Food plays a big part in our family life, but having a 3-year -old means we don’t always experience meal times together. During the week, my husband usually gets home from work between 7-8pm. This is too late for dinner as a family, but he usually does story time. I sit with Scarlett at the table in the kitchen/diner while she eats dinner at around 5pm. She has a very healthy appetite, and snacks on fruit, nuts and raisins during the day (as well as odd treats). By dinner time she can be quite tired, so although she will sit down, it can take a long time for her to finish!
Luckily Scarlett will try anything and loves strong flavours. She prefers a choice of foods on her plate, rather than a one-pot dish. So, typically she will have pasta or chicken/fish/omelette with two types of vegetables such as home-made potato/butternut squash wedges, peas and she has cucumber batons with every meal! Some fruit, yoghurt or a lolly finish off her dinner with something sweet. We have recently gone through a phase of lolly-obsession, which made dinner rather prolonged! Scarlett loves to pick herbs from the garden to put on her dinner, and her Grandparents have a big vegetable/fruit patch so she has a good understanding of where some food comes from.

On Friday evenings, we are much more relaxed and we have a long aperitif with Prosecco and tapas-style dishes on the sofa all together. Scarlett will almost have a second dinner and picks at her favourite olives and chorizo happily whilst we all chat, and build Lego towers.
Nick and I eat together at the table after Scarlett’s story time. Lately bedtime is a bit fraught, so we often eat at 8.30-9pm. I cook during the week, and Nick cooks at the weekend. He is an experimental cook. He gives us exciting dishes using weird and wonderful equipment, which Scarlett helps him with-she is an expert egg cracker!

We often have a starter, then a main course. I have carried this on from eating meals made by my French mother, and my father being a French teacher and embracing every part of French culture. Though, when younger (1980’s) my sister and I ate standard chicken nuggets and chips when friends came over for tea, as a family and at the weekend it was different. We would have a salad/charcuterie starter, a main course and then cheese with green salad and dessert. My friends found this very funny and strange, though it was the norm for us. My mum’s home-made fries, gratin and vinaigrette managed to win most of them over! It was just fresh, simple food and not extravagant as it sounds. Mum still shops every couple of days like the Parisian she is. I love passing this heritage onto Scarlett, as well as the traditional English side which she enjoys at her paternal Grandparents. The best of both worlds!

At the weekend we have relaxed meals, the three of us or with friends/family over. As soon as the weather is nice enough we bbq some meat/fish and have with home-made bread and a selection of salads. Mexican wraps are also great for everyone to get stuck in. Home-made pizzas are great on the bbq too, and Scarlett enjoys putting the toppings on (and nibbling). These are our favourite meal times for catching up and relaxing. Eating outside is fantastic, when the weather is in our favour. We have dessert at the weekends, maybe a quick to make apple tart and Nick’s ice cream. I look forward to dinner times all week together as a family (soon to be of 4) in the near future.

We don’t eat out in restaurants much at dinner time, unless we are on holiday. These aren’t always relaxing outings as Scarlett doesn’t like sitting down for long. Although I want her to get used to this, I don’t see the point in making it a torturous experience for everyone. She loves food, cooking and family meals, and for now that’s enough for me!

Quick To Make Apple Tart

I don’t follow recipes generally (apart from baking), or always measure ingredients so I looked up another tart recipe to make sure the quantities were about right!
This serves about 6-8, and the tart is delicious cold so good for lunches the following day. Alternatively, use a smaller sheet and 1 less apple. Of course, you can always make your own pastry!

