My Nanny Rhino journey

My Nanny Rhino journey began on November 1st, obviously. I sat down, wrote ‘The Food And I’ on the page (like that film, The King And I) and I started writing. The first thing I wrote about was microwave chips. Who knows why? It just came into my head so I wrote it. Then I wrote about squid. Then I had reached 1667 words and gone a little further than that. So I stopped. The next day I wrote about truffles. I hit my 1667 word count again. It was easy. I read posts on blogs about how by the end of this month of NaNoWriMo, friendships and marriages would have been tested to their max, mental states become frayed and mealtimes passed by in a haze. I didn’t know what they were talking about. The words flowed freely and I wondered if I’d stop at 50,000 or just keep going. I loved it. And so it went, happily, uninterrupted, until November 10th.

Then the invites to dinner came, the extra workload, the work I was meant to be doing from home, which I had cast aside for NaNoWriMo but which now really needed doing. I started carrying a pad with me to try and snatch bits of time to scribble something I could type up later. For a whole week, NaNoWriMo didn’t get very much attention. I managed a few thousand but, by the time I got a few hours to sit at the computer, I was five days behind. There was nothing else for it. I sat down and wrote ten thousand words in a day and caught up.

The next day I was back to writing 1667 words and feeling good. Then the next few days, I was busy and when I next got to the computer, I started writing and the biggest load of nonsense found it’s way on to the page. Who wrote that drivel about nutmeg and limes? Shockingly enough, I did. I pretended all was fine and moved on hurriedly, excelling myself with my section about cheese.

I fell behind a few days from the end and squeezed four and a half thousand on to November 30th, the last day of NaNoWriMo. I finished on 50393 words. There is some nonsense, some slightly better stuff and some recipes.

All in all, I’m extremely pleased I undertook the challenge. I feel great having done it, although I haven’t yet got out of the habit of drifting to the computer as soon as I get in the house…

Kiwis, curries and rats with style

It’s that time again. Time to see what Chat has to offer this week. Once again, I am blown away by their fabulous witticisms, sprinkled throughout. For example, I open the magazine and the first thing which greets me is a photo of a pig in a picnic basket, with the caption ‘designer ham bag?’

Brilliant. There doesn’t seem to be any reason why the massive photo of the pig is there, just a little sentence about how the pig looks so comfy, “there’s no way we could ‘rasher’ to go anywhere.”

And on we go, to the photos page and there are a few good ones this week. The first is a here-are-some-cupcakes-I-made photo. The second is a here’s-me-with-a-huge-plastic-ape picture. And no, I’m not kidding. Someone really thought that the world would be interested in a picture of her with a huge plastic ape. Check it out.

There are some others of dogs and cows, which aren’t even worth mentioning in any greater detail.

So onward we go, past a story about a girl who had a maggot living in her back and a story of scandal with a 9.9 shock factor (!), to the Blimey, That’s Clever page.

And what have we here today? I think my favourite might be the kiwi fruit tip. Put it in an egg cup, we’re told. And that’s it. That’s the tip. Eat a kiwi out of an egg cup. £25 they got for that.  

Maybe I’ll make up some top tips and try to get £25 from Chat. Watch this space. I’ll think some up for tomorrow.

Another of the top tips is to use toothpaste to clean your mugs if they have tea stains. While I can’t see anything initially wrong with this, it just sounds a bit dodgy, cleaning a mug with toothpaste. You’re bound to have toothpaste-tasting tea for the next few days, I reckon.

Another tip seems to be, my granddaughter chewed the straw bit off her favourite beaker, so I put a new straw in. I don’t know whether that really warrants a place on the Blimey, That’s Clever page, do you? It’s not as though, previously, people have been throwing away their children’s beakers every day with no clue how to fix it and then they open Chat, see this tip and go ‘Wow! I’ll just stick a new straw down the hole where the old straw was. That’s genius.’

Next we have some more scandal, a murder, some letters, some weight loss stories and then the baby photos page. Ahhhh, the baby photos page. Photos of babies. Doing nothing at all. Just being babies. A whole page. One is a baby on a slide, one is a baby swimming, another is a baby and a cat, one is two children smiling a bit. A whole page.

To the side of this page, we have the recipe section. Now previously, I have seen some amazing gourmet recipes that opened my eyes to a whole new world. The week they had a recipe for mushrooms on toast was a week that changed my life. This week’s recipe? Onion and potato curry.

Mmmm. Doesn’t that sound great? Onion and potatoes. In a curry. Like when you look in the fridge and you don’t have anything in so you bung together some nonsense and fill up on ice cream afterward. Mmm. Nothing-in-the-fridge curry. The ingredients? Olive oil, 4 potatoes, 2 onions, spices and mustard seeds. And the attraction in making this meal? It’s only 54p per head.

Now it doesn’t take a genius to work out that it’s not 54p because Chat are so great at providing good meals on a budget. It’s because there’s NOTHING IN IT.

