Hairy Dieters Recipe Test

I have an extensive collection of cookery books as my husband will testify to. I like to think I'm a vaguely decent cook, despite the fact that every so often my children proclaiming my meals to be yucky. This does usually coincide with the introduction of the alien vegetables onto their plate. If its not peas, they're not interested!

However I do find that some recipe books are a little hit and miss. I have a couple of Lorraine Pascale books and the cooking times she gives never work for me. I made my birthday cake from one of her recipes and it took twice as long to cook as she stated. Lovely cake though. The Vintage Tea Party books are the other ones I struggle with. I love them, don't think I've got a recipe to work for men from them yet!

I bought the Hairy Dieters first book and was impressed. And the girls ate the food too, so to buy the second one seemed like a good idea. 

This evening I made the Beef Ravioli with Tomato Sauce.   

It is a very time consuming recipe. Definitely not one to be rushed and it takes some preparation too. I think by the time I had made the filling and let it cool and the dough sit for an hour, then rolled out thirty circles of dough, filled them and cooked them, we were well over two hours. 

Those are my little raviolis ready to hit the pan. The instructions were easy to follow and I have to say that the end result was delicious. Not only that, both the girls cleared their plates too which is a definite result!
 

I know, I wouldn't score any marks for presentation on Masterchef. But yummy food from the Hairy Dieters Eat For Life and low fat too.
 

Topic of the Day

So, I had a few different ideas of what to write about today. I started with manners, passed over mystery vegetables before settling on the news story of the day that has caught my attention, that this government want to give any mother who breastfeeds their baby for six months £200.
I breastfed both of my girls umtil they were six or seven months old- pretty much until the first time they bit me! Although the advice at the time was that it was best to breastfeed exclusively until six months, I think we intoduced a bottle at night time at about three months in a big to get them to sleep through the night, and we started weaning at five months.
However, just because I did it, don't for one minute think that I'm about to preach about it. We all know its best for the baby, but there are many reasons why a mother wouldn't do so and I dont think that waving two hundred quid under their noses is going to change that.
According to some statistics I found on the internet, 81 in every 100 women start breastfeeding, but one week later, less than half are still continuing to exclusively breastfeed. This suggests to me that most women have the intention of feeding their child but are giving up and surely the reason for that is what needs to be addressed.
The first couple of weeks of feeding were excruciating.  I can remember physically shaking when my baby was feeding, to the point of tears sometimes; dreading the feeding time as it approached, lying on the sofa, burning up when I had mastitis. And it was hard to find the advice or help that I needed. I went to breastfeeding cafes which are predominantly volunteer run, talked to other mums who were going through the same thing. Once you are discharged by the midwife, help can be hard to find. Another statistic I found said that the health service was sort by some 5000 midwives. I don't know about anyone else, but I'd rather the money was spent on more midwives. I often have to bribe my children with incentives to get them to do what I want, and this gesture smacks of that to me.
It was worth the perseverance,  to anyone who may be struggling through the early days. It does get easier. Its free. Its uncomplicated. I didn't have to wait twenty minutes to prepare a bottle of formula, nor did I have to lug around a load of kit every time I went out. And never once did I encounter any hostility when I was feeding in public. But it isn't for everyone,  of that I am well aware and society already loads enough expectations on us of how to raise our children without adding something else to the list. We all have to do what we need to do. I coslept with one of my girls until they were a couple of years old, but I kept quiet about it, because its not the done thing. But thats another subject..

Mystery veg tomorrow. This is a making blog after all ;-)