Cooking and painting with Laura.

We get up early to a cooler day, rain is forecast by lunchtime, and I want to mow the lawns at Cherry Burton, so need to make an early start. I make an omelette for breakfast and refuse to share it with Norman, as eggs have a spectacular effect on his bowels, so he has to make do with Baker's. We leave the house by nine and collect Dolly and Teddy, before we walk round our usual loop, it is a cool, windy, day, not too bad in the woods but cold in the open. Occasionally the sun breaks through and the temperature soars by ten degrees, only to plummet again once the clouds close over. We return to Two Riggs for ten thirty, with spits of rain blowing in the wind, undeterred, I manage to mow the lawns, front and back, without getting rained off. The lawns in Cherry need treating with feed and weed, so I will buy some more and spread it before going on holiday. I drop Norman back in Tickton and then drive to the Leisure Centre to swim, arriving in the pool for noon. It is fairly quiet today and even when "the wave machine", aka ladies aqua aerobics arrive at half past, I am able to train uninterrupted. Today I swim 2,000m, 3 x 400m on backstroke, breaststroke and front crawl, and then 4 x 200m Individual medleys, with an easy warm down. Afterwards I drink tea and eat a toasted teacake in the cafe and chat to the staff, until it is time to drive to Molescroft Primary, in order to collect Laura and transport her back to Tickton for tea. I wait in the playground with other parents and grandparents, the rain has finally arrived and it is cold, wet and miserable, as I shelter, shivering under my umbrella, until Laura emerges from her classroom. She tells me she wants pork schnitzel, salad and chips for tea, as we drive back to Tickton and even though Norman and I ate them yesterday, I accede to her wishes. Normy is waiting for us, wagging his tail as we arrive, and runs to be patted by Laura. After removing and hanging up our wet coats, we head into the kitchen, clear the table and set out the ingredients. Laura is going to make the food, she is eight years old, confident and bright, so I am sure she can handle it. First we put the oven on at maximum heat, in preparation for cooking the oven chips. I show Laura how to use the timer and we set it for twenty minutes, before taking crinkle cut chips from the freezer and spreading them on a baking tray. Next I show her how to use the tenderising hammer to flatten and soften the pork fillets, at first she is too tentative, but gets the idea when I tell her to think of something she doesn't like. Next she whisks an egg and then seasons it with salt and pepper, before spreading breadcrumbs on a dinner plate, ready to receive the pork, once coated. Laura is a little squeamish at first in handling raw meat and having beaten egg on her fingers, but she quickly overcomes her reticence and in moments we have two perfectly coated cutlets ready for the frying pan. We put a little butter and some olive oil into a twelve inch skillet and set it on the stove to melt and heat up, whilst it is doing this, we chop the lettuce, cucumber, tomatoes and spring onions into small pieces and then toss it in a bowl with a little salt, pepper, lemon juice and olive oil. Pointing out that it is best to use just a little, before testing by taste, as it is always possible to add a little more, but not possible take it back out again, if you put too much in. The skillet starts to smoke a little and I show her another simple trick, just move the pan away from the heat onto a cold ring and it soon cools down. The oven timer pings, before the schnitzels are cooked, so we switch the oven off and leave the chips inside to keep hot, until we are ready for them. The two fillets completely fill the twelve inch pan and only take a couple of minutes per side to cook, as they have been beaten to a thickness of around a quarter of an inch. Finally we warm two dinner plates in the microwave and I explain that this will stop the meat and chips cooling too quickly and then produce two side bowls for the salad, when she points out that warm salad doesn't taste good. We plate up together, Laura choosing the larger of the two schnitzels, which we sprinkle with lemon juice, and then sit down to eat. I don't think she will eat all the meat, but I am proved wrong and she eats all her salad as well, but sacrifices most of the chips to make room for it all. Poor Norman doesn't get any meat, but has a few chips with his dog tin. Laura tells me that her food tasted even better because she had made it herself. Telling children how to cook tends not to work, but letting them do it themselves, albeit under supervision, becomes a lesson well learned. I tell her that she will be able to make the same dinner for her mum, who also loves schnitzel, and then we clear away and wash up. There isn't too much to do, as we have been clearing as we go, another good habit. After dinner, we dig out the water colours and I produce some white cardboard, that I saved from the packaging that accompanied some pillowcases I bought last year. It is Sam's birthday on Saturday, so we paint a card for her, it has a royal blue border, a pale green background, with daffodils and a weeping willow, with yellow catkins as a subject. Laura just has time to paint two red hearts on either side of the word "Mum" and then it is time to take her back to her other grandparents, who live just round the corner from Sam. We arrive at seven and I stop for a cup of tea with Mike and Pauline, before returning home around seven thirty. Norman sits on my knee and I read a couple more chapters of Patrick Gale, before calling it a day. To bed for ten.