Ah, that post-holiday befuddlement. Feeling as though you're coming up above sleepy waters for the first time in a while and you can't quite remember what you're supposed to be doing. Routine has become a foreign word, and it takes forever to pack the child's day bag. 

It was goodbye, UK! again. It's back to business as usual in Milan. Surveying the astonishing amount of mess and crushing silence M-Little and M-Big left behind this morning. Wondering how to offset the industrial quantities of sausages, Kettle chips and crumpets consumed with something a little more nutritionally balanced. 

Still, the fact that we are finally coming out of silly season (yes, even Italy gets a bit mired in a soup of cabbage and greens at certain times of year) is helping me find inspiration. There's asparagus, lovely broad beans, spring onions, tomatoes and strawberries from Sicily, juicy melons and I've even spotted the first nectarines. 

penne with broad beans, crispy pancetta & mint
spinach gnocchi with the sweetest tomato sauce
carrot, bell pepper & red lentil soup (still trying to think of an interesting topping for this one)
kofte with aubergine dip & flatbreads
pearl barley & asparagus salad (something along the lines of this fantastic-looking creation)
Lemon & herb farfalle with courgette, tuna & mozzarella

The Bean will be at home for the double bank holiday on Thursday and Friday, so I want to make the kofte and the pearl barley salad in advance. For some reason, as soon as he spots me at the stove he tries to surgically attach himself to my leg. Although today I got him to help me with podding the broad beans, which he loved. Maybe he will grow into a kitchen elf rather than a kitchen obstacle yet?

Like I'm sure many other parents-to-be do, before the Bean was born I imagined what kind of activities we might enjoy doing together. For some it may be football, or baking, or building model aeroplanes. M-Big had visions of M-Little in a tiny judo suit. I envisaged gardening.

I know you can't force a child to like the things you do, but I would love it if he loved gardening, or at least enjoyed pottering about outside while I chatted to my azaleas. The early signs have been pretty good - he decapitates daisies in the park with particular gusto and has shown a taste for dirt, pebbles and sand.

Though it takes some serious creative license to call our piddly little balcony a 'garden', over the last few years I've done my best to add a bit of greenery and colour to our otherwise very urban view. So, now that it's warm enough to fling open the French doors without worrying about coats (or even pants, on some days), it's time to let the Bean have a little go.

Yesterday he put on his cutest baby Havaianas and prettiest nappy cover. He squirted the plants with water (and maybe also Daddy a little bit), swept some soil from side to side, and tried very hard to be GENTLE with Mama's flowers.

I'm pleased to report that no plants were decapitated, but we do need to work on making the balcony as a whole more toddler-friendly. There are too many things for a Bean to trip over, too many things he shouldn't touch. There isn't really anything he can really explore or play with without me silently freaking out in the background (I guess that's the price you pay for three years of careful toddler-free nurturing).

So now I'm racking my brains about how to make it more suitable, more inclusive. Some kind of toddler activity station with pebbles, harmless plants, a watering can? How to do this while making sure nothing gets dropped on unsuspecting pedestrians eight floors below? All ideas and suggestions welcome...

I'm so pleased to send you over to Donna's blog today, Redhead Babyled, for my very first guest post. Donna has been running a fabulous series on the topic of Baby-Led Weaning and very kindly agreed to include a contribution by yours truly.

This is a little taster of my post: 

"On paper, BLW made perfect sense to me. Especially when compared to what the Italian mamas around me were doing: boiling a potato, a carrot and a courgette for at least an hour, discarding the lot to leave just the “broth”, mixing in some creamed baby rice and grated Parmesan, administering with a special weaning spoon. In the middle of summer, when it was already 32° C in my kitchen? Erm, no. With a food-obsessed 5-month-old who grabs the spoon out of your hand, flings it across the room, then reaches for the nearest tomato? Definitely no.

BLW was everything I was looking for. No faffing with purees, ..."

