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Rice Krispie Treats

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At the moment I am on the Joe Wicks, aka The Body Coach, 90 Day SSS Plan.  I fancied a challenge and my body needs some care after all the neglect of repatriation and back surgery. The rest of my family are not on the programme so they still get treats. The trick for me is to make them with dairy. That way I won’t be tempted.

Take these Rice Krispie bars for instance.  Made with a large Galaxy milk chocolate bar I had hanging around. Once that is in, there is no way I am going anywhere near them, even though they smell so pretty.

That said, I have some ideas of what I am going to do when I finish the SSS Plan (Joe is an advocate of occasional treats, I’ve seen the cheesecakes his brother makes!) which I will share with you at the end.

Ingredients

50g coconut oil (could be butter but this probably makes them a little healthier)

200g milk chocolate

100ml golden syrup

150g Rice Krispies

A handful of jelly sweets to create a little surprise (I used some Halloween themed Haribo we had lying around)

Recipe

Break up the chocolate into a glass bowl. Fit the bowl snuggly over a pan of simmering water and watch it melt.  Give it a stir to help it along. Put the coconut oil in a large mixing bowl and pour over the still hot, melted chocolate.  The oil will submit to the chocolate, but help it along with lots of stirring until you have a smooth consistency. Then add in the syrup.  Finally add in the Rice Krispies and sweets and stir until it’s an even, sticky mess.

Pour it into a lined brownie tin.  I used a loose bottomed one because it’s easier to get it out at the end. Press it down really firmly so it’s tightly packed into the tin.  Put it in the fridge for a couple of hours so the chocolate sets again.

You will now have a breeze block of chocolate, Krispie yumminess. Get a long, sharp knife and cut up into bars.  My knife kept getting stuck to the sweets so they weren’t the neatest of bars, but seriously “tidy” is not the priority here.  I keep them in the fridge and they work for lunch box treats or an after school snack, right through the week.

Alternatives I have been thinking of are:

Easy dairy alternative – use dark chocolate.

I am looking forward to trying out the new Green & Black Velvet Edition, which are dark chocolate with flavours. Not all are dairy free, for instance the Salted Caramel isn’t (yes I have checked even though it’s another 56 days to go). I was thinking of using some for the following combinations:

  • Mint chocolate and chopped up liquorice allsorts.
  • Orange chocolate with chopped up hazelnuts.
  • Sea Salt chocolate and miniature marshmallows.

Finally, and this one may take a few test runs to get right; dark chocolate, smooth peanut butter, chopped Medjool dates and some crushed salted peanuts. May get a caramel, peanut taste sensation??

What would you do to pimp up the traditional Rice Krispie bar?

* this blog has not been sponsored by Kellogg’s, Bassett’s or Green & Black’s, but if any of them would like me to invent some recipes for promotional purposes, please do get in touch.

 

 

 

 

Would I have been a better mother in the 70’s?

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Our children are six and seven years old. Both are at school. They can use forks. Conversation with them is coherent and interesting, sometimes illuminating and educational. One of them can wipe their bum, the other still prefers to let others take care of that.  Our family can walk 5km in about an hour. At least once a week, they make their breakfast without setting off the smoke alarm. OK, that’s cereal day.

We are officially parents of children: no babies, no toddlers.

Quite often, either Gareth or I will turn to the other and say these words; “I would never have talked to my parents like our children do to us.” This is often followed by a frustrated debate about why our children can be so disrespectful. Gareth leans towards our children being punks, I lean towards our skills being deficient. We settle on, maybe we’re being punk’d?

I could be paranoid but I get the feeling that our parent’s generation is quietly wondering what all the fuss is about. Why do mum’s get so obsessed with spending quality time with their children? Not cooking with mushrooms because the littlest doesn’t like them. Children attending a minimum of three out-of-school activities a week. Shelves stacked with books about being good parents. General bemusement at our ritual of following the perfect parent, with perfect children on Instagram and then complaining that it makes us feel like terrible mothers.

When the children are feral and I’m screaming into the vortex that is my children’s total disregard of anything that isn’t the chaos they want to be in right now, I am aware that anyone over the age of 60 who is observing, is saying to themselves, ‘Children were never like this in my day’.

It’s probably true. But is that because they were better parents? Or were we better children? Does the latter really follow the former?

Here are my thoughts.

Peppa Pig has a lot to answer for.

In fact, all cute, clever cartoons and children’s shows that have an underlying message that children should rule the world and adults are idiots should have limited viewing. Peppa is a spoilt, precocious little madam.  If she was my child (and I mean if she were human and real) I wouldn’t take her out in public, for fear she might open her mouth with some condescending putdown to any adult she meets.  Then there are all the superhero cartoons that have children saving the world and adults either don’t exist or are very much sidelined in the crazy, complicated plots. When you do get an adult in a cartoon, like the ridiculous Mayor Goodway in Paw Patrol, they are completely useless and obsessed with a pet chicken!

We were brought up on Rainbow, Blue Peter, Fireman Sam, Postman Pat, Thomas the Tank Engine, Inspector Gadget and Danger Mouse, who I assume was an adult judging by his dulcet tones. Adults were heroic, clever or at the very least coherent in these programmes. Even in books like the Famous Five, where the protagonists were children, the adults were at least respected.

