Madhouse diaries : Going bananas !

What with the awful weather, Pierre being sick for a week and having a few crazy busy weeks at work, I feel like we haven't been out and about forever ... at least since Christmas, although we probably have ! Well, to kick off the school holidays in style, especially as it was a lovely sunny day, we headed into town to visit the port museum and their current temporary exhibition about bananas !

The museum is located in an old warehouse which used to be used for, amongst other things, bananas, so the exhibition started off by explaining how the bananas arrived in Dunkirk.

How much fun can one family have with a fake banana on a stick ? Smile !

The first stand explained about the banana in popular culture, including the iconic Velvet Underground record cover and the Minions. All three of the Madhouse kids were in hysterics listening to some strange song about a banana !

I was more intrigued by the banana flower which was much prettier than I expected. I didn't realise how short banana plants are either - I thought they grew on trees (I must have been thinking of coconuts !) but they are actually plants that only grow between 2-5m in height usually, or maximum 7m apparently.  

It was a very hands-on exhibition so the Madhouse kids all worked together to complete this big magnetic wooden puzzle.

Juliette and Pierre were lured back to the headphones with the funny banana song, leaving Sophie to finish it off by herself ! 

We had a good look at the mini banana plantation - look out Sophie, don't let the big machete get you !

 

I can't believe how fast Pierre's reading is coming on - he managed to read some quite complicated descriptions of the banana exportation system and put them in order.

But constructing a container ship was deemed more fun.

 The banana exhibition was drawing to a close but there was one more activity ... 

Eating bananas, while we looked at some banana-themed books in their little reading corner ! They were very tasty so everyone had two each ... I think Juliette might have even had three !

We went to have a look around the rest of the museum but it was mainly model boats which didn't really hold their attention for long.

Pierre was scared of the deep sea diver for some reason - I think he thought he was an alien !

And he also hated the "walk of faith" type glass walkway that  lead round to the exit at first, before he realised it wasn't going to crack and went round three times with Juliette !

Sophie has been away on a school trip for the past couple of day but she gets back tomorrow night so we have lots more adventures planned for the rest of the holidays. My calendar is covered in scribbles of places to go and events that are being organised, weather permitting !

The March Degustabox (review)

As usual, when this month's Degustabox arrived, everyone crowded round to see what would be hiding inside. Before we'd even started unpacking the contents, the Madhouse kids were squealing in delight, asking if they could try this and that, oh and that too ! Needless to say, it was a very popular box this month !

The oohs and aahs didn't stop coming when we looked at what was hiding at the bottom of the box.

The Lindt White Chocolate Bunny (£2.99) looks so cute and Pierre loved making him jump around so his little bell jingled. It was almost a shame to eat him, but the white chocolate was beautifully creamy and incredibly scrummy.

Chewits (4 x 35p) were a real blast from the past because I used to eat them as a kid and haven't tried them for years. They are still exactly how I remember them and the Madhouse kids were big fans too. We got four packs, two each of blackcurrant and strawberry, and they didn't last long !

The Brioche Pasquier Pain au Chocolat with Crème Patissière (£1.40) were declared delicious and disappeared so swiftly, I didn't even manage to get a photo ! They can be eaten warm but the Madhouse kids just scoffed them straight from the pack for breakfast.

I was surprised to see that the healthier snacks were equally popular though.

Kallo Milk Chocolate Rice Cake Rounds (£1) were declared delicious by all three of the kids. Personally, I'm not keen on rice cakes because the texture reminds me of polystyrene and I hate the way it squeaks on your teeth, but the addition of chocolate makes them a bit more palatable.

 Kallo Quinoa and Seeds Multigrain Cakes (£1.89) looked just too healthy to be popular with the kids but they proved me wrong, announcing that they tasted like popcorn and asing for them in place of biscuits as a snack - definitely a great swap !

Parle Hide & Seek (59p) are thin square chocolate chip biscuits that are apparently India's finest. The kids munched their way through the smallish pack in minutes, enthusing about the crisp texture and the large quantity of chocolate chips in them.

Parle Monaco (39p) are light crispy biscuits sprinkled with salt that reminded us of Ritz-type crackers. The kids added them to their semi-traditional Sunday night smorging tea, topped with cheese spread or cream cheese or just plain.

Pipers Crisp Co's Cheddar & Onion (£2) were popular with the whole family. They're nice and crunchy with a lovely depth of flavour.

We have a trip to the cinema planned later this week to see Zootopia so we've kept the bag of Metcalfe's Skinny Popcorn (£1.50) to take with us. It is Cinema Sweet but sweetened with stevia so it contains 67% less sugar than all other sweet varieties on the market and only 93 calories per serving.

