Win! £150 worth of Anthropologie vouchers

I've never been a labels person. I've never felt the need to buy Manolo shoes or Hindmarch handbags (which is lucky). Instead I'd prefer to have something understated and unrecognisable by a new or unknown designer, or (ok, much more likely) something from John Lewis.
And then along came Anthropologie. I first glimpsed it in New York, where I spent hours poring over the beautiful bowls, amazing butter dishes, trying on the dresses and imagining a life where we could be together, all the time. Several years later I heard whisperings, Anthropologie was opening over here. I had a husband and two very young children in tow when I went to the first store on the Kings Road. It was everything I remembered it to be. Even my (then) 2yo smashing an exquisite china Indian door handle on the floor couldn't spoil it for me. I had come back home.
Now I go in the shop on a weekly basis. When I'm working in town it's a 20 minute walk, so I stride up there after work and buy the inevitable birthday present for someone and spend hours (ok, about 20 mins, until it closes and I get chucked out) walking around it, inhaling it, living it. The winking owl biscuit jar pictured is something I've lusted after for months. Last week I bought myself some pyjama bottoms from there, but after wearing them just once I've decided they are too beautiful and now they are hanging from my bedroom wall, as part of my room's decoration.
I know, I know. I've gone too far. This isn't just a girlish infatuation. It's an obsession. And if you are as susceptible as me, look away now. Because....I've got £150 worth of vouchers to spend there, for you, a lucky reader. O, so lucky. Not that I'm jealous. I'm sure karmically I'll get my rewards. All you need to do is tell me your most ridiculous purchase - in the comments, by email, twitter etc, and the silliest will get £150 worth of kit from Anthropologie's website. Take a browse here for some inspiration. The homeware is amazing. And the reason for this bounty? Appliances Online are very generous and have donated the prize.

Hello chips

I realise that blogging about gadgets so many times in so few posts (first a Kmix free-standing mixer mainly used to make bread, secondly an apple corer mainly used to, ummm, core apples) is going to make Claire and I seem the kind of people who salivate over the Lakeland catalogue and forgo polite company in favour of expeditions to Robert Dyas. We do not know why you would make this assumption. We are completely normal. Honest. It is just that the McDonald household has a new gadget. And it has changed if not our lives, then certainly what we eat. 

My husband has been hankering after a Tefal Actifry for some time. Obsessively looking at them in Robert Dyas, reading reviews about them on Mail on-line (shh!) and talking about how much better our lives would be if we had one. And how much less clogged our arteries. He sneaked off one Saturday afternoon and came back pleased as punch, swinging a Robert Dyas bag (they cost about £100).

In case you aren't in the loop, the Tefal Actifry is a deep fat fryer that doesn't really use any fat. Only a 1/2 tablespoon of oil is needed to cook the crispiest of chips. It is a largish (this is a flaw as it does take up a lot of worktop) circular appliance, with a clear lid and a rotating inner heated drum that moves the food around ensuring everything gets a good coating of oil and cooks evenly. Anything that isn't coated in batter, that would normally go in a deep fat fryer, can be cooked in one. Sadly, this means no fresh doughnuts or home-made onion rings, but yes to chicken drumsticks, the world's most low-maintenance roast potatoes and divine chips. Decent proper chips, just like mum used to make back in suburbia in 1979. Forget the preservative-clad oven chips that many of us have been fooled into believing are the real thing. These are the real McCoy. 

So I have a new bread maker and now a new chip maker. Are you thinking what I am thinking? Like I said, life-changing.

Banoffee pie. This recipe is armed and dangerous.

Banoffee pie, how do i love you? Let me count the ways. Yum, yum, YUM . I adore banoffee pie. I mean really adore it. In my head the bananas counter out the cream, the caramel and the biscuits. It is a healthy pudding, right?

