What do you buy a dying man for his birthday?

I can’t quite believe I am writing this, my Dad has been terminally ill for over a year now, quite some feat in itself, I never would have thought I’d write this blog post. Last year I explained my dilemma to anyone who was reading, my Dad had a birthday coming up but didn’t want for anything. All Dad has ever wanted for his birthday is ‘three well behaved children’, so last year he got a tray of double chocolate brownies and I held a Macmillan Coffee Morning to raise some money for Macmillan.

This year, all bored of being well behaved and not around for The World’s Biggest Coffee Morning I have made a more conventional choice for a birthday pressie. My Dad served in the Navy and loves travel and has many tales about his time around the world so I’ve bought him a beautiful book, Atlas of Remote Islands: Fifty Islands I have not visited and never will by Judith Schalansky. I’m delighted with it, it is an atlas of remote and lonely places; the product description on Amazon says it better than I can:

Judith Schalansky lures us across all the oceans of the world to fifty remote islands – from St Kilda to Easter Island and from Tristan da Cunha to Disappointment Island – and proves that some of the most memorable journeys can be taken by armchair travellers.

The other thing I’m hoping to do is use Dad’s birthday as a chance to get some support for a mobile app I’ve put forward in the Department of Health #mapsandapps campaign. The app suggested is Picture Prompts, in my head it’s a directory of simple drawings and diagrams that can be shared with patients, carers and staff when explaining anatomy, procedures and treatment. You can read more about my thinking behind this app – essentially I think it would have helped a lot when Dad received his diagnosis of cholangiocarcinoma (bile duct cancer) and I’m sure there would be many other uses for it.

The way the campaign works, an idea needs votes to push it up the table – I’ll be honest with you, this is a little faffy and requires people to create an account (should only take one email) *but* that five minutes of your life, could make all the difference to someone else’s quality of life, if this app was ever developed.

So please, do go give it the thumbs up. Thanks.

The secret ingredient is love

I’ve spent this weekend at a wedding in Suffolk and had the chance to watch a craftswoman at work! Betty had offered to make her cousin and his wife their wedding cake as their wedding gift. They were delighted to accept and had a particular idea about what they wanted – three tiers of chocolate cake covered in white chocolate cigarellos and white roses. You can see the end result below:

How much do you think that cake is worth? Go on, what you reckon? £100? £200? £300? £400? Annoyingly I’m not going to give you the answer – mostly because I don’t know. Depending on where you live, and the quality of ingredients you’d like used, that cake could easily cost you anything between £200-500.

A few years ago I made my little sister’s wedding cake – she’s got modest tastes (not) and wanted four tiers. The bottom tier was fruit cake, followed by double chocolate cake, victoria sandwich and topped with lemon drizzle cake. Her husband is in the Army and she met him at Army Cadet Summer Camp (she was an adult instructor – nothing dodgy) hence the camouflage ribbon and little hearts. You can see it here:

What I can tell you is that the ingredients alone cost over £150 – I’m not a professional and don’t have access to suppliers for the things you need, so the ingredients were all from Sainsburys – yes I could have got them in Tesco or Lidl but it was a one off and my sister at that, so money was no object. So the ingredients alone – cake, marzipan, icing, dowels, cake boxes, ribbon, cake tin hire for the HUGE fruit cake – were over £150. Cost in the time, gas and stress and that cake was easily worth double that I’d say. Not to mention the number of times I did a dry run of all but the fruit cake.

The thing is when people get quotes for wedding cakes they nearly always think they’re extortionate – and to be honest I think I’d always sniff at a couple hundred quid and feel it was daylight robbery, after all anyone can bake a cake right. Well not so actually. The baking is only the first step, then there’s the icing, and the decorating, and the transporting, and the stacking, and the finishing. It really is much more complicated than you think. All of this is time consuming like you wouldn’t consider.

None of this even starts to consider the stress. The responsibility of making the centrepiece for someone else’s special day, takes a lot of the fun out of it. Watching Betty cutting, icing, stacking and decorating the wedding cake this weekend reminded me of just how stressful it is. Never again. Seriously. I did offer to help Betty out with her own cake (she’s getting married in three weeks) but she declined – and I am *so* relieved. Betty, in her real life, is a paramedic, so she’s trained to cope with stress and work under pressure – she is definitely more adept at it than I am.

