ENGLISH MUM IN IRELAND HAS MOVED! FIND ME AT ENGLISHMUM.COM

So here’s the thing, it’s the end of the road, the final page of the story, the last rolo, the…er…last kiss before bedtime for my blog. We’ve had a long and somewhat tempestuous journey together. We’ve had some good times; some laughs and some serious hissy fits along the way, but we part company older, wiser and nominated for four awards! Not bad eh?

Still, it’s not all bad. We’re moving into dot com territory and that’s gotta be a step up. From now on, my new humble abode will be:

ENGLISHMUM.COM

Last one there’s a sissy!!

xx

PS: Early teething probs mean that comments are showing as zero even though they’re in there somewhere. Don’t be afraid to comment!!

PPS: Please remember to change your links and bookmarks to the new site.

So I finally managed to slot in a visit to Gorgeous G, my yummy hairdresser. Someone fabulous and glamorous once told me that a girl should never allow anyone except a man to cut her hair, and even though I can’t remember who it was (I do remember that they were fantastically well groomed), I’ve stuck by that rule ever since. Gorgeous G is a find. Not only is he friendly, chatty and heterosexual (okay, I suppose that doesn’t really matter, but the whole point is to find someone who will make you look attractive, and if their idea of attractive is Brad Pitt, well, frankly you’re in trouble), he’s also pleasingly easy on the eye. Digressing. So I plonked myself down in the chair, G gave me a quick once over, and the trouble began.

G (shakes head and does the sucking air through teeth thing that plumbers do when your boiler’s going to cost a fortune): ‘Ohhh dear. You’re looking a bit…’
Me: ‘A bit….what?’
G: ‘Well, a bit dull and washed out, and your hair is frazzled’
Me: ‘Frazzled. Okay, that’s not a technical term for fantastic, then?’
G: ‘Er, no. It’s a technical term for: step away from the straighteners, girl’*

Ah. So, basically his solution was a radical one: brown. Now I’ve no objection, in principal, to brown hair. There are plenty of beautiful brunettes in the world, but I came into the world blonde, and even though I’ve darkened over the years, my comfort zone is distinctly blonde-flavoured. Reader, I panicked. I took some persuading, but G explained, in his best ‘I’m the expert and therefore I know best’ voice, that it was either brown or a radical few inches off the length and I look like a boy with short hair. I took some persuading, but after promising faithfully that it would restore some much-needed shine to my over processed locks, I gave in. Two hours later and several Euro lighter, I emerged, like an..erm..hairy butterfly, a glossy brunette. ‘There’, said G, somewhat unconvincingly, ‘it’s lovely’, before quickly adding ‘look, try and live with it and if you really hate it I’ll fix it on Monday’.

So I went home, looking in the rear-view mirror all the way at the shadowy, serious stranger driving my car. When I got in, I did the washing up, staring again at the dark and sombre stranger standing at my sink. I picked the children up from school (wary glances were shot in my direction, but nothing was actually said out loud – I think it was my trembling bottom lip that did it). And finally I phoned Hubby: ‘I hate myself’, I said, ‘I’m dowdy and boring and, well, brown. I haven’t laughed once since I was brown. I can’t even think of anything funny to write on the blog. It’s not me. I’m happy and fun and, well, blonde’. But men don’t GET stuff about hair. They don’t see how important it is. And his reassurances that ‘I bet it’s lovely, and you’ll get used to it’ somehow didn’t hit the spot. This called for the BF. I reached for the pink batphone:

Me: ‘I’ve gone brown’
J: ‘No!’
Me: ‘Yeah’
J: ‘You hate it don’t you’
Me: ‘Yup’
J: ‘Get thee back to the hairdressers. There’s only room for one brunette in this friendship, and that slot’s taken. Get blonde and buy a good treatment. End of.’

So that’s it then. I’ll be loitering outside the hairdresser’s at 9am tomorrow morning, and will pester G like a deranged thing until he promises to restore my sunshiny, happy blondeness and banish this brown forever. Then I’ll make you laugh again. Promise.

*Okay, so that’s not exactly how the conversation went, but you get the picture.

We were trudging around the big field this morning, then; Bert with his fur-lined waterproof coat on (it’s manly, honest), and me with seventeen layers, including thermals, t-shirts, fleeces and two jackets. The snow was coming straight at us as we walked down the slope and the wind was freezing my eyelashes to my very pink cheeks.

