Food Friday: No bake Lemon and Orange Cheesecake.

This week is Noelie's 2nd birthday. Time just flew in and I can remember very clearly what I baked for her birthday last year. We decided to celebrate her birthday early with family and friends. Mr Foodie and I started baking on Friday, to save rushing on Saturday. We had decided to bake a chocolate cake, a quiche, cookies (3 different types) and make a lemon and orange cheesecake (I say make because it's a no bake cheesecake).

So Friday I got cracking with the cookie dough that can be refrigerated and kept overnight, the quiche and the cheesecake. I made it all from scratch. I left the baking of the cookies and the chocolate cake for the Saturday morning.

I love the cheesecake recipe as it is one of the easiest and tastiest recipe I have ever come across. Other people seem to agree with me as I was asked to wrap up the last two slices so that they could be taken home.

So I decided to share the recipe with you. Try it out and let me know what you think!

Ingredients:

- 200 grs Digestive biscuits.
- 100 grs of butter.
- 1 can of condensed milk.
- 1 tub of Philadelphia (300 grs).
- 2 or 3 Lemons and Oranges.

How to?

- Melt the butter.
- Bash the biscuits.
- Mix the melted butter and the biscuit crumbs.
- Put the mix in the base and refrigerate while you do the next steps.
- Mix together the condensed milk, the cream cheese and the juices of the oranges and lemons.
- Beat up until it thickens a bit.
- Pour over the base.
- Decorate with either biscuit crumbs or lemon and orange zest.
- Refrigerate for as little as a couple of hours, as long as 24 hours.
- Cut up and enjoy!

WAHM: Don't know how to get started!

I've been on both sides of the fence. I have been a working mum and I have been a stay at home mum. Both have advantages and both have disadvantages.

I have experienced the guilt of leaving your child for so many hours a day to go and work and bring money in. I have experienced the exhaustion of rushing constantly from home to creche to work to creche to home, the exhaustion of having to do everything to a strict schedule and only putting your feet up late at night, thinking now I can relax and falling asleep on the sofa 10 minutes later. I have experienced the corporate world and climbed up the ladder only to be made redundant after 10 years of loyal services. My dedication and loyalty to the company meant nothing to them. At first, I was glad not to have to return to work, not to fall back into that trap of running around like a headless chicken. Feeling like I was being cut in half, feeling like I couldn't give as much as somebody who didn't have children, because I had to leave on time to pick Marie up, because there was always the possibility of THE phone call, that something happened and that I would have to leave work and feel like I was letting other people down. Feeling like I wasn't flexible enough for the company. Although nothing was ever said to that effect, it was always there at the back of my mind.
And then there is the other side of it, feeling guilty that I couldn't see Marie's first steps, first words, delegating so many of the decisions to the creche. They made the transition to solids, not me, they potty trained her, not me, they looked after and cared for her, not me. So many not mes. Feeling guilty about it all, because in the back of my mind, it should have been me. She was my child, my responsibility, mine to bring up, I should have been there to make those decisions, witness those firsts. I was torn like most of working mums are.

Then after being made redundant, I jumped the fence and stayed at home. It was and still is a wonderful experience. I am there for those firsts for Noelie, I am there for Marie to help with her homework, to get her to school and pick her up, I look after the house, I look after Mr Foodie and I am enjoying it immensely. I don't need to rush from here to there, like I used to. I feel more complete and I feel like I belong. But there is a downside to it too. Unfortunately, it's quite a damn big one. Financially, things are harder, as you would expect them to be. I feel guilty about the fact that I don't bring in an income and that we have to be more careful with our money. I feel guilty that Mr Foodie works his arse off and I don't share the financial burden. He works hard and should be able to enjoy the rewards of his hard work instead of being faced with the worry of what had come out, what needs to come out and how much is there left, of how can we save more. I am very grateful to him for not complaining about and getting on with things. But yet, once again, I am not 100% happy with the balance. Before it was too much work, not enough time for the children and enough money and now, it's enough time with the children, and not enough money. Does a mother's guilt ever go away? It feels like you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't.

