Another day, another passion, this time: COOKING!

Another great talent I inherited from my mother is my passion for cooking. I enjoy really exotic foods and my parents often treated us out to the most fascinating foods. While my mother was still around, I didn't actually cook that much, and to be honest I was quite awful at it. Its my children that inspired me to be the cook I am today. Before my mother departed she gave me great tips on cooking that still stay with me today.

So when my daughter requested an Indian feast for her birthday I set a whole day aside to cook the dishes she so wanted to eat!

Well I started with an accompaniment that is offered at most North Indian meals, Dhai Bhundi, which is a yoghurt dish filled with boiled potatoes and tiny graham flour balls, topped with spices and coriander.

Then I made a side dish, Aloo Gobi, which is basically potatoes and cauliflower. 

This was the main curry made with eggs, which sounds strange but is absolutely yummy! My vegetarian mother-in-law who is usually quite fussy absolutely loved it.

 Another side dish was Palak Paneer which is small cubes of Indian cheese in a spinach puree. 

None of the dishes were spicy, and all of it was served with rice and store bought chapatis. My favourite brand of chapatis is Elephant Atta, which you can get in quite a few well known supermarkets. 

If you want recipes I would have to recommend Anjum Anand. She really does make it very easy. 

So her Indian feast went down a treat and I was exhausted, but with just enough time to get set for her joint birthday party with her little sister. The weather was pretty awful all day but we made a special request to our very dear guardian angel and we were granted with sunshine until the last 10 minutes of the party.

The children loved playing in our garden and we hired out a fantastic bouncy castle! That's it for birthday parties until next year! Phew! Well will have to see what my youngest will want for her birthday dinner in two weeks!

The Honour of Motherhood

Today I have but one thing on my mind. My eldest daughter's seventh birthday. I am so incredibly proud of her. I'm also proud of myself for getting this far in motherhood. She was a beautiful baby at 6 lbs 6 oz. It was a difficult birth and motherhood just didn't come easy for me. We didn't bond the way I did with my second daughter. I think I hadn't realised how much motherhood would change me. It made me put everything into perspective and when I looked in the mirror, I didn't like what I saw. Why would my own child love me if I didn't love myself.

That was the dawn of post-natal depression for me. I didn't get treated for it until after I had my second child. When I realised today how long its been since I said to myself, "Today was a good/bad day" I realised I've been over it for a while. I didn't know that I could be this content with my life.

If I had never had my children, and learned how to love myself and make my life work for me, I never would have had the strength to get over losing my mother to cancer last year. My mother lost her battle 5 days after she turned 65. She had a difficult time of it, and its been a hard year coming to terms with her absence. Now I realise the gift she gave me of being the mother I am today. I miss her, but I only have to look in the mirror to see her in me.

I think my daughter is going to have an amazing day tomorrow, full of joy and contentment.

My TV obsession

Ok, so I have to talk about my obsession with TV because its just who I am. I grew up in NY where we had 24 hours of lots of channels to watch and plenty of educational programs that I watched continuously from the age of 5. After I left the States, the TV withdrawal was horrific. I cannot even begin to explain it. But with the dawn of the internet and Sky television, my hunger for specifically American dramas just grew and grew! I make excuses about it now, because I want to write for TV. I will be starting a writing for television module at University in the next year or so. So my obsession is justified. Its homework!

My current favourite has to be Game of Thrones. I am reading the book and watching Game of Thrones series.  The first book is fantastic. Its been such a journey and reading it alongside watching it is so enriching. They can't put every detail into the TV series, so I love reading the characters thoughts and little stories intertwined into the main story. I enjoy reading fantasy novels anyway, this is heavily about war and politics but the little spices of magic and dragons thrown in make it really enjoyable. The details are very clever and the author has clearly worked hard at defining each of the characters. It really reminded me of the Belgariad and the Mallorean written by David Eddings. Those are my favourite fantasy series I have to say. Maybe one day I'll be writing my own!

Giving it another shot!

Ok, so I thought I would have to write everything about my life all in one go. But there are so many parts of my life that vary every day.

I am a student but I'm done for the year, so I'll get back to that another time. Today I'm a mum. I've just baked fruity buns for my kids school. They are having a bake sale tomorrow. It came out awful, haha! I was like yeah, baby, I'm super mum, I can make home made cakes and be a student, and an actress and sing and all that hokey, and boom, I forgot to add the sugar and tried to remould the dough again and it looks like crap! They taste good though!

I have so much to do today, lots of ironing to catch up on because I was ill last week and a birthday party to finish organising. My daughters are turning 4 and 7 and they are having a joint party on Saturday in our back garden with a giant octopus bouncy castle. I think I am more excited than they are. Nah, scratch that, they are super excited.

So its a busy week ahead and I have a lot to be excited about. I start rehearsals on Friday night for the Agatha Christie play Murder on the Nile. Its the first drama I'm doing. I auditioned for a nice juicy part but a good friend of mine got it and I have a teeny part as an Egyptian beadseller. I am so grateful though, I love being able to get out of the house on an evening and be creative. Its such a huge passion of mine, and an addiction, to be on stage! I love it!

I've arrived

OK, I've attempted blogs before but this time I really need to try harder. My very wise cousin in New York told me I should do this, so AT, this is all your fault!

I want to use this blog to write about my crazy idea to go back to University again. You see back when I was 18, I left Gibraltar, fresh faced and fancy free to do a degree in Engineering. Crazy? I didn't have the best careers advice at school but to make a long story short, I picked from a list of top 10 best paid careers and ended up choosing Engineering.

I grew up in New York, where everyone tells you, you can do what ever you want, as long as you put your head to it! I suppose this is true for most people, but you have to have a real passion for it if you really want something.

I didn't really want to be an Engineer. So somehow I got through three years and ended up failing my last exams. Its ok, I never enjoyed it, but I did meet my husband there, he was my lab partner.

And so I left Uni, got a job at Prudential, looking after people's company pensions. It paid well, and I made a pretty good success out of a boring finance job. Once I had kids though, it just got tougher and tougher, until I hit a massive brick wall when my oldest daughter started school. I just couldn't manage.

So I got upset, left my job and sought some professional advice. What do I do now? My advisor asked me, what do you see yourself doing in ten years time? The first thing that shot out of my mouth, I want to write. I'd been writing short stories since I was five years old. When I was seven, my grandfather read one of them and was so excited for me that he gave me his typewriter to use. You see, my grandfather was a published writer back in the day, and his father before that.

Somehow in the move from New York to Gibraltar, I lost my confidence. I spent so much time trying to fit in, I forgot who I was supposed to be.

Now I had a second chance. I joined a creative writing class, and then an acting class. I joined the local amateur drama company. The first play I did was a musical and I had wonderful principal part that had me singing solo on stage for the first time ever. 

It was truly amazing. My creative appetite was growing, and after much soul searching, and web crawling, I found a degree in Humanities I could apply to at the nearest University where I could study the modules I wanted, Film Studies, Philosophy, Creative Writing, and Acting.

I applied, and despite the competition, got accepted a few weeks later. Its been four amazing weeks and I'm just doing Film and Philosophy this year, part time, until my youngest goes to school full time. I should have that magical BA Hons degree in my hands in four years.

I've had a lot of help from family and friends, and a wonderful guardian angel.

I wanted to do this blog to maybe there have been so many people who have inspired me. This is my way of thanking them.