On the Seventh Day of December

According to a Cornish Mutual survey in 2011, nearly half the families in the UK no longer eat together at least once a day.

I'm not surprised.  A couple of years ago I watched a fly on the wall documentary where a secret camera in the kitchen filmed an intermittent stream of family members raiding the fridge freezer for containers which they zapped in the microwave and then disappearing off with them to some other part of the house.

And not so long ago I seem to recall Kirsty Allsop being taken aback by a participant in Location Location absolutely insisting on a dining room with a table for family meals.

Eating together three times a day was the bedrock of my childhood.  We ate together as a family three times a day.  But then, of course, we didn't have a telly, which I suspect has quite a lot to do with it.  That and those ready meals!

Now I'm not going to pretend that we always eat together around the table but we do try.  And when we don't it's almost always to watch a family favourite on the box.

We also always used to say grace.  We don't any more.  Or at least not until today ...  It's never too late to start again.

Sunday Lunch

We rarely have a traditional Sunday Lunch - or at least not a lunchtime!  When we do have a roast dinner it's  in the evening, so Sunday lunch is usually pasta ... or soup.

I absolutely adore soup.  My earliest memory of it is my grandma's rather greasy but nonetheless delicious broth.  The Scots seem to eat a lot of the stuff.  We always started our dinner with a bowlful .  My mum, who wasn't a particularly imaginative cook, nonetheless produced a lovely fresh tomato variety, as well as the occasional spicy mulligatawny.  She is also the only person I have ever known who made kidney soup.  But we won't go there!

Soup is cheap to cook and extremely versatile.  In our house it always starts off onions sweated in a knob of butter, or a splash of oil.  But from there it could go anywhere, depending on the time of year or what we have in the kitchen.  I never throw away a chicken carcass or a marrow bone without having first boiled it for stock which I freeze for later.  My favourites are leek and potato, lentil and bacon, spicy lentil and tomato,  minestrone, scotch broth, cauliflower and blue cheese, butternut squash and chorizo, chick pea and harissa, chowder ...

Today it was a johnny allsorts affair with a random selection of vegetables left over from last week's shop.  There were onions, celery, romanesco, a carrot and a few stalks of cavolo nero that had seen better days.  I threw in a few handfuls of broth mix to thicken it, and a couple of bay leaves and some dried chilli flakes to spice it up.  There was no stock in the freezer so I used up the last of our Marigold powder and a vegetable stock cube.  Ten minutes before it was ready I sprinkled in some mini pasta shapes.

I served it with a drizzle of extra virgin oil and a couple of slices of my freshly baked bread.

It was just what was needed on a cold wet Sunday afternoon.

Focus on Me

Along with approximately 14,000 other children born in Bristol between April 1991 and December 1992, my elder daughter is a 'Child of the 90s'. ALSPAC, the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, is a long term research project which has tracked the health and development of these children from before their birth until the present day. We have completed questionnaires on almost every aspect of our lives and my daughter has been observed, examined and sampled at regular intervals. The study has published a steady stream of findings including:

laying babies on their backs has no harmful effects and can reduce the risk of cot death

eating oily fish when pregnant improves the child's eyesight

peanut allergy may be linked to the use of certain nappy rash and eczema cream

children brought up in very hygienic homes are more likely to develop asthma

just 15 minutes a day of moderate or vigorous exercise cuts the risk of obesity by 50%

Today it was my turn. At Focus on Mums I gave blood (to check glucose, insulin and cholesterol) and had a DXA ( to scan bone density) and an ultrasound (to take pictures of my carotid artery). The hard part was fasting for 8 hours prior to my appointment for the blood test. I had to get up at 5:30 for a light breakfast and then sip nothing but water until 14:20. After that it was quite fun and I was relieved to learn that I am not at risk of osteoporosis.

Mumbai Memories

I have been shocked and saddened by the reports of the recent terrorist attacks in Mumbai. I was brought up in Pune, 120 miles south east of Mumbai (or Bombay, as it was then). We didn't visit very often, mostly on our way to and from the UK, but we had number of friends who lived not very far from where some of the attacks have taken place. I loved Mumbai. It was big and brash and boisterous compared to the relative gentility of Pune Cantonment. I never stayed in either of the hotels but I did go through the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (or Victoria Terminus (VT) as it was then). My memories are happy ones: being mobbed by coolies at VT, the lights on Marine Drive, evening strollers along Chowpatti Beach, the grandeur of the Gateway to India, the Indian handicraft emporiums, swimming at Breach Candy, old family friends ...

It's heartbreaking to hear of such acts of violence being committed against foreigners. In all my years in India I never once felt threatened because of who I was. In fact I was always treated with the utmost respect and consideration, even at the hands of complete strangers who had nothing to gain by their kindness. I am sure that these attacks sicken the hearts of the majority of Mumbaites, and Indians, and I hope that this group, whoever it is, is stamped out before it blemishes an otherwise hospitable country.