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Travels: Our Life Journey

Published by Oana

Travelling has been part of our life story from day one. As we matured and grew as a family, travelling grew beyond being simply a means to a destination and became an immense source of excitement and enjoyment. Grab a hot drink and draw closer and I will tell you the story, as it has unfolded.

We had our first conversation (in English and Greek), with Alex from an overpriced internet cafe in Villars, Switzerland, our matchmaker (this is a story for another blog post, lol!) from Athens, Greece and myself from Iasi, Romania. I should have seen it as an omen, a good omen, a sign that the relationship that was budding will be one of journeys, of crossroads, of amalgamation and of discovery.

Before we got engaged later that year, we had managed to travel thousands of miles between the two of us and met in three different countries in as many months.

Our wedding took place in Romania, bringing together two families that could only communicate with each other in sign language and who never got to meet in that formula ever since!

Our first holiday as newlyweds was back in Villars, Switzerland, the place we both had visited before as single people. Some of the best memories were created there, on sunny ski slopes and around pots of steaming hot fondue and mulled wine:

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Switzerland had put a magic spell on us and it did pull us back for several years during the cold season. We not only enjoyed the mountains, but we took in the wonderful sights of its chic towns and cities, our favourite being Montreux and Lausanne.

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Those initial first years of marriage saw us taking Europe by storm. Or plane, better said.

We saw relatives in Greece, Germany and Romania several times, visited with Barbary macaques in Gibraltar, holidayed in Spain and generally, had a wonderful time discovering our rich continent and its history. And some amazing hotels, in the process:

The Erbprinz, Ettlingen(Germany): the ultimate in luxury accommodation.

Short stay in Marbella, Spain.

We marked the wonderful news of my first pregnancy with…you guessed it, more travelling!

My cute Emma bump travelled first to Australia and caused loads of mischief, in the form of repulsion to strong smells and a penchant for…toast and kangaroo! We did manage to squeeze a lot into that week and did the Sydney fish market (twice!), the Gold Coast, a drive up to the rain forest and another one to Australia Zoo, home of The Crocodile Hunter.

We came back to the UK enriched by the experience of having visited a vast and amazingly diverse continent, of which we had seen only a tiny fraction.

The Sydney Opera and a drama queen in the making, lol!

Amazing Gold Coast

That spring, we took a Mediterranean cruise, accompanied by Alex’s parents, knowing that the growing Emma bump would not allow us such luxuries in the near future. This was our second cruise and was enjoyed as much as the first because:

the views were never the same the following morning!

we discovered hidden gems only locals frequented

Sorrento beach, Italy

the food was amazing!

the craic was mighty, as the Irish would say!

With Emma’s arrival, our journey of discovery became of a different nature. We learned to be parents. We learned to love unconditionally. We learned that a baby opens new routes, those of self-sacrifice and self-discovery.

But as she grew older, we took many, many trips with Emma, mainly to Greece and Romania, for her to get to know and love her extended family, but we did squeeze in hotels stay here and there, to give her an early taste for adventure and novelty:

Emma was exposed early to the rhythmic twang of mixed languages, often on her travels abroad:

and just as she was turning two, she had her first transatlantic journey to New York:

Exploring in the Museum of Natural History, New York

Tackling, rather unsuccessfully, a stack of all American pancakes!

And then, we had Georgie.

And then, we lost Georgie.

Our hearts were shattered beyond recognition but we drew strength, paradoxically, from all those amazing travelling memories. We found courage to carry on, knowing that, the world is an amazing place, as we had seen it on all those previous travels. We decided that, by continuing to live and travel, we would honour our boy and carry him with us, in us, to see so much more of this beautiful Earth.

This is my photography entry to the Mark Warner Holidays’ Family Ambassador Program . I am truly hoping it will make me into a lucky #MarkWarnerMum for 2016 so our travels in Georgie’s memory take us to see the tallest mountains and the bluest seas.

New kids on the…food aisle

Published by Oana

Since today marks the Chinese New Year and we are entering the Year of the Monkey, I will start with the Firecracker Tilda Rice we got to review over the weekend.

firecracker-packet

Alex loves putting together oriental recipes so this was right up his street. The convenience of flavoursome packaged rice made dinner last night nearly childplay.