There has to be a happy medium or is it just an illusion? And then I look at my lovely neighbour. She is a work at home mum. She has two successful business that she runs from home, that bring in an income. She is a personal trainer and she is also a hairdresser. And I envy her. It feels like she has found that balance I am currently looking for. This is what I would like to do. I would love to be a work at home mum. Unfortunately, I don't have any of her hands on skills, I can't cut hair, I can't train people, I can't do much with my hands other than cook and bake. I have other skills, of course. I have made a list of them.  I am fluent in French and English. I can teach people. I can make mean PowerPoint presentations. I'm sure I have skills there that would allow me to make a living from home. I'm far from stupid, I learn fast. I just need to be able to take my skills out of the corporate environment and apply them differently. I can see that this is what I need to do. I just don't know where to start, what to do and how to go about it. Self doubt is clouding my judgement. I just need to think outside the box for long enough to be able to formulate a viable idea (not easy with baby brain!). All I need is a bit of direction and support. Does anybody have any spare supply of it?

Pampers factory: a trip to remember

Last week, I had the pleasure of being invited to visit the Pampers factory in Manchester and meet the experts from the Pampers Parenting panel.

It was a very busy day that started very, very early (4.30 am anyone?). Mr Foodie had been very kind and taken the day off to look after the girls and he even got up to make me a fresh pot of coffee! At the airport, I met Sandra from mummypages.ie and Chris, the lovely PR from Fleishman Hillard.

Due to a misplaced boarding pass, Chris and I took a mad dash through Terminal 2 to make it onto the plane on time. If you saw a pregnant woman running through the terminal with her belt in her hand and her trousers falling off closely followed by another lady running in her socks carrying her shoes, well, that was us! The exercise certainly woke me up at that early hour and really is not that different from running after a toddler who doesn't want to put her shoes and coat on!

We arrived in Manchester and had breakfast while we waited for Barbara from parenthood.ie who was arriving on a later flight. As we were early and the event wasn't due to start for another couple of hours, we went to the Trafford Centre for a spot of shopping (or window licking as we call it in french!).

We finally arrived at the Pampers factory for the event. There I had the pleasure of meeting fellow mummy bloggers SimplyHayley, Mummysbusyworld, Simone and Wendy. We all gathered in the conference room for an informal meet and greet along with the Experts from the Pampers  Village Parenting Panel, and representatives from Pampers. The experts were very interested in the mummy bloggers, on how and why we blog, where we get our inspiration from, how we started etc.

The Plant Manager then gave us a presentation on the brand and the plant which celebrated its 75th birthday a couple of years ago. We then received a presentation on what goes into a nappy and how it works to keep your baby dry for up to 12 hours! We had great fun ripping nappies apart to see the various layers of material they are made of (which, despite having nappies at hand everyday for the past 2 years, funnily never really occurred to me before!). Did you know that the absorbent gel thingy (I believe it's called polymer) is the same thing that goes into sanitary towels as well as the bottom of prepackaged meat? Well, I didn't, but it does make sense when you think about it. Another interesting thing is that all Pampers nappies across the world are designed and manufactured the same way and that a pack of size 5 Pampers in Ireland is the exact same product as a size 5 in Japan or the US. The only thing is that some sizes wouldn't exist in some countries (Pampers size 7 or 8 are available in North America!).

Everybody listening to the presentation.

Over lunch, we had the chance to mingle and talk to the experts. I had a great chat with Mary Steen-Greaves, the expert midwife on the Parenting Panel. We talked about the differences in prenatal care in the UK and Ireland (which are a world apart), premature birth, breech babies, c-sections and breastfeeding vs bottle feeding. She was the most approachable midwife I ever spoke too and I very much liked her philosophy that 'a happy mummy is a happy baby' and 'you have to do what works for you'. I also talked to Dr Maggie Redshaw, the development expert, about bilingualism. Unfortunately, I didn't have enough time to talk to the other experts:
- Dr Gillian Lockwood, the fertility expert.
- Laura Williams, the fitness and nutrition expert
- Dr David Atherton, the skin expert.
- Denise Knowles, the relationship expert
- Nicola Cairncross, the money expert and Wendy Dean, the sleep expert.

We were then given highly fashionable (not) safety shoes and hi-vis vests and went on a tour of the plant and witnessed how the production works, from raw material to finished product. Most of it is handled by very fast and very impressive machines, and quality checks are performed at every single stage of the production. Unfortunately, us Irish bloggers had to leave before the end of the tour because we had a plane to catch and didn't get to see the warehouse and shipping part of the process.

During the tour.

