North & Soul

Hello mum-to-bes!

I have a few items for sale below, feel free to give me a shout at gillyrip@gmail.com if you want any of the following:

Red party dress (Size 10-12), George Maternity (RRP £18) – £7
- Bead detail on shoulders
- Just above knee length
- Back tie to accentuate your ample boobs!

Navy Blue long top (10-12), Mothercare, (RRP £20) – £9
- Diamond detail and gathering at centre of bust – very flattering and hangs wonderfully

Mothercare M2B coat size 12  (was £70) – £20
- I lived in this through Winter! It needs a dry clean just through general wear, but stain free and no rips or tears.
- Has two big pockets on the front and double-breasted buttons – really cosy
- Cream colour with dark piping

Maternity Dress, Medium (was £20) – £9
- Great office dress that ties at the back
- Lots of give it in (I’m 38 weeks in the pic)
- Worn only once. Washed without needing to iron!

I’m the carnivorous type, but once in a while I get really freaked out from reading about cholesterol levels in meat. I try to give mine and my husband’s tickers a rest when I can and cook veggie.

Vegetarian cooking can be counterproductive in the health stakes for a seasoned meat eater. It’s really easy to use lots of fatty substitutes to meat (loads of butter, full fat cheese and tonnes of creamy sauces), to gain the satisfaction that is felt from a meat dish. However it’s easy to replace meat with other textural foods that are varied and exciting to bite into.

These stuffed peppers (adapted from BBC Good Food) use an edible shell (the roasted pepper) to house chunks of Halloumi, fluffy cous cous and garlic mushrooms. They take around 40 minutes to cook and make a great light dinner for two or a starter for 4.

You’ll need:

2 red peppers
3 chestnut mushrooms, sliced medium/fine
250g Halloumi cheese, in small cubes
1 crushed garlic clove
50g cous cous
100ml veg stock
Tbsp chopped parsley
Tbsp olive oil
Salt and pepper

- Preheat oven to gas mark 6
- Gently cook the mushrooms and garlic in olive oil until soft, taking care not to burn the garlic. Drain and retain the garlic oil
- Slice the peppers in half through the stalk, and remove seeds. Place on a baking tray and drizzle the garlic oil over the peppers. Bake for 20 minutes until they start to soften.
- put cous cous in bowl and pour the boiling stock over the top. Leave to soak for 5 minutes, then fluff up with a fork.
- Add all other ingredients to the bowl, mix and then spoon into the peppers. Bake for 15 minutes or until the Halloumi turns golden.

I try to go to Poland at least once every couple of years. The country has beauty, bleakness, history, and amazingly tasty food (don’t get me started on the vodka).

My cousins live in the city of Wroclaw, a cool city in the southwest of Poland. So far it thankfully remains unscathed by stags and hens. The tiny airport is now served by Ryanair and makes family visits a breeze.

In the days before budget travel, the long and exhausting journey to my cousins flat ended with the warm and welcoming smell of… boiled cabbage. Now stay with me! Love or hate cabbage, you’ll get lashings of it in Poland and when cooked in a gorgeous pork stew called bigos, it’s a tasty far cry from soggy school dinners.

My brother argues that bigos takes 3 days of fermenting and slow cooking. I can happily tell him to stop slaving like a fool. Mine takes three hours and he should know by now: I am always right

To make a pan of bigos to serve 6:

1 white cabbage, shredded
1 kg (or close to that amount) jar of sauerkraut, thoroughly rinsed clean of all its vinegar
1 250ml jar tomato paste
Handful of dried porcini mushrooms, soaked and drained of liquid
Handful of chestnut mushrooms, sliced
1 large onion, diced
1 large ring of diced smoked sausage – kielbasa from the polish deli is good, but Mattesons sausage is fine, diced
2 thick rounds of unsmoked gammon, diced
2 slices of whole ham, torn up (or use bacon)
1tsp smoked paprika

- Melt some butter in a pan and gently fry the onion, chestnut mushrooms and meats
- Add the cabbage, sauerkraut and rehydrated mushrooms on a low heat. Add a cup of water. Gentle occasional stirring will stop the pan sticking, and to help the cabbage reduce
- Cover and cook on a low heat for 2 hours, stirring occasionally
- Add tomato paste, paprika and cook for 1 more hour. You may need to add another cup of water if the mixture is becoming too thick and dry

Serve with Polish Rye bread, or crusty baguette. If you’re feeling particularly east European, round your dinner off with a frosted glass of krupnik – honeyed vodka, found in most big supermarkets.

