Shopping Challenge November 2nd shopping

Took a little longer to do the shopping today, around 20 minutes, but it is the weekend.

Spent 115,07€ that included a jar of piment d'espelette which was incidentally the most expensive item on the list at 12,65€!

Here's what we will be cooking and eating this weekend and early next week:

Beef Bourguignon ( made earlier this week for tonight)

Magret de Canard En Saumure, Roti au Miel ( duck breast with honey)

Carrot, Tomato & Feta Soup

Home-made Pizzas

Roast Chicken with vegetables ( going to the market Sunday morning)

Chocolate Creams

Apple & Pear Cake ( to use up the fruit the children have not eaté from last week) 

*bought some artisanale (craft) sausage meat too for a meal to cook and freeze for next week.

M-K's Chocolate Orange nibbles

 Marie-Kate receives Astrapi, a magazine for children, once a fortnight (thanks to her Mamie & Papy) and most of the time there's a recipe to do, and this time, this was it.
Organic orange peel, cooked and dried, then dipped in dark chocolate, then left to harden.

They were good, really good in fact and we'll be making some more this weekend.

Edible Christmas Wreaths (Nigella Lawson)

Yesterday, we managed to clean the house from top to bottom (excluding basement), do the weekly shopping for seven, welcome children's friends who came to play or as for the case of Charlotte, cook breakfast pancakes for her and friend who often sleeps over.

I wrapped presents, washed clothes, then hung them to dry (no drier here), put Christmas tree up, decorated later by the children and even manage to cook or make, thank to Nigella Lawson's Christmas cookbook, two tins of Rocky Road with Gaby and MK's help, two meals worth of Chili Choc Carni and these Christmas Wreaths with help from Gaby.  Besides being easy to make, they are just so adorably cute.

All that's needed is cornflakes, marshmallows, vanilla extract and some sprinkles to decorate.

We will certainly be making some more and soon, what's good about them too, is the fact that they can be frozen...I yes we have bought a new chest freezer, that lives in our rather messy basement. Why didn't we buy one earlier.

Papillote, a cooking magazine for children

There's an amazing choice of quality magazines here in France, for both adults and children.  Our children receive quite a few magazines each month that are just brilliant, for example Virgule, a French literature for 10 to 15 year olds that's fantastic.

 It's appealing from the outset, extremely ludic and richly illustrated. We love this magazine, and it's one we couldn't go without.  Enough about that, because I wanted to talk about a brand new magazine called Papillote that's just been published and it's super....why did someone wait so long to come up with the idea, I mean a cooking magazine for children in France, it just has to be a success, no?

With over seventy pages of recipes and info, this magazine is adorable and everything looks yummy.  This is the first one out and timed perfectly for Christmas, with emphasis on chocolate, salmon and foie gras and much more

 The White Chocolate Charlotte above, is the first recipe we're going to try out tomorrow.

 This sweet potato recipe could be served up in a starred restaurant

 There's even a recipe by a Michelin starred chef to boot

 A bit of science

 A yummy foie gras Christmassy recipe

 and orange tarts to die for.

At the end of the magazine, there's a list of ingredients and children are asked to come up with a recipe using them and send a picture or drawing in, and the best one will be published...such good fun... and all this just for 3.60 euros.  

We whall certainly be cooking lots of recipes from Papillote between now and the new year.

Still talking food

 The evening ended with a apple, pear and fennel salad served with a cider vinaigrette served with some smoked salmon the Alain had brought back from a recent trip to Norway (recipe taken from Cannelle et Vanille)

But earlier on, the tea-time treat was highjacked from the beginning by Marie Kate

 After double dipping using milk bread as the double, after fried, then

 20 apple doughnuts were ready

And then gobbled up at a wink of an eye (recipe taken from Joy the Baker)

cooking for children after Verjus

Cooking after last night was a tall order and our children ate take outs last night, so to bring them back to reality and  certainly to real food, they ate caramelized meatballs with a radish and carrot salad along with one of Alexis' famous vinaigrettes from our all time favourite French cooking book "Soeurs Scotto".  This book is so amazing, with a mixture of French cuisine mixed with Italian and Japanese influences that make it so special.
Our family favourite recipe from this book is a veal blanquette with vanilla.

Alain and I ate (diet after yesterday), gambas in a light tempura with stir fried ginger and garlic veggies 

We eat with chopsticks the majority of the time, sometimes the colours don't match but that's fine as long as it tastes good

Annual Turn Off Week Blog challenge...How it went here

Kapla Tower

What a great turn off week we had, ok, we were lucky, as we went to London from Thursday onwards, so that helped us turn off ...

Tower Bridge in sight!

Marie Kate, who celebrated her 5th birthday the 22nd did really well, never watched television nor did she play on the Wii. She played heaps outside, and she helped tidy up our garden ( note: she hasn't watched tv since coming back Monday lunch-time..yippee) I'd give her a straight A.

Marie-Kate opening some presents

Alexis watched a little tv in London, but it was in English and we need as much English input as possible, in really enjoyed "Horrible Histories". He probably watched in all, abot 1 hour over the whole week of tv. Before leaving for London he helped more in the kitchen, read more and had more imaginative fun. Alexis has started to read books all on his own which is a great leap forward.
Shelling peas, this is more fun than the TV!

Gabrielle watched the same amount of tv as Alexis and thats all... no wii, no dvd's. Gaby drew a lot and read A Picture of Dorian Gray and a couple of J. Wilson's books (her favourite author).

I didn't do as well as them, I didn't manage to keep to 15 minutes per day of internet, but for a good reason, I had to surf a little to organise our visit to London. I probably used the computer 1 hour per day from Monday till Wednesday. No tv, no videos. I have started to prepare our vegatable garden and I read lots of books with the children. The children have helped me cook a lot more.

A glimpse of a bit of our garden from kitchen window


Alain hasn't used the computer (work not included) and he watched on program on the tv (45 minutes). Bravo Alain. He used to be quite a tv add

Unfortunately our teenagers sucummed to temptation, Oliver couldn't stop playing with his toys (psp, ipod) and the tv, too! He deserves the worse mark of the class. he did play chess once and beat me, argghhh..

Charlotte, watched less tv, but listened to lots of music and hung out with her friends ( which is great).

Charlotte peddling hard at the Sciene Museum

It's Thursday, today, and the children and their friends have been playing outside most of the day, the weather's glorious at long last.

I'm really happy to have participated in this years Annual Turn Off Week and I think we are ready to give up the tv completely.