Media and entertainment is such a massive part of our children’s lives and if the common theme is that children are in charge and adults are unnecessary, then is it any wonder we get some resistance when we try to take the lead in our children’s lives?

I am not shirking the blame here for behaviour I don’t like witnessing from my children. Happy to take full responsibility for my lack and failings. But I am saying that perhaps we have more of an uphill challenge than our parents had when we were children.

It’s true, I wouldn’t have given my parents the same amount of back chat and sass as our children have given us by the age of six.  Oh no, I saved sarcastic retorts and accusations for the more acceptable age of 16.

When I was young, I think I was more frightened/in awe of my parents, because there was a much bigger gap between adults and children.  We spent less time with them.  We were probably in the home with them more, but we weren’t necessarily engaging with them.  I used to spend hours in the garden on my roller skates, or biking round the estate we lived on, and I did my homework in my room on my own. My dad and I went horse riding together and we would go to WHSmiths most Saturdays, but when he was watching Match of the Day or reading the paper, I would make myself scarce. I did talk to my parents but I knew very little about their lives or their thoughts.  It made them more mysterious and removed from my little world. At school I didn’t know my primary school teachers’ first names, if they were married or had children or what they liked to do on weekends.  I was only given access to them as my teacher. In relation to a couple of them, I’m glad I didn’t know!

As 21st century parents we’re encouraged to interact with our children as much as we can.  That’s not a bad thing. I don’t want my children to feel distant from me or that they can’t ask me to hang out. They certainly don’t.  I would say my children think it’s their right to have all of my attention, all of the time. So much so that if I were to sit down and read a book on a Saturday afternoon, they would hunt me down and do everything in their power to distract and persuade me to play their game.  This would include bitter complaints of being bored and me being a mean mum.

I actually think we do have a relatively healthy balance of our children getting to do what they want and them coming along for what we want to do.  For example, we have fought hard to make family walks an acceptable part of the weekend routine, but we have endured many miles of weeping and gnashing of teeth from child number one, and promises of ice creams or lemonades at the finish line are standard tools for getting compliance.

It’s not like I loved family walks when I was a child or that I loved every meal mum put on the table.  The difference is that when I was seven, I would generally accept what the adult said as final, and whilst I might have lodged a complaint here and there, I would never have dared to embark on an argument with an adult over what I wanted. I feel like I argue with my children every day, usually between the hours of 4pm and 8pm.

I realise that the movement of giving children more empowerment has the best of intentions, in terms of children not being abused, neglected or overlooked. However, I still want children to realise that for the most part, particularly in a loving family, adults should be trusted, respected and allowed to lead.  We all need our time to be children, to have little or no responsibility, to not have to make decisions for the greater good, instead just make decisions that are in a child’s realm of understanding. Children should spend time away from adults, so they can play without agenda, exercise their imaginations and figure out that boredom is a state of mind, not a lack of food or television.

It feels like it’s too late to bring up Charlie and Lola. Our children are growing up in an entirely different world, but I don’t want to make that an excuse for rudeness.  I am going to fight hard to teach my children that we have their best interests at heart, that we are ultimately in control until they are 18 and we have the right to say no. I believe they will thank us for it when they finally are given the burdens of adulthood. I have one request of the parenting generations who came before us; don’t judge us or our children based on the world of yesteryear.  Seriously we would love to go back to a simpler time before Peppa Pig and iPhones, but it’s too late.  Maybe have some sympathy for those that are the pioneering parents in the era of Apple, Netflix, social media and XBox. We’re literally fighting for our rights!

Old fashioned slice of sweetness

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The Louise Cake is a classic Kiwi tea time slice. I imagine that it’s been around for decades, because first of all it’s called Louise so it must date back to the Seventies at least. It doesn’t have any fancy ingredients, a simple treat that goes very well with a cup of tea and a yarn. It’s made up of three layers; “cakey” biscuit bottom, jam and coconut meringue topping.

What I love about this, is that you can easily make it gluten and/or dairy free, it’s nut free too so you can pack it off in the children’s lunch boxes or donate it to a school cake sale.  Plus you can have fun with the middle layer; it could be any flavour jam, or lemon curd, caramel or if you can eat nuts, you could spread Nutella in there. Oh my gosh, I want to do that right now! Despite having three layers, it is quick and easy to make and it looks really pretty.

I’ve used the recipe given by Natalie Oldfield in the The Great New Zealand Baking Book and I’ll note the variations where I would make them.

Ingredients.

For the cake:

150g softened butter (for dairy free you could use 150g margarine or 130g coconut oil, I use odour free)

1/4 cup caster sugar

2 egg yolks

2 cups of self raising flour (for gluten free you can use the equivalent GF flour, or go half GF flour and almond meal, if you can eat nuts. It will come out a slightly denser base, which is no bad thing)

3/4 cup jam/curd/caramel/Nutella

For the meringue:

2 egg whites (I actually add a third here, which I know wastes a yolk but it’s worth it for a higher meringue)

1/2 cup caster sugar

1 and 1/2 cup desiccated coconut (if you don’t like coconut you could just have it as plain meringue, but unless you are allergic I would suggest trying it as it’s subtle)

Recipe.