I got home about 6pm that same evening and I have to say the house was still standing, the girls were in one piece, and dinner was on its way too (not that I ever doubted it would be otherwise)! I had such a wonderful time that Mr Foodie could hardly put in a word edge ways as I was telling him all about the day. So thank you P&G, Pampers, Fleishman Hillard and everybody else that made the day so memorable!

Bumps and brains...

I am now 28 weeks pregnant and I feel like a whale. There I've said it. My head says that really I am not that big. If I look purely at numbers, I 'only' put on 3 kgs in 3 months (well, the last time I was weighed), which really is not that much. But I'm quite petite and this bump is without a doubt the biggest bump I have ever had. And I have had 2 before! Even at the end of both my previous pregnancies I don't think I had such a big bump. Going to the hospital for check ups puts things in perspective though and makes me feel quite good, because when I look at all the other bumps waiting for their check ups, I realise that really my bump is not that big. That and the fact that I haven't yet developed any stretchmarks! Don't ask me for a miracle cure, I haven't got one. And if anything I am definitely not as rigorous when it comes to applying cream to my bump as I was with the 2 others. This one is quite a mystery really as my skin has always been very dry and far from being stretchy!  I am definitely carrying this bump differently than the girls. While, with the girls I had a bump that was mainly towards the front, this one seems to be more across. But all this doesn't make it any lighter and bending forward has become something close to mission impossible. Putting my shoes on is becoming difficult as I have to consider both the bump and my back which still acts up some days more than others.

I have gone for some physio appointments which have helped and have been cause for great laughs. I came back from the first one with one of those tubey things that help you support your bump although stepping into it now is becoming more and more difficult! And I came back from the second one with a triangle of elastoplast on my bum! I felt a bit like a broken down truck at the side of the motorway! I have had to take it off though because it was starting to peel off and was getting caught in my clothes and pulling the skin of my arse literally!

This bump is also the most active bump I have ever had. I don't know what this baby is doing in there but he must be having great fun! Jumping up and down and side to side and back to front. Every bone and organ in the vicinity is being kicked and pushed and prodded. He is a very very active baby and quite a jittery one too and would sometimes take 'fits' of movement that are quite incredible to feel and even more impressive to look at. We are pretty sure we saw an arm (or leg) rolling across my belly the other night!

Baby brain has also set in and I'm forever forgetting things. I would walk into the kitchen and by the time I get there not remember what I went in for. I think that this baby has also stolen my writing mojo. I have had great ideas for posts and then either forgot them, or sat down to write and haven't been able to string 2 words together that make sense. We have had a very busy week with Marie's communion and a day trip to Manchester to visit the Pampers factory (more about that soon!) and I find it quite hard to get over the tiredness this week which doesn't help either but I am trying to apply the old philosophy of the more you write, the more you'll want to write. Hope it's going to work!

So please bear with me while this little baby is sucking all my brains and energy (and kicking the netbook that is resting on my bump!), I promise you that I will make sense soon (hopefully).

Review : Little Dish

I usually cook food from scratch. I like the sense of achievement and to see the look on people's faces whenever they taste my food. Noelie eats the same food we do. And you better put the plate in front of her before you cut anything otherwise she thinks that she is not eating the same thing and would rather eat what's on your plate than what's on hers.

I have never seen a baby love vegetables and fruit so much. Actually, I have never seen a toddler (because she's hardly a baby now that she turns 2 at the end of the month) eat like that. A sure way to know if she is not well is to look at her plate. If she refuses to eat, then there is something wrong. Anytime we cook, she wants to sit on the counter and look at what we are doing. And if we taste anything, she wants to taste it too. She loves looking at whatever is in the oven and just generally loves food. She is not a fussy eater.

I am not going to lie, there are days when I or Mr Foodie are not in the mood for cooking and we usually resort to ready made lasagna (there's a dish I have never managed to get right) and salad. I sometimes give Noelie baby food at lunchtime, especially if there are no leftovers from dinner the day before. And we do have a few stored in the cupboard just in case. However, I am not a big fan of them as they all look the same, orange gloop with bits.

Then Little Dish got in contact with me (a while ago, sorry!) to try their ready made fresh dinners, I was immediately won over by their philosophy: making fresh, healthy food using only 100% natural ingredients without adding salt or sugar. Just like I would cook at home myself. So off we went in search of their products. We selected 3 of their wide range: the Mild Chicken Korma, the Salmon and Broccoli pasta bake and the Cottage Pie.

