Police Checking exchange student families

As you may know, I have been teaching children to cook at my children’s  school.

I love doing it and I think the children do too.

Great so far, however,  suddenly I have been given masses of forms to fill in and I am to be police checked.

I have been at the same school for 7 years and the whole idea does not make sense.  It has been in the papers recently about the parents who,  out of the kindness of their hearts take children to matches, swimming etc and are now not to be allowed to do so unless they have been police checked.

These are the same parents who take children other than their own on play dates and do school runs.  …..are the government completely mad?  This  is just more interference by the state that does more harm than good. Is the Government trying to kill any kind of social concience or desire to help our children?

I know there is danger out there, but I sincerely doubt it comes from the parents who offer their unpaid time and help to organise extra curriclar activities.

This brings me to my Twitter comment about Exchange students…has there ever been a case of a child going to stay with another family in a foreign country who has had a terrible experience apart from the obvious of feeling homesick or hating the food?  I doubt it…Police checking of these families is idiotic, time consuming and is leading me to believe that the next step in the Government plan is to make us all be police checked prior to giving birth…I seriously wonder whether the good souls who make these rules actually live a normal family life?

Faithful customers

I just got this message from a lovely customer who purchased a cabinet a while ago and was waiting for the lids:

Dear Katerina,
Thank you for the bottle delivery,they are gorgeous!The cabinet is of great use and has a lot of admirers…
Regards,
A

Wow, people are just so nice, I am really lucky that they are my customers!

New products

Am designing a new coat hook. No hearts in this one and painted stone colour, very chic for the hallway.
Will be online beginning of November, just in time for your Winter coats!

Bottles have arrived

At last, after 9 months and several factories, my spice bottles have arrived.

I was down in the warehouse on Tuesday with the little darlings.  Like my sisters said, they should be gold plated the amount of time and energy they have taken!

One thing did slightly surprise me however and that was the lack of packaging.

200 bottles per layer, no inter-packaging and even more surprisingly hardly any breakages.  However I am personally going through 5,500 bottles, because I want to know that every one of them passes my own Quality Control!

New Recipe for Apples

We have got tons of apples here.  Everyone of ours and our neighbours trees are heaving with them, so a few new recipes are due.

As you may know, I teach cookery at my children’s school every Thursday.  Last week we did a new take on Lemon meringue pie…..Apple Meringue pie!

I can see you thinking….’No, It couldn’t be as good’ but it really is and as you know, children are the first to tell you they don’t like something.

Anyway, back to the recipe.  I am not going to write out the recipe for pastry and meringue, however as always I have a few tips.

Pastry - Half fat to flour with a bit of water to bind it together

Baking Blind – put the flour in the flan dish, cover with greaseproof paper and pour ceramic beads (or I use rice) onto the paper.  Put in oven and cook. The point of baking blind with a weight on the pastry is so that the base does not bubble while cooking.

Making meringue mix. A good guide is 1 egg white to 1 TBSP caster Sugar and make sure you really do whisk well before you add any sugar and then between each TBSP of sugar you add.

So now for the Recipe.

Prepare a Pie Crust.

Peel, core and cut up fresh apples.  Put a little water in the base of a pan and cook the apples, stirring occasionally.  Cool

Make the meringue mixture.

Assemble the Pie, finishing with the Meringue and put in the oven to bake for a few minutes.  It will go brown very quickly.

Now eat!  You can make the pie in advance,  but brown the top just before you eat it.

This recipe took my 8-12 year olds 1 hour to make from scratch and eat!

Being a man

This is great, it has absolutely never occured to me that anyone would consider me to be a man.  Yet, I had the most charming lady calling me the other day and she was rather shocked to be speaking to the owner of the Company  -  a woman!

I thought I had made it quite clear through my website and my general chit chat that I am feminine, but perhaps I should not take my gender for granted.  From now on I will have a couple of VERY GIRLIE blogs, so that noone can miscontrue them!

Spice Bottles in a box, new design

I have designed a new holder for my spice bottles.  Until now, I have restricted their placement because they needed to sit on the counter, however with this new design, you will be able to hang them on the wall or the inside of a pantry door.

The bottles will come as a set of 4 in a long, narrow, wooden painted box.  I thought I would do the first batch in Stone but would relish any comments as to the colours you might like.

Photos will be on soon.

Joke for the girls

I had to add this to my Blog, because I think it is very funny!

A husband asks his wife,

‘You never argue when I get mad at you.

How do you always control your anger?’

‘I clean the toilet,’ she replies.

‘How does that help?’ he asks.

‘I use your toothbrush.’

Gift Wrapping Service

I have now found my own paper and I shall be wrapping mine and your presents like this at Christmas!

Instead of a Jewellery Box

I designed this with the help of my daughter Ella.  We thought it would be the perfect present for Teenagers, who always receive (and buy) lots of lovely jewellery but have no where to put it.  If you would like to see the full board visit my website http://www.ellaskitchencompany.com/3-48-the-bling-jewellery-board.htm

I am thrilled as I have just sold 10 to a lady for all her teenage xmas presents!