Pre-heat your oven to 180°, or 160° if it’s a fan oven. Grease and line a 30cm by 20cm slice tin (I used a square 22cm by 22cm, loose bottomed tin. The loose bottom makes it easier to get out without crushing the meringue)

Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy (praise the Lord for my Kitchen Aid), then add the egg yolks and beat well.  Sift the flour in and mix in thoroughly.

Now with a doughy mixture you can press it into the bottom of the tin.  I use my fingers to get it right to the corners and edges, then the back of a spoon to get a level and smooth finish. Then spread your middle of choice over the top, I used strawberry jam for the one above.

Whisk up the two egg whites with the sugar until you have a thick, going towards stiff consistency. Fold in the coconut, or not if you don’t like it (weirdos!).  Gently spread the meringue on top of the jam, on top of the cake.

Bake for 20-25 minutes, to when the meringue is browning on top. Let it cool off fully in the tin.

Pop it out of the tin, and I would cut 12 slices out of this.

It’s just so yummy.

 

We’ll always have ice cream – Part Two.

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Our family have worked through some major life changes in the last few months.  Moved country, sold our home, given up our dog, new job, new schools, new friends and I’ve (temporarily) given up sweets.  These are all major changes. All. Of. Them.

I’m not an expert in child psychology or parenting, but I generally fulfil the role of Change Management Co-ordinator in our family, so I thought I would share some things I’ve learnt along the way. As I said in Part One, children do adapt to change but it takes time and they need help to navigate through the choppy waters of change.  As their parents, we are in the best position (frankly it’s our responsibility) to help them along the way.  And at the same time, parents can make things harder if they’re not switched on to the version of events as experienced by the little people. Something I realise now I have hindsight on the first half of this year.

It’s not surprising, given I blog, that I believe when you know there are changes coming, it’s good to communicate with your children about what’s around the corner.  Children want to know things.  They are constantly asking questions, wanting to know what we are doing on the weekend, how many days until Christmas, what cake can they have for their birthday, who’s coming for lunch on Sunday, what did the person on the other end of the phone say, how old will I be when they get married?!?! And nothing frustrates them more than the passive, blow off. I’m not saying we communicate on the big changes, so they can have an input. I personally think children should be allowed to be children and their opinions on the big decisions of life are not required in order for the adults to make decisions for the family. However, when our decisions are going to have an impact on their “normal” life, then I think it is important to talk to them about it.  When we knew we were coming home to the UK, we took the children out for a hot chocolate and explained what would be happening.  We gave them time to ask questions and we answered them as fully as we could.  How exactly the container was going to be put on the ship was a little out of my expertise, but I talked about cranes and such like, it seemed to help….

The thing with communicating with young children, is you have to be aware that their internal interpretation of what you have said, may not be as accurate as their nodding heads would lead you to believe.  Check in with them regularly to find out what their understanding of the situation is. It was a few months before the move that we told our children, and there were smaller changes happening along the way. We would remind them of what was happening, ask them if they had any concerns or questions.  Minnie was excited about going back to the UK where her grandparents and cousins lived, but I needed to clarify that we would still have to travel to visit them and we wouldn’t see them every day.  For a while there, she believed that the UK was one happy village where all our family lived next door to each other.

Timing is everything. Yes communicate, yes be honest, but sometimes it’s not best to tell the children things as soon as you know or when it’s still not fully certain.  When we arrived in the UK, we had to go on a waiting list for the village school.  One weekend we were all in the car and I knew a place was coming up for Jackson at the village school so I was talking to Gareth, in ear shot of the children, about getting new uniforms etc. The following week, the school he was currently in called to ask if Jackson was leaving at the end of the week, because that’s what he was telling people.  When I talked to him about it, he said that there wasn’t any point making friends because he wasn’t staying at this school – eek! I had to do some back tracking there.  Lesson learnt: children can listen to a conversation in the front of the car whilst watching a film in the back. That whole thing about males can’t multi-task must kick in after puberty/their wedding day, or something?

When the changes are big and stressful for you, you need to find your own peace.  Children know when their parents are struggling with something, probably ours do more than others as we’re ‘heart on our sleeves’ kind of people.  When we were preparing to leave, we had a lot going on.  The house had work to be done to get it ready to sell, we were both trying to finish well at work, our beloved dog needed to find a new home, and fundamentally we were both really sad to be leaving NZ.  I think it would be ridiculous to suggest we should (or even could) have hidden some of the real emotions we were feeling through all of this.  I burst into tears when we said goodbye to our dog and sobbed as we landed at Heathrow. The children saw I was human and was feeling things like they were. However, I know I exposed the children to too much of my stress and frustration about the whole thing. I wish that in the really stressful times, I had taken a moment to say to myself – I am confused, I am angry, I am upset, I am not in control.  I give those things to God (you can send your concerns to whoever or whatever you’d like to give them to) and choose to not burden my children with them. It seems overly simplistic but acknowledging those feelings and choosing my attitude for the day, i.e. not shouty, grumpy and irrationally strict mummy, would have helped them to feel more secure in the changes.