Alex loves improvising so after frying 450 grams of chicken in sesame oil in a wok, he decided to throw in a package of Tesco stir fry vegetable medley (you know, the broccoli, red pepper, baby sweetcorn, spring onion and green beans one), followed when the veggies were al dente by a pack of chow mein sauce. To make things a bit more authentic, he added some fresh pineapple and ginger as the sauce was seeping over the ingredients. The last to go in was the Tilda rice, as it only needs heated throughout.

Firecracker rice prep

He decided to serve his dish in a thin egg omelet, in which he enveloped the rice dish, with lashings of authentic soy sauce. It was absolutely delish but in retrospect, he told me he would probably use no chow mein sauce next time he cooks the recipe, as the taste of the rice didn’t come through strong enough.

Homemade Chinese

We appreciated the convenience of the packaged rice and I will buy Tilda again when I am in a rush and dinner needs to be on the table quick! If you want to get a taste of the Firecracker rice, make sure to purchase before April 2016, this is a limited edition and it will not be available in supermarkets after that date.

The second product we were told about and are still awaiting the arrival of in our local supermarket is Arla’s new Best of Both milk.

“Arla, the UK’s largest dairy company, has launched a unique branded milk product: Arla ‘Best of Both’ (Arla BOB); fat-free¹ milk that tastes as good as semi-skimmed, packaged with a distinctive yellow top.

The farmer-owned dairy cooperative has spent three years developing the technology to produce Arla BOB. It involves collecting some of the naturally occurring protein² in milk and carefully adding more of it back into skimmed milk to deliver a taste and texture that is as good as semi-skimmed³ and fat-free. In addition, with Arla’s unique PurFiltre^TM process, it also lasts longer in the fridge.”

Arla BOB

I am curious to try it and see if the taste is as good as Arla claims as, for a fat-free milk, I would expect less in terms of taste and more in terms of health benefits.

Have you tried the new Arla BoB milk already? What were your impressions ?

The last products I will mention in today’s post are the Super Yummies, the new healthy toddler snack range by Cow and Gate.

” The Super Yummies are a new range of deliciously different snacks, developed by mums and nutritionists for little ones 12 months+. Made from carefully selected, real ingredients to create new, unique and exciting tastes and textures for your toddler to discover.

Part of the well-loved Cow & Gate family, The Super Yummies are superly delicious and come in ground-breaking flavour combinations that your toddler will love. With only naturally occurring salt and sugar, making the range irresistible for both mum and their little one.

Perfect to fuel little ones’ everyday adventures, the range includes unique freeze dried fruit pieces and vegetable slices, breadsticks, rice cakes, and a variety of fruit and yoghurt pouches – all of which taste, look and feel like the real deal!”

Although Emma is no longer a toddler, she gave some of the products we got sent a go. She really enjoyed the refreshing taste of the yughurt and the fruit pouches and would choose them to go into her lunch box, as an alternative to the chocolate buttons or little treats she gets regularly.

We had a little visitor at the weekend and he did give the spinach breadsticks a go. He didn’t reject them but was more interested in the pizza everyone was having so I am guessing the taste is not as strong, due to the lack of extra sugar and salt in them. Which cannot be a bad thing, for sure!

We are planning on having another baby this year and all being well, next year we will be enjoying this range extensively :-).

What other new kids on the food aisle have you been trying recently and what would you recommend for trying?

From A Mother To Another – A Campaign by JoJo Maman Bébé

Published by Oana

Once in a while, I get to do the awesomest of things on the blog.

Yesterday, JoJo Maman Bebe approached me and asked me if I would be interested in becoming a blogger ambassador for their amazing campaign, From A Mother To Another and help spread the word about helping children in need.

I nearly wept at the privilege of being able to lend my blogging voice and raise awareness of two worthwhile causes. Syrian children, for whom the campaign is trying to raise clothing, have been weighing on my heart heavily for the past year. Emma and I spread the word about #ShareTheMeal app at Christmas and shared our pennies in December with Syrian refugee children. Local children who live in poverty are also a genuine cause of concern for me and we always donate Emma’s small clothing to local charities who try to make their lives a bit better.

