Food for March

I know it doesn't look like it when you look out the window, but the calendar can't be wrong. It's March. I have spent the last weekend congratulating myself on surviving another UK winter, right before Monday arrived and I went to pick my boys up from school and promptly got caught in the biggest hailstorm we had all winter on the one day we were supposed to go check out some houses for our "how does it feel to live in a proper house" research project instead of going straight home. But if you ignore this freak-storm that lasted exactly from five minutes after I left home to five minutes before I got back, as most storms tend to do, you could look around and quietly whisper - it's beginning to look a lot like spring.

Trying to get out of school

And do you know what spring brings with it, other than flowers and sunshine and smiles? Food. Spring is, without a doubt, the season to be eating. It raises two problems - the first being that I still have 3 kilos to lose because unfortunately February was less than a stellar month in all areas of life, so it will come as no surprise to learn that what I thought of as a less than ambitious target of loosing 8 kilos and exercising 4 times a week was in fact too ambitious. The other problem is that spring is what comes before summer. And summer is the season to be showing off your diet's results. Well, the solution here is easy and clear to all - we live in the UK, we can always wear a coat under the pretence that "a summer coat is so in this year". And until we move to the suburbs were people actually have dress codes (or so I hear), we can always wear whatever we want under the label of eccentric rather then just plain weird.

Truth is I planned to get right back on the diet-horse on Monday, it's just that I didn't have a set Monday in mind and so I found myself last Wednesday when it became apparent that Monday has already passed, making an apple crumble. Apple crumble is the best cake ever, because it's a guilt free cake - after all, it is mostly apples. If you just ignore the sugar, flour and butter of course. But why would we want to be so petty? But then came the text message from school - we have moved year 4's cake sell to this Friday. Please bring your cakes on Friday morning. Ha, I thought to myself, here is my chance to get out of making a cake for school. I hate doing anything just because I have to, and baking is no different, but Ron looked at me like I ran over his puppy and told me he promised the whole school I will bake them cupcakes. 

I tried explaining that I don't have time on Thursday, I tried explaining that I don't have the ingredients needed for 40 cupcakes just lying around the house, I tried blaming it on the school. We all know what happened next don't we? I got him to compromise on a cake. Now that raised another dilemma - if you bake a chocolate cake for school, are you supposed to not bake one for yourself too? After all, how will you know if it's any good? And also it was my mum's birthday on Sunday (happy birthday mum!). And the fact that we live in different countries should not mean we don't deserve to enjoy some birthday cake. Yes, I baked two chocolate cakes, with chocolate icing, and sprinkles on top. 

It was the best decision ever, as I don't even dare trying to buy anything in the school bake sale with all the people fighting there for every cake, and Yon, who lives for chocolate cake, was devastated when he discovered that the cake is going to school and not all intended for him to eat.

Apparently, and not that I'm bragging or anything, my cake was the first one sold out, and it went for the highest price per slice :)

Cakes on their way to school

But that is not enough, because on Friday I decided it is high time to get some Jewish food supplies. I go to Golders Green about every three months to get some real hummus, pittas (don't get me started on what goes for pitta bread around here), wine and sweets. So we had more cakes. With chocolate. I am just thankful that Yon is even a bigger chocolate crazy than me. Makes me look so much saner when he runs around the house yelling "chocolate. My precious..."  (he does an excellent Gollum). 

Yon really likes pancakes

And then somehow we got to today, Tuesday, and though I told myself again, that I will get back on the diet-horse on Monday, we somehow stumbled upon Pancake Day. And you know I am not one to give up a good excuse to celebrate a holiday, regardless of its relation to me, if it has good food. Right after Pancake Day we have Purim, which you don't know about unless you are Jewish and why would you want to be Jewish? There really aren't a lot of reasons, but Purim is the main one. It is, after all, the candy holiday. Very diet fitting.

Purim food

After that Ron and I always celebrate St. Patrick's Day, for one reason alone - we get to eat mint-chocolate. Hidai doesn't like it and he always looks at us funny when we eat it, so I don't get to eat it a lot. Why on St. Patrick's Day you ask? The answer should be obvious really, because it has a green wrapping of course. And green is the colour of St. Patrick's Day. I expected you to know that.

That is followed by Mother's Day, or as I like to call it - Only Mummy Gets The Good Chocolate Day. After all, nothing says we love you mummy more than not eating my fancy chocolate, right?

Is it flowers or is it really.... You guessed it ;)

Hey, it's not my fault. I wanted to diet, I wanted to exercise. It's not my fault I opened the mailbox and discovered a box of chocolate from Hotel Chocolate last week.

At that point I decided to look at it as fate's way of saying - lose the diet, embrace the spring!

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