Week 43: It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Christmas prep has officially started in our house! I used to make most of my Christmas gifts, nowadays I'll settle for making a few. But with a toddler in tow, a baby on the go, work and a precarious house situation, I still have to start the prep early to ensure stuff actually gets done. On top of that, Christmas baking is usually best done in advance so it all takes a bit of planning.

I'm a firm believer in nothing beats homemade but I accept that sometimes, time constraints or cost of raw materials can be a bit of a dampener. That's not the case for mincemeat though, it is so easy to make and the ingredients are so readily available, it is totally worth making your own!

I use a trusted recipe by Delia Smith, can't beat Delia for the classics, right?

Ingredients:
- 450g ( or roughly 2)  Bramley apples, cored and chopped small (no need to peel)
- 225g of shredded suet
- 350g raisins
- 225g sultanas
- 225g currants
- 225g mixed candied peel
- 350g dark brown sugar
- grated zest and juice of 2 oranges
- grated zest and juice of 2 lemons
- 50g sliced almonds
- 4 tsp mixed ground spice
- 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
- 1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
- 6 tbsp brandy

If only you could smell through the screen, this smells a lot like Christmas already!

Method:
- Mix all the ingredients, except the brandy, in a large bowl. Cover and leave to rest overnight.
- In the morning, pre-heat the oven at 110ºC, cover the bowl with foil and put in the over for 3 hours. It sounds like an awful long time but you do not need to stir the mixture while it's in the oven, just leave it in there and forget about it for the whole duration.
- After 3 hours, get the bowl out of the oven and give the mix a good stir. It will look like it is swimming in fat, that's ok, that's how it's meant to look like.

- Leave the mixture to cool on your kitchen countertop, stirring once in a while.
- When the fat starts to coagulate, add the brandy and give it all a good mix again.
- Pack in sterilised jars and that's it, you're done!

A few personal observations:
- I find it's best to make this mincemeat a few weeks in advance so the flavours get a chance to develop.
- Don't worry about the quantity it makes, if you store it in a cool dark place, it keeps for years!
- As you use the apples with peel still on and use the zest of the lemons/oranges, I would recommend using organic produce.
- For the suet, I use the veggie version as I have many veggie friends and I wouldn't want to deprive them but I have used the beef suet in the past and I can honestly say, both work equally well.
- You could change some of the ingredients to suit your liking. I reckon replacing the currants/sultanas with some cranberries would be pretty fab.

Enjoy!

Week 42: Make your own chocolate spread

It's not always doom and gloom in this little witch's world and while pregnancy definitely turns me into a grinch, not everything is cause for a moan.

Earlier this week, I ran out of chocolate sprinkles, which, served on bread, is the breakfast of choice for my Dutch compatriots. I'm not a huge consumer of the stuff but my hubby and daughter are quite partial to it and with no trips to the continent planned for a while, I had to come up with an alternative, quick! I hate the chocolate spreads out there, particularly Nutella, I know I stand very isolated on this one, but I can't find a single redeeming feature to the stuff. Luckily for me, I remembered having the recipe for a homemade chocolate spread in one of my Belgian cooking books and I still had quite a few slabs of good quality Belgian chocolate in my pantry so I decided to give it a go.

After I posted pictures of the finished product on Facebook, I got many requests for the recipe (and many volunteers for sampling!) so here it is by popular demand.

All you need is 3 ingredients, yes, just 3!

- 200g good quality dark chocolate*
- 200g butter
- 400g tin of sweetened condensed milk

* I can never emphasise enough how important it is to use good quality ingredients, especially when it comes to chocolate! I use Belgian chocolate that I bring back from the home country but failing that, my chocolate of choice would be Green & Black's cooking chocolate. Good chocolate needn't break the bank, Aldi and Lidl tend to have decent chocolate for a good price, just make sure it's got a high cocoa content.

Method:
- Put a glass bowl over a pan of hot water, making sure the water doesn't actually touch the bowl.
- Break the chocolate in small pieces and cut the butter in small cubes then melt the lot slowly in your glass bowl, stirring constantly.
- When all the chocolate and butter has melted, remove from the heat and stir in the condensed milk.
- Spoon the mixture in clean jars and that's it, you're done!