 Karyatis Meze To Go (£1.99)promises to bring a taste of the Mediterranean to your snacking and I was delighted to discover the crunchy rosemary crackers accompanied witha dip made of sweet and smoky roasted red pepper and tangy feta. Its convenient packaging means that this would be great for picnics and packed lunches too.

Staying on the savoury theme, there was a tub of Kent's Kitchen Stuffing (£1.85). We got Cranberry & Orange which I used in an all-in-one couscous & chicken bake that had wonderful overtones of Moroccan spices that were perfectly complemented by the tangy fruit. Each pot serves four and it is also available in Apple, Sage & Onion, Apricot, Apple & Ginger and Rustic Red Onion, Herb & Horseradish.

For a quick breakfast that I can drink on the bus, Weetabix On The Go (2 x £1.50) sounds ideal so I've put these aside for when I go back to work. They contain extra protein (20g) and deliver a proper breakfast in drink form that provides all the energy and fibre of a weetabix with milk, as well as four vitamins, iron and calcium. As I often skip breakfast, this sounds perfect for my busy morning routine.

This month's Db's Discovery was Good Hemp Coconut (£1.79) which can be used like milk. It is a natural source of omega 3 and is completely allergen free. It is also available in Original and Unsweetened. I'll be using this to make a coconut flavoured custard and also in baking.

There is absolutely nothing in this month's box that we wouldn't eat - in fact most of it has disappeared already ! - so it was great to discover some brands and products that we were unaware of. This month's recipe is for Chocolate Easter Nests, which Pierre wants to make, even if they don't actually use any of the products from the box !

A subscription to Degustabox costs £12.99 per month including delivery, with each box having a value of much more than that (£21.79 this month), but the great news is, I have a discount coupon code for you which gives you a whopping £6 off the price of your box - just enter code BLDEG15 at the checkout - making it great value and a fab way to discover new products.

for more information :

http://bit.ly/DBhomepage - website

http://bit.ly/DBUKfacebook - Facebook

http://bit.ly/DBUKTwitter - twitter

Also now on Instagram @DegustaboxUK 

Disclosure : We received the box in order to write an honest review.

Madhouse recipe : All-in-one Moroccan Couscous & Chicken Bake

When I was sitting down to write this week's menu plan, I knew that I wanted to do something a bit different with chicken. I had visions of a twist on shepherds pie, with spicy chicken topped with mash. When I looked in my cupboard for inspiration, I came across a pack of couscous and decided to see if a couscous bake would work as well as a pasta bake.

I'd received a pot of Kent’s Kitchen Cranberry & Orange Stuffing mix in a recent Degustabox and I decided that the tart fruity flavours would work well in this dish, as the smell reminded me of a Chicken & Apricot Tagine that we sometimes eat, after discovering it on holiday. It ended up working so well that a new Madhouse family favourite has been born !

 All-in-one Moroccan Couscous & Chicken Bake

ingredients :

a drizzle of olive oil

a pack of chicken breasts

2 onions

a bit of chicken stock or gravy

salt, pepper

Moroccan spices (ras el hanout, chermoula or similar - or just mix up what you have : ginger, smoked paprika, garlic granules, cumin, chilli, coriander, even mint)

a pack of couscous

a knob of butter

a tub of Kent’s Kitchen Cranberry & Orange Stuffing mix

Chop the chicken and onion into chunks and fry in the olive oil until cooked through. Season with salt, pepper and Moroccan style spices to give it a taste of the Orient. Add a little chicken stock or gravy so that it's not too dry.

Make up the couscous following the instructions. This generally means adding equal quantities of couscous and boiling water to a bowl and leaving it to absorb the liquid. Add a knob of butter and season to taste with salt. I used Moroccan spiced couscous which gave it a lovely lift, so you could always add a bit more Moroccan seasoning to the couscous if yours is plain. Transfer the couscous to an ovenproof dish.

Pour over the chicken.

Make up the stuffing mix by adding boiling water and leaving it to absorb.

Scatter dollops of stuffing all over the top of the dish and use a fork to spread them out to cover as much as possible.

Bake in the oven for about 20 minutes until the stuffing is cooked.

This is so quick and simple to make that it would be great as a midweek meal when you're in a rush. The whole dish took ten minutes to prepare and twenty minutes to cook so it could be on the table in half an hour. The Madhouse kids were unsure to begin with but ended up asking for seconds! The stuffing mix gave it a great lift - the fruity pieces blended perfectly with the Moroccan spices to create an exotic, flavour-packed meal.

Disney Art Therapy Colouring Books review

As Book Buddies, we're always excited to see which books Parragon will have selected for us to review in our monthly package and this month, there was a great deal of excitement when we discovered these Disney Art Therapy Colouring Books, one featuring Disney Princesses and one featuring Frozen.

