I don’t think I’ve ever grown out of the excitement of the postman arriving – even though most of it is bills and junk these days. Both Akra Jr and Li’l Bhaji also have the post bug and run to the door at the sound of envelopes hitting the mat, but whereas Li’l Bhaji can easily be fobbed off with a clothing catalogue or takeaway menu, what Akra Jr covets most is postcards.

Fortunately, the grandparents seem to be doing enough travelling between them to keep us in a steady supply, however in my web wanderings I stumbled across Postcrossing – a postcard crossing scheme to get random cards from around the world – sort of a postcard version of Bookcrossing, really. I think I shall be holding it in reserve for one of those rare occasions when all grandparents are in the UK….

Just a flying visit as I’m supposed to be elsewhere (story of my whole day, if I’m honest).

• Wheel of the Year – I’m up to date now with the entries for February as far as I am aware. If I’ve missed you off, please let me know either using the comments here or the contact form on the entries page. Looking forward to seeing March’s entries very soon!
• NaNoWriMo 2003 – Okay, it’s taken me around four months to get around to it, but I’ve finally put back the NaNoWriMo novel which got lost in the redesign. If you haven’t heard of NaNoWriMo, it’s a mad month in November when insane people attempt to write a 50,000 word novel in the space of 30 days. It’s not a great thing of beauty, but it’s quite entertainingly bad in places. Do feel free to dip in and out of whenever you feel the whim.
• That Damned Fish – Bob now has white spot, otherwise known as the ich. Sort of an “Ichy Ishy”. I vaguely remember Zip telling me that fish keeping was soothing and relaxing – so I’m holding her personally responsible.
• Heating – back on, thank God/Goddess/Tao/divinity of choice.

That’s all for now. I’ll try and plan my day better tomorrow.

Self-confessed attention whore (ooo, we have something in common already!) C.M.Chase is the author of this week’s showcase blog: Taste The World. Given the title I was expecting a travelogue filled with exotic recipes, but on the whole I’m glad it wasn’t because I’ve been laughing like a drain since I clicked. (Random aside: “laughing like a drain” – what a bizarre idiom. Do drains find the world particularly funny? Enquiring minds need to know).

Instead, her posts are a healthy mix of reminiscences, observations and insights into her life written with a dash of sarcastic and self-depreciating humour. Her recent tribute to her grandfather is particularly moving and poignant, but she still had me smiling throughout. I’m still giggling over the thought of Jesus needing a microwave and on the whole, remind me not to eat at her place – particularly if there’s any cans of cat food about…

Do visit. Taste The World is worth it.

Just as Li’l Bhaji and me are both streaming with cold, the central heating boiler decides to pack up – great timing, huh?

Fortunately, we’re with one of those insurance schemes so we got an emergency boiler guy out this morning fairly promptly. The diagnosis? Fan motor is kaput – spares won’t arrive into Monday (hopefully before arctic conditions hit Worcester).

In the meantime, we’re huddled around a couple of fan heaters we had stored in the garage and have been out to buy hot water bottles for tonight (will just warm Li’l Bhaji’s bed with his bottle, not leave it in overnight as he’s still too young).

Today would be a great day to go back to bed and hide under the duvet…

Horrible children gave me their cold. Feeling sorry for myself. Back when I’m not doped up with cold medication.

I’m long over due for having a recipe entry. For those that haven’t seen my recipes before, they’re not meant to be haute cuisine – just stuff I’ve cobbled together for an easy, hassle free dinner. If you’re already an excellent chef who knows how to experiment, then they probably aren’t going to be useful to you.

Anyway, we’ve been having the occasional frozen chicken pie for when I can’t be bothered to do much cooking, but the quality seems to be degrading everytime I buy them – this is my attempt at recreating them while having more control over the quality of meat that goes in ‘em.

Chicken and Mushroom Pie

Ingredients

295g can of condensed mushroom soup
½ of the above emptied can full of milk
3 chicken breasts, diced
150g closed cup mushrooms, quartered
1 tbsp olive oil
a sheet of ready rolled puff pastry
a bit more milk to brush on the top

Method

1. Preheat oven to 220°C (425°F Gas Mark 7)

2. Fry the diced chicken in a pan with the olive oil for around 5 minutes then add the mushrooms and fry for 5 minutes more.

3. Add the soup and the milk, stir in well and heat for a couple of minutes.

4. Pour contents into a 1.2L (2 pint) pie dish.

5. Stick pastry on top, cut around edges so that it matches the shape of the pie dish and either chuck away the spare or use it to create pretty patterns on the top if you’re feeling flush with time and creativity. Put a little hole in the top, press edges with a fork to seal and brush with milk.

5. Bake in the oven for about 30 minutes.

6. Serve with new or mashed potatoes and lots of veg.

Serves: 4.

Your house tells the world that you ought to be a leader. You are a freedom lover and a strong person. You are shy and reserved. If you’ve drawn a cross on each of windows, you always want to live alone. Once you have a problem, you need a friend with you. Your life is always full of changes.

When it comes to love, you shut yourself off. It’s difficult to win your heart because you have decided to keep your feelings deep inside. You have a strong personality and you like to command, influence and control people.

You added a flower into your drawing. The flower signifies that you long for love. It also safe to say that others don’t see you as a flirt. You don’t think much about yourself.

When can I move in?! DrawAHouse.com

It shouldn’t surprise me really (Li’l Bhaji thinks he’s five years old at the best of times, rather than his tender years of not yet two), but my youngest son has decided he’d quite like to start school now.

