Month: October 2012

Toad in the Hole

When I decided to add this to my library of blogs I thought I should finally find out why sausages in Yorkshire pudding mix is called ‘Toad in the Hole’. You’d think as I once lived in the good city of Wensleydale I’d know already, but I don’t. Allegedly it’s because the sausages peeping out of the Yorkshire pudding resemble toad’s legs popping out of a hole… well yes of course. Needless to say it’s raised some Kiwi eyebrows over here when I’ve mentioned I’m cooking it. They can’t judge, they have yo-yos and cheerios. So this is a good hearty meal and it includes sausages, and what child does not like a sausage or three? You are meant to make it with onion gravy, which I would if I was cooking it for adults but I think that extra effort would be lost on my children so I let them have tomato ketchup. I would like to stress at this point, that on average we have one meal a week that has ketchup with …

The comedy of children

Published by thethingsnotsaid

I find being mum to two small children really stressful, I think more than the average mum because I am a certified control freak and a nearly three year old and 16 month old will not be controlled, some days they won’t even be gently guided. I’m finding it doubly hard this week so thought I’d share a couple of funny stories from the past few weeks. First of all, the quick wit of Minnie: I often treat her to a juice bottle that is covered in garish pink patterns and Dora the Explorer on, you know the type, allegedly water but really highly flavoured and full of trash. I buy her the bottle as a treat and then for the rest of the week I fill it with water – how clever am I. Anyways one dinner time I thought I would educate myself on exactly what’s in it and picked up the bottle to read through the ingredients. My suspicions were right, seriously no natural stuff in there. Minnie starts screaming at me, …

Street Signs

Published by thethingsnotsaid

As I’ve been driving around Christchurch over the last six months I have seen loads of street names that mean something to me. Either they are of a place back in the UK or they are the name of a friend or family member. So I thought I would start taking pictures of them. I have ideas of making them into something to put on a wall somewhere, but for the time being I am going to share them with you. First one. I used to live very near the River Mersey and now I live near to this street. It’s nice to think that we are not the first people to have come over here from Merseyside. Mersey Street is actually a very pretty, tree lined avenue so whoever named this street must have had good memories of Liverpool. Much like me.