You can read the whole post here. Do take a moment to read the rest of Donna's amazing blog too!

On Thursday we are heading back to the UK for a week. It'll be the first time since the Bean was born. Do you understand how exciting that is? No? Let me try again.

WE'RE HEADING BACK HOME FOR THE FIRST TIME IN 21 MONTHS. I AM GOING TO EAT MY BODY WEIGHT IN CUMBERLAND SAUSAGES WITH MASH AND RED ONION GRAVY. I AM GOING TO STUFF THE BEAN WITH CRUMPETS.

Just a little exciting.

All of which means there's no meal plan this week. We're just going to be eating whatever we find in the fridge and the freezer, whilst dreaming of all the yummy things we've been missing out on for almost two years:

sausages & mash (did I mention I want sausages & mash?)
a decent Indian curry
wholemeal bread, scones with jam, crumpets with melty cheddar, hot cross buns with butter, OH GIVE ME GLUTEN
chicken katsu curry at Wagamama's (which isn't in the least bit authentic I KNOW but it's damn tasty)
Kettle chips
milk chocolate digestives
CEREAL OH MY GOD DECENT CEREAL
gallons and gallon of tea (okay I have that here, but my stash is running low so I've been having to ration it)
Cornish pasty
grilled halloumi
jaffa cakes

I know what you're thinking now (unless you're a British expat too). Woman! you're thinking. What is wrong with you. You live in Italy, do I even need to tell you the food is great? 

No. You're right. It is great. But you simply can't help missing the weirdest things about home.

Last week I wrote that we love to escape the city and explore the beautiful cities and countryside around Milan. There are plenty of weekends where we stay at home too though, because someone's ill, the weather is not playing ball, we have no money, or we're all just feeling plain old lazy.

Often these weekends feel like a bit of a battle. I wish they didn't because after a whole week at work I want to be able to enjoy the time I have with my family, but the truth is that we get cabin fever very quickly. Plus, the Bean's wishes don't exactly match up with our own.

- for example -

Mummy and Daddy: sleep
The Bean: test the bed for bounciness, the light switches for clickiness and the toys for banginess (at 5:40 AM, obviously)

Mummy and Daddy: grocery shopping
Bean: playground

Mummy and Daddy: lunch
Bean: TV

Mummy and Daddy: TV
Bean: Boing boing boing weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee off the sofa

Mummy and Daddy: walk to the park
Bean: Oh I think I'd like a snooze now

We've long since accepted that the Bean is essentially the boss and that the weekend is in no way our own. Those Milanese parents who take their brood on social dinner dates and look fabulous doing so? Not us.

We have, however, found a survival strategy of sorts: split shifts.

One parent gets up at silly o'clock and the other has a lie-in (although that's getting increasingly hard, as I seem to have given birth to a foghorn rather than a child). One parent stops the Bean from self-destructing while the other showers. One parent entertains while the other clears up the fallout from a meal.

And this is how we often find our groove - though not without the help of gallons of tea as well, of course - and actually enjoy the Bean's company during these ordinary days at home.

It takes a lot to entertain him, but once you've struck toddler gold, it's priceless. I can never tell what will capture his imagination. Today it most certainly wasn't colouring pencils. It was cotton buds. Plus a very patient daddy who turned him into a porcupine. When I see them playing together like this, I end up feeling glad we decided to just mooch at home.

I put into blogging:

A bit of myself and my family
A whole lot more time than I thought I would
Experiences, ramblings, passions and always more than a little hope these will resonate with someone (anyone?)

I get out of blogging:

A better sense of myself, as though to find my voice I needed to stop, think and write
A wider sense  of inclusion, in that the window our far-flung family and friends have into our lives has become a little bigger and more colourful
A sense of community and of perspective - there ARE other people out there also grappling with the bewildering beauty of parenthood, who hate snot-suckers as much as I do, who laugh in the face of crusty patches on their shoulders and wee in their shoes

And then there’s a sense of humility. Many of the blogs I read carry similar stories to ours, of endless laundry, sleepless nights and toddlers obsessed with brooms. But I know, we all know, that there’s more to the story of parenting than snotty noses and wondering what to cook for dinner.

