When Mr NQN turned two years old, his authority as the head boy and one and only child was threatened by the addition of two sisters. To add insult to injury, one was a baby and garnered more attention while the other one was an adopted older sister who snatched place as the eldest sibling directing the traffic and family.
Poor Mr NQN was suddenly in no man’s land, with no schtick to cling onto-literally. And he didn’t like it one bit.
With his two new sisters, they visited Finland where his now older sister was quite sick and had to be weaned off her diet of sugar and junk food that was the cause of her intestinal distress. She was given the Elliott treatment of natural, raw vegan food. One of the items that they made to help sell her on the new diet was raw, vegan pancakes. They were made the evening before by their “mummi”, aka their grandmother and stored in the fridge for the next morning’s breakfast. Mr NQN went to sleep no doubt dreaming of these pancakes and so did his new older sister. Because by the time they woke up the next day they were gone. His new sister had snuck into the kitchen and eaten the entire family sized stack during the night!
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| January 27th, 2012 by Not Quite Nigella
I felt like a slight fraud writing about ice cream. You see I make plenty of it but I have never been able to eat a whole scoop of the stuff. In fact like the child that plays with the box rather than the toy (that was me, I love boxes) I prefer to eat the waffle cone dipped in chocolate than the ice cream itself. It was like when I missed the point of a toy and would prefer making noise and banging on the boxes. Nevertheless Mr NQN, who was the child that never got toys, prefers the toy itself-the ice cream. He can eat vast quantities of it, his mother telling us that the first time he ever ate ice cream, he had a serious makeout session with it and consumed 16 ice creams.
I first heard about the idea for this cornflake milk ice cream which is served at Momofuku Milk Bar and created by dessert chef Christina Tosi. When I used to eat cereal for breakfast as a child I loathed the actual cereal which got soggy so quickly but loved the sugary, flavoured milk. It was as though Christina was sitting next to me at the plastic floral yellow tablecloth covered table and scrunched her face up at the same time as we when we had to eat the cereal part. Even today I eat cereal but only dry and often with a spoonful of peanut butter.
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| January 17th, 2012 by Not Quite Nigella
I should now declare to everyone that is willing to listen that I have had some really bad New Year’s Eves. They range from the bizarre to the hilarious in retrospect but rather dismal on the night. There was the time when I went to Queen Viv’s house and came across her flatmate-a disagreeable beast who loathed me on sight. In the middle of dinner she took a shower, came out in a white bathrobe and then proceeded to get even more drunk and well you may know where this is headed…
There she was sitting on the chair stark naked under her bathrobe. Her arms were flailing and her bathrobe went askew with every gesture. Then the robe fell open with her sprawled legs and she pointed her lady parts at me while I tried to carry on a conversation with everyone else in the room while simultaneously facing away from them-not an easy thing to do. It has now been referred to as the “white bathrobe” incident. And this is apropos of nothing but the white bathrobe lady is an in-law of one of the biggest directors in the world today, and I have no doubt that he won’t be casting her in anything unless it is as “the hot mess”.
So you see I don’t hold much hope for New Year’s Eves. I thought of Queen Viv who told me last week that she finds it hard to stay awake. Well for me, I find it hard to drink since I am such a lightweight and really only like sweet alcoholic drinks. I thought of a way to cater to both of us-and that was with an espresso Kahlua granita served with ice cream. I found inspiration in one of the cookbooks I was sent over Christmas, the Kitchen Coquette. Knowing that espresso and Kahlua would help keep sleepy souls awake and keep sweet loving souls soused, it was an easy choice.
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| December 30th, 2011 by Not Quite Nigella
“I think you’d make a …good mother” a friend said to me once.
I looked at her. Who was she kidding? Me?
“No no no. I’d be a terrible one. I’d indulge them with anything they wanted, cook them up cakes and cookies on a whim and feed them ice creams if they looked even slightly flushed. And I’m secretly thinking that I’d inadvertently end up raising a creature like Courtney Stodden. And then she’d end up marrying a 49 year old guy when she was 16…” I said stopping when I realised that I had actually turned the conversation decidedly weird.
“Ummm ok, we don’t need another one. You can stay as a godmother then” she said rethinking her comment.
I realised the truth to these words when I plied Mr NQN with as many icy pops as he could eat and then offered him more. But before you call social services for force feeding and husband abuse, the pops were home made and made with lower fat ingredients and contained less sugar than than what you would buy. The warm weather played a hand in this proliferation of icy treats.
Recently though, the weather has been pretty unSummery to say the least and when I first made these, it was in October when the Summer weather really hit us and on these hot days all I wanted to eat was icy pops. To aid in this venture I was sent a Zoku machine which makes pops in about 10 minutes (review is below). My favourite one for sheer accuracy was the apple pie pop which was just like an apple pie in icy pop form followed by the banana custard pop which was creamy and sweet with caramelised brown sugar bananas and sweet vanilla custard.
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| December 19th, 2011 by Not Quite Nigella
I was shopping a few months ago and suddenly hungry (you see why I fear running out of food? 
) picked up a chicken burger from a burger chain restaurant. I paid for my burger and stepped off to the side and waited. They called me over when it was ready and Mr NQN sat down with me while I ate it. I removed it from the bag and took it out. “oh no, they gave me a mini burger instead” I said getting up to return to the counter.
“I’m sorry but I think you gave me the mini burger instead of the regular one” I said sliding the bag across.
The person behind the counter had a look inside and said “Sorry ma’am, that is the regular sized burger.”
“But… it’s tiny! It’s a…burger for ants!” I said lost for words so I just paraphrased Derek Zoolander.
I am used to things shrinking and being smaller from when I was little. After all how many of us could swear that Big Macs have shrunk or that the ice blocks that used to be enormous are now a shell of their former selves also lacking the taste that you remember waxing lyrically about. Perhaps we were smaller or perhaps they had shrunk-who knows. But a year? I haven’t grown in a year!
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| November 14th, 2011 by Not Quite Nigella
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