Celebration – Page 2 – The de-la-Haye Girls

Date. Night.

L shares her new favourite lockdown activity – themed date night!

Two words that put the horrors into me and my partner. I have friends that insist a weekly date night becomes a necessary evil once you have children, but we don’t, as yet. Notwithstanding this, and as I mentioned in a previous blog, I’m on the hunt for new activities to keep me out of trouble this lockdown.

Before we entered this new normal, one of our shared passions was travel. We loved nothing better than exploring the culture, music and cuisine of an unknown place. It’s something that E lovingly passed down to me. So, given that we can’t currently travel, I thought, why not bring the travel to us?

On our daily walk, we hatched a plan. Each week we will pick a place: a country; a region; a continent; whatever takes our fancy. We will have a home-cooked meal celebrating food from the selected place, followed by a film inspired by or set in the same location. The only rules are: no fish/celery (at Vince’s behest), neither of us can have seen the movie before and we have to be brave and include at least one item on the menu we wouldn’t normally prepare and eat at home. And there you have it, dinner and movie, lockdown style.

For our inaugural week, we decided the theme should be the USA, as this seemed both easy and wholly appropriate. After toying with whether to go down the TexMex, Soul Food or cowboy food route, we settled on a menu inspired by our childhood and holidays.

And yes – aperitif was spelt phonetically for humour. The menu was designed to be read in your best southern drawl

Buffalo chicken wings and ice cold beer immediately transports me back to working for Royal Caribbean aboard the beautiful Oasis of the Seas. Every Wednesday, the ship would host a “Crew Appreciation Evening” where all departments were welcome to join for free beer and wings. For variety, I’d love to swap out some of the wings for cauliflower florets for a vegan twist.

Celeriously delicious. Breaking my own non-celery rule in week one!

Our main course had to be hotdogs. We both had fond memories of those jumbo bad boys from family trips to Florida. Now let me tell you a secret: the trick to a great hotdog is nothing to do with the bun or meat; it’s all about the toppings. We created our own selection bar with crispy bacon bits, relish, macaroni cheese, chopped onion, mustard, ketchup and grated Cheddar. Really the combinations are endless; you could feasibly chuck any leftovers a top your hotdog and make it delicious. Chilli con carne dog? Sauerkraut and smoked cheese? Linda McCartney veggie-dogs and mushrooms? Ok, ok – I’ll stop!

After a long debate with E about what film we should screen, (she hilariously suggested An American Werewolf in London…yep), we settled on Tony Kaye’s American History X. It was quite a heavy watch of a Thursday evening but I couldn’t believe how relevant it still is 23 years on. It’s available on Netflix and worth a watch if you haven’t seen it before.

Our evening finished with a slice of good old-fashioned apple pie. It’s long been known between the de-la-Haye Girls that E is the baker. Whilst we both love to potter in the kitchen, anytime something sweet has to be made it never goes well in my hands. But, dear reader, I’m delighted to report that I may have broken the curse! It might not have been the prettiest pie but the bottom wasn’t burnt and the filling tasted good. Better than good actually; it was delicious.

It’s such simple idea but we both really got into it, listening to Johnny Cash all day and feeling like we’d escaped for just a moment. Next week we are going to Japan. Recommendations for food and films are most welcome! ~L.

Not-So-Basic Banana Bread

It’s lockdown, of course we must have banana bread.

Slice Appeal

This third lockdown is hitting a little different isn’t it? Discounting those four weeks in November of last year, our only other experience of lockdown was during the spring. Getting out and safely enjoying your local surroundings is much tougher on a cold, dark evening. In fact nearly everything that lifted my spirits last time just isn’t cutting the mustard this time round. I think the key to getting us through the next few weeks, or indeed months, is changing things up!

I’m taking full advantage of all the activities I didn’t turn my hand to in the initial lockdown and top of my list is baking banana bread. E treated me to the new Nigella Lawson cookbook Cook, Eat, Repeat for Christmas and this recipe is very much inspired by her gluten-free version. Mine is best served still slightly warm with ice cream or early the next day, fridge cold and lathered in salted butter.

Serving Size:

10 generous slices

Time:

1 hour + cooling time

Difficulty:

lemon squeezy

Ingredients

175g flour
100g ground almonds
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp bicarb of soda
pinch of salt
4 bananas (the more bruised the better)
2 tsp vanilla extract
100g Greek yoghurt
2 eggs
100ml vegetable oil
125g brown sugar
100g dark chocolate chips
100g walnuts
a spoonful of Nutella (for swirling purposes)

Directions

Preheat the oven to 150℃ and stick some baking paper into the base of your loaf tin.
Mix together your flour, almonds, baking powder and salt

Peel and mash the bananas, a good old fork will do for this. Then, take out any aggressions you’re harbouring, possibly towards certain politicians who will remain nameless and beat in the vanilla, yoghurt, eggs, oil and sugar. Make sure you do these one by one so as not to overwhelm the mixture.