They target older children and even grown ups, who can enjoy colouring as a stress-busting activity, but Pierre and Juliette were so enthusiastic that I said they could have them. Sophie was a bit miffed though, showing that they really do appeal to all ages !

As they target a slightly older audience, you won't find portraits of the characters to colour in, but you will find symbols and patterns from the films - maybe elements of the decor or patterns from clothing.

The designs are frequently repetitive, which adds to the soothing, calming nature of the colouring. Don't worry about symmetry or not going over the edges, just grab your (or your kids') felt pens, crayons or pencils and take a step back into childhood, letting your mind zone out and your troubles fade away while you create a rainbow masterpiece.

It's also a lovely activity for spending some quality time with the kids, working together on the same picture.

The kids often like using colouring apps on their ipads, but I think it's much nicer to get back to basics with a real colouring book. Not only does it help practise fine motor skills, it also means that you get a pretty picture to put up on your bedroom wall.

Parragon had another little surprise up their sleeves for us too - a lovely Easter-themed crafts activity from their  brand new ‘Make it By the Book’ crafts book.

All you need is the template and instructions, which you can download on the Parragon blog, along with two sheets of coloured or patterned paper, a sheet of tracing paper and a piece of corrugated card.

We had great fun and Pierre was very impressed with our finished bunny !

Disclosure : We received the books in order to write an honest review.

Kids' DVD review : Peppa Pig Around The World

Today saw the release of a brand new Peppa Pig DVD and Pierre was delighted to receive a review copy. Funnily enough, as he sat down to watch it, Juliette mysteriously appeared and lingered until it had finished. I can't say anything, I was secretly watching too - I always find something to make me smile !

The DVD features a brand new 15-minute episode entitled 'Around The World With Peppa', which sees Peppa and her family heading off to the park to celebrate the beginning of the summer holidays by jumping in muddy puddles. When their car breaks down, Miss Rabbit lends them her plane for the day, so they go to visit Peppa's friends who are on their holidays in different countries. 

The DVD features three other episodes that we had seen before but we still enjoyed watching them again :

International Day - It's International Day at playgroup so all Peppa's friends dress up in clothes from different countries

At The Beach - Peppa and George have a fun family day out at the beach 

Polly's Holidays - When Polly Parrot flies away, George comes up with a very clever plan to get her back

The DVD is quite short - it has a total runtime of 30 minutes - but it has a low price too, costing just £5 in all major supermarkets and online stores. You also get a free sticker set in the DVD case while stocks last.

Visit the Peppa Pig website with your little ones for fun games, stories and activities you can share together. Plus don’t forget to sign up to the Muddy Puddle fan club! (http://www.peppapig.co.uk/)

• Number of discs: 1
• Classification: U
• Studio: Entertainment One
• DVD Release Date: 4 April 2016
• Run Time: 31 minutes

Disclosure : We received the DVD in order to write an honest review.

#readcookeat recipe : Boiled Bacon & Cabbage (Secret Demon)

Before I had even got to the opening chapter of C.L. Ryan's Secret Demon (click through to read my review), I knew that it would be a great book for #readcookeat recipes, because the foreword says : "Mother's food was always made with so much love, it was her pride and joy to keep her family, at all times, warm, clean and well-fed, no matter what !" I knew that the pages would be bursting with good, homely Irish cooking and I wasn't disppointed so, having eaten Irish Stew last week, as one of the recipes in this month's Irish-themed Kitchen Trotter box, I knew that we'd be in for a treat.

The food sounds quite similar to things that I already serve :

p7 Cottage pie was cooking in the oven, the soda bread was cooling on top and the buttered mashed swede and runner beans were keeping hot on top of the stove.

p106 She checked the larder again : potatoes, carrots, corned beef, flour, butter and eggs. "Right then, corned beef hash", she said to herself. I haven't made corned beef hash for a while, but it's a great family-friendly comfort food, not to mention very simple and cheap to make. There's also a mention of "corned beef pie" in the book (p152) which sounds interesting.

Megan would be great at joining with the #KitchenClearout recipe linky too !

 p84 The fridge was almost empty. There were just some eggs, old tomatoes, a piece of hard cheese, an old onion, some cold cooked veg and buttermilk, for the soda bread. Angie gasped with amazement as, within just a few minutes, Megan made a loaf of soda bread which was now ready to go into the oven. When Angie asked how on earth she was going to feed her brothers and sisters, she replied "I will make a big oven omelette; it's a type of Spanish omelette. It will be really tasty, don't worry." So, she whisked the eggs good and hard, added salt and pepper and managed to find the little bottle of olive oil, which made Angie grimace. "Olive oil," she said, "for ear aches?" "One day everyone will cook with this oil," Megan replied and carried on with her preparation.