The first thing that struck me was that you can actually recognize what's in the dish, unlike so many baby foods around, rice looks like rice, salmon looks like salmon. It looks and smells like you've made it yourself. Noelie wasn't too keen on the chicken Korma but she wasn't feeling great that day and I am pretty sure that this is what it came down too. I have to admit that I finished her plate and it was really tasty, not too strong, not too bland. The Cottage Pie and Salmon and Broccoli Pasta Bake went down a treat and there was next to nothing left for me to taste (you are supposed to taste yourself too, aren't you?).

I was really glad to find out that these Little Dishes can be frozen too. As I don't rely much on ready made food for Noelie, they could have sat in the fridge for a quite a while and they could have gone off without me noticing. But the fact that they can be frozen means that I didn't have to worry about it. I just popped them in the freezer and took them out whenever I needed them. It was also great knowing that there were no nasty preservatives or other unknown ingredients in them, that there was no added sugar or salt, just like I would cook myself! And that they definitely passed the Noelie taste test!

If your children are past the toddler stage, Little Dish also has a beautifully illustrated cookbook out entitled 'Little Dish Favourites Cookbook', full of more than 60 favourite recipes for the whole family, from Macaroni and Cheese to Chili and Rice Bake to Pink Ice Cream, all tried and tasted by children and adults alike, and with no added salt. The recipes are divided in various sections: First tastes for that all important weaning period, Family Dishes (itself divided into sections such as poultry, vegetarian, meat and fish) and finally the Treats and Puddings. Each section has its own introduction with tips and guidelines from when to start weaning to dealing with fussy eaters to choosing the right treats. The degree of complexity of each recipe is clearly indicated along with the prep time and the cooking time which makes it easy for busy parents to identify and select the recipe that will suit their needs. They don't require an infinite list of ingredients and all of them are readily available. I particularly liked the fact that all the weights were both in grs and oz since I don't do imperial (sorry I'm from the continent, give me grs and kgs anyday!) The recipe planner at the end of the book lists all the recipes by degree of complexity but also points out the ones that can be made ahead, freeze well and the ones in which children can easily get involved. It also matches various recipes together to provide meal ideas. We decided to try out the Meat Loaf recipe as I had never cooked one before. The result was very tasty despite its appearance (but that definitely would be my fault and not the books!!).

I would definitely recommend the fresh dinners to any parent who wants to give their children nutritious food even if they might not have the time to make it all from scratch themselves.The Little Dish range of fresh dinners is available in the UK from the following retailers: Tesco, Waitrose, Sainsbury's, Boots and on Ocado.com and can be found in the Republic of Ireland in Tesco and Superquinn stores.

And I would also recommend the cookbook for those who are past the toddler stage and are looking for easy and tasty recipes that the whole family will like. It is available from WH Smith, Waterstones, Tesco, Ocado, and Sainsbury’s, or online at Amazon.co.uk.

Go on, give it a try!

In order to review, we received coupons and a free cookbook.

A different Easter: Tradition, food and craft.

Easter is upon us once again and I have been reading a few blogs relating to Easter celebrations and traditions in other countries. That got me thinking about the differences between Easter here and back home in France.

First of all, we do not have the Easter bunny. Instead, we have bells. Yes, I know, it sounds strange but it's not really, once you know the story behind it. From Good Friday until Easter Monday, church bells do not chime in France, in mourning for the passing of Jesus. The story told to children is that the bells have gone on a pilgrimage to Rome and, on their way back from Rome, they are celebrating the resurection by dropping treats for children to find.

Some traditional friture.

I am deliberately saying treats because, although we do get chocolate eggs (Kinder chocolate eggs were my favourite when I was a child), we get all sorts of different chocolates. As a matter of fact, apart from the Kinder eggs, I don't recall getting many eggs as such. I got chocolate hens, chocolate bunnies and something else we call 'friture'. A real 'friture' would be small fish the length of your little finger, deep fried and eaten whole but for Easter, we get chocolate friture. These are small chocolates shaped like fish. My mum and dad brought Easter chocolates over for the girls. They get their chocolates from one of the best chocolatiers in France and they are scrumptious. I have kept them hidden in a cupboard for the past few weeks and today I couldn't help but have a peek and there is a small bag of friture in there. Not sure the Easter bunny is going to leave that out for the girls to find on Sunday! I'm pretty sure the 2 chocolate hens (and other eggs and bunnies) will be enough to keep the girls happy.