I hope you’ll be impressed to know that I am typing this whilst sat on a big pink exercise ball. I’m not weird, or super-healthy; I’m massively preggers and trying to help our little boy along with some discreet bouncing.

Whilst in this early part of maternity leave, I have also been tasked with looking after a different set of babies: Our seed tray. Again, nothing dodgy here that will get me in trouble with the police – I’m talking about herbs to cook with. They should be planted round about now to have a thriving window box ready for the summer.

I don’t have an eye for gardening. I grew up in a council flat with no garden. My husband on the other hand is more rural than a hiker’s wooly hat and his love for growing things (babies, herbs etc) has gradually been passed onto me. So if you’re like me, and the thought of planting stuff makes you slightly scared, you might like this beginners guide to planting a good herb box.

Get the kit: Go to your nearest garden centre of hardware store (places like Homebase and B&Q probably store what you’ll need). Look for a small seed try with its own compartments – it should also have holes in the bottom to drain the water out). Also get a tray with no holes in the bottom, for the seed compartments to sit in. Ideally the trays should rest on one another, to form a kind of drip-gap from soil to tray base (see pic below). You’ll also need regular growing compost. If in doubt – as k an assistant to help you choose a type. You’ll only need a small-medium sized bag. It’s a good time too to choose the final window boxes or planters that your herbs will be repotted into later, but that can just as well be left for now.

A few have started... wish I knew which!

Which herbs? You should be able to find all of these in the dried seeds aisle. Most of them can be planted at the same time and treated in the same way.
Parsley: Flat or curly-leaf. Good for soups, stews and in butter with fish
Chives: Lovely when snipped into sour cream and plonked on a potato
Sage: Adds amazing flavour to roasted meat, as well as a staple ingredient for traditional stuffing
Rosemary: Goes hand-in-hand with lamb or beef. Also gives a kick to gravy
Thyme: My favourite. Works wonders on chicken, and also used a complimentary taste in sweet pastries (maybe I’ll make them one day)
Mint: I love mint mashed up in a cup of green tea, plus a decent spoon of demerara sugar

Fill the seed compartments with soil two-thirds up, then sprinkle the seeds in each section. Cover with the remaining soil, leaving a half cm gap between soil and tray rim. You might want to label each compartment so you remember what is growing. My husband forgot to do this… but I guess it adds an element of surprise to our cooking .

Do not water the herbs obsessively – seeds are damaged easily. A very light watering once a day will work. Within a week, you’ll start to see small shoots like the picture above. Some herbs will grow quicker than others.

Within a month or two, the herbs will be ready to replanted. I’ll happily watch my husband do this bit, then try my best to tell you all how to do it!

Your non-green-fingered, green-fingered friend,

N&S x

This made me laugh. it’s an illustration of ‘The Karma Sutra for Dads’. Whilst I have no intention of having baby sleep in our bed, inevitably it will happen on the odd night.

I adore Thai food. It’s mostly delicate, healthy and still manages to be satisfying. I also love Thailand, though my experience reaches as far as taking a Thai Airlines flight (bottomless wine, dainty service, and a strict rule in the safety video that you should not lie down in the aisle).

Myself and the team from work visited Sukhothai for an early-evening nibble; mainly to wave our colleague a permanent farewell, but also to loosely mark the near start of my maternity leave. Sat atop of Cheltenham Mount like a solid Buddha, the restaurant is intimately lit, gilded in gold leaf and attended by polite and gentle staff.

I chose to have the chicken and sesame toast to start with. It was straightforward and a generous size, instantly filling that after-work rumble and settling me in well.