On my best days, I managed to share the fun in the changes. Ultimately, I want my children to not fear or hate change, because change can often be the best thing ever, even change that is hard can have positive outcomes, so to be able to adapt and not lose hope when things change in your life, is a great strength to have. When we first arrived in the UK, we tried to see as much of the family as we could; that way the children immediately saw the benefits to be being back on this side of the world.  We signed up for the National Trust, we went to Legoland, we ate really good fish and chips, travelled on a train, I took them to an M&S food hall and we put the heating on so they could marvel at the wonder of radiators. We tried to highlight the exciting things about leaving one country and discovering another. Looking for the bright side is a skill I want my children to have.

Change can come in so many forms. It can affect one part of your life or be a change that alters everything in your life. Children are resilient and they will adapt, but there is much we can do as parents to help them come out the other side, stronger, happier and more confident in who they are and what they can achieve.  What our family have discovered is when the tough days come and it feels like we’re on the wrong side of overwhelming, there is always ice cream to bring a bit of comfort, joy and delight.

 

 

Dear Joe Wicks

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As you have become the fifth member of our family since I embarked on your 90 Day SSS Plan, I thought it would be nice to give you a personal update on my progress so far. This is not to say that your Support Heroes aren’t perfectly lovely, they really are very helpful and friendly. Although I have to confess I did nearly come to blows with one of them over the dairy substitute for yogurt.  I really do dislike soy but they dug their heals in about it.  Something about the macros and fat content ruining my fat burning. On reflection I’m pleased they persevered as full almond yogurt is prohibitively expensive, and the soy with a touch of almond works fine as long as there isn’t too much of it in the recipe. More on that later.

I am very pleased to say that I am now a Cycle One graduate.  Submitted my measurements yesterday and as I carry on with Cycle One rules for the time being, I am looking forward to getting my Cycle Two instructions.

Let’s talk results first. I can confirm ‘sad step’ is right. After four and a half weeks of faithfully sticking to the recipes (so much so that the scales are permanently sat on my counter), saying no to chocolate and Candy King, having only four glasses of wine over the entire month and nailing 23 cardio sessions, I have lost exactly 1kg. I have to confess, I had a wee bit of a sulk about that on Cycle One Graduation Day. I’m better now.  It’s possible that during ‘Shape’ and ‘Sustain’ the weight could still ‘Shift’ so I’m going to ignore the voice that is shouting, ‘Seriously?!? Put some chocolate on your Ocado app girlfriend, it won’t make no difference. Get used to that tummy lady, it ain’t going anywhere. And what were you doing this for anyways, no one expects a 41 year old mother of two to look good in jeans!  Baggy tops all the way pet.’  Because whilst the weight loss was pretty unimpressive, there were losses in other areas that actually have a more real effect on my life.  I lost me some inches baby! Three off my waist and two and a half off my hips. I am currently sitting in a pair of Jack Wills skinny jeans.  That’s right, not nice and forgiving GAP or Next jeans, no.  These are “we really only design for undernourished students” Jack Wills jeans. That’s progress.

I’m just going to side step the before and after photos. Apart from anything, my family read these blogs and they don’t need to see me in my Alan Whickers, never mind a rogue stranger that might stumble upon my blog.  Me and the hubby studied the ones from 30 days ago and the ones from this week and we were hard pushed to see any changes. Again, it’s early days, plenty of time to get concerned about aesthetics.

All in all, I am feeling fitter and healthier and my clothes are sitting on me a little better so these are positive results. I thank you.

When I say that you have become part of the family I mean that your name and your voice are as much a part of our household as the rest of us.  Phrases like, ‘Hurry up, we need to get home so I can do “a Joe Wicks” before dinner’ and ‘Is this something Joe says we have to eat?’ are quite common place. Your cheeky chappy voice is often what wakes up my children at six thirty in the morning, as I squeeze a HIIT in before breakfast.  I have to say, my children have very mixed feelings about you, as whilst they are quite fascinated by your workouts and even sometimes try to join in (my six year old son’s interpretation of a burpee is priceless), they have not always enjoyed the meals.

Which brings me to the food side of the plan.  I’ll tell you now, I’ve never followed a diet.  As I have always loved exercise and I’m a pretty healthy eater (apart from the serious sugar addiction) I’ve never needed to get really serious with something like Weight Watchers.  Frankly fads like the Atkins Diet seem ridiculous! So this is the first time in my life when I have had a prescribed eating plan. Due to a bulging disc followed by surgery earlier in the year and then moving back to the UK in May (by the way, when you have finished in the States, get yourself to NZ they will love you!) my eating and exercising has been terrible so I thought this would be a focussed way to learn new habits and challenge myself.  Plus I am totally curious to see if I can get muscle definition on my upper body for the first time in my life.

I already plan our family meals for the week ahead so filling in your meal planners wasn’t too much more effort.  I am the only one on the SSS Plan, but I didn’t want to have to cook separate meals in the evening so I “adapted” your meals to make sure my husband didn’t feel deprived and my children were getting the carbohydrate they need for their growing bodies.  For the most part, I think we got away with it.  Breakfast and lunches I did my own thing and everyone else had their usual.  At dinner time, if I was on a low-carbohydrate meal I would just add rice, pasta or potato to whatever I was cooking. Apart from nearly blowing off the heads of my children with your Thai chicken curry (totally my fault, I was way too generous with the paste!) and needing to pimp up the salmon fishcakes (hope you don’t mind, I added some lime zest and just a spoonful of creamed coconut to give them more flavour), all the meals were very successful.  The favourites were probably the Chicken Cashew Curry and Lean Mince.

