Dentist, bread and splashing

Dentist for me and the kids this morning for our six monthly checkup. It would have been for Ady too but he is currently having some sort of dental issues which may or may not need expensive treatment and I am keeping out of so he has his own appointments for the next couple of weeks. Our dentist has changed and the new woman is lovely (as was the old one actually). I went first and was fine, she said I have a little staining from tea drinking, which normally gets cleaned off as part of the check up appointment but now is considered cosmetic rather than medical and so I would need to see a hygienist and pay privately for – I will invest in some whitening toothpaste instead 😉 . Davies was fine, a bit of plaque picked up and some hints on where to be concentrating on brushing, a bit of a cross bite issue potentially although I suspect that is him not biting where he normally does as I know I never seem to bite properly when asked to consciously do it. I have been aware of him overbiting his lips with his two new front teeth though which might become an issue. Both kids seem likely to have overcrowded mouths and possibly be candidates for braces in the future which is a surprise as no one in my family has ever needed anything like that. Mum has had lots of dental issues and has false teeth on the top but that is due to gum disease rather than tooth issues. Ady’s teeth however are all over the place and both Davies and Scarlett look like they have his teeth patterns rather than mine :(. Something to put off thinking about for now though.

Scarlett had a small patch of decay on a back tooth last time and this time it had gotten worse (which I knew) so it was drilled out and some fluoride cement put in, apparently not technically a filling but it looked a lot like one to me. She was a star, sat through the whole thing including X rays (to check it has not gone through to the adult tooth underneath) and had more cement put thinly on the other back tooth too. We walked home again talking about X rays and why we all had to leave the room while Scarlett had it done.

We were home with a full couple of hours before we needed to be out again so I got the River Cottage Family Cookbook out and told the kids I wanted to start reading it to them. I explained that if we go WWOOFing then we will need to be eating together rather than in shifts as we do now, there will be no freezer therefore no chicken nuggets and potatoe waffles and that I consider part of my job as their parent to teach them how to cook, what is healthy and needed in their diet and show them how to prepare meals. Tarly has always enjoyed baking and Davies has been showing a real interest in cooking his own food lately so it seemed the right time.

So we read the introduction which talks about how everyone should understand where their food comes from and basic, raw ingredients rather than packets of processed food. We read about flour and bread and as I had hoped both the kids were imediately asking if we could bake bread. I explained we hadn’t enough time before lunch to make yeast bread but could manage soda bread and prepare a yeast loaf for later for dinner too.

So, to the kitchen! I read out the recipe, reached high up things and nominally supervised the oven but between them they made a loaf of soda bread and then the dough for a normal loaf. This involved weighing, mixing, kneading, melting and so on, all the time referring to RCFCB for the ‘science bit’ behind it all. We talked about how our bread had 6 ingredients and we knew where they all came from and read the ingredients list on a loaf of supermarket white sliced bread which had many more, most of which we’d never heard of or sounded quite scary. We left the dough to rise, brought out the baked soda bread to cool and cleared up the kitchen.

Sofa bread for lunch was lovely :). The chickens and ducks got fed the remainder of the sliced white supermarket loaf 😉 .

Then we collected together swimsuits and towels and change of clothing and headed off for Ali’s. We arrived before Freya to find a paddling pool being filled :). Unfortunately the styles of enjoying said paddling pool were not compatible between the three children, or indeed even any two of them at any one time. I got very bored, very quickly of micro managing D&S who got very bored of being so ‘ruled’ so it wasn’t quite the happy meet up with a not-seen-for-ages-friend we’d been hoping for. They did manage to have an overall nice time though, with the apparent highlight being dunked headfirst into the water for Davies and 22 bounces on the trampoline to cure a shallow-fresh water vampire bite to Scarlett. Can you tell I don’t just stick with a conventional ‘kiss it better’ routine 😆

Was very lovely for me to see Ali (and J) though and I really enjoyed sitting on the patio drinking ginger beer and eating ice lollies and chatting :).

I’d left anticipating heavy traffic and alllowing for it and possibly another 10 minutes later leaving might have demonstrated that but we were home in 20 minutes so called in home to bake the bread. It had risen beautifully, Davies kneaded it, Scarlett shaped it and between them they monitored it in the oven, turned it over and tapped it to check it sounded hollow before turning it out to cool. Then off to Badgers.

Next week is our last week, we will miss the final two which is a shame as it is the end for Davies so next week is his last ever Badgers. There is some debate about when he will get his Super Badger award having completed the 12 required badges but I think it will probably happen in December if he is happy to return to Badgers presentation night then to recieve it.

Badger was a little underplanned tonight with the theme being compasses. We talked a little about coordinates and directions and then went outside to practise. We are obviously lucky being within hearing distance of the beach at Badgers knowing we live on the south coast so therefore the sea is south. We did some running about to show different directions and then came back in for drinks. We played some quieter games indoors but it was clear if we didn’t have more on offer than games we were going to struggle so we took them back outside again for more games. Running around games were something I HATED as a child so even though D&S seem to quite enjoy them I don’t really like standing around supervising them so it was a not good night particularly for me. I don’t get anything out of herding a group of children really.

On the way home we played spot the elderflowers as we want to make some cordial (and maybe some wine) so were planning a route to harvest some later in the week. Ady was home so I dropped D&S off and nipped along to Co Op for some sausages for Ady and I and some tinned pasta for the kids which was what they’d requested to go with their home made loaf (baby steps! 😉 ). Davies offered to come and do it when I got home so he opened tins, tipped into pan and heated, cut and buttered bread etc while Tarly got drinks and cutlery sorted. Funnily enough the next thing to make is pasta so we’ll try and do that this week too.

No story as I was cooking dinner and the kids got caught up in a Simpsons episode instead but we did candle the quails eggs and discarded 5 of the 12 as empty giving us 7 potential hatchers. Been meaning to do that for days. I cooked a lovely toad in the hole which inadvertantly used up loads of eggs as in a 12 eggs recipe (six normally but I was using our bantam eggs which only count as half an egg each) egg number 10 was bad 🙁 It must have been either a found egg from the garden that had been part incubated or left in the sun or just old or very poor egg rotation in the kitchen on our part. It wasn’t 100% rotten but didn’t smell nice and with plenty more eggs I chucked the mix away and started again. So it was a 22 egg recipe in the end. Luckily we’re good for eggs ;).

I’ve been looking at campervans online tonight which are surprisingly cheaper than I realised :).