I’m addicted to any Asian dish covered in peanuts, and don’t really see the issue of eating peanuts whilst pregnant. So I chose the Gang Massaman – a creamy lamb, potato and nut curry, accompanied by jasmine rice. The portion was deceptively compact and my greedy brain told me I’d screwed up and would be going home hungry. I was happily wrong; the rich sauce going a long way in fulling long a demanding tummy (I can’t even blame my son, I’m just gluttonous in general).

After our mains, we heard the approach of pots and pans, staff banging drums and descending upon our unsuspecting colleague with moon cake and a rendition of Happy Birthday. Though it was not his birthday, it was fun and entertaining. Much respect to a very young-looking waiter with the huge Elton John glasses, who really enjoyed singing to us.

The final thing to note was the cow-shaped milk jug that poured milk into my coffee via the cow’s nose. I liked that!

There’s a bone of contention when it comes to where you ‘should’ buy your meat (now that’s what I call a terrible pun). Many will argue that a nearby butcher not only supports local economy, but will yield a tastier cut chosen by an expert. I’m a realist, however, and would never be so pompous as to demand that you buy ingredients for my recipes from any given place. If I see you in the meat aisle of Asda, we shall pass each other like we have not discussed this

I am quite lucky that my local butcher is reasonably priced and gives generous cuts. Two pork chops come to less than £3 and you aren’t left wishing that there was more meat on your plate. I find that pan-fried pork can be dry, dull and often quite an anti-climax to eat. I decided to try and sex it up with some stewed sweetness, and the addition of some classic flavours that always jazz up a humble chop.

Serves 2
2 thick pork chops
1 large red onion
1 tsp brown or dark sugar
1 tsp butter
1 tbsp mustard (any type is fine)
A few stalks of thyme, stripped
Accompanying veg (I do mash and steamed broccoli)

- Heat the butter on low in a heavy pan – the same pan you’ll cook the chops in
- Thinly slice the onion and add to the butter. Sprinkle sugar over the onions. Cook on low for 10 minutes, ensuring that they onions do not brown. After 10 minutes, turn the heat up slightly for 5 minutes to begin to caramelise
- Place the pork on a chopping board. Slice right through the fat side 3 or 4 times. This will stop the chop from shrinking up in the pan
- Arrange the chops within the onions and spread the mustard over the top of each one. Sprinkle the thyme on too. Allow the chops to sit and cook for 6 minutes
- Turn the chops over and cook for another 6 minutes. By this stage, the onions should have turned dark and sticky. Stir the onions frequently to prevent them from sticking to the pan
- Once chops are cooked, transfer to plates and spoon a helping of the onions over the top. Serve with your choice of veg

I was worried, picking this book up, that it would in no way measure up to The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini’s debut novel that I had just finished reading. I needn’t have worried, this is an excellent read and I would recommend it to anyone who will happily disappear into a vortex (or maybe phone in sick) for a few days to fully immerse themselves in it.

It’s not a novel that you can put down and leave for weeks. I had to keep going! The story is based around Mariam and Laila: Two women of different ages who are thrown together in newly war-torn Kabul. This isn’t a rom-com, or chick-lit. It’s harsh and chances are you will be affected emotionally, whether you are man or woman. The story is a stark and thought-rendering insight into womanhood during this time, and all of the aspects of culture at the time.

I found it to be just as awe-inspiring as The Kite Runner, possibly even more so as Hosseini bravely (and intimately) takes on the world through the eyes of a female. I’ll be watching the film one day soon.

A big thanks to @emilyrosewaite for the borrow

I’m officially mad, and decided to get married whilst 5 months pregnant. It was supposed to be the following June, but we decided to roll it forward. This left me with a couple of months, not a huge budget and no capacity to get stressed! We managed it and had a fantastic day (and we’re told that our guests did too). I’ve shared some tips below that might help you in planning your Big Day whilst saving a couple of crafty quid. And no, you don’t have to have a baby on the way!

