It’s all about the milk

Many, many thanks for all the good wishes following Lee’s birth last Tuesday.  He’s a dream…….just as long as the milk supply is near. Brothers Dan and August have adjusted to the new order pretty well although Auggie (3 1/2 and total mammy’s boy) has wondered if Lee (or “it” as he calls him) will be “popping” back into my tummy anytime soon. Hmmm…….. Well, at least there’s been no violence and anyway Lee’s such a bruiser (10lbs 2 oz!!!!) he could probably defend himself pretty well. So I really should put that story about a baby being thrown out a window by his older brother out of head right?

You know all those recipes I say are a cinch, superfast to put together, will only take ten minutes? Well, at the moment they’re out. You’d think given I already have two, I’d remember – when you have a newborn you have no time for ANYTHING else and that includes cooking and sometimes even eating. Yes, there are the occasional ten minutes (like now) but it’s really only enough for a trip to loo or to throw on a load of laundry. Then Lee realises it’s been oh, 8 minutes since his last feed and starts mooching around. Paul might be able to keep him cool for a minute or two but just as I open the fridge door the cry goes up and that’s when I know I have about 1 minute to stuff my face and get back.

Needless to say, good stocks have been the key to my staving off starvation (ok, a bit dramatic but that’s how it feels) – a big log of goat’s cheese bought a couple of weeks back has been a life saver. It’s avocado season and I get through at least one of those a day, sometimes just spread on corn or oatcakes with a pinch of salt and a little balsamic.Then it’s stuff like sundried tomatoes, jalapenos, speck, prosciutto and spicey salami. They all get piled up on bread or crackers and wolfed. A chaser of a piece of dark chocolate and I’m back on the sofa.

Paul’s been doing all the other meals and we’ve had a lot of help. Everyone seems to know that with 2 young kids and a newborn all bets are off for at least a few months (or is that the next ten years?) so we’ve had any amount of lasagnes and casseroles delivered. When you’re feeding you are permenantly starving but I found that after a few days all the bacon sambos, lasagnes, pastries scored by Paul on the way home from the school run (plus we’ve been working our way through a stash of almond croissants he got me from the bakery on Moore street (the best in town) were just too heavy so I needed to get back to some kind of food normality.  For a proper injection of fresh stuff the guys have made juice a few times giving us a much-needed counterpoint to all the weightiness at dinnertime plus a big batch of quinoa I made a few days ago has made all the difference.

In the last few weeks I’d been working on recipes that I thought we could send you while I took a break. Then Lee arrived 2 weeks early (on time but as the others came so overdue I’d assumed I had all the time in the world). Some recipes have been worked out, even photographed while others are still in note form and still need revisions. Paul is back to work next week so there will be cooking and I can see myself sending out recipes at least sporadically for the upcoming months.We’ll just have to see how things pan out. I can hear other mothers saying yeah she’s just on a high after the birth, she’ll crash and burn over the next few weeks… there’s no way she’s going to do recipes. Well, maybe. I reckon if I do great and if I don’t it’s not the end of the world either.There are any amount of simple ideas on the blog and if anyone’s in doubt about what to do with their veg nine times out of ten most things taste deadly roasted in the oven……

Gotta go x