Fears creeps up and settles in our gut or sticks in our throat. Fear that we are not good enough, and that no matter how hard we fret and furrow our brows and contrive to avert disasters small and large, one day we’ll be caught off-guard and ‘something bad’ will happen. And sometimes it does. Totally undeserved and out of our control.

So, although I almost didn’t do this for fear of gatecrashing someone else’s grief, I made an origami daffodil for Freddie, a little boy who didn’t stay. His mummy associates daffodils with Freddie, and appealed to other bloggers to help her craft daffodils in whatever way we could think of and help remember him on what would have been his 4th birthday - 2 April.

I don’t know this mummy and I never knew this boy, but I think - I hope - it doesn’t matter. And, in a strange way, making this daffodil for this boy I don't know made it even more obvious than the list above that I get far more out of blogging than I put in.

Is it slightly tragic that I'm really, really excited about fresh peas and broad beans being in season? I don't care if it is, because I love fresh peas and broad beans. I've been known to eat the peas raw, straight out of the pod... 

So although I think making risotto is the biggest faff, it had to go on this week's menu as I think it's the best way to showcase the very first peas and broad beans of the season.

I'm going to have to be a bit better at batch cooking this week. Work-wise I'm kind of twiddling my thumbs before the storm - today and tomorrow have been quiet but I may not see the light of day for a week or so from Thursday. 

So far I've steamed and frozen the asparagus, cooked up a big batch of meat ragù and frozen half. Then this evening a delightful job awaits: podding all the peas and broad beans for tomorrow's risotto. It's glam, this parenting lark...

When people ask me what it's like to live in Milan, I usually say "well, it's easy to escape". They normally giggle in response, often nervously. 

I'm not trying to be funny though. Milan is not a terrible city to live in, but it does have its downsides. It's overcrowded, flats are small and expensive (the three of us live in a one-bedroom flat), noise and traffic are ever-present, and smog levels are often dangerously high. 

Granted, the historical centre is impressive. It's the kind of place that has an enormous amount to offer for students and young professionals: architecture, shopping, art galleries, restaurants and bars trying to out-gimmick eachother, furniture design fairs, concerts. 

As a family with a small child, however? A little trickier. Even the Milanese themselves think so: they escape. In winter they go skiing, in spring they go to the Ligurian coast. Many people have second homes for the purpose of escaping and on Friday evening the big stations are awash with about-to-be escapees and their little wheelie suitcases. In summer they leave for Puglia, Sicily or Sardinia in droves, turning Milan into a baking-hot ghost town. 

Who, then, are we to do differently? When in Rome/Milan, and all that...

During our first, pre-Bean years we went somewhere new as often as we could afford. We didn't (and don't) have a car, but the Italian rail network is extensive and reasonably priced. You can even *gasp* rock up on the day to buy a ticket and not feel like you should have taken out a bank loan first (though you can of course book in advance and get better prices for long-distance travel). 

So this, to me, is how Milan comes into its own. We're within an hour or so of the big lakes. Two hours down to the coast or up to decent ski-slopes. Two hours from Verona, two-and-a-half from Venice. Three by fast train to Rome (six by slow-train). It's fabulous. It's fun. It makes for perfect facebook fodder. 

Since the Bean's arrival we've been able to get out of the city far less frequently, and for various reasons we've been pretty much quarantined since September. But no longer: Spring has finally sprung so last Sunday we slung the Bean on a train and went to Parco Monza (of Formula 1 fame), and this weekend we hired a car and drove up to a farm north of Bergamo (for which I have no photo-evidence aaaaaargh).