JoJo Maman Bebe are currently encouraging mums out there to spare a thought and an outgrown outfit and spread some love to other mothers whose children are in desperate need of warm, decent clothing. They are also extremely generous and will reward every mother who participates in the campaign with a £5 gift voucher to be spend in store on any £35 or over purchase.

In Northern Ireland, JoJo Maman Bebe is located on 629 Lisburn Road so a weekend trip into Belfast can become an opportunity to bless a fellow mother and her precious child in need.

We regularly donate Emma’s clothing when she outgrows it but I am sure we will be able to put together two outfits for a couple of special little girls somewhere in the UK or on the Syrian border. Emma will help me prepare the outfits as I want her to know from now that the life she lives is a privilege not many little girls can enjoy these days.

Will you help too?

Nourishing and healthy soup

Published by Oana

Last week, I had dear friends over for lunch.

Generally, I love making my own food when I have people over so the day before the visit I rushed into Tesco’s before school pick up and lifted off the shelf a pack of what I thought were split lentils and thought no more of it.

After dinner that evening, I decided to make a start on my soup and placed about 300 grams of my pulses with half a pack of cut up veggies and a cube of chicken Knorr in a pot to boil.

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It usually takes less than half an hour for lentils to boil but when I checked, my pulses were nowhere ready. That is because…they were split chickpeas!

You will not blame me as according to the picture below, lentils and split chickpeas can look quite similar. They do even more suspiciously so when you are in a hurry and plan a nice soup for friends the following day, haha!

Anyway, once the realisation settled in, I had to decide what to do, carry on with an experimental chickpea soup or start everything from scratch the following morning.

I went with the former option, as I thought mistakes can sometimes turn into delicious discoveries and I was right!

Since my chickpeas were taking forever to boil, I decided to transfer them into my slow cooker. I had planned on an Indian lentil soup and I had added half a teaspoon of Indian curry powder, some ground turmeric and a dusting of ground coriander but the flavour just wasn’t coming through as I wanted it so, ~~in desperation~~ in a struck of inspiration, I decided to add a packet of ready made Holy Cow sauce I had in the house.

The game changed completely once the sauce went in as the flavours of the sauce started to work on the chickpeas and infused everything beautifully in the slow cooker.

I turned my soup off when I went to bed (it had been in the slow cooker for about an hour, on slow) and in the morning, added a can of coconut milk into it. Once the chickpeas felt cooked, I processed them into a paste. The coconut milk made everything feel less like a sauce and more like a soup, as intended, and added even more flavour to the mix.

I did let it simmer gently on low for another hour or so in the slow cooker and served it with crusty bread and sandwiches and got a lot of praise for it!

So, here is my “mistake soup” which turned out as a success in the end! It is very filling, healthy and flavoursome and very cheap to make too! I got both my Holy Cow and my coconut milk from Home Bargains for less than £1 each and the chickpeas were around £1 in Tesco’s for a big one kilo bag.

Have you ever made chickpea soup and do you like the flavour? What other “mistakes” have you made in the kitchen that lead to tasty meals?

Dislaimer: the guys at Knorr sent me a bunch of tasty cubes the other week but the opinions expressed in this blog post are all my own. For more soup inspiration, do check their recipe section.

Belfast Children’s Festival Launch Event

Published by Oana

Last week, I had the honour to attend the launch of the 18th annual Belfast Children’s Festival, organised by Young at Art.

Young at Art is one of Northern Ireland’s leading children’s arts not-for-profit companies and home of Young at Art Events and the Belfast Children’s Festival. From its base in Belfast’s city centre, Young at Art coordinates not only an international festival and a touring events agency, but also a wide variety of projects that encourage children and young people under 18 to enjoy the arts.

The launch was a cheerful and bright affair, organised in the central station in Belfast, which was attended by local school children and various local representatives, the Deputy Lord Mayor of Belfast, Alderman Guy Spence being one of them.