I found lunches that worked for me.  Basically anything that didn’t require more than 40g of yogurt.  Being dairy free and even with the substitution of soy/almond yogurt, some of the dressings were just too, well yogurty. And on that note, again I hope this is OK, I changed the 235g of soy yogurt you’re meant to add to jelly for the Mousse Me Up snack to about 60g of yogurt as that first attempt was just nasty.  I am really hoping the snacks will be different in Cycle Two as I only really liked two out of this list. The day I gave a protein shake a go was traumatic.

You’ve certainly introduced me to a good selection of tasty new recipes that I will use again. Plus my husband and I have learnt that we don’t need carbohydrate with every meal to feel full and happy at the end. That said, I am looking forward to the freedom I hear I am about to get in Cycle Two as we’re all a little bored of the limited selection of Cycle One.

I found you through YouTube HIIT workouts so doing these a few times a week has been relatively easy.  Although I do love to run, and after my back surgery, doing lots of fast squats can be dicey. Therefore I balanced three 25 minute HIITS with two over-6km runs every week. Hope that’s OK?  I am preparing for the weights coming in on the next Cycle. I know this is good for a forty-something mum as my bones need to keep their density, however jumping and running keeps me sane so I am a little concerned that whilst the food side of things may take a turn for the better, pumping the iron may be the biggest challenge so far.

As I am sure you will be curious to know how I get on in Cycle Two and all this feedback is hopefully welcome by you and your team of heroes, I’ll write again in 30 days.

Love your work.

Yours faithfully, Claire

 

 

 

 

We’ll always have ice cream – Part One.

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There are many observations and pearls of wisdom that I have heard over my time as a parent:

“It gets better”

“Try not to be anxious about it, they smell your fear.”

“Oh I breastfed my children until they were one and they never get colds.”

“You can’t give in to them or they will just keep doing it.”

“I’m sure that’s perfectly normal but perhaps just go to the doctors to check it out.”

“My my, what spirited children you have.”

In relation to all this moving around the world business we keep subjecting them to (OK it’s only been twice in five years but it feels pretty regular from where I’m sitting), you often get one of the most popular phrases about children said to you:

“Children are really resilient, they will adapt to the changes.”

And it’s true.  Children are resilient and they do adapt. However, that 10-word sentence does not tell you how they will adapt, or what you should do to help them through change, or at what point you will have pushed their resilience too far.

In terms of change, emigrating to another country is arguably one of the biggest you can experience in your life.  My children have done it twice already, and I have a sneaky suspicion they will be doing it at least one more time whilst they’re living under our roof. As they were babies the first time, they don’t remember that change at all.  Our eldest was two and a quarter and she doesn’t remember the house in Liverpool, the friends she had, the long flight over.  All they both know is Christchurch, New Zealand.  For them, that is home and where all their memories are from.

Which means even though this second move is in fact us coming back to our home country, they view it as emigrating. Yes they are coming back to the place where all our family live, but as we have moved to a part of the UK that their parents don’t know and where we have no family nearby, it is essentially moving to a foreign country!

It’s a big change for them and nearly six months on, they are still processing it.  So yes they adapt, but it doesn’t happen overnight. This rang true to me yesterday, when I was talking to the head teacher of their new school.

We are celebrating a victory this week.  Minnie has finally been given a place in the village school.

One of the biggest challenges a family will face when they move, even just from one town to another, is getting their child(ren) into school.  Where you live is crucial to where your children go to school.  We got it wrong in New Zealand. We bought a house that we loved on a street we loved, only to find out two years later, when Minnie was about to start school, that we were 14 houses out-of-zone for the school that was closest to us.  Despite me creating a brochure on how awesome our daughter was, the school’s hands were tied and as the in-zone school didn’t have great reviews, we had to apply for out-of-zone places to schools further away.  Wonderfully, both our children got into a fantastic school and the only downside was that I had to drive them.

I was determined to get it right this time.  Unfortunately, over in the UK, even when you live in a house that is in-zone for the school you want, you might not get a place, because it’s a numbers game over here. If they have too many already in, then you’re out. It took seven weeks from landing to get the children in a school that was five miles away.  A lovely school, but not our village school.  We joined the waiting list.  Then in September, we found out that there was a space for Jackson – yay! Surely, they would then take his big sister, who is in Key Stage Two where you can push out the class size and she’s such a lovely, compliant pupil, a blessing to all teachers who are fortunate enough to have her in their class? Nope.

What had been really good news, turned into the worst news.  Now I had two children in two schools, that begin and end at the same time, but are five miles apart. You do the math on that one.

In short, not an ideal situation. Thankfully, you can appeal.  Which we did.  And like a beautiful miracle, a rainbow in the sky, an unexpected gift, we won! In two weeks time, BOTH my children will be pupils at the delightful village school, where they can make friends, introduce me to their friend’s mummies so I can make friends, have play dates after school and most delightfully of all WALK TO SCHOOL!

