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On baking bread

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I have been musing over half a year on the possibility of adding another dimension to my blog. I love cooking, I have said it before and I love counting calories(not that I use my knowledge in keeping my weight down!) so I am going to launch two new categories of posts: cooking easy meals and cooking light for your family. If you like them, let me know. If they inspire you to cook healthier for your family, even better.

Today I will post my super easy recipe of soda bread. When I first moved to Northern Ireland Alex encouraged me to take some cooking lessons and the recipe comes from there. But I have adapted it a little bit so it’s foolproof and delicious.

I use:

  • 500g self-raising soda flour
  • almost half a pint of buttermilk,
  • 25 grams of butter
  • about half a jar of sun-dried tomatoes(I buy mine from Home Bargains for about 69p per jar).

Put the flour in a big bowl, mix the butter in(with your own wee hands or if you have kids, let them make a mess of themselves). Add the chopped up sun-dried tomatoes, the milk and a pinch of salt. It will be a bit sticky so use some of the oil from your sun-dried tomatoes to get the dough off your fingers. Mould it into a ball, cut it in quarters, place it in a non-stick pan.

Put it in the oven for about 40 minutes at 180 degrees.

Check if the bottom sounds hollow after 40 minutes. If so, it’s ready to be devoured!!

Note: I use one of them lazy silicone pans to bake it in. Non-sticking and very easy to clean afterwards. I haven’t been paid by Home Bargains to write this post but their pans are the best value for money, I think I paid £3 for mine.

Here is a picture of my soda bread from last Saturday. Let me know how you liked yours if you make it!

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Damned if you do, damned if you don’t

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Bless you, Eleanor Roosevelt, I couldn’t have said it better! As a mum who needs to make constant choices towards my three year old’s happiness, safety, contentment, education, entertainment, nutrition, I constantly feel EXACTLY like that.

The latest example is my choice to do a little part-time, temporary job in the afternoon, looking after two other children. I thought it would be ideal for us, as a mama and daughter team, as Emma could come along so she wouldn’t be separated from me. I would earn some cash, she would earn new friends, winners all around, right? Aaaaaah, nope!

Monday was bad but bearable. I saw it coming from the moment I picked her up from playgroup. “I want crackers and cheese!” was screamed at me as soon as she got into the car. Naturally, as the afternoon progressed, so did her moods escalate. But they were manageable.

Yesterday was bad. She didn’t get to nap, played hard in Funky Monkeys so by the end of the afternoon when I left the kids’ house I was feeling sorry for them. And for myself. She napped in the car so I foolishly assumed I was out of the woods. Oh, no…she had kept her best for a last performance. Think banged doors, flung around toys, screaming, nonsensical demands, whining, tears and more whining.  More than I can bear whining. And you know what? She keeps all this “special treatment” for me. As soon as daddy got home she plastered a smile on her not-so-long-ago-scrunched-up-face and said sweetly: “Daddy, let’s play!”

So my conclusion is: no matter what you do as a mum, your kids will never be happy with your choices because kids are primarily concerned with their own comfort and little else. And once you make a choice, you need to learn to live with it and your kid’s almost certain disapproval. Probably find compromises that would make all involved if not happy at least comfortable.

Last weekend I attended a writing course with Mumsnet and the conversation led to the very same subject. I was shocked to hear that women dealt with the same dilemma even 15 years after they had had kids. How disabling had felt for them to face the reality of having a child in a busy man’s world and how restrictive their career choices had felt afterwards. How torn they feel between doing things that fulfil them professionally and keeping the peace in the house. How the expectations to be there for their kids are always placed on them as mums and rarely on their partners. How even women who in the world’s eyes are professionally accomplished and had achieved the perfect family-work balance by either working from home, working less than they could or giving up work completely felt actually that they had failed someone. Either one of their kids, themselves, their spouse…

I couldn’t bother taking her to playgroup today. The very thought of dragging her out of bed, putting up with her whining over her choice of pants and which toy to bring along in the car made me choose the least stressful option. But I am sure there will be some discontentment along the way. I will just have to live with it, I suppose and wait for the waters to settle again…Keep-calm-and-carry-on-scan

At War

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Since my last post I had a lot of responses from dear friends regarding my current situation.

Friends who love God encouraged me to persevere through it all and wait for His perfect timing and solutions. Friends who don’t or have forgotten what it means to love Him encouraged me to believe in myself, send good vibes and carry on.