Young at Art

‘Young at Art produces this festival each year because it believes the arts are an intrinsic part of how our children and our society understand, grow, imagine and innovate. Experiencing something creative is about going on a journey as far as you can dream. Whether it’s reading a story, seeing an exemplary performance, looking at artwork, the arts offer children an inspirational roadmap through which they can navigate the universe, comprehend everything in it and imagine anything that could happen in the future.’ (Festival Director Ali Fitz Gibbon)

So what will be on the menu this year?

The Australian Terrapin Puppet Theatre Company will be present with I Think I Can (4-9 March) in Central Station, a large-scale public art installation.

“Festival visitors will be treated to a spectacular programme of imaginative and interactive family events during this year’s festival and we would encourage everyone to enjoy good value journeys by bus and train to fully unlock their creative potential. Our Family & Friends Ticket is available for the Big Festival Days Out on March 5 & 6 offering up to 2 adults and 4 children unlimited Translink day travel across Northern Ireland for just £22. We are also looking forward to welcoming everyone to Central Station to take part in the amazing ‘I Think I Can’ installation and become members of the miniature community!” (Lynda Shannon, Translink Communications Manager)

As well as visitors from down-under, the 2016 festival will host a plethora of other international guests including: Vorstadt Theater, Switzerland presenting Bambi (4- 5 March), Norwegian Katja Lindeburg’s two charming clown shows If Only Rosa Could do Magic (8-9 March) and If Only Blue Could be a Super Hero (8 March) and festival regulars Branar presenting an adaptation of the popular Oliver Jeffers novel The Way Back Home (4-8 March). Festival favourites such as Baby Rave (6 March), Pre-teenage Kicks (6 March) and Mini Mid Week Magic (9 March) will also feature in the programme.

If Only Rosa Could Do Magic- official launch photos, courtesy of Young at Art.

The 2016 festival will also boast a strong literature programme in association with Eason’s and Children’s Books Ireland, giving families the opportunity to meet award winning authors and illustrators such as Marie Louise Fitzpatrick (5 March) (Izzy and Skunk, Silly Daddy and There, Mummy), Sheena Wilkinson (6 March) (Taking Flight and Too Many Ponies) and Kitty Crowther (8 March) (Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award winner). Fighting Words Belfast will celebrate their first year in Belfast inspiring local children and young people to get involved in creative writing with a number of interactive events including the Library of Stories (5-6 March) – a portable library of stories and publications written entirely by children and young people.

Child reading. Image Courtesy of Young at Art.

Highlights of the 2016 visual art programme for families will include the following exhibitions; Ordinary Extraordinary (4-9 March) by local artist David Turner in Young at Art’s relocated Office of Important Art on the first floor in CastleCourt Shopping Centre opposite Costa coffee shop. The artworks will represent autobiographical events that took place whilst the artist was growing up in Belfast in the 70s and 80s. Young at Art will present These Boats Carry Hope (4-9 March) at the Duncairn Arts Centre. The artworks were completed during Emma Berkery’s time as an Associate Artist of Young at Art in 2014-15.

Ordinary Extraordinary. Image courtesy of Young at Art.

The festival also offers a diverse programme aimed at adults, professional arts practitioners and those working and studying in related fields. Highlights include the annual TYA (Theatre for Young Audiences) Northern Ireland showcase, welcoming delegates from all over the world. Local artists presenting work at the showcase this year include, Maiden Voyage Dance with their imaginative new dance performance for children and young people aged between 4-8 years old, Pause & Effect (5-8 March); Replay Theatre Company’s Snoozle and the Lullabugs (4-6 March) a multi sensory performance aimed at children under 5 years old with profound and multiple learning difficulties and Young at Art’s Everything That Isn’t Me (7 March) sponsored by Belfast Harbour exploring environmental issues with young people.

As you can see, there is a huge variety of shows, exhibitions and events to choose from. Some are free, some will need booking in advance. To avoid disappointment, head over to the website to book discounted family travel tickets to Belfast with Translink, download our travel activity pack for suggested fun on the journey and use this website to plot your festival itinerary and get some tickets included in our early bird offer.

See you there, we can’t wait for March to come!