When you’re happy that everything is well combined, tentatively mix in your flour. Again, unless you want your kitchen floor to look like you got into a fight with a pastry chef, go slow. Or if you’re using one of those fancy KitchenAids, frankly you’re cheating.

A great excuse to finish off any baking bits left over from Christmas

Here’s the fun bit, fold in the chocolate chips and chopped walnuts, I’ll allow you a blitz in the blender if you really loathe chopping. And just to be extra decadent, I added a spoonful of Nutella and swirled it into the cake batter to make a marbled effect.

Gingerly tip into the lined loaf tin and pop her into the oven for an hour. At this point I poked a kebab skewer (of course I don’t have cake testers) into the centre and it was still pretty liquid. I turned the heat down to 120℃ and let her sit there for another 20 minutes whilst I went on a walk.

Tempting as the smells may be, leave your loaf to cool down before you attempt removal! It’ll be worth the wait, trust me! We had ours for pudding with freshly sliced bananas and cream. It’s healthy because there’s fruit in it, right?

You can always swap the nuts out if you prefer or use rice flour and GF baking powder to turn this coeliac friendly. I’m sure E has some tips for a vegan version too! Happy baking ~L.

The Big 3-0 In Lockdown 3.0

L celebrates her “milestone” birthday during the UK’s third national lockdown.

Well, I had hoped it wouldn’t happen, but it has. I’m finally joining the rest of my loved ones in celebrating a Lockdown Birthday. Now, let me be clear before I type another word: I know there are terrible, frightening things happening in the world right now, of much more importance than this little Capricorn, but I still felt “funny” about it all…

Growing old is inevitable, growing up however…

I was chatting with some of my friends last week, who all felt similar about celebrating this milestone under the current restrictions. It’s not that I had grand plans of a dirty thirty in Bordeaux, although that would’ve been delightful. I think it’s that being born in January, my birthday is quite often a bit of an after thought. This month is not only long and dark, it’s also the time of year we typically introvert, diving head first into fun activities such as Dry January, Veganuary, countless diets and detoxes, returning to school and last minute tax returns. Hardly puts you in the mood for a party, does it?

Turning thirty had a lot riding on it. It’s the mystical age I often used growing up to set as a measure. As Emma Bunton articulated in Spice World: “do you think I’ll always be Baby Spice, even when I’m (gulp) thirty?” It would also firmly put in me in the “Overs” category of the old X Factor format. “Overs”…how rude is that?

All this having been said, I am shocked to confess that this birthday is probably one of the best I’ve ever had. Having zero expectations for the day and no added pressure from my loved ones asking: “have you had a good time?” meant that my simple, relaxed day was really enjoyable.

I spent most of the morning mooching round the house in my new pyjamas that I treated myself to at Christmas, playing nostalgic tunes from my childhood as loudly as I wanted. Vince popped out to get me a takeaway vanilla latte after my brunch of Nutella pancakes. It’s always the little things that matter most, am I right? Whilst he was out, our local Postie arrived with cards, flowers and an embarrassingly large box for me to open.

Love these so much I could burst!

I settled down to watch 13 Going On 30, (honestly worth a watch if you haven’t seen it before. Mark Ruffalo in a romcom – what’s not to like?) and cracked open the bubbles!

There had better be a pot of gold with my name on it underneath that!

To work up an appetite, we headed out on our daily walk. We’ve been doing around 50km a week since Christmas and we’re loving our rambles. Mother Nature treated me to a special present on this day – check out that light!

Once the sun went in, we headed home to check out our local Chinese takeaway – which did NOT disappoint and provided left overs for the next day too. I often think leftovers are actually better than the main event. By the time I’d zoomed the family and caught up on my messages, it was midnight and I’d officially made it 30 times around the sun.

Over the past year there have been so many projected scenarios for my birthday, including spending it in Cardiff with my Phantom cast, locked in a hotel room abroad quarantining, a small family shindig for our support bubble and a lockdown party for two. As E reminded me on Facebook: “lockdown birthdays are all the rage at the moment”. As ever, she was right, and I wouldn’t have had the day any other way. ~L.