My final thought is that the value of a friend or relative making your wedding cake is something that you can’t actually buy or put a cost on – it’s love, it really is a *massive* labour of love. So if you’re getting married any time soon, and someone offers to bake your wedding cake for you, please do accept, but accept graciously and spare a thought for the effort, time, cost and love that goes into it.

It’ll taste all the better once you appreciate the love that has gone into it.

 

 

Gluten Free Chocolate Brownies

The lovely @hadleybeeman was asking today if I had a gluten free chocolate brownie recipe. The truth is I don’t, but, I have adapted the Hummingbird Bakery recipe that features in their awesome Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook on three occasions – none of them came out perfectly, but they were all completely edible; let’ be honest with this much chocolate you can’t go wrong

Ingredients

200gm dark chocolate
175gm unsalted butter
325gm caster sugar
**130gm plain flour**
3 eggs
icing sugar, to decorate

a 33 x 23 x 5cm baking tray, lined with greaseproof paper

Magic

Preheat the oven to Gas Mark 3 (170C/325F)

Smash the chocolate against the worktop to break it up (very therapeutic) – put chocolate and butter in a bowl over a saucepan of simmering water (usual caution about not letting bowl touch the water but I have to confess that I’m way too impatient for that so I always make sure it is in the water, just not touching the bottom of the pan)! Leave until melted and smooth.

Take off the heat. Add the sugar and stir it all together. Then add flour** and stir until well mixed. Lightly beat the eggs and stir them into the mix until thick and smooth.

Pour/spoon into baking tray and bake in preheated oven for about half an hour – the idea is to get brownies that are soft in middle and flaky on top. I have cooked these loads of times and nearly always leave them in for too long! I check after 30mins, get concerned that the mix is still a little wobbly looking, bottle it and put them back in for five mins….only to end up with overdone brownies with crispy edges – which are still beautifully edible but not as nice as they should be.

Leave to cool before decorating with icing sugar. Serve with clotted cream, ice cream, yoghurt if you insist on pretending to be healthy, on their own. I’ve never had anyone complain about these!

**Gluten free alternatives**

As I said I’ve made these three times for those pesky people who don’t do gluten One of the times I did a straight swop for almonds, so instead of the flour just 130gm ground almonds; one of the times I replaced with a mix of half almonds and half rice flour; and one time I just used gluten free flour from Doves Farm.

IMO none of these substitutes work as well….but they were all still very edible and very yummy.

Brownie tin?

This week the ever resourceful @dalekdoctor spotted this and sent me a link to the Edge Brownie Pan – I have yet to indulge in a purchase but if I do I’ll let you know how I get on – it makes perfect sense to me as a solution for the is it raw…damn it’s crusty challenge I regularly seem to face.

Need an excuse?

Just in case you are one of those strange, restrained types who needs an excuse to get baking – don’t forget it’s @macmillancoffee today and let’s face it, we shouldn’t need a special day to eat cake or raise cash for them – they’re worth it anyday, so get baking

Cancer and Cake

The other week I sat down to watch The Bucket List, I didn’t really know much about it, except that it was a comedy and that Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson starred in it. In a nutshell, for anyone who hasn’t seen it, it’s about two terminally ill cancer patients and their quest to achieve a number of things on their to-do list before they die. It’s a little cheesy, it’s easy watching, there’s a moral (kinda), you can probably take as much or as little out of it as you like. The tag lines of the film probably tell you all you need to know:

When he closed his eyes, his heart was opened

You only live once, so why not die with style?

If you’ve not seen it I’d recommend it.

Except it left me thinking. A lot. Regular readers (all two of you ), will be aware that my dad has terminal cancer, cholangiocarcinoma (you’d think after three years I wouldn’t need to double check how to spell that bloody word but no such luck). At his last appointment he decided not to have chemo for now (it was only likely to give him extra months not years) and to just carry on as normal – whatever normal is. The irony of the situation is that my dad is, or at least looks, fit and well; you wouldn’t know he was ill, indeed if it wasn’t for the routine scan earlier this summer I’m not sure we’d have been giving it a second thought. Dad was given three months to live, three years ago this week; he has surpassed all the odds already.

Last week was his birthday. What do you get a man who is dying for his birthday? Getting my dad a birthday present is an epic task at the best of times. He’s almost Buddhist in his approach to life and possessions – nothing is permanent so why want for anything? The only answer my dad has ever been consistent with when asked what he wants for his birthday – or for Christmas – or any other occasion is three well behaved children. We’re not too bad, us three, and we’re all adults now – so hopefully that need is met. So, true to form, what did I get him – I got him nothing, I baked instead. Double chocolate brownies for my pa on his 63rd birthday.