I ate it first as a teenager, baked by my sister’s friend Mandy. She'd lived in the States and as I’d never had it, I presumed it was American. Turns out it is not. It’s a home grown invention. Another reason that puts the great into Britain, huh? The caramel bit is dulce de leche or condensed milk that has been boiled in the tin, so it thickens gloriously. These days you can buy either in most supermarkets meaning it is dangerously easy to make. If you have a weakness for bananas, cream, caramel and biscuits, then don’t read on. If you want to see us make (and eat) it, then click here.

300g digestive biscuits
100g unsalted butter, melted
1 x 350g can caramel (or dulce de leech)
1 x 300ml pot whipping cream
1 tbsp icing sugar
3 bananas
100g milk chocolate - crumbled or grated.

Pre-heat the oven to 160c degrees. Grease a spring-form cake tin with butter. Whizz the digestive biscuits in a food processor until fine. Mix with the melted butter and pat nice and snugly into the bottom of the tin. Put into the oven for 10 minutes. Take out and leave to cool. Open the caramel and spread over the biscuit base. Put into the fridge for about an hour, until firm. Whip the cream with a tablespoon of icing sugar. Chop the bananas into slices about the width of a pound coin. When the caramel is set, arrange the bananas slices on top and cover with whipped cream. Sprinkle with some grated chocolate or crumbled Flake. Eat. Eat some more.

We're back!

Yup. Finally. It's done. The Mumsnet recipe book is written. The files have been handed over. It's been fun. We've learnt a lot (particularly that Mumsnetters like sweetcorn). But it's time to move on. And give the blog some TLC. It's been neglected and we miss it/you. So watch out! In the next few weeks we'll be back! Ideally we'd like to give the blog a bit of a revamp. Anyone suggest any beautiful blogs that can inspire us (ok, that we can copy)? Anyone know any designers who could tickle us up and make us pretty?
All assistance appreciated!
xx

Ahh, Lakeland...sigh

I do love a spot of Lakeland. The catalogue arrives and I'm in it immediately. Imagining a life where I have storage solutions - not just piles of junk. And a life where those storage solutions are FULL of really useful things like this apple divider. And maybe an apple corer too.
Since the house-move our kitchen leaves a lot to be desired. It's more a lean-to, and there will be no flash extension, at least not for a while. So I'm saying "No!" to the apple corer. There's no room. But, I admit it. I have succumbed to the apple divider. There it is, in the picture, in all it's glory. It's true that in the past I may have derided the apple corer. Thinking it was a little bit pointless, and why would I have that when I've got a perfectly good knife. But the other day at my sister's we had to cut up eight apples for this, and she got it out. I was impressed. Ok. I was jealous. I wanted one. But now I've got it, and my life, well the apple part of it, feels a bit more complete.
I won't pretend it's perfect. Cutting out the core is a bit hit and miss as few apples are that straight, and it's true, the whingers in the reviews have a point when they talk about the fact that the divider doesn't come out all the way at the bottom. But I think they miss the point. This makes your apple kiddable in 10 seconds. You may have to trim it a bit afterwards to get rid of any core that's snuck through, but essentially you can serve your children portions of apple in the time you might contemplate giving them a rice cake. It's great to be able to cut up a load of apple in the morning to chuck on their/your porridge. And I don't know about you, but sometimes I stop cutting up fruit for my kids, not because I think they won't eat it, but because I'm bored. I know. Terrible. Skimping on their five a day because I can't be arsed. Oh well. With this divider, that's all in the past. Although I can't promise I'm going to peel any oranges for them though.

