On the Table

I can't claim this photo as my own. It comes from a new magazine I discovered recently, Mindfood (incidentally, it was this magazine that provided the recipe for last weekend's citrus delicious). This weekend, though, Mr M and I attempted to create our own version of Apple Cake with (or in our cast without) Apple Wafers. We enjoy baking together and I'm trying to let us become more adventurous with our shared cooking. When we decide to bake a cake, Mr M runs to the bathroom and chooses a towel to spread out on the kitchen floor. Then he finds the big red mixing bowl in the cupboard and the silver measuring cups and is ready to go. He is slowly mastering the art of stirring so all the flour is blended in, has nearly got his head around the idea of taking turns with the stirring, and has conquered the art of the taste test. Sad to say, though, that on this occasion the apple cake looked better than it tasted. Mr M wasn't impressed at all - he took a couple of bites and returned to playing. Nor has he asked for another slice since.

Have you heard of Michael Pollan? It seems to me that he is everywhere at the moment. On the radio, on blogs, in the gardening pages and book pages of the weekend newspapers. He has just published a book called In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto, which opens with the following seven words:

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

From the little I have read and heard, his central premise seems to be that you shouldn't eat anything that wasn't available to your grandmother to eat. This rules out diet soft drinks and "fast food". It also rules out the breakfast cereal that is my daily staple and most of the things that come in packets and cans. But I'm intrigued by the thesis and by the number of times his name has come up in the past fortnight so I suspect I shall be buying his book soon. I'll keep you posted.

I'm Late, I'm Late ... Again

On Sunday I had all sorts of ideas about what this week's post might be. Can't recall a single one tonight; can't even recall why I didn't post on Sunday. What excuse did I have? Most likely I decided that watching Persuasion on ABC1 was far more important than turning on the computer. (I did try to watch it with an open mind but, really, it wasn't a patch on the Amanda Root/Ciarin Hinds version. Anne spent too much time staring into the lens of the camera and, much as I adore Rupert Penry-Jones in Spooks, he is simply too handsome to be Captain Wentworth.)

At midweek, the household is weary. Mr M appears to have 'slap face'. He did have a cold over the long weekend and this evening came home from playschool with a bright red right cheek. My internet search has found results that lurch from informing me it's terribly contagious and hangs around for months, to the more comforting announcement that by the time the red rash appears, the worst is over. This is why you shouldn't rely too much on the Internet to diagnose illness. For a little while following my diagnosis last year, I tried to research my disease and possible treatments on the web. It seemed to be the thing to do if you wanted to take control of your treatment and be what we called, in the days when I worked in consumer affairs, an 'informed consumer'. It was hellish. Invariably, I found myself hot on the trail of a possible treatment (usually of a 'natural' variety) only to discover an hour later that I was caught up in loony-land and being asked to pay not insignificant dollars for a 'cure'. In the end, I stuck to the most mainstream websites I could find and relied on the medical profession for advice. At times, this felt like a cop-out, as if I was abdicating responsibility for my own recovery. Most of the time, though, I believed that relying on the Internet was the surest way to madness. Now how did I get on to this?

It hasn't been all colds and weariness this week, though. Mr M has a new 'big boy' carseat, which he has taken to with enthusiasm. I did think he was going to cling to his old seat and refuse change but he has adapted to his new booster and H-harness willingly. I have a new mobile phone - with a camera - although I still can't work out how to email photos. A phonecall to the provider's helpline is required. Once I have that sorted, though, I'll be able to add photos more easily to 52 Sundays. And we went on a small bookshop crawl on Sunday on which I found two treasures - this one on the work of Margaret Atwood and this one which I had been thinking about buying on ebay for a much higher price than I paid in Fyshwick!