasionally we’ll get invited to a do out in the sticks and someone needs to get us there and back safely.
The obvious solution when you need to take your car on a night out is to have a designated driver – someone who is prepared to forgo a festive drink so that their passengers can let their hair down. Co-op Insurance have created a fun Designated Driver Roulette Tool to help those groups of friends who can’t decide between them who will stay sober and and who will get sloshed. It’s important to share the designated driving duties and take turns when possible so the same person doesn’t keep losing the lottery, unless they really want to that is. The designated driver tool also includes a suggested IOU, so you owe the driver a coffee for example, seems a fair deal!
In a recent survey by The Co-op Insurance, a whopping 744,000 drivers think that they will be over the legal alcohol limit at some point when they drive this festive season. Of the 2,000 drivers questioned, 10% said that they would be having at least one alcoholic drink per night out over Christmas, with nearly a fifth (18%) admitting to thinking that they would be over the legal drink drive limit when they drive home afterwards.
Despite years of widespread anti drink driving campaigning, there are a number of reasons people will choose to drink and drive over Christmas, some of the more common reasons include –
It won’t harm anyone
A taxi is too expensive
I don’t want to walk home
I’ve done it before
The roads will be quiet when I drive
Alcohol doesn’t affect me / doesn’t affect my driving
I can handle my drink
I know other people who drink and drive
I don’t want to rely on anyone else
Drivers who plan to drink drive perhaps don’t fully appreciate the consequences of their actions on the public and themselves, and if they are caught. According to the DVLA, those caught driving or attempting to drive whilst over the legal limit or unfit through drink can receive: 6 months’ imprisonment, an unlimited fine, and/or a driving ban for at least 1 year (3 years if convicted twice in 10 years).
A fifth (20%) of the drivers surveyed admitted that drink driving is something that they have done before. Nearly half (49%) of drivers who are having at least one drink will be carrying passengers, and are most likely to have their partners and children in the car.
These days the don’t drink and drive message seems to have sunk in for many people, but many drivers are still underestimating how much they can drink and be safe and legal to drive that night; and many drivers drink so much the night before that they’re still over the limit when they hop in their car to go to work the next day.
If you’re going out this Christmas, please make sure you know how you’ll be getting home, bus, taxi, or a lift home with a sober friend. I don’t want to sound preachy, but 3000 people each year are seriously injured or killed on our roads due to drunk drivers. It’s not worth the risk to you, your friends or loved ones. Please drive carefully, and drive soberly. Merry Christmas!
For more information on the research from The Co-op Insurance click here.
Last weekend we took the small boy to see Mr Popper’s Penguins at The Lowry in Salford Quays for a Christmas treat. The theatre production is based on the novel by Richard and Florence Atwater, and has been adapted for the stage by Pins and Needles Productions.
Mr Popper’s Penguins follows the story of Mr Popper, a painter and decorator by day. He dreams of Antarctic adventures and lives with his wife, living a normal, everyday, average life. One day he is astonished when a packing crate arrives on his doorstep, out of which waddles a penguin who he names Captain Cook. Alas Captain Cook is lonely and he is sent a mate to cheer him up – Greta the penguin from London Zoo. Soon the inevitable happens and Mr Popper’s house is filled with baby penguins; Popper and his wife, struggling to keep up with their demands for fish hatch a plan to get the penguins to help pay their way – by performing on stage!
Picture credit: Helen Murray
This musical adaptation of Mr Popper’s Penguins is packed full of original songs and puppetry which bring life to this remarkable family of performing penguins. I was absolutely captivated by the show, and the small boy was giggling away at the antics of the penguins. Mr Popper’s Penguins was lively and engaging, lots and lots of fun and the show just flew by.
Using penguin puppets and a remarkably adaptable set, the cast of Mr Popper’s Penguins bring the story to life, giving each penguin a unique personality, to the point when collectively our hearts broken for the lonesome penguin Captain Cook.
The songs throughout were really catchy and fun, and had the boy wiggling and jiggling in his seat along with the music. There wasn’t much audience participation throughout (this isn’t a panto), but the penguin dance routine at the end which the audience are invited to join in with is marvellous. The small boy insisted we waddle our way home afterwards and is still busting penguin moves days later!