But the best response was from Him(no offence, everybody!). On Sunday morning, during worship time ( if you’re not a Christian or haven’t been in a liberal church before, that’s the time we bellow out to Him, some more aptly than others, trying to forget our pressing situations and focus on His greatness) He spoke to me through an image. A warrior woman, hitting her shield with her sword: “Boom! Boom! Boom!” I could almost hear it. And then came the words: “I haven’t forgotten you. I have been preparing you for war. Worked on you, strengthened you so you can go and attack the enemy’s camp. The warrior you saw? You know what’s she’s doing? Provoking the enemy to fight. No cowering , nor fear any more. Taking back what belongs to Me.”

Last night, I woke up around 2.30 with a feverish child who needed comforting. And Paracetamol. Took her an hour to get comfortable enough to go back to sleep. Then it took me another one to fall asleep myself. Hardly the condition for vivid dreams. But then, I dreamt one of my rare dreams in colour. War. Streets in grey and muted colours of green, the military sort. People fleeing, aimlessly. Military tanks. Young boy warriors kicking about street signs in a sick game of football. Complete anarchy. A sense of panic because in the mass movement I lost my daughter and husband. And a sense of relief as I went back into the church from where I was trying to flee and find them both. Complete clarity and fully coloured vision as I evaluated the situation: we were stranded for an indefinite period of time, with little food and no means of transportation in an unsafe place. But the sense of relief prevailed as I knew that with my loved ones near me I would find the strength to face these things.

Woke up again wondering what the dream meant. I had vivid dreams before, one in which I was trapped in a tight space the night before a big earthquake in Turkey in which many people were buried alive. I thought then that maybe this is my opportunity to pray. For a family somewhere in the world facing war today. A little family which will find strength to fight what’s ahead of them by being together. I hardly feel like a warrior challenging the enemy to war. But I guess I don’t have to feel it, I just AM. He said so!

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Image courtesy of Boston.com.

Positively fed up

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It’s been three months and two weeks since we left Greece with many plans and hopes for the future. We were going to come to Ireland, find work, make some money to put aside for our retirement and a little home of our own. On top of that I had a strong sense that I was coming back to Ireland to help with a children’s or women’s ministry of some sort. Broken down into smaller steps, I was going to find temporary work as a substitute teacher, as I had done in the past, look after my little one the days I would have no work and in the meanwhile try and figure out where God wanted me to help.

Three months, two weeks  and some days later I have achieved NOTHING of what I had planned.

I only had three(yes, THREE!!!) days of work since we came back as a substitute teacher. In consequence I started looking for alternatives but apparently selling yourself for less doesn’t get you more in this country: I am overly qualified to work as a classroom assistant so in consequence “thank you for your enquiry but on this occasion you were unsuccessful.” I even applied to be a part-time, temporary nanny but the “potential employer” came back to me with a contract similar to the ones I imagine secret agents sign vouching total allegiance, perfectly cooked meals, laundered linen and appropriately entertained offsprings all for £6.50 an hour, after tax…

I came nowhere near finding what ministry I am supposed to get involved in, even if I volunteered in several places to work for free and get some experience. I have had countless chats with people who have teaching experience, life insight and spiritual wisdom. Inconclusive. In fact, the sky seems locked behind unbreakable glass doors and my sense of spiritual direction has seriously been going…akimbo.

On top of that, just to make my sense of failure complete I have been reacquainted with old high school colleagues who have “made it in life”, as the word goes.  Appraised university lecturers, business owners, home owners. Aha, that sort of thing while I have “stay at home mum” and “odd teaching jobs” to account for myself. And no pressure there, hey, I am only 34, right, I have another 30-40 years to make it happen. Oh boy, who am I kidding???

So the question arises: what……on earth am I doing here?? Here as in my marriage: complete, childlike dependency comes to mind when I try to define our relationship. Here as in mothering: what sort of example am I setting for my little one, moping (figuratively) around all day. Here as in Northern Ireland: six years of odd employment and no hope of further makes me sour in the mouth just to think about it. Here as in spiritual journey, when I have no clue whether I am coming or going. Metaphorically speaking.

Thank you for stopping by at the “feel sorry for myself” clinic. Please feel free to return at a later date. No optimism guaranteed though.

2012 in review-Thank you friends!!

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The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 7,100 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 12 years to get that many views.

Click here to see the complete report.