If you want great meals on a budget, I can give you far better, go-to ingredients – squid is really cheap, people. Fry it with fennel. Re-use old bread by chopping tomatoes, adding red wine vinegar and basil and ripping your old bread up and mixing it in for a panzanella salad. If you want a curry, spend your money on some chicken and chuck it in a pan with tomatoes (tinned or fresh) and add whatever combination of spices you find in the cupboard, depending on what country’s cuisine you are chanelling.

See? All those will probably be about £1 per person but don’t resemble student food or invoke severe depression in the person who is eating it.

Anyway, back to Chat, the finale is the ‘Ratwalk models’ story on page 46. Yes, RATwalk models. You know what’s coming. It’s a story about a lady who designs and makes clothes for rats. Yes. Rats. It started with making ‘couture creations’ for her pet chihuahua, inspired by a dress worn by Penelope Cruz to the Oscars.

A few years later, business was booming, she went full time into her pet clothing designing and her friend asked her to help “raise the profile of her annual rat convention.”

Honestly, this is not a joke. It’s all true. Her friend runs a yearly rat convention.

So she designed and made the dresses. There was a fashion show with 12 of the ‘models’. Post-show, fame and fortune came her way, she got calls from everyone, even David Letterman.

The article finishes with the touching line, “After all, every single pet should feel like a star.”

That’s something we should all remember as we go on with our days today.

I hope you have learned something here.

My love affair with Waitrose

It’s partly because of the cool rush of air that greets you as you enter. It’s partly because of the amount of things that have ‘organic’ written on the label. It’s also kind of because there’s a whole aisle dedicated to yoghurt. Actually, there are plenty of reasons why I have a long-standing love affair with Waitrose. Let me just tell you about what happened last time I went to see the love of my life.

My shopping list had these things on it:
Shampoo
Conditioner
Asparagus
Something for dinner
Sugar
Eggs

Let’s enter my head to see what actually happened.

Oo! The cool air rush. Mmm. Nice. Ok, grab a trolley. I wonder if people think I’m a grown-up cause I’ve got a trolley. Hee hee. I love pretending to be a grown up. Oo! There’s an offer on something! Raspberries! I’ll just get one box. And another. Ok, I’ll get four! I can make jam with them. I love making jam….

And so it starts. It’s one of those days. One of those days where I have to have one of everything.

Let me get some bananas for banana bread. And a few aubergines. They’re always good. I guess I’ll make a parmigiana with them. So I need tomatoes. I’ll get some strawberries on the way to the tomatoes. Beetroot! Oo, I like raw beetroot shaved into a salad with smoked salmon and rocket. Laura! Calm down! You don’t need everything! Yes I do, I NEEEEED the beetroot. I need it. Ok then, just get it and shut up. Yesssss, beetroot in trolley. Do I need to stop at the fresh pasta section? Not really, but I like lingering there and looking at it and pretending I’m in Italy. Right, moving on, my favourite sections are coming up. The meat and fish counters. I can feel my eyes lighting up. O no! Here I am in front of the counter ordering tons of fish, before I can stop myself. I’m walking away with a bit of everything, scallops, prawns, squid, mahi-mahi, tilapia, salmon, rainbow trout. What on earth did I do that for?! When can I possibly eat all this fish?! O well. Down the chicken aisle. Oo, what to get? The turkey’s on offer, or some duck? Don’t be ridiculous, why would I get a duck for normal dinner at home. I must learn to distinguish when fancy dinner is required and when to just do normal dinner. Ok, I’ve actually got enough fish to feed an army, so maybe I don’t need any chicken. And so to the yoghurt aisle. Too much choice! Too exciting! The nice Waitrose yoghurts made with Jersey cream are amazing. I’ll get one of each flavour. There are about ten flavours. I don’t need them all but I can’t stop myself. And some of the passionfruit flavour. Mmm. And a large vanilla one. Mmm… And some of the Greek stuff. Omygoodness, there is NO way I’ll be able to get all this home. Ah well, keep going. Skip the freezer aisle. Next aisle, tins and cooking stuff. Actually, I’ve run out of ground ginger and oregano so let me get some of those. Next, to the juice, yessss, they’ve got that iced peach tea, two please. Round to the crackers and cereal aisle. I need oats and I’ll get some crackers too, they’re good to have in. Next aisle, need chocolate for making flapjacks. Eggs, yes please. Sugar, two types please. Flour, yes please. I need hazelnuts too actually. I can feel this is becoming slightly crazy. I can’t stop though. Next aisle, spend a while deliberating over which shampoo and conditioner are most suited to my hair. Last aisle, do I need anymore washing up liquid or clothes softener? Foil? Cling film? No I think I’m fine.

And so I emerge from the last aisle, hurrying a little as I try to stop putting things in my trolley. Ridiculous. I didn’t even have everything e.g. parmesan for the parmigiana, salmon or rocket for the beetroot salad I planned, the asparagus that had originally been on my list, etc. I practically ran to the tills, like a guilty lover, trying to pretend the rendezvous had never happened. But it had. I had three heavy shopping bags to prove it. It was one of my silliest shopping trips ever. How much do you reckon I spent? Have a guess and I’ll reveal the answer tomorrow.