Bert started to pull. Usually this is because he’s stopped to have a poo and I haven’t noticed, but this time he was looking up towards Lily The Lovely Lamb Lady’s farm. We were introduced to Lily last week when the little blue greyhound went missing. It was on her land where Hubby hurled himself out of the car at our little escapee, sliding neatly off her rump and landing in a big huffy heap. Lily took pity on us and showed us round all the new lambs that they were feeding by hand, and the ready-to-pop lambs in the field closest to the farmhouse. It was that particular field that was drawing Bert’s attention. Lily The Lovely Lamb Lady’s very fat, pregnant lambs were being chased about their field by a very pingy black dot, moving a whole lot faster than you would expect a heavily pregnant mother to move. I know my eyes are bad but it didn’t look good. Especially when, on closer inspection, the dot was definitely dog shaped. I phoned Hubby on the pink batphone:

Me (slurring through frozen blue mouth): ‘I’m in the field behind the house! I just looked up and there’s a black dog chasing the ewes in Lily the Lovely Lamb Lady’s field!’

Hubby: ‘What?’

Me: ‘There’s a f*cking dog chasing Lily’s sheep!!’

Hubby: ‘Oh shit. Is it ours?’

Me: ‘No, it looks furry’

Hubby: ‘Thank Christ. Do you know her number?’

Me: ‘No, but D next door’s brother in law knows her’

Hubby: ‘I’ll get on the case’

So, while Hubby tried to warn Lily, like the Michelin man in a bad slow-mo movie clip, I ran, dragging a very miffed Bertie, back to the house, hurled myself into the jeep and took off as fast as I could (it’s difficult to drive in wellies, especially with seventeen layers of clothing and frozen extremities) off to Lily’s farm. As I drove up the farm track, the dog, a bedraggled black collie-looking thing, came running towards me. Oh. I hadn’t expected that. I stopped, jumped out, and tried to entice it towards me. It eyed me warily but didn’t come any closer. Instead I opened the back of the jeep and whistled. Amazingly, it hopped in. Slamming the door, I screeched up to the farmhouse to meet a worried-looking Lily at the gate.

Luckily, the sheep weren’t as heavily pregnant as I thought, in fact, that was the ‘kind of possibly maybe could be pregnant’ field, which was good. Having checked her beasties were all well, we retired into the farmhouse for a cup of tea and a mull over what to do with our hairy hostage, now sitting guiltily in the back of the jeep (it’s the Cavan way – a cuppa and a chat can solve any crisis – maybe we should suggest it to NATO as a new strategy).

So the upshot of this very exciting episode was that we drove around a few of the farms, showing off our little furry prisoner, and when nobody recognised him, we drove him to The Dog Lady, who everyone knows takes in dogs, and if someone’s missing a dog, they’re bound to visit. While we were there, we oohed and ahhed at her clutch of rescue puppies (7!, all needing a new home), and were happily chatting when Lily the Lovely Lamb Lady suddenly remembered that she’d got a ham joint boiling on the stove. Back we went to the farm to drop Lily off to her lambs and her ham joint, and I drove back, mulling over the fact that I had single handedly managed to catch a stray dog in about five seconds, but that my own runaway still evades capture over two weeks later.

Well I never. I was perusing the links that lead people to my blog this morning, and apart from several hundred wierdos, perverts and dog-botherers who googled ’saugages’, ‘lips’, ‘arseholes’ or a combination of the three (note to self: pick better titles to your posts so as not to attract abovementioned weirdos), I noticed this link which happens to mention that I got a nomination in the Blog Awards 2007 for Most Humorous Post for ‘Ooh I Say!‘ too. Happy day! I would jump around the lawn in my pants only it’s snowing and my extremeties are delicate. Woohoo, though, and thanks for whoever nominated me (Ma?).

Now I’m not saying we’re special or anything (well, okay, I already said it yesterday) but up here in Cavan, it doesn’t just snow, it snows rabbits! Impressive eh?

The Disreputable One likes nice food. When we were little, we were lucky enough (although totally unappreciative, I’m sure) to eat proper food at home, produced with love by my doting Ma from scratch, and to be taken to nice restaurants. We were even allowed a little teeny soupçon of wine (diluted, natch). He was always immensely disparaging about our teenage obsession with burgers and fast food. I remember he used to wind us up and say that stuff like sausages and burgers were made up of ‘lips and arseholes’. It became a bit of a family joke.

