Author Archives: Louise

Sticky Mince

This is my recipe for sticky mince, it comes from a few I have seen over the years but this version is my fave.

Ingredients:

500g Turkey Mince (Also works well with pork or ostrich mince)
Bunch of Coriander, with roots
3 Garlic cloves, chopped
1.5 tsp White Pepper
1 tbsp Peanut oil (Sunflower oil works just as well)
¼ Cup of Palm Sugar, grated (Normal white sugar works ok too)
2 tbsp Fish Sauce
4 Kaffir Lime Leaves, finely shredded
1/3 cup Crispy Shallots
¼ cup chopped peanuts (pine nuts work well too)
Limes, Chillis and Rice to serve

Method:

Make coriander paste by putting 3cm of stalk and the roots of the coriander in a blender with the garlic and white pepper. Blend to a paste, using a little water if necessary.

Fry the mince and put to one side

Add the coriander paste to the pan and cook for 1 minute

Add the sugar, fish sauce and lime leaves.

Cook until sticky then add the mince, shallots, nuts and remainder of coriander leaves.

Cook through, add a little water if you prefer it a bit more saucy.

Serve with rice or as a starter by serving in little gem lettuce leaves.

This post is an entry for BritMums’ Summer Turkey Recipe Challenge

http://www.leanonturkey.co.uk/

Lots of other Turkey recipes here, quite a few for me to try methinks!!

http://www.britmums.com/2013/05/join-the-summer-turkey-recipe-challenge-win-250-voucher/

My Mum’s Recipe Book – update

Matilda Mae

2 Replies

When my son, Ellis, died 10 years ago there was no Twitter, no Facebook, no ‘social networking online’. The people that supported us and got us through the tough times were our friends, family and the people at the Lullaby Trust (Foundation for Study into Infant Death).

The onset of social networking has brought me a wider circle of supporters; many of these supporters are people I have never met in real life. I have met up with a few at ‘tweet-ups’ and other events and have really forged some great friendships. Many of these friendships came as a result of the Antony Gormley #oneandother project I took part in a few years ago.

I have met other Mums who have lost children; children that have died as a result of illness and quite a few where the cause of death was SIDs as it was in our case. It wasn’t until the death of Matilda Mae earlier this year that I realised quite how powerful social networking could be. Today would have been Matilda Mae’s 1st birthday and instead of spending a lovely day with her family she is, instead, trending on twitter. The awesome outpouring of grief for a child and the support shown to her family is just stunning. I don’t know Jennie or her family but I keep thinking about them and how they must be feeling today. They are saying their final goodbyes today, sending Matilda off into the sunset. I wish them all well. From experience I know the first birthday, the first Christmas, the first anniversary are all going to be the worst. They will never forget their lovely girl but I can promise them that in time it will get easier.

Louise
x

The Recipes are coming in…..eek

My Mum’s Recipe Book

Every year I raise money for The Lullaby Trust (FSID), I ask you for money and in return you get nothing except that good feeling of giving some money to charity. I have been asking you for money for 10 years and to be honest I feel it is time to give you something back. So, with that in mind, I have decided to ask you for money again but this time I am asking for your favourite family recipes as well so I can put them into a book and sell you your recipe back along with lots of other families recipes.

I have a book (pictured) of all our family favourite recipes. There is the Lemon Drizzle cake that is Jim and Alex’s favourite, the Sausage pasta that is our camping friends favourite, the Scrummy curry which is all our favourite although Jim prefers it if I leave the sultana’s out! I thought it would be nice to put all these recipes into a book so that when Alex grows up he will have the recipes of his childhood that he can then cook for his children. Many of the recipes in my book are recipes that my Mum cooked for me, a special favourite of mine is the Sticky Gingerbread and Parkin recipe that she made for my sister and me.

It got me to thinking, why don’t I ask my friends and family for their favourite family recipes and put them all in a book. I would like to publish this and send all the proceeds to the Lullaby Trust.

