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Happy free-from Easter!

Following on from my last post about free-from sausages and how going without gluten and dairy doesn’t mean going without per se, it turns out the same can be said for chocolate. And Easter eggs. Until six months ago health food shops were alien to me: the sort of places that emit the same waft as you pass by the door (what is that smell? The ryvita? The flax?) and are piled high with daunting looking bags of unidentifiable brown stuff. Until I went in with a list written by my nutritional therapist and actually knew what I was looking for, that is. Admittedly chocolate was not on that list, however one cannot help but notice bright shiny chocolatey-looking packaging amongst the aforementioned unidentifiable brown stuff. And so I discovered Booja-Booja, which not only sells luxury chocolates and seasonal treats like Easter eggs (made in Kashmir and filled with truffles, pictured) but ice cream too. […]

By |April 16th, 2014|Family life, Food, Health, Parenting, Reviews|0 Comments
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By’eck! I’ve just eaten a squasage

That’s right, a squasage. Also known as a square sausage. That’s what gluten free sausage brand Heck have been busy making in time for the barbecue season, because it doesn’t fall through the rungs of the grill only to be burned to a crisp and lost forever, or roll off the side of the barbie onto the grass (pictured). We haven’t dusted down our barbecue yet, so I’ve been eating mine between two soft and thick slices of (gluten free) bread. It may not look like a traditional sausage sandwich – as BB was fast to point out – but it tastes just the same and makes spreading the ketchup even easier. When embarking on Project No Nasties last autumn I thought living free-from would also mean going without, but when it comes to sausages I’ve found an ever better offering than the standard shelves. […]

By |April 14th, 2014|Family life, Food, Health, Parenting, Recipes, Reviews|0 Comments
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LEGO storage brick: a place for everything

Spring has officially sprung which means it’s time for a good spring clean (tidy house equals tidy mind and all that). There’s nothing more therapeutic than filling clear plastic bin bags with outgrown toys and packing them away, leaving great swathes of living and bedroom carpet visible for the first time in months. I know it won’t last and the lovely clear patches will soon be filled with new – infuriatingly bigger – toys, but that’s not the point. Of course while some toys have got bigger the ones with Annoying Parts have got even smaller. Like letters that fit into jigsaws and plastic Winnie the Pooh characters (if I have to extract Roo from between my littlest toes one more time I will scream). Luckily aplaceforeverything.co.uk has come to my rescue and sent us a giant LEGO storage brick (rrp: £22.95) which is just the ticket (pictured). […]

By |April 2nd, 2014|Family life, Parenting, Reviews|0 Comments
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Nairn’s oat biscuits up for grabs!

Given that I’m trying to eschew gluten (and the type of gluten found in bready things) I’ve been consuming rather a lot of oat biscuits lately. When I first went hunting for them in the supermarket I expected to find a choice of two, possibly three different options. I couldn’t have been more wrong. There’s been an explosion of oat biscuits apparently led by category stalwart Nairn’s, whose range includes everything from seedy and fruity to biscuits to biscuit breaks (aka breakfast biscuits) and a raft of gluten-free varieties. I’ve been dunking, spreading, dipping and munching my way through them for weeks now, and in a bid to share the love I’ve teamed up with Nairn’s to offer one reader the chance to win three lovely boxes of the stuff. […]

By |March 28th, 2014|Competitions, Food, Health, Reviews|0 Comments
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Specks get into the most annoying crevices no matter how well I rinse the damn thing

I am sick of our cafetiere (ok, I know there are greater problems in the world). And I don’t even drink coffee. No matter how well I rinse the damn thing before putting it in the dishwasher after Misery Guts has left for work, by the following morning specks of coffee have still managed to work their way into the most annoying crevices of everything else in the dishwasher, like the teats of BB’s beakers. I’m so fed up with picking them out I think it’s time to join the rest of the coffee-drinking world and invest in a no-mess home coffee machine in time for Misery Guts’ birthday (I’m banking on him not reading this post, obviously). The only problem, apart from the fact that I don’t drink coffee and couldn’t tell you the difference between a skinny latte and a macchiato, is that I have no idea where to start. And Misery Guts is exacting when it comes to his morning coffee hit. […]

By |March 19th, 2014|Family life, Food, Money, Parenting, Reviews|0 Comments
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Spring days out in Dorset: head for Farmer Palmer’s

Bottle feeding a lamb has got to be a rite of passage when growing up and determined that BB shouldn't miss [...]

