How not to give yourself a manicure...

So which one of you jokers out there knew that cutting up a pumpkin would give me brown stained fingers and palms, and chose not to tell me?

Hmm?

Because it was all oh-so-funny when I was mugging it up for the Boys as they ate their dinner, girding my loins with an apron for an epic battle with this 5 kilo monster squash, attacking it with my sharpest knife and asking my enthralled audience if they wanted to see it's intestines. And before you call me ghoulish, to be fair the stringy stuff inside did rather look like something's insides, especially if you're a 5 or an 8 year old boy (or a 44 year old mother with an over-active imagination).

It may not have been wise, however, to wave the sectioned and vanquished vegetable (fruit? vegetable? Fruit? It does have seeds, after all) over my head in triumph at this point. It might even perhaps have been a rather a silly thing to do, since the pumpkin spitefully proved to take what I thought at the time was it's last revenge, showering my newly cut hair with seeds in retaliation for the inconvenience of being cut up, but I was on a roll, my sons were laughing hysterically by this time, and it seemed like a good idea at the time Your Honour...

Less funny however were the 10 minutes I had to spend with a pumice stone removing the dried up and brown-stained skin on my hands afterwards. Turned out that in fact the seeds on my head were only a foretaste of retaliation, since the pumpkin's last act was to use it's juice to give me hands that looked as if I worked in a tannery or on a tobacco farm and which felt like I had spent the afternoon moisturising with Cif.

I had the last laugh over-all, though. The soup that I turned my victim into is delicious...

This post was brought to you by a rainy Friday night in Moscow with no new dvd's to watch. Normal service should be resumed shortly.

Little Dish & the Russian Ingredients Challenge...

So, it's review time again. Last summer, when I was (sob) still living in London, Little Dish were kind enough to send me some ready meals for my boys to try. The taste test was - mostly - a success, and I blogged about it here. Not so long ago, they got back in touch and asked if this time I would be interested in reviewing the 'Little Dish Favourites Cookbook'.

Now, I live in Russia these days. (You might have noticed - that fact has featured on The Potty Diaries once or twice...) And whilst there are many things you CAN easily buy here, like, um, well, honey... and umm vodka, healthy ready meals are not one of those things. Consequently scratch cooking is majorly back on the agenda in the Potski household (except for Fridays which is religiously Pizza night - I deserve one night in seven off, surely?) and having fallen into something of a rut on the meal-planning front, any and all inspiration is welcome.

So, the Little Dish Favourites Cookbook; how do I rate it?

The opening section on First Tastes contains simple and practical advice on weaning your baby. It probably wouldn't do as the only book in your repertoire, but it contains easy purees and is a great place to start, especially if you're a first time mum and have no idea where that might be.

It does contain a recipe for homemade chicken stock and whilst I have nothing against that per se I would say to all new mums introducing solids for the first time: on the subject of home-made chicken stock; DON'T DO IT. Your house will stink, you will stink, and since Waitrose (amongst other places) now sells a perfectly good salt, additive and preservative free alternative, buy a couple of packs there, stash one in the freezer for when you next need it and save yourself a whole heap of time and effort. (Sorry Annabel Karmel and any other Domestic Goddesses reading this, but life is just too short to make your own chicken stock...).

The main bulk of the recipes come under the Family Dishes section and in the interests of properly reviewing this book, I decided that rather than just reading it and making my mind up, I would walk the walk and use it to cook from. I chose one recipe per day for 5 days this week, and here are the results (It would have been 6 but, come on, Friday is pizza night after all...). So. What did I cook, and how did it go?

Sunday: GG's Chicken Supreme (p 78)

This was easy to make (even when having to substitute Russian ingredients like Smetana for the soured cream), and it was great to know that having put it together the evening before, I had minimal fuss on Sunday evening to pull dinner out of the hat. Plus it was absolutely delicious. We all loved it - even fussy Boy #1. I will definitely make this again.

Monday: Monty's Favourite Fish Fingers (p54)

Not a success. In fact, after my first bite I took pity on my sons and told them they didn't have to eat it, and we dined handsomely on vegetables and ham instead; however, this is much more down to the completely rubbish quality of white fish generally available here than anything wrong with the recipe. In actual fact I would expect this recipe to work fine with most fish you could get from a fish counter in the UK.

Tuesday: Chicken Enchilas (p76)

Pretty yummy. Boy #2 and I wolfed it down, Boy #1 - after initial negotiations concerning non-consumption of the flour tortilla had been concluded - did the same. With the exception of the tortilla, obviously. (What it did contain, which he usually never eats, was cheese. He didn't notice. This is a Result in my book - it's going on my List).

Wednesday: Easy Fish in Foil (p50)

I know, it's not fair to make the book run the fish gauntlet twice but I'm looking for any way I can to make the fish available here palatable. This time I used imported frozen salmon (from Norway), so the start point was a bit better, but I have to say the reaction from Boy #1 was still wholly unexpected. He pronounced the first bite 'Delicious!' and came back for seconds. Yesss!

Thursday: Spanish Tortilla (p122)

No fish today, and I decided to give ourselves a break from genetically modified meat with genetically modified eggs instead (seriously; you should see the size of the average chicken breast here. It would dwarf many turkeys back home...). This recipe was - OK. I enjoyed it, as did Husband who ate more than half of it without pausing for breath, but the Boys objected to the use of parsley and I would probably leave that out when I make it again for them (which I will). Again, it contained cheese and again, Boy #1 didn't notice (or at least, didn't identify that as one of the things he didn't like about it).

Overall then, I would give this book around 8 / 10. I will use it again, and already have my eye on some of the other recipes, so culinary boredom has been postponed for a while longer in the Potski household. Thankyou, Little Dish!

This was a sponsored post. (I got a free copy of the book, in other words).

The Gallery: 5 out of 7 ain't bad...

It's Wednesday, so it must be time for Tara's Gallery (cue Tony Hart music). This week's prompt was a hard one: the Seven Deadly Sins. What on earth was I going to use for this one, I wondered?

But then I came across the photo above, that I took one rainy day last Autumn when Boy #2 and I were making gingerbread. I particularly like the way you can see his finger-marks in the mixture and how next to his body you can see the drops over-hanging where he's scraped his hand over the edge of the bowl. Food-appreciation in it's purest form...

I reckon this shot ticks at least 7 of the following boxes;

• Greed - well, that one's obvious
• Gluttony - see above (I know you're supposed to distinguish between these two but for the purposes of this post I'm not going to bother. Is that a double hit for Sloth, I wonder?)
• Sloth - from me, for leaving the unwashed bowl within reach on the side in the kitchen
• Pride - that Boy #2 liked it enough to do this
• Envy - because I so wanted to be licking out the bowl myself
• Wrath - no, I was laughing too hard ...
• Lust - well, it was only gingerbread mixture. It wasn't as if it was chocolate, or anything...

And, just in case you're a Brit of a certain age and are now asking yourself 'What was that music, again?' here it is... (You could even play it whilst you're perusing The Gallery over at Tara's, if you like).