Which loops full circle to the point of this post – having just watched the Great British Bake Off on BBC2 I’ve decided that I’ll be baking tomorrow night for the World’s Biggest Coffee Morning on Friday. It’s not too late – you can still register to raise incredibly valuable funds for Macmillan Cancer Support. Trust me, Macmillan do really make the difference between a good and a bad day and just £25 could pay for a Macmillan Nurse for an hour; to be blunt that hour could change someone’s life.

You can help Macmillan continue their fantastic work – and you get to eat cake; what more could you ask for?

Out of the Box #box10

You know something is up when you get a blog post from me before 9am! Don’t panic, the world isn’t coming to an end, I’m not ill or anything, and I’ll even refrain from getting into some tangential debate about the cost of fresh air or the like…this post is to tell you what I’m up to today and to give advance warning of possible tweet overload; don’t worry I’ll not be offended if you unfollow me!

I’m on a train to Birmingham as I type, heading to Out of the Box a conference hosted by @patientopinion at the Deaf Cultural Centre. There is an excellent programme for today and as usual I’m struggling to know what to attend.

Box10 is exploring ‘how patients, service users and carers are using the web to change their lives and their services’. There are sessions arranged by theme. The themes for today are getting started, stories, connections and community. Within these four themes are sessions on:

• engaging communities
• reflective digital stories
• supporting people with dementia to use computers
• Big Society
• e-campaigning
• hearing more from people with learning disabilities
• using Facebook to address health challenges
• creating social capital
• using video to communicate via the web
• empowerment of isolated and vulnerable members of the community
• social networking for mental health
• opportunities in hyperlocal.

As well as these there are soapbox talks and a speed dating marketplace – two of my favourite things to see at a conference. You can see the full programme here and you can follow the discussion on the #box10 hashtag.

I’m really looking forward to today. I’ve set myself a personal challenge to try and figure out a way of ensuring that my attendance has both an impact for my own work but also is of use (hopefully) to other people who can’t be there in person. I’ve blogged a couple times about events that I was following from afar, most recently We Are Enabled By #WeEbD and #media140 in Glasgow last week. I’m particularly aware of how difficult it can be to genuinely engage with an event that you are not at, so this is in an invite to anyone to get in touch with me if you have your own question you’d like me to try and get an answer to, or an idea or reflection you’d like to share, or better still if you have any ideas for how I can share #thebox10 with you.

I am armed with netbook, camera, flipcam, iphone and blackberry, three chargers and two lots of cake, so I’m hoping I have enough ‘tools’ for the job!!

I heart Wales

Photo by Mooganic

I love Wales and I love Welsh people. Earlier today I got a text off one of my Welshmates and even reading it made me smile because I can’t read a text from Jo without imagining her saying it – and I can’t imagine her voice without smiling; that shiny happy Welsh lilt

For me the great thing about Wales is the Welsh people. Sure there are one or two idiots, but most countries have a few of them. I am a bit biased, after all I lived in Wales for a quarter of my life and some awesome times were had there – I’ve watched some of my best rugby in Wales, and the most heartbreaking moment when Munster lost to Leicester in the Heineken Cup Final 2002 and the ref appeared to have gone to sleep when Neil Back was cheating…anyway I should be over that by now; I’ve graduated from Cardiff University – twice; I’ve assaulted my liver and enjoyed it every step of the way; I’ve celebrated birthdays, babies, weddings and civil partnerships; I’ve spent hours of my life volunteering, studying and working there – hell I even ran a B&B in Brecon for two weeks once! I’ve loved and lost and learnt a lot and on the whole have nothing but respect for the fabulous Welsh people who made it such a pleasure to live in their country.

So what made me waffle on with this diatribe…well I saw a BBC news story about a thanksgiving service that had been held in Kent to thank the people of Wales who took in refugee children during World War 2. One of the organisers recalled the generosity of the people of Blaenavon who took them in and it reminded me of my grandad’s story. He was based in Wales for training during the war and he often talks of the generosity of the Welsh people who donated him eggs from their farms for his wedding cake.

So there’s a long history of the Welsh being generous and noble – that’s got to be worth celebrating I’ll end with the words of John Lockyer, one of the evacuees. I may have been in Wales through choice not necessity but the generosity and welcome is one I recognised instantly.

