Coriander, Curry and Confidence

As we are about to leave for a trip to the UK, I decided it was high time I invited some people for a meal. That was the start of my problems. Being a control freak and also enjoying cooking meant I wanted to plan what I would cook. However, this is dependent on stuff keeping if you buy it too far ahead (everythign has to be kept in the fridge. Even flour, sugar etc) or more likely having to keep changing what you will cook according to what is, or is not, in the shops the day before. So I did what I vowed I would never do, that is call someone on a mobile from a supermarket about choices of food. You know what I mean, you see someone by the cheese counter on the phone saying "shall I buy wensleydale or gorgonzola?" Doesn't happen in Sri Lanka because there aren't any choices really.

Actually I wasn't exactly doing that, I was calling a friend to ask her keep her eye out for coriander when she was at the market and to buy it and come armed with the herb the following evening. either that or change again what I was going to cook. It's probably good for me not to be able to plan, and make me more flexible........ but doubly irritable.

My daughter also, unwittingly, does not exactly help my culinary confidence, a confidence I had in my former life, but which has been severely knocked since moving to this land of strange vegetables, and elusive ingredients. Having accused me a few wks ago of serving up roast 'froggie', on Sunday I felt in need of a good old victoria sponge complete with jam and (....well, butter icing), cream not always being readily available here, and dusted the top with icing sugar. My daughter took one look at it and said "Mummy why have you put talc on our cake?" However she didn't refuse to eat it. But then she is partial to the odd lick of ant killer.... (see below) It makes me wonder what she will come out with as a teenager. She's pretty good already at pulling the rug from under me and making me feel incompetent........

I have also discovered that she has been tucking into our house help's rice and curry most days, despite her constant excuse as to why she doesn't like something I present her with, as being because it's "too spicy" This includes medicine, cereal, fruit, cake, potatoes......

Maheswary told me this week that my daughter goes up to her every day and says "have you eaten your lunch yet?" and then asks Maheswary to tell her when she is going to eat it. She then goes and gets her small chair, plonks herself in front of Maheswary and is fed rice and curry by hand (as all food is eaten here) Of course, our househelp is only too pleased to oblige, as she thinks my daughter is 'very thin' and I am not feeding her properly. No wonder she doesn't eat her supper if she's been tucking into curry every afternoon......

She is, when not eating rice and curry, up to her usual toddler stuff. As well as cutting a huge wodge from her hair a while ago, (and from her brother's) so she now has a tufty bit sticking up in the middle of her head, , .......... I also caught her trying to cut thru M's speaker cable, and cut a hole in the mattress, all with her v blunt (fortunately) children's scissors (now under lock and key, I keep forgetting she can climb...) Other tricks include felt-penning on the walls, emptying her wardrobe of all its contents (regularly), licking the nozzle of the ant killer liquid, trying to remove a door lock with a screw driver, and pushing small beads up her nose.

Honestly why is it always the same things? Makes you wonder if there's a manual for toddlers on "Making Mischief". Chapter headings including; Wreaking Havoc, Cutting Hair and Other Banned Materials, Drawing on Things, Consuming Poisons, Ruining Mum's Make Up, Sticking Small Objects up the Nose etc etc. I just hope there isn't a Volume Two........