So when I saw the The F Word the other night I thought instantly of my Dad. He’s quite like Gordon Ramsey, really. He’s a stroppy sod sometimes and he doesn’t take any prisoners, but he doesn’t give a toss what people think of him and for some reason I always reckon that’s a pretty admirable quality: being true to yourself no matter what. Anyhoo, I read somewhere that ol’ Gordo bought Tana an Audi R8 for Christmas so he’s okay in my book.

Oops, digressing. They were talking, amongst other things, about sausages. Poor J, our houseguest, had to leave the room as he likes a sausage and didn’t want to hear all the gory details. Basically, though, they tested a load of different sausages and talked about their meat content and what exactly this ‘meat’ consists of. Now I’m a realist and I’m fully aware that if you buy something from a supermarket’s ‘Value’ or ‘Economy’ range, it’s not going to have the best ingredients, but even so, the results were pretty shocking. I can’t find it anywhere on the web, but Tesco’s Value Sausage came out the worst, containing, if my memory serves me correctly, the minimum allowance of 32% meat, a quarter of which when tested was found to be sinew, connective tissue, gristle, rind and various other crap. Yum.

So who’d have thought it, after all these years it turns out that The Disreputable One was right: lips and arseholes it is!

Well, some of the longlists are out for the Irish Blog Awards 2008 and bugger me with a fish fork if I haven’t actually been picked for something! I was always picked last in games (childbearing hips - my own personal cross to bear) so this means a lot. I’m in the ‘Best Personal Blog’ category, along with some very tough competition: the wondrous Grandad, lovely Flirty, Annie, Nats and Conortje to name a few, I’m also in ‘Best Food and Wine Blog’ along with Wee Jen and Manuel the Waiter. My mates Isitjustme and 73man have been nominated for Best Newcomer, and the lovely Annie Rhiannon is in the ‘Best Designed Blog’ too! Lovely Fat Mammy Cat got about a squillion nominations in lots of different categories and is bound to clean up. Well done y’all. Go us, eh? Champers! Pass the champers!!

PS: Just seen I’m in the list for Best Blog too! (along with 135 others, but hey, at least I’m there!)

PPS: If Fat Mammy Cat’s post on fox hunting doesn’t win the Best Blog Post award, then I’m a monkey’s uncle (and I’m not. I checked.)

On Sunday, I made Bill Granger’s banana and butterscotch pudding. Okay, so I admit, I left out the ‘banana and’ bit when I was telling #2 what it was, but he sussed right away. As I was making the custard I was mulling over what gorgeous stuff custard powder is. Remember those yummy rhubarb and custard sweets? So then last night, as I was lying in bed (I know, I know…) I thought ooh, I wonder if you could make rhubarb and custard muffins? But not having any rhubarb handy, I settled on pears. And the result is pretty darn good, even if I say so myself.

So remember, as usual, the Golden Muffin Rule: get your ingredients ready before you start, and don’t over mix. If you can still see a teeny bit of flour, it’s just right.

8 oz plain flour
2 tablespoons custard powder (not instant custard!)
1 tablespoon baking powder
Pinch of salt
4 oz caster sugar
2 oz brown sugar
6 fl oz milk
½ tsp vanilla essence
1 egg, beaten
4 oz butter, melted
1 large ripe pear: peeled, cored and diced into teeny squares.

Sieve the flour, custard powder, baking powder and salt, then add the sugars (as usual you can use any sugar you like, I like the toffeeness of brown sugar in it). Just melt your butter in a jug in the microwave, then mix in the milk, vanilla and beaten egg and stir into the dry stuff. Don’t forget to add in your diced pear here (remember the GMR – a lighter hand gives a lighter result). The smell of the custard powder when you’re mixing is just gorgeous. Divide into 12 large muffin cases. It’s also quite nice if you sprinkle the tops with crunchy sugar, but I forgot.

Bake for about 15 – 20 minutes, depending on the size, at 200 degrees, then serve warm to fully appreciate the moist custardy interior studded with little pearly bits of pear….mmmmmmm.

So me Mam’s visit all passed in a happy blur. Oh, apart from the bit when Bertie disgraced himself by eating her knitting needles- sorry Mam. Oh, and that other bit where Bertie disgraced himself by hopping into her bed and frightening her silly when she returned from a nocturnal trip to the loo – sorry again Mam. And yesterday I found myself dropping her at the airport again.