“Comforting voices and outstretched hands gave us a sense of hope and security which those of us who survive will never forget….The love I was shown during that time has given me a deep affinity with Wales”

Rwy’n caru Cymru

Reminiscing

My mum just called to have a chat. She was reminiscing about this weekend two years ago. Today would have been the Thursday before my sister Abi, and her husband Steve got married and my Dad had just finished chemo early due to side effects. He couldn’t walk, literally, could barely take a step….yet had two days before he walked my sister down the aisle, I’ve written about this before so won’t go on. Suffice to say it was a little stressful.

Meanwhile I had my own stress to worry about as I’d stupidly offered to bake my sister’s wedding cake. Now I know my little sis well enough to know that wasn’t a good idea but they were getting hitched on a budget and I’d done a couple wedding cakes and figured she’d rein in her tendencies to something realistic. Yeh right.

Abi wanted four tiers…yip, four. Easy peasy…not. She also wanted each tier to be different. She had a fruit cake, double chocolate cake, victoria sponge cake and the top tier was a lemon drizzle cake – baked in a pork pie tin!! So four different cakes, four different icings and loads and loads of little hearts for decoration….not to mention the stress of cutting the dowels to size to make sure it stacked and stayed up…oh and I’m missing the forty minute drive to the wedding reception venue. All kinda stressful. Well worth it though…it was exactly what she wanted, right down to the camouflage ribbon!

My mum likes to remember the bad times as well as the good times and I reckon that’s a good thing; tomorrow I’m having dinner with my folks, my sis and her hubby and the new addition to our family, my gorgeous niece, Libby. Two years ago I never would have believed that life would be as good as it is now, as my mate Jo always says ‘you never know what’s round the corner’

A proper tea

I’ve been really loving coffee lately. This isn’t a new thing; in fact I suspect the only thing I’ve ever been addicted to is coffee!

Therefore I consider myself a recovered/recovering (do you ever confidently recover from anything in life? That’s a post for another time) coffee addict. So take it as read that I love coffee and I particularly love the sociable nature of going for coffee with friends. I put that out there because I don’t want coffee lovers thinking I’m ‘not one of them’ if there any of them reading!

I also love tea though. Where I live tea shops can be found in far greater number than coffee shops…which if I’m honest are still a little exotic! I was musing to myself this week that what London lacks is tea shops! You can barely stroll a couple hundred yards in the big smoke without finding a coffee shop but tea shops seem a little harder to come by. So imagine my delight when @niccombe and I met for coffee one evening this week and she suggested going for tea instead. She introduced me to the delight that is Yumchaa and we went for a cuppa in their shop in Soho which can be found at 45 Berwick Street. Nic had a pot of Lemon Sherbert which smelt absolutely divine; I plumped for Assam and we shared a chocolate brownie.

I really enjoyed the couple hours we sat in this teashop, it was incredibly civilised, we chatted for ages and at no point did I feel that we were overstaying our welcome (we did get a second pot of tea each but even so…). Obviously Nic’s company was fantastic, but I don’t think it was just that; there was just something extra special for me about Yumchaa.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of meeting up with @chrish10 at the same place and can confirm that there was consistency to their good service, lovely atmosphere and an additional bonus, complimentary wifi, making it a strong contender for my new London office! Eat @ Paddington has that honour at the moment but suspect the absence of pigeons, together with all the above, means that Yumchaa is now my remote office of choice

They also have two shops in Camden and market stalls dotted around the place and you can buy tea from their website. Well worth a dabble I tell ye.

A Proper Tea is much nicer than a Very Nearly Tea, which is one you forget about afterwards – A.A.Milne

A grounding experience

Photo by Josef.Stuefer

So yesterday, if all had gone according to plan, I’d have flown to Canada for a conference. Right now those that made it (teams from Australia, Canada and Americe) will be getting up and ready for the day, I’ve spent the morning clearing an email backlog and am about to go and find a cafe to sit in and read a report that is with our designers to give them feedback, before turning the work laptop off for two weeks and concentrating on some me time.

Having had my flight cancelled twice already, at the moment I am scheduled on a flight out of London on Thursday morning that would enable my holiday to go ahead with minimal disruption. Although really I’m not overly optimistic that I’ll be going anywhere.