So, what I would like from you is your recipe, the ingredients all need to be readily available in the local supermarket. The recipes I want are yours, not a celebrity chef’s recipe. Please email me the recipe, you will be credited in the book. I also thought that if you have been affected by our story if you would like to write a few words that could be included too. For instance if we met as a result of my involvement with the Lullaby Trust you could put a few sentences together about it. I would really like this to be a success, not just for me but for the Lullaby Trust too. They are a fantastic charity with fabulous people working hard to put an end to cot death.

Email your recipes to louise@louisebarrett.co.uk

I am not specifying sections as I want your family recipes, whatever they might be.

Louise

More than a half of Mums fear that their baby will never wake up!

As you know over the last 10 years I have been heavily involved with Cot Death Charity the Foundation for Study into Infant Death, they have today announced their new name, The Lullaby Trust.

As part of the rebrand they have released the results of a survey which shows that 62% of new Mums said that they worried more about their babies dying suddenly and unexpectedly than being harmed in accidents or contracting meningitis. The survey also showed that 49% of mums from Yorkshire said they had moved their newborns into their own bedrooms before they were six months old in order for everyone to get more sleep.

Read the press release in full here. My own son died whilst bed sharing, I fell asleep whilst breast feeding him. This research needs to be shown to a wider audience so that mums and dads are given the very best advice to keep their babies safe.

Over the years I have done many crazy things to raise money for this charity, this summer I plan to take part in the Ride London 100 mile road race, Hell on the Humber endurance 12 hour run and the Great North Run. The fundraising never stops and neither should the raising awareness of the dangers of co-sleeping.

I am a middle class Mum and my baby died from Cot Death!

Many people think that cot death only happens in poor families, homes where the parent’s smoke, where the Mum is a teenager or even in homes where drugs are regularly taken. Well that is just not true, middle class families are just as much at risk.

I was 32 years old when my son died, so not a teenager. Neither myself nor my husband smoke, so that was ruled out. We are not poor, we are not mega rich either, but we both have good jobs, we have a nice house and a car each! We have never taken drugs, our house is clean and we live in a nice town.

We don’t fit the stereotype of the sort of family that it is assumed cot death affects. You just can’t assume you know where cot death is going to occur; it can affect anyone, even your family!

Sadly it is not fully known why cot death happens and this is why I support FSID and their research. They may be able to tell me one day why my baby died and their advice may save the life of your baby!

http://fsid.org.uk

The name’s Barrett, Louise Barrett

Well, we did it. What a fantastic night with Mr Bond. I am still buzzing from the generosity of the guests, the brilliance of the film and the kindness of the sponsors and supporters.

It has been a hard 5 weeks, I won’t bore you with the details but at some points I did wonder why we were even bothering. I have never organised anything like this before and I also have never been to a film premiere so didn’t really know what to expect. With this in mind I called on my friend Lyn to help me out and together we planned the sort of evening that we would like to go to and hoped that others would feel the same. Based on the happy faces at the end of the evening on Thursday I am fairly confident that we achieved this.

We arrived at Cineworld to get ready for our guests. Our cars were packed with everything we needed, a red carpet, bottles of bubbly, glasses, prizes and more prizes. We had roped in friends and family to help ‘man’ the event. Julie and Neil sorted the tombola prize draw and the handing out of bubbly. Becky, our Bond girl for the night, did a sterling job of ‘bullying’ people into parting with their cash for the main prize draw. Loren was freezing outside taking photos of people in the fabulous cars from Hatfields Jaguar & Landrover. Sam and the boys entertained the crowd with their brilliant renditions of Bond themed songs and a few Beatles tracks thrown in for good measure.

The Cineworld staff surpassed themselves, led by Jess, they had dressed the room with balloons. They had all dressed up and really did look the part. Despite having to work they all joined in with doing the quiz, buying tombola tickets and generally taking care of our guests.

The chaps from Hatfields had brought along a couple of the cars from the film along with a couple of other shiny examples of loveliness from their fleet. They too entered into the spirit of the event and I am sure they enjoyed themselves.

We had plenty of photographers on the night too, Paul from HU17 came along, there are now some fab shots on his site. My lovely friend Ash came up from Leicester to join us, he brought his camera along and took some great pictures. Jess, from Cineworld invited her Dad and his friend along to take pictures and they will let me have a copy of them too.