By |March 10th, 2014|Family days out, Family life, Money, Parenting, Reviews, Travel|4 Comments
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Crushed: a healthy snack you’ll love too

You can always rely on a mumpreneur to find a solution to a problem. One vexing me lately is what to give BB to eat on the go when we’re charging between home and Talking Tots or the supermarket and nursery. Bored of snack packs of apple and grapes from Tesco and constantly being harassed for Milky Way Magic Stars, I’ve been on the hunt for something in bright packaging that looks like a treat akin to magic stars, but isn’t. Cue Crushed (pictured). Technically designed for hard-to-please seven to 11-year-olds, these Ella’s Kitchen-style pouches of 100% fruit contain no artificial colours, flavours, sweeteners or preservatives and come in apple and banana and apple and strawberry flavours. With screw-top spouts there’s no mess and no spoon, perfect for on-the-go consumption – in our case the pushchair. […]

By |March 5th, 2014|Family life, Food, Health, Parenting, Reviews|1 Comment
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Tiramisu flavoured Haagen-Dazs: the queue starts here

Haagen-Dazs is adding to its Sensations range of super indulgent ice cream with a Tiramisu flavour. Now I’m not a fan of Tiramisu as a rule (cheese in dessert is a no-no for me) but when the opportunity arose to taste test the new offering which hits the shelves in March (pictured) it would have been rude not to. Sensations is the right name for the sub-brand. We’re talking pockets of gooey coffee and chocolate syrup and cookie dough-style pieces of tiramisu-ey cake in a really intense ice cream, and there’s so much packed in to the pint-sized tub you get a taste of it all in every scoop. I daren’t look at the fat and calorie content, so I didn’t (you’ll have to find that out for yourself). […]

By |February 24th, 2014|Family life, Food, Parenting, Reviews|1 Comment
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‘Mummy and daddy gone onna mini break’

This is what BB has been telling anyone who’ll listen following our night away at Foxhills Hotel & Spa in Surrey at the weekend. ‘Mini break’ sounds so extravagant and self-indulgent, and I suppose it was (pictured). Luxurious rooms with king-size beds, a king-size bath (even Misery Guts, who’s 6ft 4, could lie down in it) and a health spa complete with a 20m pool with vaulted ceilings and ‘mood lighting’ all promised and delivered a restorative 24 hours away from being mummy and daddy. And all despite my reservations that the trip was going to go pear shaped when Misery Guts demanded 10% off the bill before we’d even left the house because the hotel’s restaurant was closed (a fact they failed to tell us when making the booking) even though we had never planned to eat there in the first place. […]

By |February 12th, 2014|Beauty, Exercise, Family life, Health, Parenting, Reviews, Travel|2 Comments
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Recipes your toddler (and you) will love

I’ve suffered my triannual anxiety attack in which I fear we’ve come to rely too much on sausages and potato waffles and the same meals on the same day of each week. In a fit of renewed I-must-get-more-vegetables-into-BB I went in search of a new cookbook featuring meals I know she requests seconds of at nursery (when her little friends are sat beside her happily tucking in) like spaghetti carbonara and chicken curry but won’t touch with a barge pole at home. Nestled between the River Cottage baby and toddler cookbook with quinoa this and spelt that (too poncey pretentious for me) and the obligatory Annabel Karmel recipes (always far too time consuming) I found The Baby-Led Weaning Recipe Book by Felicity Bertin and Emma Ogden-Hooper. As an advocate of baby-led weaning but with a toddler who now refuses to suck the tips from a tree of broccoli or peel the layers off a sprout I discovered a book packed full of normal, simple family recipes like cottage pie and fish cakes all with a healthy portion of ‘hidden’ veg. […]

By |February 3rd, 2014|Books, Family life, Food, Health, Reviews, Weaning|2 Comments
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Happy Birthday crummy mummy!

