My first week back to work, and my daughter is one today – big milestones. I am trying to simultaneously raise my sights at work, and lower my expectations at home. Looking for ways to squeeze more out of each different type of time I now have – even when that means more fun, more relaxation, more sleep. Part of that is leaning on the slow cooker. I’ve really enjoyed cooking from ‘Slow Cooked‘ by Miss South. It helps that E loves slow-cooked meat of all sorts, and it’s soft enough for her to shovel it in pretty well.

Today’s mission is making some cream cheese icing and assembling the monkey birthday cake for E’s first birthday party. We’ll be having a warm spring vegetable salad, cheese bouikas from the Honey and Co. cookbook, and soup, then cake, and this evening, pulled pork from Slow Cooked over pasta.

Recipes:

• Chicken mole,
• Beef Ragu,
• and Dulce de leche – all from Slow Cooked by Miss South
• Chicken stir fry and Shanghai aubergines – Every Grain of Rice by Fuschia Dunlop
• Shaved asparagus pizza, and tomato pizza from The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook
• Chicken pie from this month’s Delicious magazine (mum made that)
• Queen Maud muffins from Scandilicious by Signe Johansen

Reading:

• Alice Waters shares the 10 dishes that most influenced her. It reads like a list of foodie cliches, but this is one of those occasions where she actually invented the original on which the cliche is based.
• How Flavour drives Nutrition: we may know more than we think about what we should eat, by following flavours. I’m particularly intrigued by the account of toddlers feeding themselves, and self-correcting for deficiencies. (This was a paper by Clara M. Davies, described in a Canadian medical journal.)
• I always struggle with which fish I’m supposed to eat. Xanthe Clay’s (not very inspiring) answer is: the little ones
• Different chefs weigh in on their favourite things to do with sumac. I wish they did something like this for all the spices lurking in the back of my cupboard.
• An adoring piece on Epicurious by American Amy Thielen on the joy of British cookbooks
• And Miriam Gonzalez Durantez (Mrs Clegg) has revealed she writes a food blog with her sons. Everyone’s doing it these days!