I can promise you this will work out cheaper than Nutella and taste a million times better. The only "snag" is that it needs to be kept in a cool place and consumed within a couple of weeks.

I can confirm that our daughter gave it her seal of approval the next morning. So did the few lucky neighbours who got to sample some.

A few personal thoughts on the recipe:
- It makes quite a lot for my little family to consume within a couple of weeks so I would consider halving the quantities next time.
- For a nuttier, crunchier spread, you could try adding finely chopped hazelnuts.
- For a more fancy spread, you could try adding a pinch of sea salt, chili or pink peppercorns, all of which work well with chocolate.
- I find the spread still a little too sweet to my liking so I might try making it with evaporated milk next time.
- For the coconut fans out there, I'm wondering whether you could replace the condensed milk with coconut milk and even the butter for coconut oil. Then you could also add a bit of desiccated coconut for a bit of texture?

Let me know if you give this recipe a go and particularly if you attempt any of my suggested alterations, I'd be curious to know what you thought of it.

Week 40: Gender disappointment

Well here's another post that's sure to loose me the title of "mum-to-be of the year". In fact, a quick trawl on the pregnancy forums out there tells me this topic is highly controversial. But pregnancy and motherhood is riddled with taboos which, in my opinion, just isn't helpful. Mommy guilt is bad enough without having to be scared of talking openly about your feelings and experiences. So I'm going to be very open here, and if it looses me a few friends, well so be it.

We had our 20 week scan this week and it revealed that our baby is sporting some optional extra bits... yes, we're having a boy. So apparently, hubby and I will now have the perfect family with "one of each". This is a whole topic unto itself, a concept I wholeheartedly disagree with, surely the perfect family has nothing to do with how many children you have or what their gender is? But I won't get into this here, this isn't the purpose of my post.

Of course being told that our baby is seemingly full of health was a huge relief and cause for celebration. But when I got home, reality dawned on me and I started crying. I cried incessantly for two whole days. Why? Well, I was/am suffering from what's called "gender disappointment".

I hadn't realised until then how much I'd hoped this baby would be another girl. Not because I don't like boys, I have a tribe of nephews who are all amazing little dudes and I love them very much. No, I have nothing against little boys. Through the tears and the overwhelming sadness, I have asked myself why it was that I should be so disappointed.

This is what I've come up with: Firstly, I'd let people around me convince me that I was going to have another girl, it was just the way it was meant to be. With my first pregnancy, I was very weary of that and I'd protected my feelings but I guess having had a girl already, it made it easier to believe. We'd already started imagining this little girl and had even chosen her name. So to suddenly be told that this baby isn't a girl meant I had to let go of the little girl I'd created in my head. Yes, it may sound silly to you, but I'm having to mourn an imaginary baby.

Secondly, in my twisted hormonal brain, having a little girl meant having another Nimue. My rational self knows that another girl would not have been another Nimue, but emotionally, that is how it felt. I was looking forward to re-use all the pretty outfits that I have loved so much but that she's grown out of so quickly, I didn't get a chance to appreciate them enough. Now I'm having to sell all the clothes I had been hoarding should we have another girl, and the thought is simply heart wrenching. It means saying goodbye to Nimue's babyhood, something I just wasn't quite ready for. So on top of having to mourn an imaginary baby, I'm having to mourn the baby that has been and gone.

There are many reasons out there why parents suffer from gender disappointment, all equally valid (or invalid depending on where you stand) but these are my reasons. I also know this will all go away the second I lay eyes on this little boy and so in a way, I'm happy we found out early so we have some time to process our grief and disappointment before he arrives.

It may seem abhorrent to some that anyone should suffer from disappointment about something as trivial as gender. But having talked with some amazing mummy friends, I now realise that these feelings are far from unusual and they're most definitely not reprehensible. Pregnancy and motherhood is already an emotional minefield and most of these emotions are impossible to explain or justify but it doesn't make them any less real.

So judge me if you must, I actually don't care. I, in the meantime, will happily lend an ear to any mummy-to-be who's having a hard time whether it be because of a crappy pregnancy, because of gender disappointment or any other emotional turmoil that we're not supposed to talk about. Because motherhood would be so much nicer if we supported and appreciated each other through our differences rather than insisting on painting it as this ideal, almost transcendental experience.