I’ve totally digressed from what I was going to tell you, but it’s good news, and who doesn’t like good news? Plus it’s scene setting…

…so I am talking to the rather disgruntled (remember the school didn’t want to take Minnie) head teacher as she rather brutally, but at the same time graciously says even though she’s not happy Minnie has been given a place, she can start after half term (it was hard to hear but her honesty makes me think I will grow to like this woman and I’m determined to show her that having the full team Cowles in her school will be the BEST THING EVER). Concerned that Minnie may get wind of this conflicted welcome, I tactfully say that I hope they will help Minnie settle as she has just found her place in the second of three schools she has attended in one year, and although she is the best pupil ever and a blessing to any classroom she comes into, she may need extra encouragement as she once again gets to know another classroom of strangers. In her reassurances that they will, the head teacher comments that in fact, Jackson had said he was missing his old school. But not the second one, the first one, in NZ.

And this is my point. What I wanted to say right from the start, but took a long walk to get to.

Children do adapt to change. In twenty years time, this change will be one of many character building changes that our children will have adapted to and learnt just how resilient, courageous and awesome they are. But right now, in what Americans might call “the adaption phase”, change can feel tough and overwhelming for our little people. It isn’t an overnight thing.

So in Part Two (I’ve split this up into two blogs, otherwise I break one of the golden rules of blog writing, “Don’t try to fit a book into one blog, rather make a book out of many blogs and cash in!”) I’m going to tell you what I have learned about helping children adapt to change.

Nail biting stuff hey.

When the dust settles

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In a few days time, we will have been in the UK for five months.  That’s almost half a year!  It has gone by so quickly, but I also think I should get some kind of a badge for the 143 days of “settling in” graft I’ve put in.

Repatriating has been one of the hardest things I’ve done in my life. It sits somewhere above emigrating and mercifully quite a bit below IVF on my hard things to do chart. I think what I find hardest is the underlying sense of being just a little bit lost in my life. Which is even more unsettling when you are a 41 year old wife and mother, who should really have her shit together by now.

In actual fact my level of “togetherness” is probably not bad, all things considered.  I feel like I grew up a lot in my thirties and it turned out to be quite a decade of achievements and milestones, personally and professionally. I have my faults and I still wonder at how I can be such a selfish wee rascal sometimes, but on balance, I’m relatively at peace with who I am.  So I’m not a basket case or anything….yet.

Listen, it’s not like I’m getting up in the morning, forgetting to put socks on and walking through my days distracted by the feeling I have left a child somewhere. I know where we all are and from one week to the next, I have a long list of things I need to do and places to be.  However, in terms of the greater picture of who I am and why I am here, I feel a little like a child who has wandered from her mother in the kitchen department of John Lewis and is now standing in mens clothing with a ball of panic in her tummy, nervously spinning around looking for her mum (aka safety and security) to appear over a rack of shirts any second.

The dust of the move back has settled.  We are not only unpacked into our house, the local water board knows where to send the bills.  The children are in schools, albeit two different ones whilst we try and get the oldest into the village school.  Honestly, you would think I was trying to get her on the front row of London Fashion Week.  Sadly financial bribes won’t work in this instance and we just have to wait….patiently. 

School dilemma’s aside, life is essentially in working order now.

It feels like this may be the hardest phase of repatriation.  The rush of arriving, familiarising yourself with your new surroundings, catching up with friends and family and setting up the machine that turns to make family life work is now over.  Hubby is not so new in his job and the children are making friends and joining clubs.  I have all the usual domestic tasks that have been mine wherever we are; shopping, cooking, cleaning, organising etc but there is no meat in the sandwich that is my day. No work.

In the last two weeks I have missed my old job so much.  I was in a team, I had a purpose, I learnt as much as I gave, the workload fit with our lives.  I loved it. It is by far one of the biggest sacrifices we made to come home and I have felt really sad, and a little angry, that I had to give it up. As I grieve for the job that I loved, I struggle to know how to go about getting another job.  There is no way I can replace it, because there were lots of unique things about it that I can’t have here; like the people, the location, the clients, the culture.

And yet, I have hope that there are other people, places, clients and company cultures that I will fit into and enjoy, maybe even just as much. The trick is finding it. So here I go, signing up for the alerts, sending out the requests and hunting for work. The next battle is upon me to win and so, “once more unto the breach, my friends, once more”.

Three countries in one summer

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When we were in New Zealand we would often talk to ex-pats about their experiences of visiting home.  Due to the distance and expense the whole family would generally need to take four weeks off to make the visit manageable.  Even then, they would always come back totally shattered because the four weeks would be a mad rush around various friends and family homes scattered across the country, the whole family staying in one or two rooms, managing the children’s behaviour as they juggle tiredness and not being in their own space along with trying to squeeze in a few landmarks or “must-sees” of the UK, of which there are many!

One person suggested to Gareth, when we had been considering it a couple of years ago, to go over in the UK summer, rent a big holiday house in some beautiful part of the country and book in friends and family to come and visit you.  That way, in between the two 32 hour flights your family has had to endure, they can stay still, get familiar with only one new place and spend time with family in a relaxed and neutral place for everyone.

We never did get round to just coming back for a visit but if and when we go back, I’m definitely going to suggest that’s how we do it.  Especially after this summer holidays!

The thing with living over the other side of the world for five years, is that when you do return, there is a high expectation that you will catch up with everyone once you are back. We returned in May, and the first two months were taken up finding a place to live, getting the children in school and unpacking furniture.  Unpacking the last box almost perfectly timed in with the beginning of the school holidays.  An ideal opportunity to catch up with everyone, n’est pas? Indeed.