Two little chocolate hens for the girls.

We also celebrate Easter with eggs. One of the traditions in my region is to make an Easter omelette. But it's not your usual omelette. It is a sweet omelette. Every year, on Easter Monday, a small village beside mine makes one of the biggest omelette in the world. It is made with 15 000 eggs and cooked in a 400kgs, 4m wide pan before being shared (for free) amongst the villagers and tourists that have come to see this tradition that started in 1973.

French Sweet Easter Omelette:

Ingredients for 4 persons:

- 8 eggs

- 50 grs of caster sugar

- 10 grs of vanilla sugar

- 40 grs of butter

- a pinch of salt

- 7 cl of  rhum (optional)

- In a bowl, break 5 of the eggs.

- Separate the yolks and whites of the last 3 remaining eggs.

- Add the yolks to the bowl, the pinch of salt and beat.

- In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites with 10 grs of sugar until soft peaks appear.

- Fold the whites in with the other eggs.

- In a pan, melt the butter.

- Once melted, pour the mixture in.

- Once cooked, sprinkle with the remaining sugar.

- Flambé with the rhum (basically pour the rhum over and set alight. Be careful not to burn yourself! Also, it is safe to give to children as the alcohol gets burnt off in the process).

- Enjoy hot or cold!



Now that's one big pan!

So this week, we started our Easter celebrations in the Foodie household. Marie and myself decorated a few eggs. Some people boil the eggs but I decided to empty them and make an omelette with them instead (I am not a big fan of hard boiled eggs). So we proceeded to make small(ish) holes at the top and bottom of the egg shells with needles. And then the hard work of blowing the egg out began. You have to make sure that the holes are big enough to get the egg out. I find that shaking the egg for a little while before blowing makes it easier. We then washed the eggs before dipping them in food colouring. The longer you leave it in, the deeper the colour. If you want designs on the eggs, you can draw on them with crayons (that way the die doesn't take under the crayon). You can leave the crayon on, or using an eraser, take it off. If you have some glitter glue, you can use that to decorate your eggs. The options are endless, you can glue paper on, put little gems on, whatever you have at hand can be used. So here are the results of our morning of Easter egg decorating.

Why don't you give it a go (either the omelette or the decorating!) and let me know how you got on? In any case, have a wonderful Easter!





There's a new club I'd like you to join,

I'm officially on autopilot except that it looks more like the blow up doll on 'Airplane!' than a real autopilot. I don't even know how I can manage to string two words together together (see!). We are exhausted. I know I keep banging on about it but we are really not used to broken nights anymore. And it's been a week now.
We have had broken nights because of fever and 3am Nurofen calls. We have had difficult bedtimes because of over tiredness. Noelie had been crying for nearly 4 hours solid, full on cries, snots, tears and souvenirs and eventually around 10 pm, she just lied down and within half a second, she was snoring loudly which led Mr Foodie and I to laugh hysterically after the tension of dealing with her. One minute, she was a screaming, wriggling, crying, refusing to do anything toddler, the next, she was sound asleep on the bed, snoring away as if nothing had happened. The only problem was that she was lying sideways on OUR bed which meant that neither of us could really lie down properly to go asleep.