It’s official: confessions of a crummy mummy is one today and I’ve been blogging for a whole year (if anyone fancies sending me some cake, or better still, some champers, please feel free). A lot can happen in a year, as a quick flick through the archives has revealed: Twelve months ago today, in my very first post, I declared time on the milk bar and began a five month task of giving up breastfeeding. This was surprisingly straightforward and culminated in me mourning the process far more than BB, which I recorded for posterity by composing my first poem since my schooldays – An Ode to BB. There have been funny times, like the day BB woke from a nap having fashioned an exquisite bouffant while sleeping. […]

By |January 20th, 2014|Breast feeding, Family life, Food, Reviews, Travel|4 Comments
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Boobie Beanie: a breast feeding mum’s must-have

Yes you did read correctly. This is a Boobie Beanie, aka a breast feeding hat, designed – you guessed it – with boobies in mind. If you’ve ever wanted to stick two fingers up to the person (there’s always one) who insists on having a good look when you need to breast feed in public then one of these on the baby’s head is the way to do it. […]

By |January 8th, 2014|Breast feeding, Craft, Family life, Reviews|0 Comments
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I’m going on a bar hunt…and other interesting stories

Only five sleeps to go until the big day! Which means it’s time to concentrate on stocking fillers, and you can’t beat a good book. Or app book (yes, there really is such a thing). These are my top three: 1) We’re Going On a Bar Hunt: A Parody by Emlyn Rees and Josie Lloyd  (RRP £9.99) Think ‘we’re going on bear hunt’ for adults, and instead of daddy carrying baby on his shoulders, he’s got a squiffy mummy instead. […]

By |December 20th, 2013|Books, Food, Reviews|1 Comment
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Dreaming of a…German Christmas market

There’s nothing like a German Christmas market to get you in the festive spirit. I don’t mean a German Christmas market in England, I mean a proper one. In Germany. BB and I spent last weekend sampling the best West Germany has to offer, namely in the city of Trier and the cobbled streets of Bernkastel-Kues (pictured). I saw it as a bit of a rite of passage for her: as a forces child I spent a number of formative years living in Germany, and the Christmas markets of Trier and Bernkastel are a lasting childhood memory I’d like her to have too. We’re talking wooden huts quite literally decked with boughs of holly, sausages sizzling in great big pans and the unmistakable smell of mulled wine and sugared almonds wafting through the streets. We weren’t sent on the trip for the purposes of review, I just thought you’d like to know about it because there’s still time to hop on a plane and sample it for yourselves. […]

By |December 13th, 2013|Family days out, Food, Reviews, Travel, Uncategorized|2 Comments
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Peanut butter…without the peanuts!

I can hardly believe it but I’m about to enter my third month of project No Nasties (alcohol, caffeine and dairy) in a bid to wave goodbye to not-so-new mum frazzle and fatigue and rediscover pre-pregnancy levels of health and wellbeing. I say no nasties: I must admit to falling off the wagon once or twice wine-wise, and the odd diet coke may have passed my lips, but overall I’ve had a pretty good stab at it. While I’m at it I’ve decided to embrace the whole free-from revolution and opt for gluten-free and whatever-else-I-can-get-my-hands-on-free at the same time. Why not? In for a penny, in for a pound. And you can now get peanut butter without the peanuts. Or any other sort of nut. And it actually tastes – and looks – like peanut butter (pictured). […]

By |November 29th, 2013|Food, Health, Reviews|3 Comments
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I'm a wife, mum of four, freelance journalist, author & blogger. Not necessarily in that order! Join me as I navigate the previously unchartered territory of motherhood always safe in the knowledge there's a bottle of wine in the fridge...

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