The day I went full metal Women's Institute.....
Yesterday we celebrated a birthday, whilst in lock down. I was determined to make it as fun as possible and I laid any plans of enrolling my youngest into 'Ratchet Home-School' aside for one more day. As a family, we have been reasonably good at avoiding shops and kept to the 'only for essentials' rule fairly successfully. So I decided to give myself the challenge of making a party, complete with party food from the goods we had in our cupboards. I decided to go full on Women's Institute on my unsuspecting family.
Luckily my son had made the birthday cake the day before and on the birthday morning he set about decorating it with the red and black icing I had purchased around Halloween time. The unusual colours purchased with the full intention of baking a spooky cake until I was blighted with a serious case of can't-be-bothereds. My son's efforts were well rewarded, I think you will agree he did a pretty good job at decorating his dad's cake.
The eldest was persuaded to make her current specialty of brownies and surprised me by remembering the method and ingredients almost by heart, after making them only one time before. Kids are surprising creatures ain't they? I mean if you judged them on their inability to tidy behind themselves or to consider rudimentary things, for example hanging a coat up or turning a tap off, you could easily be lead into thinking they are complete idiots. But apparently, they are not.
So my list of things to do was: make homemade meat pies, scotch eggs from scratch, homemade chips, cheese straws and homemade chicken nuggets, accompanied by bruschetta and toasted wraps. A pretty impressive list, even if I do say so myself. That list, of course is not the part that impresses me the most but the fact I actually made every, single thing on the bloody list. There were no short cuts, no 'flexibility' to my approach, no alcohol consummation to make a boring task, not so boring, I made every.bloody, thing. I have never felt prouder. My kids and husband said enough encouraging and nice things to make me feel like that I did not waste a minute of the 3 hours it all took.
When we are free of all this 'free time' it probably won't be something that springs to mind, making a full party food table from scratch. The truth being that my family probably don't give enough shits about the type of chicken nuggets they are consuming in party mode to keep me busy for 3 hours. I must admit the nuggets were a peak of excellence but I am grateful for a life that is full enough to 'need' to be able to just chuck some frozen ones in, on occasion. No, I won't be going all full metal WI too often but that doesn't stop me feeling somewhat proud that I have the resourcefulness, concentration and patience to complete a labour of love.
Luckily my son had made the birthday cake the day before and on the birthday morning he set about decorating it with the red and black icing I had purchased around Halloween time. The unusual colours purchased with the full intention of baking a spooky cake until I was blighted with a serious case of can't-be-bothereds. My son's efforts were well rewarded, I think you will agree he did a pretty good job at decorating his dad's cake.
The eldest was persuaded to make her current specialty of brownies and surprised me by remembering the method and ingredients almost by heart, after making them only one time before. Kids are surprising creatures ain't they? I mean if you judged them on their inability to tidy behind themselves or to consider rudimentary things, for example hanging a coat up or turning a tap off, you could easily be lead into thinking they are complete idiots. But apparently, they are not.
So my list of things to do was: make homemade meat pies, scotch eggs from scratch, homemade chips, cheese straws and homemade chicken nuggets, accompanied by bruschetta and toasted wraps. A pretty impressive list, even if I do say so myself. That list, of course is not the part that impresses me the most but the fact I actually made every, single thing on the bloody list. There were no short cuts, no 'flexibility' to my approach, no alcohol consummation to make a boring task, not so boring, I made every.bloody, thing. I have never felt prouder. My kids and husband said enough encouraging and nice things to make me feel like that I did not waste a minute of the 3 hours it all took.
When we are free of all this 'free time' it probably won't be something that springs to mind, making a full party food table from scratch. The truth being that my family probably don't give enough shits about the type of chicken nuggets they are consuming in party mode to keep me busy for 3 hours. I must admit the nuggets were a peak of excellence but I am grateful for a life that is full enough to 'need' to be able to just chuck some frozen ones in, on occasion. No, I won't be going all full metal WI too often but that doesn't stop me feeling somewhat proud that I have the resourcefulness, concentration and patience to complete a labour of love.
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