Yesterday, things were getting back to normal(ish). We had gone for our walks and Noelie had gone from a 15 minutes nap on Tuesday to 45 minutes on Wednesday to just over an hour yesterday.  The only thing was that she had quite bad nappies all throughout the day. Every dirty nappy was cause for a lot of distress, tugging at the nappy, even tears and eventually panic before every poo. We know that this was brought on by the antibiotics she takes to treat her UTI. They are playing havoc with her digestive system. Towards the end of the day, we were lulled into a false sense of security that things were really getting back to normal. Her appetite had returned and she was happily eating grapes and spaghetti puttanesca (made all from scratch, where I got the will and energy from I will never know!) and asking for yoghurt for dessert. Once she finished her dinner, she asked to go to bed and made a beeline for her cot, a scene that we hadn't witnessed for nearly a week now. So there she was nicely tucked up in bed, Mr Foodie and Marie were clearing the table and I was giving my daily update to my mum when she started screaming. Real screams of distress and discomfort. I thought that it was just another poo so we took her down to change her. Indeed, it was a dirty nappy, she was a little red down there but not as bad as some of the rashes she had gotten from previous antibiotics. And then it started. She started screaming and crying in discomfort, calling me, telling me she had a 'caca' (poo in french) when she clearly had done nothing. And tugging at her nappy,wriggling around while she was sitting down, trying obviously to relieve a terribly annoying itch. It then dawned on me. We (when I say we, I mean women) all know what it is. I don't know one woman who hasn't had it. That terrible urge to scratch, the irritating itch in that particular area, the discomfort: thrush. The antibiotics had brought on a bad case of thrush.  She was quite distraught, trying to scratch herself and I had nothing in the house I could put on to relieve the itch. We have never really had to use barrier creams with her and I can't remember the last time we did. I sent a text to my neighbour to see if she had anything. She came around with Sudocrem and, upon seeing Noelie's behaviour confirmed what I thought, thrush. Itching that drives you up the walls.  Mr Foodie decided to go to the pharmacy to see if they could give us anything for her and the neighbour went back to her house to get me some probiotics she uses for her son who has to use antibiotics regularly.

In the meantime, Mr Foodie found an open pharmacy (not an easy thing to do at 8.00pm in rural Ireland) and was explaining the problem to the chemist. To say that he is not a prude would be the understatement of the century (if not the millennium). He can discuss anything using any words to describe any body part you can think off (and he has greatly enhanced my English vocabulary in that way!). We all know most men are not quite comfortable when it comes to buying sanitary towels and tampons and things like that, but he couldn't care less (thank goodness for that, otherwise I would still be waiting for those maternity towels I sent him around for when I was in hospital after giving birth to Noelie!). But discussing thrush on a toddler with a female chemist is bringing it to another level and for the first time in probably forever, he found himself lost for words to describe the problem. Luckily, the chemist was 'really nice' and gave him some Canesten cream, a powder and even some probiotics. He came home quite proud of himself having been able to discuss female ailments with an unknown female chemist.

In the meantime, the neighbour was happily entertaining Noelie dancing with her in the middle of our sitting room to In the Night Garden. As soon as Mr Foodie came home, on went the cream and the powder and Noelie seemed to be instantly relieved and happily went back to bed. It was only 9pm by that time and both Mr Foodie and myself were fit for bed already. We struggled on for another hour before giving in and going to bed.

And then, around 12am, cries, winges, screams woke me up. It was not to be a good night again. Noelie was again itching like mad. So badly that it woke her up. So I went in to get her, triggering a bit of sciatica so bad that I couldn't put her down on my own bed, I could hardly walk, let alone get back into bed. We took her in, on went more cream and powder. But this time, there seemed to be no way of relieving her. She kept on wriggling, trying to scratch, wingeing, crying my name. And there was nothing I could do, just try and calm her down with words and cuddles. She was exhausted too and wanted to fall asleep but the itching was so uncomfortable for her that she just couldn't. Mr Foodie, being a man who never had the pleasure of knowning what thrush feels like, was struggling to understand why she couldn't just go back asleep and why I wasn't doing much to help her. So I found myself explaining what thrush was like at 1.30am to a sleep deprived Mr Foodie while trying to distract an itchy toddler by putting on a play with Iggle Piggle and Upsy Daisy and putting In the Night Garden on the DVD player in the bedroom.. Eventually she settled... Around 3.30 am... Mr Foodie's alarm going off at 5.30 am was not a welcome sound by any of us, least of all Mr Foodie who knew he had to get up.

This morning, she seems to be a bit better. We walked to school. She has complained a little bit but not half as much as yesterday. She is not as red as she was either. She took her probiotics and had breakfast. She was so tired that she fell asleep in my arms at 10.30. Now, that hasn't happened since she was a baby! We walked back to school to collect Noelie who is now on her Easter holidays and spent a bit of time in the garden. Hopefully, she will be able to catch another nap and I'll be able to go asleep a bit too. Because I am on autopilot and it doesn't feel nice. People in work commented on Mr Foodie's looks today, asking if he'd been drinking all night. I am sure he'd rather have been drinking all night than having to deal with an itching mad toddler. Mr Foodie has been talking about it with female colleagues (told you he wasn't a prude) and all of them have nodded in compassion and offered advice. They have decided to create the 'Itchy Fanny' club (their title not mine!). Care to join?