The show is suitable for children aged 3+ and is about 55 minutes long. The small boy, who is 5 gave this a very big thumbs up!
Mr Popper’s Penguins is on at The Lowry, Salford Quays from Thursday 10th December 2015 to Sunday 10th January 2016.
With the central heating on pretty much all the time I’m finding that I’m thirsty a bit more than usual. Winter makes me feel like my skin is drying out too. The obvious solution to this is to drink more water. I’m not that keen on plain tap water and I’ll only drink bottled water if I’m out and about. Water is boring and tea and coffee fill me full of caffeine; so I try and limit those to a couple of cups a day, so I tend to drink copious amounts of Robinsons squash.
Since I was a girl I’ve always liked drinking squash. Hot or cold – it helps keep my fluid levels topped up. Plus if it’s sugar-free cordial there are very few calories to worry about. In the summer I make myself a refreshing pint of cordial (my favourite is usually apple and blackcurrant, but I’m also fond of lemon barley water). I fill the glass with ice and if I’m feeling fancy I’ll throw in a bit of fruit to nibble at once the drink is gone.
In the winter I like to make a hot flask of cordial for the family for our trips out. It’s something we all enjoy and when Jack Frost has nibbled at your toes it helps to warm your cockles. Likewise I always have a jug of cordial on the table during family meals. The great thing is you can dilute it to taste, we prefer a weaker cordial, but you can always add more.
I don’t really know why I tend to add fruit to the jugs of Robinsons squash. I guess it feels like I’m adding extra nutrients into the drink. Plus I know the family will eat the fruit once the drink is gone; more so than if I just gave them an apple It doesn’t have to be fresh fruit either, a handful of frozen berries would be a great addition to a nice chilled glass of squash.
I think that hot squash is a thing of beauty. If it goes cold then the best thing is I can still drink it without grimacing. In the winter I drink mug after mug of hot squash. I often keep a flask on my desk so I’ve got a steaming mug of orange squash at hand. If I’ve got a cold I often add a bit of powdered turmeric and give it a good stir, or a drizzle of ginger syrup which gives it a nice kick and the bit of fire feels like it’s fighting off some germs.
Robinsons squash is a really versatile product, with lots of flavours to choose from there’s probably one to suit everyone. What’s your favourite Robinsons squash and how do you drink yours?
I realise that I may be teaching my (blogging) granny to suck eggs here; but a couple of friends have recently been asking me how to improve their SEO. So I thought it was worth putting a blog post together about Alt Tags and how they work.
An Alt Tag is an alternative title for an image you will use in your blog post. Your alt tag will not be visible to your blog readers; but search engines who “read” your page will pick it up as a keyword. Every tiny bit of SEO can help your blog post rank a bit higher in the search engines. An alt tag will not throw your blog post to the top of the search engine rankings, but it will help to improve your SEO just enough to make it worth doing.
The only people who may be aware of your alt tag would be visually impaired people. Alt tags were originally meant to provide a text description of pictures, so people with screen-reader software would get a spoken-word description rather than it just read “IMAGE 123” for example. Ideally your alt tags should still accurately describe the image for visually impaired people.
We all like to add images to our blog posts; it makes them prettier and it breaks up the text a bit to make it easier to read. I use WordPress to blog, so I can only really tell you how to add an alt tag in WordPress. I can’t imagine it would be that much different on a different platform.
To add an Alt Tag to your image on WordPress you can do it one of two ways…
Go to “Add Media” and upload your image.
Select the image and the “Attachment Details” menu should appear on the right hand side of your screen. You should see a box called “Alt Text”. This is where you put your keyword. I am using my recipe for Lebkuchen Cake as an example, my chosen keyword for that blog post was “Lebkuchen Cake”, so my alt tag for that image was “Lebkuchen Cake”.
Enter your chosen keyword into the “Alt Text” box and click on “Insert into post”. You have added an alt tag to your post.
Or….
If your image is already inserted into the post and you want to add, change, check or update your alt tag, it’s pretty easy.
Make sure you’re in the “Visual” view (rather than the text view) and find the image you want to edit or check.
Click on the image and a small toolbar will appear with alignment options and a pencil icon; click on the pencil icon and it will take you into “Image Details”. This is where you can add or edit your alt tag.
Insert your chosen alt tag and click on “Update”. Remember to make it the same as your chosen keyword for your blog post.