All of it would not have been possible, however, without the guests. What a generous bunch of people. We had 125 guests, as well as buying their tickets they donated an awful lot of money on the night too! Our star prize was kindly donated by Laura Hickman, she had drawn in pencil two fabulous pictures of Daniel Craig and Berenice Marlohe. The lady that won them was thrilled; she said that she never wins anything. She is certainly lucky, these pictures are one offs! Other fabulous prizes were a £250 voucher from Berry’s the Jewellers, a signed rugby ball from Hull FC, a programme from the Bond Royal Premiere, a beautiful book ‘The making of Skyfall’ and a year’s membership to a tasting club.

After our pre-show soiree people collected their popcorn, checked in their mobiles with our friendly ‘Men in Black’ security guys and took their seats. A few people had dressed up as their favourite Bond characters, we called them down to the front. My lovely friend Suzanne had really gone to town on her costume, she had on a wetsuit and after some encouragement she started to take it off revealing that she had a suit on underneath. It was just a brilliant crowd pleaser, what they didn’t know was that she had no trousers on! Suzanne was the well-deserved winner of the dressing up, 2nd went to ‘Q’ and 3rd was split between the ‘General’ and my son, Alex, who was dress in his tuxedo waving his Bond gun. The other highlight of the dressing up was Steve and Alan that went a bit overboard with the accessories – they brought a white Rolls Royce along with them, and it was so funny that they parked up in the middle of the car display outside. Pair of nutters, but we would expect nothing less of them!

After the thank you’s, which I am embarrassed to say I forgot to thank the band, we sat back to watch Bond at his best. All I will say is that the film was brilliant, my favourite Bond film so far. There are some surprises and certainly some shocks. Daniel Craig is definitely easy on the eye ladies and the Bond girls are, as always, beautiful. Judi Dench is a brilliant actor, such an elegant woman. The badies were really good and as usual, very funny. Even if you are not a Bond fan I am sure you will enjoy this film. The smiling faces of the guest as they left and all the thanks just made my night. With all the worry and the faff or organising it, it was just a brilliant success. I can’t believe that after 10 years people are still so generous with their time and their money. After the costs we raised a fabulous £1862 – for an event of just 125 people this is a magnificent amount and I can’t thank everyone enough. Right up until the event started I said I would never do it again, well, I take that back. I will definitely do it again.

Louise
xx

*heads off to Cineworld to see what the next film coming out is*

Beyond excited! 007 is coming to Hull!!

I can’t sleep! I have so much going on at the moment I am struggling to take it all in. I have the Great North Run next week, the Tickton Ball the week after, a wedding the week after that and mega excitingly the James Bond Premiere in October! Yes, really, the James Bond Premiere.

It won’t be the fancy one in London with all the stars, it will be way better than that! James Bond is coming to Hull. I have been asked by FSID to arrange a charity premiere in conjunction with Sony at my local cinema. I chose Cineworld in Hull as this is the cinema we tend to go to when we watch films. It is the nearest to us and most importantly it has pretty comfy seats!

The arrangements are yet to be finalised and the film doesn’t have an age rating yet but we are on with organising a red carpet event which friends, family and new friends can all attend. It will be screening on 25th October, the day before general release which means you will get to see it before everyone else.

I have a meeting with Cineworld Hull in the morning so should have more final information later in the week. If in the meantime you would like to register your interest, please email me louise@louisebarrett.co.uk who knows, we may even get Peter Levy to attend!

All the work I do for FSID is in memory of my son, Ellis, who sadly died almost 10 years ago. What better way to celebrate his short life than get this blockbuster to Hull.

Louise
xx

Great North Run 2012

On 16th September I shall be taking part in my second Great North Run. Since the London Marathon I have struggled with my running Mojo but having got my place for GNR I felt I owed it to myself to get on with it and so here I am. I am raising money in memory of my son, Ellis, who died almost 10 years ago from Cot Death, the Foundation for Study into Infant Death have been a constant in our lives since that time. They fund vital research into cot death so that other families don’t have to go through and live with the pain that we have.

So please dig deep and donate now.

Thank you so much for reading, every donation counts, even a pound is much appreciated.

Louise

http://www.justgiving.com/ljbgnr