• Jus Roll Sheet of ready to use Puff Pastry (320g).
• X 6 Cox Apples
• 150g Unsalted Butter
• Tsp Cinnamon (or more if you like)
• Juice of half a lemon
• Seeds from inside Vanilla pod
• Caster sugar

Pre-heat oven to 220 degrees C/Gas Mark 7. Core, peel and thinly slice the apples. Squeeze lemon juice over slices and set aside. Melt butter with cinnamon, squeeze of lemon juice, vanilla seeds and tbsp of caster sugar. Allow to cool.
Use sheet of pastry in rectangular shape it’s in (or you could use dinner plate to cut around as template for round tart). Do this on silicone/ normal baking tray as it is difficult to transfer otherwise once apples are on! Roll out a little thinner, prick pastry base to stop it puffing up. Make a little ridge around tart with your fingers, to make a crust. Put a few dots of soft butter on base. Layer apple slices in rows, overlapping slightly. Brush the butter etc onto the slices, saving some to brush on in middle of cooking. Sprinkle apples with caster sugar.
Bake for 10 mins, then brush on rest of butter. Cook for about another 10 minutes or until apples are golden brown. Allow to rest for about 10 mins. Serve with vanilla ice cream, or cream.

- Laura

Here’s the recipe:

• 125 self-raising flour
• salt, freshly ground black pepper
• 2 eggs, separated
• 150 ml milk

Put flour and a little seasoning in a bowl, and drop in the egg yolks. Add a little milk and whisk, gradually pouring in the remaining milk to make a paste. Whisk egg whites until peaking, and gently fold in paste to form a batter. Heat a thin foil of oil in a frying pan. Take a spoonful of batter and drop in the pan so it spreads to about 8cm in diameter. I could fry 3 scones at the same time in my frying pan, of course it depends on the size of your pan how many you can fit in at the same time. When golden flip over and cook for another minute or so. Keep warm while you prepare the rest (this recipe made me 10 scones).

For the topping, mix crème fraîche with fresh parsley and chives (chopped), and a bit of black pepper. Serve the scones with the crème fraîche, smoked salmon, and a squeeze of lemon.

Bon appétit!

xxx Esther

Do you ask your children to take off their shoes when they enter the house? It wasn’t a rule for me when I was a kid (unless I wore my wellies), nor was it a common thing in other households. Even still, adults won’t take off their shoes when they step inside a house here in the Netherlands, so I don’t ask my grown-up guests, but I do ask kids (visitors and mine) to throw their shoes in a basket next to the front door when they enter. My kids and I always wear slippers in my house — it’s so much more comfortable, and hygienic, I feel!

Collegien is a French brand  with the most wonderful slippers imaginable. I love these slippers for my kids, so cute and easy! There are many great designs and models — how cute are the short summer ballet flats in the bright colours and happy stripes. Adult sizes are also available, so you can treat your husband to a pair (it’s Father’s Day soon), and you probably could use a pair for yourself as well! These slippers are also great for babies who are just starting to walk — warm, comfy, and anti-slip.

Don’t you love all those sweet designs?

xxx Esther

Carrots, radishes, salad and rocket are best sewn in the full ground (outside). If you don’t have a garden or balcony, you can also easily grow these vegetables on your window sill. Just one word of advice (we keep doing this wrong!) — don’t sew the seeds too close together, or the carrots, radishes etc don’t have room to grow! Plain salad and rocket are also super easy to grow (even in the windowsill), and you can keep cutting their leaves for a long time.

Of course we set the children to work immediately. They love gardening! Obviously the small scale of our vegetable garden-to-be will far from feed our entire family, but it’s a real pleasure to harvest our own grows, little as it may be, and it’s educational for the children. Here are some really fun ideas for gardening with kids:

Sara received this super cute Gardening Giftbox (from French brand Moulin Roty) as a gift and it comes filled with little pots, compost, seeds, a watering can and gardening tools — all packed in an adorable little suitcase. So cool! Sara and her friend spent hours working in the garden, preparing the soil, sewing their seeds, watering the plants, etc.

I got some bags of seeds at the Balcony Gardener. These bags are really pretty and also make gorgeous gifts (I just ordered a few more of them!). They also sell beautiful quality kid’s sized gardening tools which we love.

