Tweet Treats

Originally written for http://www.culch.ie

Tweet Treats – Book Review

Tweet Treats is a recipe book that was conceived on Twitter.  All the recipes in Tweet Treats are in under 140 characters or less as submitted to compiler and editor Jane Travers over the medium of Twitter. There are over 1000 recipes in all. 140 of those were submitted by celebrities ranging in talent and glamour from Keith Barry to Paula Abdul, Neil Gaiman to Ryan Tubridy. The rest came from your average tweeps including a couple from little old me! It contains a foreward and some great cooking tips from Marco Pierre White. All the royalties of the book go the deserving charity Medecins Sans Frontieres.

But there’s only one way to review a cookbook. This is how my Tweet Treat day went:

8am: breakfast: Look longingly at @HazelkLarkin’s Tropical Breakfast “1 ripe papaya, 1 fresh lime. Seed, peel & chop papaya. Squeeze limejuice over papaya. Eat. Yum.” but as papaya is not really one of my store cupboard items, I leave it for another day and go with @Countrylets Fruity Porridge instead. “Boil 450ml watr, 1tbsp b/sugr, 1tsp cinmn, 2tbsp map/syrup. Lower heat add 75g oats, stir 5min, remove from heat. Stir in apples, sultanas. Serve” Deliciously good start.

11am: I swear porridge makes me hungrier. I peruse the snacks. Spy @LevParikian’s Perfection “Really good Stilton, a russet apple, walnuts. Maybe a glass of port. No need to muck around but take time to savour flavours.” but as it’s a tad early for port, mark it for later and go with @JenOConnell of SBP’s Instant Croque Monsieur instead. “Toast 1 side of bread. Grated swiss, drizzle cream, smidge mustard. Mix, spread on other side of bread, grill.” Sure beats Starbucks CM offering.

1pm Lunch: Prepare @SarahBrownUK’s (yes, the former PM’s wife) Easy Vegetable Soup. “Add chopped leek, carrot, potato to homemade chicken or veg stock, heat for 20 mins & season, yum.” Smells good. Leave it to simmer while I collect the kids. Surprise surprise, one eats it and asks for more the other looks at me like I’ve offered him bread and dripping. Not wanting to give up yet I throw him together @campbellclaret’s (Alistair Campbell) Easiest Snack “Two slices of toast in toaster. Open tin of beans. Cook beans on stove. Pour beans on toast when beanjuice is sizzling” Success – but then I knew he’d go for that.

I’m off to a meeting later, everyone’s expected to take goodies to share. I study the generous selection of desserts. Some look delicious, some incredibly simple @Tracytid’s Golden Biscuit Cake “Melt 125g butter, 3tbsp golden syrup, bash 200g biscuits, mix together, put in tray in fridge for a couple of hrs. Eat” some as complicated as 140 characters will allow. @justinbrownchef of Masterchef UK has one there for crème brûlée. @mduffywriter has one in there for Chocolate Body Paint. You know what? You want those recipes, buy the book and look them up yourselves. I went with @goodtoweet’s Lemon Cake. I didn’t end up bringing any home again which is always a good sign.

I spent a long time wondering what to make for dinner. There’s large fish, poultry and meat sections. A section for pasta and rice dishes and a decent vegetarian and vegan section. I’m overwhelmed by choice. All look achievable and most look like everyone here would eat them. With the exception of my own Spiced Lentils. Must’ve been having an ambitiously healthy day the day I tweeted that one. I look at the mess in my kitchen after the day’s culinary escapades and one recipe stands out: @Glinner (Graham Linehan’s) beef recipe: “Step 1. Order take-out…”

Tweet Treats Compiled and Edited by Jane Travers. Published by The O’Brien Press. ISBN 978-1-84717-302-7 Price €7.99/£6.99 Proceedds to Medicins sans Frontieres. Available from Amazon.co.uk, Book Depository, Waterstones, Eason, Dubray Books, O’Brien Press and all good bookshops.

OWLS Nature Club

OWLS Children’s Nature Club

I discovered this club during Heritage Week. The event was advertised as a ‘Wild Kids’ discovery tour of Turvey Park in Donabate. I called the number and signed up my 6 year old, who loves nothing more than climbing trees and getting muddy. I dropped him to the meeting point and watched him wander off timidly with the other kids and ‘Mouse’ the leader. When I collected him after the 2 hours he was flushed, wet, muddy, in possession of a slingshot made from a twig and was talking at 100mph out of excitement about jumping ditches and making shelters. I signed him up for a year’s membership at a cost of €25.

We get regular emails inviting us to events. The club has an allotment in St Anne’s Park where we are often invited as a family to go and help plant, dig and grow vegetables. The leaders there constantly point out interesting facts about insects, gardening and other aspects of nature to the kids. The club is also responsible for the maintenance of Ashtown Nature Reserve where we spent a very pleasant Saturday afternoon foraging for fruits and berries. We were given recipes to use the fruits we had gathered and the kids loved helping to make and eat the jam produced from the damsons we collected that day. There’s another few weeks to go before we (adults) can taste the sloe gin we also made.