The UK isn’t a large country, so visiting all our family in one summer wasn’t a crazy proposal.  We began with a five day visit to the Lake District to spend time with grand parents and do the obligatory afternoon tramping around Keswick in the rain.  We then had two weeks at home and in that time the children and I covered some local ground visiting Cotswolds Wildlife Park , Wellington Country Park and Hampton Court.  Can highly recommend them all as family days out.  In the fourth week, hubby used up the rest of his holidays on a week in west Wales with his sister and her lovely family.  Loads of stunning countryside, Pizza Tipi, Mwgamor Barbecue, body boarding, very long sessions of wood chopping (led by a ridiculously enthusiastic six year old lumberjack), a near nut poisoning incident and late night card games made for a week of joyful family bonding. One day changeover and the children and I embarked on the biggest trip of the summer.

In New Zealand, if you were going to visit your mum in Wellington and you lived in Christchurch, then you are most likely going to fly. Why would anyone want to travel for hundreds of miles in a cramped car and take a ferry over to the North Island, when you can catch a plane and in less than an hour land in your destination? I live in the South East of England and my mum lives on the Isle of Arran (little island off the west coast of Scotland) so it’s a similar situation, a few hundred miles to cover and some water to cross.  However, the way to get to mum’s for us was to drive and get a ferry when we reach water.  In order to cover the 437 miles between us, with the children in the car with me, I chose to kill a few visitation birds with one return trip, stopping at my dad’s in the North East of England on the way up and catching up with good friends in Liverpool on the way back.  12 days, three houses, two drizzly games of crazy golf, an emergency visit to the Mini service centre in Teeside, 11 motorway stops and too many to count tantrums later we had nailed it.

I’m not going to lie, in the mix of spending some well overdue and very precious time with loved ones, I felt pushed to my limits of patience and calm.  The hospitality and generosity of our hosts was exceptional but even with every care taken of you, when you’re one parent with more than one child in another person’s house, the desire to be a blessing when there is so much out of your control, can feel too much to bear.

Like one of my very perceptive friends said when we met on the second to last day of our trip, “It’s hard to get your children to be on their best behaviour all day, every day.” * After years away, you want your children to be liked, for people to see them at their best. Despite the best of intentions, as any parent knows, when your children are in unfamiliar surroundings, they don’t have any of their own toys, you’re not in control of the food supply and you’ve been cramped up together in a car for five hours, they’re unlikely to display their best selves.

*the words aren’t exact but that was the sentiment

Thinking about it now, I probably should have worried about impressions less and given my children more slack than normal, but hindsight is a beautiful thing eh.

Now through the other side, it’s good to feel we’re all caught up. As we’re in the country for a while longer, we can have a more natural approach to time spent with family and friends. And next summer, I’m booking a large villa in Ibiza – who’s with me?

Family Pizza

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I don’t want to sound like one of those smug women who brags about how she cooks everything from scratch, knows the exact vitamin content of every meal she serves up and would just die if her child discovered Haribo. Mainly because I am not that woman. Frankly I think the love of Haribo is genetic, so my children don’t stand a chance.

However I do like us to have a baseline healthy, balanced diet. I am genuinely fascinated by food and cooking, so it’s not too much bother for me to learn recipes, try out something new and explore what works for my family and what doesn’t.

I’ve been enjoying making homemade pizzas for a few years now.  At first I did everything from scratch, even the tomato sauce but as I think it’s a pack of lies that strained tomatoes will ever reduce down to a thick sauce, I have learnt to cut some corners here and there.

Making pizza dough is really easy and produces so much tastier, more satisfying pizzas. Unlike bread, there’s actually very little that can go wrong with a pizza dough. I’m going to pass on what I do and if you haven’t already discovered how easy it really is, get on the homemade pizza train.

Dough.

Jamie has a good recipe in his ‘Jamie’s Kitchen’ book but I’m sharing one I got from Annabel Langbein’s ‘Essential’ book.  I am telling you the method I use, which is slightly different to Annabel’s.

Ingredients.

2 cups of warm water (like baby’s bath warm)

2 teaspoons sugar (I use caster but you could use soft brown or a couple of tablespoons of honey if you are that way inclined)

2 teaspoons active dried yeast (essentially one sachet from those handy boxes you can buy)

5 cups of high grade/bread flour

2 tablespoons of olive oil

1 teaspoon of salt

Recipe.

Measure out your warm water and add the sugar, stir until it dissolves. Sprinkle the yeast on top and gently stir in.  Leave for 10 minutes until it has a nice beery head on it.

Weigh out the flour and add in the salt.  Thoroughly stir the salt around so it’s spread through the flour; that way there is no chance the yeast hits a big lump of salt and loses all its super powers.

Create a hole in the middle of the flour.  Add the oil to the yeasty water and then pour into the flour bowl.

Use your hand to mix the water into the flour until it’s a nice gooey mess with lots of unmixed flour all around.  At this point I plonk it on the work surface and put the floury bowl to one side.  Knead the dough until it’s smooth, add flour if it’s too sticky but I find if you persevere through the stickiness, after one minute it becomes easier to handle.  I knead for about five minutes, 10 if it’s been that kind of a day.  Then I return the dough to the bowl. Tightly wrap clingfilm over the top of the bowl and find somewhere warm for the bowl to sit for a couple of hours.