Still, no point dwelling on the negatives so I took myself off to the Pavilions in Swords. It’s not huge, but I like it because of TK Maxx. What an excellent shop. It doesn’t matter if you don’t feel in the mood for trying stuff on (I was eating a Creme Egg at the time – ‘tis amazing the amount of men that stare at you when you’re trying to get the last bit of gooey stuff out of the bottom of the egg) because there are all sorts of other rubbish to rummage about in: kitchen stuff, books, cushions, you name it. I came away with a lovely lime green Le Creuset jug, a Typhoon vintage pink pie dish, a pink enamel storage tin and a very handy stainless steel strainer (small enough holes to keep at least some of my rice from ending up in the sink), plus change from thirty Euro. Not bad eh? I dropped into Dunnes on the way back and got some of their nice frozen prawns and their free range chicken (well done Dunnes – excellent selection!!) along with some baguettes. Hubby’s mate, J, is still staying (Bertie’s biscuit pusher) and I thought I’d do a couple of nice things that we can bung into the baguettes with some rocket. First up will be the yummy little chicken cakes that I always do (heaven with some nice sweet chilli sauce and SO easy, and also I’ll do some tamarind prawns:

Chicken Cakes

Couple of raw chicken breasts or prawns (must be raw or you’ll get a big wet mess)
1 medium red chilli, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 large spring onion, chopped
1 egg, beaten
1 tsp soy sauce
1 tbsp cornflour
2 tbsp Coriander leaves, chopped
Pinch of salt

So basically, whiz all the ingredients in a blender. I reserve the cornflour until last so you can see how thick it is – it’s amazing how it differs between batches – you need it thick enough to stay together in hot oil. So you can either make patties or just dollop tablespoons of the mixture into a half inch of hot oil until golden. This works just as well with prawns when you can also spread it onto toast, press on some sesame seeds and fry until the prawns are pink and the sesame seeds lightly tanned.

Tamarind Prawns

1 pack prawns, defrosted, or fresh ones if you’re that lucky – the bigger the better
2 cloves garlic, grated
1 red chilli, deseeded and finely chopped
Juice of ½ lime
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp fish sauce
1 tbsp brown sugar or honey
1 tbsp oil
1 tsp tamarind paste

So pop the prawns into a bowl with the rest of the ingredients so that they marinate for a while, then bung them straight into a hot wok until they’re pink and gorgeous and the sauce is reduced and sticky. Heaven sprinkled with sliced spring onion on noodles, rice, or just wodged into a baguette with some mayo a la English Towers. Excuse me while I wipe my drool from the keyboard

Me Mam’s been staying for a couple of days. And when I haven’t been dwagging her through the undergwowth like some latter-day David Bellamy (remember him?) hunting our errant foster dog, we’ve been having a very pleasant time doing a touch of retail therapy and drinking champagne. Oh, and eating a lot (see, it’s in my genes, no point fighting it).

On Friday afternoon we all took #1 to the opticians for his sight test and, as it turned out his prescription had changed, to choose a new pair of glasses. We’re not a decisive family at the best of times and, after several hours, we were all losing the will to live. The conversation (you know the drill) went something like this:

#1: ‘What about these?’ (coppery coloured metal frame, slightly square shape)
Hubby: ‘Ew. Robin Day.’
Grandma: ‘Ooh, what about these?’ (plastic frame, orange stripe along top of sides, think Gok Wan off ‘How to Look Good Naked’)
Me: ‘Jesus. Timmy f*cking Mallet’
Grandma: ‘What? They’re lovely and cheerful!’
#1 (sigh): ‘What about these, then?’
#2: (rolls around on floor, crying with laughter, holding ribs): ‘Hah! Harry Potter!!!’
#1: (bigger sigh): ‘Maybe not, then.’
Hubby: ‘These are cool’ (another metal frame, rectangular – very Fabio Capello*)
#1: ‘Hmmm…we’ll put these on the maybe shelf.’
Me: ‘Oh. Is that the ‘maybe’ pile? I thought it was the ‘absolutely not’ pile and put them all back’
*Collective sigh*

Finally, though, we found a pair that he’d probably tried on half an hour earlier when he was batting away his little brother who was walking around in a bright purple pair of Dame Edna frames, bringing him every pair of huge, ‘old fart’ glasses he could find whilst wetting himself laughing.

‘Well done,’ says the lady, now what about your free second pair?’

Aaaarrrrrgggggghhhhhh!

* Keep up, people, he’s the new England Manager.