You will need to alt tag every image you use in your blog post; but it’s really very simple and can make a difference to your SEO.
There are also title tags (eg title=”lebkuchen cake”) which do the same thing, but this is the pop-up caption that appears on-screen when you point to the image with your cursor. Another place for SEO keywords and again, keep it relevant because there’s even more chance a human will point to your picture and see this caption pop up.
It’s also worth noting that the WordPress template you use will need to pull the alt text from the image library into the page code. If the template’s not got anything in it about alt text, then it won’t get put into the HTML when the post is published, so you’ll have to add the alt tags in the second way I showed you. However, most of the most common WordPress templates have this built in as standard, but it’s worth checking on all the same.
So in a nutshell (or 678 words) that’s all you need to know about alt tags and what they do. Any questions?
At this time of year there are a million things to do and a million more things to think about. It had been in the back of my mind that I should probably clean my oven before Christmas, but I’d not done anything more about it. It seemed like a chore I could do without. However Oven Pride got in touch and suggested my Christmas dinner might taste a bit better if I did give my oven a good clean, they sent me a box of Oven Pride and it seemed I had run out of excuses not to clean it.
The challenge was to cook a Christmas dinner in my filthy oven, then give it a clean, then cook another Christmas dinner. Thankfully my family like turkey, so we were on!
I can’t remember the last time I cleaned my oven, I think it might’ve been sometime over the summer but I can’t be certain. Regardless it was filthy, the glass on the door was caked in brown stuff to the point where I struggled to see through it. The bottom of the oven had a slight dip in it, so anything that splatters or bubbles over pools there and quickly turns black, burnt and acrid.
I popped the turkey into the oven, and because our oven is used to fairly quick blasts of cooking we hadn’t realised how bad it was. After 45 minutes of the oven being on, the kitchen quickly filled with smoke and I had to keep the back door open. My eyes started stinging every time I went into the kitchen and regrettably I’d left a damp coat over a chair, so that stank of smoke and grease and had to be washed the next day. The kitchen reeked and it was very hard to spend any time at all in there whilst the oven was on. I hardly dared to imagine how the food would taste.
I’d cooked the turkey, stuffing, roast potatoes and roast parsnips in the oven. I’m veggie so I don’t know how the turkey tasted, but the roast potatoes and parsnips did have a slight smoky taste, and if I’m honest the whiff of the oven was still hanging in the air while we were eating, so I was very put off by it. I could only imagine what my guests on Christmas Day would think sat in an acrid, smoke-filled kitchen tucking into turkey and all the trimmings – not impressive. Action needed to be taken.
I was so disgusted I could hardly wait for the oven to cool down enough for me to get cracking with the cleaning. In the box comes a pair of gloves to protect your hands, a large bag to soak your oven shelves in and of course a big bottle of Oven Pride. Read the instructions carefully before you start, but it is very simple to do. I would recommend leaving it overnight rather than the 4 hour minimum. We left it for four hours but our oven was so filthy it needed a longer soaking, so we did the oven again, the second time overnight.
The shelves in the bag were amazing – a revelation. You could see the grime coming off them almost instantly and once they’d been left overnight and rinsed clean they shone like I’d never seen before. I was very impressed.
As you can see the oven is spotless, you could eat your dinner off it and those shelves are zingy clean and shiny! It was time to put it to the test, it was time to cook turkey number two!
I cooked the exact same Christmas dinner as before, only this time it was in a clean and shiny oven. This time there was no smoke, the kitchen was a nice place to be, all was as it should be.
The dinner was how it should be, the boys enjoyed the turkey, the roast potatoes and parsnips were really good (even if I do say so myself) and not at all acrid or smoky. Christmas dinner was a success!
I’m ashamed that I let my oven get in such a state. I promise to try and keep my oven clean from now on, knowing what a difference it makes to the taste of the food. Using Oven Pride is really simple, there’s very little elbow grease involved, and if you leave it overnight even the most stubborn oven grime is easily removed. I guess if you keep on top of it, cleaning your oven maybe twice a year then the filth doesn’t build up. Take it from one who knows, don’t let your oven get smoky and disgusting like mine.
Note: We are sent the Oven Pride to try for review purposes and we were compensated for cooking the meals, but all images and opinions are our own.