Meet the beast

I have been hankering after a freestanding mixture since I don't know when. More time has been spent than is strictly healthy on kitchen gadget forums and twitter asking owners whether they are worth the eye-watering £300 investment and whether to buy a Kitchenaid (American) or a Kenwood (British). The general consensus is they are worth every pretty penny and last a life time. Praise indeed, but still it took me three years to finally take the plunge and part with the cash. Last month as a birthday present to myself, I bought this beauty. I justified it because although my husband has many attributes, present-buying is not one of them (although, wonderfully, this year he broke with tradition and got me loads. Win win!)
The guilt lasted about as long as it took me to slide the beast out of its polystyrene casing. I plumped for the Kenwood K-Mix which combines that iconic KitchenAid, ergonomic design, with Kenwood's longstanding experience.
Mine cost £250 - new on amazon - which was substantially less than the £340 you'd pay in John Lewis. I have not looked back. I love it. I use it every day. There is a dough hook, so you can make bread without having to knead the dough yourself. So sue me, I am lazy and although I know some people find kneading therapeutic, it just puts another barrier up between me and baking my own - although I have yet to perfect the art of the perfect loaf. Mine are on the heavy side, so if anyone has any dough hook tips I'd love to hear them. It is, however, smashing for making pizza dough and every Friday night after school, we all make our own. We used to spend £10 a week on shop bought pizza, but making it yourself costs just £3 (and that is using fresh mozzarella, homemade tomato sauce, capers, salami, whatever) so in an attempt to justify the expense, I tell myself it will have paid for itself by the end of the year in pizza alone. It is also brilliant at mixing cakes and making meringues. I love it. If you have one, please share your tips with us. What do you use yours for? What is it good for?
It is nicknamed the beast, by the way, because when using the dough hook the whole machine alarmingly shudders and judders across the worktop as if it is coming to get me. This is apparently totally normal, but disarming nonetheless. Revenge of the gadgets.

Camping in the snow

Oh praise the Lord! There is sunshine. I have seen it and I have felt it's heat.
What a winter. But it's over. Or that's what I choose to believe. The bloke down the timberyard told me it's going to be 22 degrees next weekend, and I've decided that he's the weather oracle, and the only one to be believed.
Our leaking roof and TOTAL lack of insulation has made me much more sensitive to the elements, which means our decision to go camping last week, (Yes, camping. In the snow) even more inexplicable.
But we were desperate to get away. My sister's review of Butlins had won me over, but it was fully booked. The only other place we could find to stay was a Feather Down farm campsite just outside Tunbridge Wells. Very soon we learnt why it was the only place with vacancies.
The next three days were spent in ever more layers of clothes. We just kept adding. Pyjamas went on over clothes. The next morning more clothes went on, over pyjamas. By the end of it dressing gowns were worn over winter coats, gloves and hats. Oh, we laughed. Nearly.
Bedtime was 8pm, well it was either bed or doing star jumps to keep warm for a couple of hours.
But the kids LOVED it. Ok, they sobbed occasionally with the cold, but on the whole they had a great time. Mainly because they had much larger than usual access to junk food. Which they LOVE. I found them huddled under a tree at one point tucking into a some Pomme Bears they'd snuck out of the shopping. Those lollies they are sucking on in the picture above were possibly the highlight of a very expensive meal we had in Tunbridge Wells. A visit to Morrisons (mainly because it was warm) was spent hunting down the most luridly packaged food they could find. Simple pleasures.
It's always fun to leave London and see how the food quality goes down, as the price goes up (is that a controversial statement? I don't think so). But I spent a lot of time in the local Morrison's (it was really warm!) and was really impressed. They had an incredible array of fresh fruit and vegetables, everything from samphire to kohlrab, all kept fresh by a cloud of water constantly spritzed over them. It felt a bit like being in a cloud forest, except with fluorescent lighting.
Not everything was so impressive though. We went to a Smith and Western restaurant which was appalling. It reminded me of restaurants of my youth, where everything has a silly name and the waiters and waitresses are all dressed up in novelty outfits. That isn't offensive, it was the fact their tomato soup cost over a fiver and was inedible which really annoyed me. But (to my husbands embarrassment) I sent it back and ate the children's smiley faced potatoes and Frankfurters instead.
But back in London now and the sun's out.