Finally, if you live in the Netherlands or Belgium (or speak Dutch), this little Moestuinkabouterpakket is such fun and so very, very cute. It comes with seeds, bags to sew them in, labels, a little book about the garden gnomes that will help you to look after the seedlings (provided you make sure their hat and coat is hanging ready for them to wear!).

xxx Esther

In my house we have dinner in ‘shifts’. We are all together, my two boys, my husband and I, but the boys have dinner first around 5:30pm or so while my husband and I sit at the table or kitchen countertop to have a drink and a snack. We have an open kitchen that directly connects to the dining area. Since we both work full-time, this is our moment to blow off a bit of steam and share the day’s war stories. After the kids have gone to bed around 7:30pm we sit down and have a quiet dinner, sometimes with friends or family who are visiting us in Malaysia. All sounds pretty organized? Not so organized actually; getting the boys to sit still for more than a few minutes and finish their dinner is quite a challenge! As a measure of last resort, we promise a reward, mostly ice-cream or a frozen yogurt-stick, if they finish their veggies. What is a mom to do?

My secret weapon, chef and backbone of the household, is lovely Ruth. Ruth is our live-in nanny and cook in Kuala Lumpur. She is simply amazing. Ruth left Myanmar when she was 15 years old and has been working as a private cook since. First, ten years with families in Bangkok and now she has been with us for almost a year. We are very lucky to have her and enjoy Thai cuisine every day; she also makes wonderful what she calls “non-spicy and a bit boring Western” dishes, such as Shepherd’s pie and lasagna. Ruth’s homemade secret recipe spring rolls are to die for! As you know, it is quite common in Asia to have a live-in nanny. To me, living in Malaysia without the support network of my family in the Netherlands close by, having a trusted pair of hands to help run the household is truly a blessing, allowing me to work at home and run my Bloesem blogs.

Of course, I do dabble in the kitchen myself in the weekends and make a few decent Italian dishes. I really envy the Italians, such a beautiful tradition of food and family dinners. So I try to instill a bit of that traditional family dinner culture in my house – time out for all to simply enjoy mom’s home cooking. If I don’t feel like cooking in the weekends, we eat out in one of the many restaurants in Kuala Lumpur; our favorite one, Chinoz, is only a short walk from where we live; they make excellent fresh sushi that even the boys enjoy; their favorite is the “cucumber maki”. Eating out with the entire family, including young kids or babies is a very normal thing to do in Malaysia and most restaurants are fully equipped with baby chairs, coloring sets and all sorts of other distractions for the kids to help them sit through a long dinner. This is one of the things I like about Asia: kids are allowed everywhere, all the time, the more the merrier.

Thank you ladies from Babyccino for this lovely invitation. I simply love Babyccino and all the inspiring things you do so it is a treat for me to be a guest here. xxirene

Last but not least a recipe… well actually I don’t really have one. But here at BKids you can find some handy ones!

xxx Esther

Our New Earth is a completely organic line of baby clothes and accessories, and Hugh has passionately told me how he’s constantly striving to find the cleanest and most honestly fabricated materials for his collections. He’s now for instance working with gorgeous 100% organic and natural dyed denims for his upcoming winter collections.

In the meantime I’ve completely fallen in love with the simplicity and timelessness of the Our New Earth designs. It’s all just so adorable! The little sunsuits (see photo of Ava featuring one above), the sweet embroidered and smock dresses, all with the sweetest details, the adorable dress shirts and jackets and pants, the easy bloomers and tank tops…

You can find Our New Earth on our shopping portal here, with a great 15% discount this month — and the prices are already so very, very pleasant!

xxx Esther

The village is a pleasant 20 minutes walk and there are a few nice restaurants, a little harbour, and some touristy shops — it makes for a lovely little outing. We greatly enjoyed the local market with the most amazing fruits, vegetables and textiles on Thursday!

A trip to Bodrum was fun with the local mini buses (dolmus). We spent most of the day visiting the 15th century Bodrum castle with in it the underwater museum with treasures and ship wrecks, a worthy visit — the castle is beautiful, with great gardens, peacocks roaming around, and amazing views over the city and the sea. We also visited the insignificant (but still impressive!) remains of one of the seven ancient world wonders, the Mausuleum of Mausolus. The Bodrum daily market was fun with stalls filled with spices, fruits, veggies, housewares and some handmade wooden toys and utensils.

