Total eclipse of the Rat!

So friends, I’ve been very negligent and not posted an entry for ages. In my defense life has been super busy. My youngest H, Nate, turned one and as Mr H and his twin sister Eve and Eva my step daughter all had birthdays coming up too, we decided to throw a big party. As Nate is nicknamed to all who know him, Rock Star, we threw, what else but a Rockstar party. I will do a blog post about said party and all the preps for same, as I’ve been requested by a few to do so. It’s coming soon honestly!

So back to today’s post. Yesterday was a horrid day here in Screen. Wind howling, rain teeming down, all in all a day for the fire lit and snuggles with loved ones on the couch. I decided that I was going to go all Susie homemaker and do a special dinner for us all. You see I’m off to New York (yep, did I forget to mention that?) on Thursday and while I am very excited to be heading off with the girls for some retail and cosmo therapy, (it’s the law in NYC to drink Cosmos and spend lots of money you don’t have in Macy’s), I’m also having palpitations at the thought of leaving my gorgeous family of H’s. Mr H has booked time off work and will be Daddy Day Care while I’m away and as the 22nd looms closer, I know that he is both looking forward to so much one on one time with our smallies but also has mild panic at the thought of managing on his own for almost week! And I understand that, I hate it when he’s away with work for a few days. It’s not ideal!

So I thought on Sunday I’d make the day nice for us. When I awoke and before I even had a cuppa (I don’t start functioning normally until I have a cup of scald in hand), I prepared my shank of lamb and placed it tenderly atop a pile of chopped root veg into my slow cooker. My slow cooker is my best friend in the kitchen…. meat just tastes so damn good once its had 5 or 6 hours in that little ceramic pot of magic. I did get my cup of tea then and after a lovely breakfast cooked by the lovely Mr H, a morning of domesticity ensued. Kids bathed and dressed, 66 loads of laundry done (ok slight exaggeration, maybe 3!) then I made family freezer dinners for the week I was away. I even stuck a chalkboard over the freezer and wrote details of all food in the freezer, so Mr H would know what to look for, such was the level of detail of my domesticity.

Finally the meat was literally falling off it’s bone and tasted and looked pretty darn good. Sides were cooked and a sauce made from scratch. I’m feeling pretty proud right at this minute of my lovely dinner and couldn’t wait for the family to sit down and all tell me how wonderful a cook I was. But just as I was about to murmur ‘Oh it was nothing.’ to Mr H as he declared the feast magnificent, he jumped up from the table and ran like a mad man into the kitchen, grabbed a sweeping brush and charged out into the garden and started beating the bushes with gusto! Amelia and Eva jumped up from the table dropping their forks, the excitement of the moment causing all my children to whoop and holler. ‘It’s a mouse Mummy.’ Amelia cried. ‘What?’ says I in horror and followed Eva’s hand as she shouted ‘Look Cammy it’s not a mouse it’s a Rat!’

And sure enough, this wasn’t a mouse, this was a huge Rat, doing the cha cha cha with Mr H as he tried to get it with his brush. The girls ran from window to window shouting with glee to their Daddy, ‘Over there Daddy!’ ‘No there Daddy!’ But the little Ratatouille was too quick for Mr H and made his escape. Not before sticking his tongue out at him first. O.k I might have made that bit up.

So Mr H returns inside all windswept and muttering about vermin. Eva keeps talking about a dead rat that was found in school the previous winter and how it was all decayed after the mid term break and Amelia wants to grab the sweeping brush herself and a go swiping the bush.

Meanwhile my beautiful slow cooked lamb is getting cold.

‘Eat up everyone.’ I urge. But their attention is elsewhere. All eyes are firmly fixed on our windows and the possible return of the rat.

My little rockstar Nate is the only loyal one among the lot of them and the good little grubber that he is meant he lost interest in the goings on very quickly and he was scoffing the spoon feeds I was giving him as quickly as I could scoop up his food. And I know if he could talk he would have used words like, ‘Sublime, melt in the mouth, amazeballs!’

But not one word of appreciation was forthcoming from any of the rest of my family about the lovely dinner. So I eventually I can’t help myself. I fish for a compliment. And that never works does it?

‘What you think of the lamb Rog? Tender?’ I ask hopefully.

‘Nice.’ He answers distracted, one eye looking out the window. I literally gasped at the use of the word nice. Everyone knows you don’t describe anything as ‘Nice’ never mind a beautifully cooked meal that your wife has worked so hard on! But in fairness, Mr H is usually generous in his compliments, so I decide to try again.

‘More sauce?’ I continue hopefully. ‘I made it myself.’ He has to mention the sauce. It’s work of culinary art. But a shake of his head and I know its game over. It’s time to accept gracious defeat.

The slow roasted shank of lamb has been totally eclipsed by a fecking Rat!

 

P.S. I would like to stress that no Rats were harmed in the making of this blog post! 🙂

P.S.S. Snuggles on the couch in front of the fire were had afterwards. In my world, heaven.

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