So where does that leave me. Well to be honest I’m a bit lost! I’m usually quite a resilient person but for the last few days I’ve felt the cracks appearing around the edges. Those of you who know me will know that I’ve had a fairly pressured past six months, I’ve been promoted; been trying to keep a very stretched and very short staffed team together; missed out on my holiday last year in a (definitely misguided) decision to try to do what was best for work; been living my life out of a suitcase and trying to function on far too little sleep! So I really, really needed this holiday – my first in 18mths.

The realist in me knows that it looks like the holiday wont happen. Since Saturday I’ve been looked out for by a few close friends who’ve helped to maintain my sanity, to provide me with accommodation, to supply me with company, food and chocolate brownies. I’m amazed at their generosity but am also feeling unsettled about needing to rely too heavily on it. Thank you to @katiekatetweets @fergusbisset and @niccombe.

So what’s to do? At the moment it’s a case of sitting it out and waiting to see whether Thursday’s flight will leave – for me that would be the best case scenario for a number of reasons. Sitting and waiting is really rather hard though, especially when your fate lies in the hands of nature….don’t worry I’m aware that it always does, we’ve just created a society where that truth is well hidden from us most of the time. The other option would be to be proactive and decide to cancel the holiday – this doesn’t even feel like an option I want to consider but it does have the silver lining of at least letting you feel that you are in control. For now at least the first option wins out, I’ll work this afternoon, take tomorrow and Wednesday off to explore London town (anyone who wants to meet up give me a shout) and hope that the situation changes in time for Thursday and I’ve promised myself not to keep checking the NATS website for updates.

I thought I’d share a few things that I’ve realised with you all:

• None of this matters! I was musing yesterday about the bigger impact for other people, remembering when Dad was ill and the panic I felt when his consultant went on holiday in case anything happened to him or he didn’t make it back! (Irrational I know) That said, there will be people whose lives are likely to be changed forever in very real ways as a result of this – I know I’m not one of them
• I am way too hard on myself, I’m constantly trying to be reasonable and keep hold of the fact that none of this matters; but it does matter to me (I know, I know I’m contradicting myself) and getting frustrated and irritated by it is ok in small doses
• Never, EVER work yourself so hard that you reach a point where you need a holiday to maintain your sanity – because there are no guarantees in life. I was challenged this weekend about whether I needed a holiday to run away/avoid something or to seek/find something. I think the reality is both, either way I know I should have slowed down or stopped before this.
• So much in life is affected by how much autonomy or control we have over a situation. The problem is that we don’t *really* have much control over lots of things in life and I think the challenge I face is learning to accept things more as they are and not seeking control.

So some parting words of wisdom from the Desiderata:

With all it’s sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful, strive to be happy.

I’m not sure about happy, but accepting will do me

Granny’s Easter biscuits

My Gran is the best cook on the planet…it’s official, it’s not up for grabs, there’s no doubt, she is the bestest. She’s had years of practice as she has been baking since she was a child and she’s 90 now. She still cooks dinner for her and my grandad every day – well it’s a team effort really, he preps and cooks the veg, she does whatever else they’re having, he jokes that he’s the oldest sous chef in the street…which of course he is

My Gran loves tradition, routines and habits…she has made biscuits every Easter I can remember. I’m not sure about the history of easter biscuits or what makes them ‘eastery’ but I suspect it’s because they are made with all  butter, easter being a celebration and all that. I have tried loads of different recipes for easter biscuits over the years, I’ve done them with currants and without, with lemon and without, with butter and with marg, with different flours and sugars and they are never, ever as nice as my Gran’s.

Last year I asked my Gran for her recipe….and she wouldn’t give it to me! I really don’t know why, it’s not like her at all, but she wouldn’t budge on it. I asked my mum to try and get it but she had no luck either; so my sister gave it a go – nope, no luck. It was so gutting because my  Gran’s biscuits are the absolute best. This year I was in luck; today when I visited my grandfolks not only did I have two easter biscuits waiting for me (and two easter buns – we love an excuse to bake in our family) but my Gran had her recipe book ready and waiting.

When I looked at the recipe and asked Gran what her secret was….she proceeded to tell me all the things she left out the recipe, used instead and added in. She wrote her version out for me, on some cardboard from a box of tea (my grandfolks were into recycling way before it was chic) and I have it on my sofa next to me. I’ll treasure that recipe forever, all the more for waiting for it and for my Gran giving it to me. I’m not sharing it with you guys, it’s too special, but I’ll share the recipe it’s based on…taken from the Radiation Cookery Book. Enjoy.