We booked the 4 Reasons hotel through I-escape and stayed in one of the ‘functional’ rooms, which was not at all big but very nice, fresh and functional, with a separate bed and bathroom area for the two bigger children (5 and 6). We had Ava (1) in a cot in the room with us. We took a flight to Bodrum airport and the ever so nice and helpful hotel staff arranged transfers to and from the hotel for us. All in all, this was a vacation I can totally recommend if you like to go somewhere relaxing and beautiful with little children in tow (or without!). We’ll certainly be back.

xxx Esther

One of the great things about living in the Netherlands is that you’re never far from the beach. Dutch beaches are wide and sandy and perfect for wintery, windy walks, but even better to enjoy on a sunny summer day — what’s better than playing in the sand for hours and hours? Even I still like to build a good sand castle! Besides the obligatory buckets and spades, these fantastic Monkey Print Sandals found at the new web boutique Sweet Pea will also provide hours of beach fun this summer. My son has already tested them out endlessly on our wooden living room floor, he sounded like the perfect clog-wearing little Dutchman but thankfully no foot-stamps were left. I can already imagine the fun he will have at the beach pretending to be a little monkey!

xxx Esther

My husband Paul and I both work and we both share the childcare responsibilities. I do the menu planning and a big grocery trip once a week while he does the small trips through out the week. Our dinnertime happens about 7pm. Paul cooks dinner most of the time. But I do the prep work for dinner in the morning after breakfast. I hate that feeling late in the day of having to prepare dinner but you don’t have any food or ideas. So I eliminate it by preparing food in the morning. Then Paul just has to throw it together.
My kids are still small (2 and 4) but we try to all sit down for dinner together in the dining room. We don’t have any real rules but the kids have to at least try the main course to be polite. There are certain vegetables my kids love like fresh peas and haricot verts so we usually have a side of those and then make sure there is some sort of protein. One of the best things about France is the bread and cheese so we have a baguette and cheese with our dinner most nights. About once a week we do green smoothies. Our kids love them and it’s our last resort for getting vitamins in our kids when they are feeling picky. (Basic recipe is: 2 bananas, 1 cup of orange juice, ice, 1/2 cup plain yogurt, and two giant handfulls of baby green spinach and water as needed to blend.) Since we moved to France we don’t do take out very often but we do have regular easy meals like one night a week where we buy a rotisserie from our local butcher. And when the weather is nice we grab a pizza on Fridays and go to the park across the street from our house for a picnic. Besides that we eat lots of soups and bean and vegetable salads. I’m really inspired by 101 Cookbooks and Ottolenghi Cookbooks. I usually prepare a salad in the morning then we eat it for lunch or as a side dish for dinner. My favorite salad is this lentil salad. I make it 2-3 times a week. It’s so good, simple and fresh.

- Jordan

What a pleasure to look at, these images that Anna took of her daughter for the Minikin Lookbook! I love the styling, and what a beautiful little girl she has… Take a look at the Minikin boutique — you’ll discover even more gorgeousness to drool over. I couldn’t resist getting Sara the long tutu in grey which she’s actually wearing today — a super piece!

xxx Esther

Dinnertimes for me, in our house are the most important time of the day. It is the time when we all catch up on each others days and also helps my children to take turns in conversations. With five children life can be incredibly chaotic, especially during the week with Brownies, Guides, orchestra practices and sports matches. However apart from Tuesdays we manage to eat as a family everyday, with the occasional exception. We eat between 6 and 6.30pm everyday, which may seem a little late as our youngest is only five but with a healthy snack after school to stop the tummy rumbles, Kitty is more than happy to wait to eat all together.

I am very lucky as my husband cooks the evening meal most days. He loves to cook so doesn’t see it as a chore but a way of contributing to the endless list of tasks that family life throws at us. Between us we seem to have developed a list of go to dinner recipes that feature regularly, but then we also like to try new ideas, which stop dinners being boring! Chicken with pasta, rice or noodles are definately a favourite and we are quite traditional in that we have a roast dinner most Sundays, with BBQs and salads being the favourite Sunday choice in the Summer months.