It was my fault. He was running around the school playground, chasing the bigger boys who were doing a grand job of running away from him in mock fear, when the school bell went. A surge of children aimed for the reception classroom doors. I saw Li’l Bhaji heading in that direction, but assumed he would stop near the door and wait until he could see Akra Jr to say “bye bye” to.

I lost sight of him for a second – someone moved in between me and him. When they moved out of the way, I could no longer see Li’l Bhaji – a heart in mouth moment. Where had he gone?!

Then I saw the little blue bobble hat inside the school building, bouncing along and making a left turn into the cloakrooms. “STOP THAT TODDLER!” I shouted. Okay, I would have shouted that if I’d lived up to the drama of the occasion – in reality I sort of weakly asked the teacher “sorry … erm … excuse me … but would you mind getting my son back…”

Li’l Bhaji was hunted to ground and swiftly carried back to the entrance. He’d got as far as the boys’ toilets, apparently. I apologised. “Oh, don’t worry!” The teacher said, “we prefer them like that – no tears, no fuss… straight into the classroom nice and cheerfully!” I was impressed and offered to pick him up at 3.30pm, at which point she swiftly changed her mind.

Wise lady.

Things were not going well for our hero. Getting Bob home went okay with minimal bumps, but he appeared to have a scale missing once we got him in the tank – we can only assume that it got knocked at the shop during transfer from net to plastic bag. However, this wasn’t the big problem. The big problem was that the little fella refused to eat.

We followed instructions to the letter with the tank. Kept the lights off for the first 24hrs of our new guest and didn’t feed him until the following day. We opened the pack of special floating fish pellets that came with the tank under the guidance that this was the best possible food for our new pet and carefully measured out three meagre pellets into the bowl – aware that goldfish were renowned for not knowing when they were full and overeating until they made themselves ill and their tank rather manky in the process. Only, he didn’t exactly rush to eat them. Roundly ignored them, in fact.

We went out for the day (to see Chicken Little, no less) and on our return the pellets had vanished – hurrah, he’d found them and eaten them. Job done. Then the next day the pellets got ignored again – only this time they weren’t found later in the day and he spent most of the day, hiding away at the back of the tank behind the octopus. This didn’t bode well. Where was the “eat anything that’s vaguely digestable” goldfish I was promised in the manual, eh?

As anyone sane in the technological age (okay, that’s just me then… and you say it should read “insane”? Ooookay) does, my first stop was google. There was bound to be someone out there who could tell me if my fish was sick or whether this was normal fish pouty behaviour in a new tank, wasn’t there? Oooooh boy… wasn’t there just. I found a fish forum and posted a query – mentioning that damaged scale but commenting that as far as I could tell it had started to heal. Their cure for new fish lethargy and food refusal? Apparently, I should be testing the water daily, I should be getting hi-tech water testing lab equipment, I should be housing my 1 tiny goldfish in a tank half the size of the living room, it was obviously at death’s door and I only had myself to blame for being a BAD FISH OWNER!

And I thought fish were supposed to be restful!

I got myself into a bit of a state, as Zip and Nada will attest. How crap was I? Couldn’t keep a £3 fish alive in a £100 aquarium?! On Sunday, I popped into the pet store to pick up some Stress Zyme (for the fish, it’s the one that’s stressed… honest) and chatted to the fish guy there. You know what it was? Go on … guess.

The fish preferred flake.

Practically hoovered up the stuff this morning and is now frisky and perky and exploring its tank. I am NEVER going to read fish keeping forums again.

Today was Li’l Bhaji’s day at nursery, and this meant (it being half term) that I had the opportunity to do something a bit more grown up with Akra Jr. We hadn’t gone to the cinema in a while, so I picked a film that sounded quite good – Chicken Little. It sounded fairly mediocre, but Akra Jr was desperate to go see it – it was a U classification (for non-UK residents that is Universal – suitable for viewers aged 4+ and “horror effects should be mild and brief and should take account of the presence of very young viewers”) with “some scenes of mild peril”. Seemed perfectly suitable, if a little dull.

Oh how wrong could I be.

It didn’t bode well that the cinema seemed to have the volume racked up even higher than normal – Akra Jr is pretty sensitive to loud noise, and spent most of the adverts with his hands clamped over his ears until he acclimatised to it. Then came the movie. The first bit was okay, although (and oh god, am I going to sound like my mother) the speech seemed very fast and hard to follow, particularly for a younger child or anyone over thirty. Then came the bit when the main plot got going.

This was anything BUT brief mild peril. It was non-stop peril, involving aliens that reminded me a lot of the little robots that were in Minority Report (you know, the ones that wanted to read Tom Cruise’s corneas) only bigger. Unlike the scary parts in, say, Finding Nemo which were frightening but mercifully brief so you could relax and enjoy the rest of the film, this was a fairly constant pace of fear and chase. While the pig character was hyperventilating, Akra Jr was sat in my lap sobbing “pleeeeeeeeeeease can we go home, Mummy? I want to go home!”

I’d like to be able to review the rest of the film, but we left at that point. I’ve heard from friends who’ve watched to the end, that the final sequence was even scarier, so I think I made the right decision in taking Akra Jr out. I really think the British Board of Film Classification got it badly wrong with this film – following their criteria, I would have given it at least a PG rating. I would recommend anyone with small or fairly sensitive children NOT to take them to see this film.