This sounds almost identical to my Spanish omelette - most recently, McCain challenged me to try replacing the cubes of fresh potato with frozen chips as a timesaver, which worked better than I expected !

I wanted to try something typically Irish though so this sounded ideal :

p17 The staple diet was usually bacon and potatoes, or 'poppies' as they were called because of their lovely deep red colour. These would explode into a fluffy ball when cooked and worked beautifully with the boiled bacon and fried cabbage that would accompany it, topped off with Ireland's own famous 'Chef' brown sauce. Soda bread was also a staple and every week Tom or Jim would drive their mother into the town to shop with the donkey and cart. The wholemeal flour, white flour and sugar would be scooped out of great vats, weighed to order and put into sturdy brown paper bags which would then be tied with string. Butter was sliced from a huge block, weighed and wrapped in greaseproof paper, something that just didn't happen in England.

Boiled bacon and cabbage is an Irish classic but I've never seen a bacon joint to boil available in the shops here, so I went for a simple version with bacon lardons and served it as a side dish with the leftover roast pork and gravy from yesterday's Sunday dinner.

Boiled Bacon & Cabbage

ingredients

1/2 a green cabbage

2 onions

200g bacon lardons

pepper

In a large pan, fry the bacon and onions until just soft. Don't overcook them as they will continue cooking with the cabbage.

Chop the cabbage into quarters and remove the core. Slice into thin strips.

Toss the cabbage into the pan and stir fry for a couple of minutes, then add enough water to just cover the cabbage.

 Cook for 30 minutes or so until the cabbage is soft and it has absorbed most of the cooking water. Serve with potatoes and white sauce with parsley, or as an accompaniment to leftover roast meat and gravy. I loved the way the cabbage absorbed the flavour of the bacon ... although the kids complained that the bacon absorbed the flavour of the cabbage, so it depends which way you look at it !

*** Don't miss my country-by-country globecooking recipe index ! ***

 Fancy cooking the books?! Join in with the #readcookeat challenge at Chez Maximka.

Book review : Secret Demon - C.L. Ryan

The blurb on the back of the book says : "Based on a true story, Secret Demon relates the astonishing, and often harrowing, childhood of a girl whose life is beset by abuse and demonic activity". It goes on to outline Megan's life, from her idyllic early years in rural Ireland with her grandmother to bullying at school, an unpredictable and alcoholic mother, then more abuse in her foster home. I was expecting a gritty, poignant and disturbing read, following Megan and her story of survival, somewhat similar to Armadillos by P.K. Lynch, that I have also just reviewed.

What I wasn't expecting was the extent of the paranormal element. The synopsis describes the novel as "a supernatural story of one little girl's battle against abuse and neglect" and goes on to explain that it is "the first of a series which follows Megan as her physical and spiritual lives unfold". I'd describe myself as an open-minded sceptic. One of my favourite TV programmes is Most Haunted and, while I know full well that 99% of the spooky goings-on are totally staged, I still believe that there are things in this world that we cannot really understand or explain. I was expecting Megan to have a psychic connection or feel a ghostly presence supporting her, maybe be the focus of poltergeist activity or the victim of satanic worship rituals, all of which I could have believed in with no problem. I wasn't expecting her to be a half demon, like her mother, and have a tail, fangs and glowing green eyes, as well as superhuman strength, when she really loses her cool. I also wasn't expecting angels to be walking around in people's houses or loitering in corners with swords without anybody batting an eyelid, and I found it hard to equate this with the "based on a true story" label. As a work of fiction, I'm happy to go along with a suspension of disbelief and take on board angels, demons, devils, vampires and all manner of other-wordly creatures, but in a true story, I'm not so sure. I actually found that for me, it detracted from the tension and horror of certain scenes, such as the bullying or the attempted rape by the foster father, because it all became a bit burlesque and unbelievable rather than poignant.

Another aspect that slightly spoilt my enjoyment was the bad language, not in itself - I have nothing against swearing when it fits in with the narrative - but because it seemed totally out of place and unrealistic. Having a respectable, hard-working and highly professional ward sister tell her nurses that they are a "f***ing bunch of lazy f****ers" totally stopped me believing in her character. The same goes for a mumsy social worker and young Megan herself dropping an F-bomb, which seemed totally out of character and unrealistic to me.

It's an interesting story though, slightly reminiscent of Rosemary's Baby, which I'm sure paranormal fiction lovers would appreciate. I'd have actually enjoyed  it much more if it hadn't had the "based on a true story label" and I hadn't come to it expecting something totally believable and realistic, but maybe I'm not open-minded enough.

star rating : 3.5/5

RRP : £8.99

• Paperback: 196 pages
• Publisher: Mirador Publishing (29 Dec. 2015)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 191104432X
• ISBN-13: 978-1911044321

Disclosure : I received a copy of the book in order to write an honest review.