After two hours you get the now twice-the-original-size dough and bang it around on the work surface again.  Roll it out into a fat log and cut it into four lumps.  Two lumps I put in freezer bags and put in the freezer.  Each lump can make one good sized pizza, so really useful to have in the freezer.  Just get it out the morning you want pizza and it will be good to go whenever you are.

Roll out each of the two fresh lumps into a pizza shape, I go for random oblong and I go pretty thin.

Here comes the cheat.  I use a good quality pasta sauce for my tomato sauce.  I favour something with extra basil and garlic but you could go chunky vegetable or spicy chorizo if you want.

Spread half a jar on each pizza base.  This week I followed up with sprinkled chorizo chunks.  Then I roasted garlic and sliced red pepper, which went on next.  Then I added fried onions and broccoli.  And finally some lightly seared halloumi, as it’s the only cheese that doesn’t seem to aggravate my dairy intolerant tummy.  Of course some mozzarella or cheddar would do very well.  And really for toppings, go for whatever you fancy or what needs eating up.

Of course the topping bit can be where you invite your children to join in.  Which I do if they have friends over but normally, I can do without the stress.

Put it in a hot oven for 10-15 minutes.  Eat it with salad or corn on the cob or just on its own.

The four of us generally only manage one of the pizzas, so Gareth and I then have a quarter slice for the next two days of lunches. Nice.

Hope this is as easy for you as it is for me. And report back on successful topping combinations!

 

 

 

Not as easy as it looks

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You know how there are things in life that look easier than they actually are?  Like handstands, setting up your iPhone and baking macaroons. Well I am here to tell you that emigrating is way harder than you might think, and I’m pretty sure most people think it’s really difficult.

I don’t find the administration of it too hard.  There are a lot of forms to fill in, you have to plan ahead so you meet deadlines and as much as possible, you need to organise the various stages of moving from one country to another to happen in a coherent order.

Instead, one of the many things I am really struggling with this week (it’s been a particularly tough one) is how drawn out it is.  We have been in the UK for 10 weeks now, but our belongings only arrived on Wednesday.

In the last couple of months, Gareth has started a new job, we’ve found a place to live, the children have nearly done a half term of school and I have set up our lives as much as you can when you don’t have any furniture, TV, computer, more than two pairs of shoes.

It was super hot the day everything arrived and it was total chaos as five increasingly sweaty fellas unloaded an entire container of wrapped up furniture and boxes.  By the time they had finished it was difficult to see any floor in our cottage, which is probably half the footprint of our house in NZ.  The following five days have been about emptying the 141 parcels and finding a place to put their contents, which has led to three trips to the tip (so far) and ironically more trips to IKEA and Habitat to buy new furniture to put things in.

After the last 10 weeks of doing everything on the floor, such as eat, work, sleep, sit, watch TV, do homework with the children; delivery day had become like a much longed for Christmas.  As I spend the most time in the house and in general, my functions as mother, wife and copywriter are home based, I have probably been the most frustrated by the wait for such luxuries as a desk, a sofa and a kitchen table.

By Saturday morning, I was well and truly over it.  Everyone in the family was getting their marching orders, THE HOUSE HAD TO BE UNPACKED BY THE END OF THE WEEKEND OR I WAS GOING TO LOSE MY SHIZZLE!

To be honest, I have never been too far away from a total meltdown since this whole circus began in February.  And whilst I can count on one hand the number of times I have been reduced to a gibbering wreck, I am finding it hard to remember what I am like when life is normal.

It’s obvious I know, but emigrating stops you living a normal life.  You are either packing down your life or setting it up. I personally feel like I am in a grey, pause-like state. Gareth goes to work, the children attend school and my days are filled with various emigration activities such as, buy English plugs, paint the kitchen, pay for a TV licence, follow up the council to see if Jackson has a place in the village school, build a shelving unit for Minnie’s room, contact the removal company about the broken chest of drawers, and a hundred other little things that are essentially getting us as a family into a baseline life in the UK.

I find I have to fill my brain with light hearted things so I don’t let it fill up with lots of dark thoughts like; why did we do this? I have no friends. What am I doing with my life?We’ve just taken a huge financial step backwards. Is Jackson’s OCD my fault? I am the worst mother ever. I could go on and on. The Netflix series ‘Jane the Virgin’ and an audio book of Mary Berry’s biography, have provided perfect distractions in the house and car. And as both escapes come to an end, I am sprinting to finish set up before the summer holidays arrive!

Half a year since we decided to come back to the UK and there is one messy room of books, clothes, furniture and computers left to sort out and then my new life will begin. I have no idea what my normal life is going to look like.  I don’t know what I am going to be doing. I don’t know who I will be spending most of my time with. And worst of all, I have to work out who is Claire – lived in New Zealand for five years, repatriated back to Berkshire, wife of programme manager on large engineering alliance, mother of young children, freelancer of who knows what, resident of well-to-do village, recovering from back surgery, living on a tight budget and now most definitely in her forties.

Whilst I may save the highlights for Instagram and Facebook (because who likes to hear privileged first-world people complain?) I can confess here, there are a few challenges to emigration and it’s not as easy as it looks.