This. This is what expat life is all about. We may live in a shoebox during the week. We may not own a swanky apartment by Lake Como, or even our own car. But we can turn a weekend in the Alps into an ordinary activity in our own way. And that, dear readers, is pretty damn cool. 

When I was writing up our most recent meal plan, I realised that all the Italian recipes I’ve posted so far have been of the “primo piatto” type: a first course of pasta, risotto, gnocchi or soup. These types of dishes are what Italian cuisine is famous for, but there is way, way more to it than that. Since moving here we’ve tried many very good “secondo piatto” of meat or fish too.

My issue with secondi is that I’m not used to eating a lump of protein essentially on its own. You can order a side dish of veg, but then you end up with so. much. food. After having already stuffed yourself with pasta. After after having already eaten a plate of antipasti.

Mr P&P doesn’t seem to have this issue.

Aaaaanyway, I do like Italian meat and fish dishes, so to make them more acceptable to my meat-and-two-veg-programmed brain I served these involtini with potatoes and skipped the primo.

Serves: 4
Pots/pans to be washed up afterwards: 2
Prep time: 20 mins
Cooking time: 20-25 mins

Ingredients:
8 squares of baking paper or foil, cut about 3cm larger than the cabbage leaves all around
8 large cabbage leaves
4 chicken breasts
100 g of melty cheese, such as pecorino, provolone, gruyere, emmentaler or medium cheddar
olive oil
black pepper
sea salt

Preheat the oven to 200° C (180° C fan oven or Gas Mark 6).

Blanch the cabbage leaves for 2-3 minutes in boiling water, then lay out on a clean kitchen towel to dry. Cut the tough stem out of the middle.

Cut the cheese into matchsticks.

If necessary, slice the chicken breasts across so that they are no more than 1cm thick. Cover with cling film and pound with a meat tenderiser (or the back end of a garlic press if you don’t have one…).

Lay one cabbage leaf on a piece of baking paper/foil, then put a piece of chicken breast in the middle, and some cheese sticks in the middle of that. Season with a little salt and pepper (leave out the salt if serving to babies/toddlers).

Roll the cabbage leaf up tightly, then wrap it up in the paper/foil. Repeat with all eight leaves, then pop them in an oven dish and bake for about 20 minutes (if using baking paper) to 25 minutes (if using foil).

Serve  with a carb of your choice, or sliced up and held together with toothpicks as a great little hors d’oeuvre 
(I actually tried to serve them to my toddler like this in the hope he hold it by the toothpick and take a bite, cabbage and all. He did not.).

Me: Let’s go make daddy some coffee
You: No I’m going to nick your keyboard and smack it on the floor instead waaaaaah

Me: Let’s sit down for breakfast, do you want melon or banana
You: I want melon banana cheese milk strawberry no I’m not eating any of it waaaaaah

Me: Before you open the front door, let’s put on our shoes and coats
You: Actually I don’t want to go out anymore waaaah

Me: As you’ve pulled all the books off the shelf, shall we read one
You: No I want to go out and play with my ball waaaaaah

Me: The bubble blower is not for chewing
You: For God's sake woman let me chew

Me: We don’t touch the wires
You: Waaaaaaaaaah

Me: We don’t throw our blocks
You: Waaaaaaaahh

Me: Open your mouth so I can put some teething gel on
You: *clenches mouth shut* 

Me: *Almost Waaaaaah*
You: Waaaaaaah (quick get the gel in)

Me: WAAAAAAHH
You: WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH

(shit the shitty gel doesn’t work why did ever think this baby thing was a good idea they’re put on this earth to torture us and why am I such a shit parent that I can’t even take your pain away I can’t deal with another sleepless night)

And then. Then you put those tiny arms around my neck. Then you grabbed me by the ears and made me kiss your forehead. Then you fell asleep with your head on my belly. 

And then I knew I wanted you to stay right here forever, grumpiness, never-ending teething, shitty gel and all.