With a large family there always seems somebody willing to help with the cooking, even if it’s just chopping some veggies or stirring a pan of something. Sadly this keenness isn’t so obvious when it comes to laying the table or doing the washing up!
We have a large farmhouse style wooden dinner table that is the hub of mealtimes. This is where we sit, chat, play Around the World in an Alphabet, laugh and sometimes whine that ‘I don’t like this’. Mobile phones are banned from the dinner table, something that my teenage sons have as yet not moaned about. With technology a part of everyday life it is nice to remove the distraction of phones from family dinner times.
I believe family meal times are incredibly important in teaching children social skills and manners. The time at the dinner table is vital to keeping my children talking about their lives and us spending time together as a family.

Apple Crumble has to be my favourite pudding and I love that you can change the fruit as the seasons change. So I wanted to share this recipe with you!

• 200g Self Raising Flour
• 100g Butter or Soft Margerine
• 100g Caster Sugar
• 4-5 Bramley Cooking Apples
• 1-2 tbsp Light Muscavado Sugar for sprinkling on top of the apples
• 1tsp Ground Cinnamon

Preheat oven to 180C. Peel, core and slice apples into a pudding or small casserole dish. Sprinkle cinnamon and muscavado sugar onto apples. Rub butter into flour to make breadcrumbs, stir in caster sugar. Pour crumble topping evenly onto apples. Place your crumble into the oven for about 25-30 mins until crumble is golden brown. Serve with cream, ice-cream or crème fraîche.
I like to add little balls of marzipan to the apples or a couple of handfuls of raisin or sultanas or try replacing some of the flour with ground almonds. Apples can be replaced by more seasonal fruit throughout the year, rhubarb & ginger is one of my favourites.

- Zoe

xxx Esther

Sweet! Love these little baby shoes from Poco Nido. Little baby slippers are so handy this time of year (well, any time of year, really) — we don’t want our little ones to be getting cold feet, or slipping all over the place when they just start trotting around! These sweet shoes come in a nicely designed, tube-shaped gift-box, so they are also the perfect present to give to a newborn. (Everything at Poco Nido actually is really well designed — their website is one of the best ones we’ve seen in a while!)

xxx Esther

Posters made out of felt and decorated with hand-embroidered details. Sweet screen printed t-shirts made out of fair trade, organic cotton sourced in Africa. Handmade toys with funny legs and big bellies and interesting stories to tell (and with a back that is as nice as the front). Fun! We’re loving what Carly and Nick from Corby Tindersticks have done for their first collections, and are anxiously waiting to see what they’ll come up with next! (Their sketch book looks promising!)

xxx Esther

So, for the next coming months, we’ll be focussing a bit more on maternity and newborn essentials. So fun to be back in baby mode again!

Love, Courtney and Esther

p.s. Any guess as to which baby above belongs to whom? Extra bonus points for people who get it right!

Beau Loves is a new fashion label — we met the team at the last Bubble trade-show in London and we instantly liked what we saw. Fresh stripes, bright red accents, fun superhero-mask prints, and great detailing like dino spikes on the hood of a sweatshirt! If you like the collection too, then head over to Sweet Pea for part of the collection, or to the newly launched (and very cool) Beau Loves webshop.

xxx Esther

xxx Esther

xxx Esther

I’ve rarely seen a child so excited by a gift as Sara when she opened her package, and her sewing machine is still one of her most treasured possessions. So, what does she sew? First of all, she still needs a lot of help. Preparing the machine (inserting the bobbin, leading the thread through the machine, pulling it through the needle etc) is something she can’t completely do herself just yet. But she’s getting quite good at cutting the fabric, pinning it together, and sewing straight lines. So far she’s made lots of little pillows, an easy thing to make (with fast results) and a great present for her friends (doll’s cushions!), or teachers and grandparents (pin cushions!). Simple bags are a step up from the pillows and she needs a bit more help with these. She also made a little dress for her little sister’s doll, and this was something we did together according to her design, and it turned out really nice!

All in all, I think we made the right decision to give her the machine fairly early. In case you’re interested, Sara’s machine is a Janome Sew Mini de Luxe.

xxx Esther