1. Have a late service. I cannot stress how great this worked out for us. We married at 5pm and not only did it give us a day to chill and enjoy getting ready, it also meant that many of our guests saved on an early-morning drive, or having to pay for a hotel the night before. Always check the sunset times for your chosen date if you have a late service – the one drawback for us was that we had a strict 45 minutes’ to get external photography! Having a late service also means that your day guests will get their dinner and you won’t have to pay for 2 lots of food in one day. We didn’t have many evening guests, but the ones we did have arrived for 8:30pm – already fed from home or town, and ready to watch our first dance.
2. Wholesalers. Do you have a friend/boss who has a wholesalers card? Wholesale warehouses are often fantastic places to pick up bulk table decorations (I did this and kitted out 10 tables for £90). I avoided using fresh flowers on tables, and instead used candle holders and table confetti. I sold the candle holders as a job lot on eBay recently.
3. Free templates. A bit of website trawling will bring up far more than ugly MS Word templates for namecards. There are many retro wedding blogs and many have links to cool DIY wedding stationery.  I found some brilliant namecard templates via Poptastic Bride . Just find a local printers who’ll do you a good deal on printing off the exact number you’ll need. You’ll also find lots of cute templates for wedding favour boxes, and anything else you might want to make along the way.
4. Bridesmaids. Ok, as soon as the word ‘bridesmaid’ is used to describe a dress, it will double in price. Most department stores have occasion dresses in store and also on their websites, and they will most likely cost a lot less. Ebay comes in very handy too for ordering group items at a much cheaper price.
5. Be flexible on dates. With a bit of advance warning, I’d be sure that your nearest and dearest will book a day off work if you were to decide to marry on any day that wasn’t a Saturday. Many venues drop their rates outside of Saturdays, due to a lower demand. You’ll also have much more scope to haggle away to get a rock-bottom price.
6. Be Last-Minute.  As above, keep your ear to the ground and subscribe to as many venue newsletters as you can. They’ll always announce any special package offers for last-minute dates that they have failed to sell for the full price. This may induce a crazy race to tie everything up, but you could literally save thousands for your effort.
7. Who do you know? I’m lucky enough to have a make-up expert and a hairdresser as two of my closest friends. But even if you don’t, search on Facebook or Twitter for local graduates who could help you out for a rock-bottom price. Or take the plunge, go to your local department store and get as many tips as possible for how to do your own hair and make-up.
8. Wedding cars. Unless you really want that pink horse-drawn carriage, or a car so vintage that it may break down en route to your ceremony, I’d suggest looking into hiring a chauffeur service instead. I found on who owned a lovely navy blue 7 Series BMW, and put ribbons on the front and flowers in the back for a whole £20 extra. I hired him by the hour, and only needed him for two in the end.
9. Wedding favours. I didn’t go crazy on wedding favours and gave them to ladies only. I gave them plantable seed paper that (should) grow into wildflowers once planted in soil. I picked these up on Ebay. Bear in mind that many favours often end up being left on the table, and anything too chunky might not fit into a small bag.
10. Wedding Dress. I may make you choke a little, but consider ordering your wedding dress online. It will save you a fortune. Most reputable suppliers offer customer services and a good returns policy. They also offer fast delivery. This isn’t to say that you still can’t go trying on dresses with your girls for fun! On this note – any expectant brides-to-be out there should check out Tiffany Rose. I bought their White Orchid Gown and was really happy with their service.

I’m a firm believer that wherever possible, you should read a book before seeing it as a movie adaptation. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini has been on-screen since 2007, and I am now desperate to see it having just devoured the novel.

You know when a book is so good that you relish getting in bed an hour early to afford some reading time? I love that feeling, and it rarely happens, does it? I don’t even want to discuss the plot much, I just want to tell you to hunt a copy down and get stuck in!

Amir is the son of a prosperous and formidable man. They live in 1970′s Kabul in a grand house, and are attended to by polio-ridden servant Ali and his son, Hassan. Amir and Hassan begin their adolescence together as friends, yet their class divisions mean that they could never be socially accepted on the same level. A winter season of kite running changes everything for them, and a very painful and poetic story begins to unfold.

The Kite Runner covers everything from popular culture and sexuality, to religion and economics. I think my husband and friends were glad I’d finished reading it, so they could finally have a conversation with me. Even if Middle-Eastern politics are not your thing, this book will give you so much more and leave you feeling very lucky in life.