OWLS stands for outdoor, wildlife, learning and survival. It is a registered children’s nature charity and the aim of it is to offer young children experiences that get them in tune with their natural world, while learning and having fun at the same time. Events run once a fortnight at weekends at various parks and natural areas both on the north and southside of Dublin. OWLS also organise week long daycamps for children during the school holidays.

We are looking forward to the conker championships next Sunday and the many scary events planned for the weeks around Hallowe’en. OWLS Nature Club is perfect for those with young families who would like to spend more time with them exploring the great outdoors. Our children have thoroughly enjoyed every event we’ve taken part in and the relaxed, inclusive nature of the events makes them a lot of fun for the grownups too.

For more detailed information, a list of  events and benefits of membership see http://www.owls.ie

This piece was written for http://www.culch.ie

National Breastfeeding Week – just another excuse for cake?

Is there anything that doesn't have its own occasion these days? Daffodil Day, Arthur's Day, Heritage Week, Book Week, Culture Night even Fish 'n' Chip day. Some of these are awareness raising, some are nothing more than marketing ploys. They seem to work in that the public masses go out of their way to focus on what they're supposed to at the designated time. Overall, having a day/night/week to celebrate your product or charity is good for business.

In 2005 I had my first child. I sometimes attended a breastfeeding support group with him run by my local public health nurse. Even though I had no breastfeeding difficulties, it was nice to meet other women around my own age, also flailing around trying to come to terms with who they were now; trying to accept that their new lives revolved around these whole other tiny people now permanently attached to their breasts, each generating more laundry than a busy hotel and every stranger on the street seemed determined to share their strong, knowing but vastly differing opinions on how the child should be treated. The group usually consisted of a bit of friendly chat, comparison of developmental milestones, discussions on where to get the best nursing bras and a teabag in a mug. If we were lucky we got a biscuit. My public health nurse was of the 'watch the baby not the scales' persuasion so although she would weigh a baby at a mother's request, it wasn't often part of the morning. The first week in October I turned up to find nice sandwiches, proper coffee and cake all laid on for us by the HSE to celebrate National Breastfeeding Week. What is the point of having a week, I wondered briefly, surely you either breastfeed or you don't? There was some talk of the launch of the Breastfeeding in Ireland 5 Year Strategic Action Plan to increase rates of breastfeeding in Ireland. I shrugged, shifted my baby to my other hip and helped myself to a chocolate eclair.

I moved house soon after that and spent a great deal of time in my new area trekking along to various coffee mornings, parent and toddler groups and nursing toddler mornings. I knew no one in the area and figured it was important to make friends, if not just for me, for my son. Some of these I liked more than others. In some, where my older baby was the only one still breastfed, the only one who had never slept anywhere but my bed and the only one who wouldn't let a puréed vegetable pass his lips, I felt pressured and judged. I frequented the nursing toddler mornings more often than the others. I was far more comfortable there.

In 2007 I had my second son and the women in my local La Leche League group were fabulous in supporting me through the ups and downs of breastfeeding through pregnancy and tandem nursing beyond. Something I hadn't even considered possible before. When he was three weeks old we attended the launch of National Breastfeeding Week 2007 back in the Rotunda where he was born.

By then I saw the point of it. This year the focus of the week was Your Network of Support, something I now realised was incredibly important even for those who breastfed with no physical difficulty. It's hard to stand up for yourself against the grain of what is seen as normal in this country. Even when what you are doing intuitively feels right, mothering your first child is always filled with questions and doubts. Having people to talk to who don't give 'advice' who just listen and act as a sounding board, gave me options and suggestions and left the decision making up to me was empowering and helped me become more confident in my mothering. It's also great to have someone to call if there is pain or other complications. Someone who will offer a breastfeeding solution to a breastfeeding problem because there very often is one. Whatever support group suits you best, they really are a great asset because unfortunately in our society, being home alone with a baby or toddler is a very lonely place to be.

This year, National Breastfeeding Week runs from 1^st- 7^th October. The theme is 'Breastfeeding Friendly' with a focus on supporting breastfeeding families and encouraging greater acceptance of this important and natural process. Many events, talks and coffee mornings are happening around the country. Most of these are organised by voluntary breastfeeding support groups such as Friends of Breastfeeding, La Leche League and Ciudiú. Some of them are available here http://www.friendsofbreastfeeding.ie/NBW2011.html but keep an eye out locally too.

I'll be at some of them handing out the coffee, cake and leaflets because as far as I'm concerned, if only one new mother finds herself a name, phone number or group to reach out to when she doubts her own mothering skills, someone who will reassure her and not undermine her; or if one pregnant woman decides to come along to see what its all about and meets someone supportive, the whole week will have been a success. I am also looking forward to the cake.

Some useful breastfeeding support sites:

http://www.breastfeeding.ie/

http://www.lalecheleagueireland.com/

http://www.friendsofbreastfeeding.ie/

This piece was written for http://www.theantiroom.com