1. Feeling a bit bleary-eyed at
5am? Want to shake off those early-hour cobwebs? Fall down the stairs! Naked!
2. When arranging your maternity
nurse’s finishing date, always ensure that it coincides with your newborn
getting her first headcold. Who needs sleep anyway!
3. Astound people you barely know (who
are good enough to bring your child to school) with your parenting skills by
roaring at that child to just GET OUT OF THE HOUSE, while you give yourself
whiplash dashing to stop another child tipping yet another child out of her bouncy chair.
4. Want to perfect your multi-tasking
skills? Arrange for your 2 yr old to
stand over you on your bed, while you’re feeding your newborn, demanding that
you WIPE HER BUM. With any luck, it will
be a really really shitty bum and bits will fall onto your clean(ish) bed
linen.
5. Nurture your todder’s appreciation
of technology by dumping her in front of You Tube for several hours. (Remember
the golden parenting mantra: “It isn’t telly if it’s not coming from an actual television”.)
6. Make teatime fun! Feed your children unidentifiable “meals”
from the freezer. Give Smarties to the
first child who correctly identifies what’s beneath the layer of grated
cheese, or who first finds a frozen crunchy bit in the middle.
7. Feeling overwhelmed? As if you have so much to do, and no time to
do it? Cheer yourself up by turning on
the radio and having exciting Christmas songs blare out at you in mid-November! That’ll soon put “overwhelmed” in
perspective.
8. It’s never too early to get children
used to dogs. Start early by living next
door to a house where the mutts bark all day.
With any luck, the people who live there will have a
special dog room, which adjoins your newborn’s.
Before you know it, their happy little yaps will have her shouting along
in harmony.
9. Unsure what to get your newborn for
Christmas? How about a soother
addiction? It’s cheap, (shockingly)
easy, and something the whole family can enjoy.
10. New mothers should remember to wear
a watch at all times. As well as
reminding you on a constant basis just how little sleep you’re getting, it’s
also the prefect torture device when snagged on the back of your newborn’s
head.
And finally: Never underestimate the restorative power of
potatoes and cream...
Gratin
Potatoes (aka Potato Dauphinoise)
I know that really, the last thing
anyone who has been celebrating Thanksgiving wants is a bowl of stodge and fat,
but truly – Potato Dauphinoise is soothing balm for the soul. (Especially if that soul has been refereeing
horrible toddlers all day, and frankly if she hears one more minute of newborn
screeching she will LOSE HER MIND...).
Pair it with a (pint) glass of wine for maximum benefits. Be warned tho – this dish needs at least an
hour and a quarter of cooking, so for perfect timing, bung it in the oven just
as you begin on the shit-show that is bed and bathtime.
You
need: (for 6; or 2 shattered parents in need of calories
and mollycoddling):
- 1kg potatoes
- 300ml double (heavy) cream
- 300 milk (full or semi-skimmed)
- 1 clove of garlic, crushed
- ¼ teaspoon nutmeg
- Butter
- Salt and Pepper
In a large bowl, mix together the
cream, milk, crushed garlic, nutmeg, and
salt and pepper.
Peel the potatoes, then slice them
as thinly as you can. (Don’t rinse them
– the starch on the potatoes is what makes the dish). Dump the potato slices into the bowl with the
cream, and mix well.
Butter a large oven-proof dish;
scoop the potatoes out of the cream, and dump ‘em in the dish. Ignore any recipes which tell you to layer
the potatoes carefully at this point:
complete time-wasting wankage.
Just pat them down so they’re packed in. Pour over the remaining cream.
At this point you can either leave
the potatoes to sit until you're ready to cook them, or cook them straight
away.
Put in the oven, and check after an
hour. If they’re browning on top, cover
the dish with tin foil, then put back in the oven. Check again 15 mins later to see if the
potatoes are cooked – you want them to be completely soft. This might take an additional 15 mins – but
after 1 ½ hours they should be ready.
Leave to stand for as long as you
can wait, then tuck in.
Serve with green salad, wine, and
mutual shock with your partner at the carnage you’ve invited into your
life.
Poor you. Clearly you need those life-saving potatoes, and you need them more quickly, so here's a helpful hint: put all the ingredients into a big saucepan, bring to boil, lower heat and, stirring constantly (not kidding -- this stuff burns as easily as a white sauce), simmer for about 10 minutes, until potatoes are almost done. Then bung them into your buttered oven-proof dish, put them in the oven, and they should be done in about 30 minutes. Result!
ReplyDeleteBest wishes, Annette
Fantastic - thank you so so much. You just bought me an hour's extra eating / 6000 extra calories (depending on how you look at it) - either way, am v grateful!
DeletePriceless!!!
ReplyDeleteand yet, sadly, true...
DeleteSomehow, a recipe which includes the phrases "shit-show" and "wankage" is still SO appealling.
ReplyDeleteI like to indulge my inner Gordon Ramsay
DeleteI have no words of wisdom, as you know, just war stories.
ReplyDeleteDo you put the boy in time-out? Does he willingly sit there for decades and tell you he "doesn't want to come out", so you've only accomplished wasting your own time and your discipline methods are still nil? Does the girl demand to be wiped, then she clenches her butt cheeks together, jamming your fingers and shredding paper that also now needs to be cleaned off - and because of this, she still needs to be wiped? When whined at for the millionth time about rumbling bellies, to you bellow at preschoolers too young and short to use the stove that they can eat whatever they feel like making themselves because the housekeeper (you) quit?
My Mother of the Year award should be arriving any moment with much fanfare.
If I have enough potatoes, I'll be making those tonight. With cheese.
i just gave a great big belly laugh and woke the baby sleeping on top of me. horrifying to think that in two years she too will have me grinding my teeth down to stubs, and probably on social services' watch list.
Deleteps - my children just resoundedly ignore me at all times. ARE YOU LISTENING?? I bellow. "Nope", they respond, off-handedly.
Treasure these moments! They pass so quickly!
ReplyDeleteI want that potato thing, and if you were here I'd whine till you made it for me. I love recipes that warn of time-wasting wankage, by the way.
Can...dare I ask? Can we have more pictures of the Baby? Please? I know that's rich, coming from me, but more pictures are what I want. And potatoes.
My father maintains - not entirely incorrectly, I think - that (a) all newborns look the same, and (b) they all look like a sack of potatoes. On that basis I could give you a photo of some potatoes and kill two birds with one stone, no? Alternatively, I'm afraid you will have to wait - until I've recharged the camera (none of these new-fangled smart phones for me, oh no) [which means finding the charger], and until her baby acne disappears...
DeleteLovely potatoes - hideous children. And they don't seem to get better. My 5yo is impressive in his awfulness, but he doesn't clench his buttocks when I'm wiping his bum - Heather, I didn't realise such awfulness existed!
ReplyDeleteI was thinking about that in the early hours, and snorting to myself. Mind you, the awfulness of the toilet-paper shredding is challenged in this house by the smearing-the-dirty-arse-on-the-toilet-seat behaviour. Ugh.
Delete