Author: Scottish Mum

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Sweet Temptation – Who’s Right – Teacher or Me? Help…..

We had a situation last week.   I may be reading too much into it, but it really irritated me to the bone.

On the way home from school, elder was very quiet and piped up that he had a letter than I had to sign for him to take back into school.  I didn’t think that much about it at the time and just thought it would be for “yet” another trip for P7’s.

At home, he sheepishly slipped the letter under my nose and I read it with total disgust.  Not in disgust at him I have to say (although I had to show him some displeasure) but in disgust at the contents.

It begins by saying this type of thing:

Dear Mss xxxxx
I am really sorry for stealing sweeties from your desk, and I know it was just too tempting, so please please forgive me and I know you can never ever trust me ever again for lying and nobody likes a thief.   I have to say sorry to the whole class and I hope you can forgive me.
Yada Yada Yada you get the idea.

 Some of you may be shocked that on this occasion, I didn’t give my boy the third degree, or make him bow and scrape to a pretence of guilt in front of me.  Some of you may stop reading right now, make your mind up what kind of person I am, and then you don’t find out my side of the story.

Wind my neck back in for a month and we find a group of “professionals” and I talking about my boy, his future, and his transition to the big school next year.  As part of that discussion, I tell them about my sons sugar addiction and cravings.  Bear in mind that I am not talking about your average pouty child who just likes a sweetie or two.

I have only recently come to terms with the fact that my son is a sugar addict and that it is part of his condition.  I specifically mentioned it at the meeting where his teacher was present as I had only just found out for myself that he was not just an out and out thief from the treat cupboard, but actually has an illness that is a side effect of his condition and compels him to ingest sweet stuff.  He is just lucky as can be that his genes keep him as slender as he is with all the stuff he packs away.

It helps me to understand why we cannot have lots of bags of sweets in the house, or lots of packets of biscuits as if he knows they are there, he will get up during the night and clear the cupboards.  This behaviour has caused many arguments in the family with extended groundings, removal of privileges, promises of treats to leave them alone etc etc etc and NOTHING worked.  I was so in the dark that I thought my boy was just pushing the limits further than is acceptable.

Back to the story.   We have the teacher INFORMED that he is a sugar addict and that it is part of his condition.  Then the teacher leaves a bowl of sweeties on her desk to give to the children.  I can only guess at the reason for the sweeties, but I suspect they are an incentive for good behaviour.

Picture this.  An empty room with no adults around, and a group of boys who probably have little opportunity to make the grade for one of these revered sweeties help themselves to one and congratulate themselves on their cleverness at outwitting the adults.  One of the boys feels guilty, so dobs the rest of them in and says he didn’t pinch any “so I am told by my boy” .  He also tells me that the dobber in got off with it.

At this point, I am fighting the urge not to laugh as in the same situation, if I were a child in their shoes, I suspect that I would have helped myself to one of those sweeties too.  I am also irritated with the teacher for putting such temptation in the way of someone who has a sugar addiction and expecting them not to take one.   I am even more irritated with myself for expecting the teacher to even to remember that he has a sugar addiction.

I will not be carrying on this issue at home though I cannot tell my boy exactly what I think of it all.

They were warned – and my boy had to take the same punishment as the other boys who took a sweetie, but heaven above – why, why, why would you leave a bowl of sweeties on a desk in front of a class of kids.   It is utter madness.

What do you all think?

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WordPress Back Up Lesson – Do you back up?

With the possibility of losing my whole blog when I updated a plugin earlier this week, I had to make some emergency plans for backing up my whole website and not just my database which is all that my host will allow me to easily back up.  Looking for how to back up a WordPress installation was not as easy as I had thought, but I did just stick to one of the first things that I had found.

I can use some html, and with the database backed up, it would only take a few hours to get everything up and working again, but I decided that I didn’t want to have to spend that much time at some point in the future to fix my beloved blog.

I can’t tell you all enough how important it is to back up your blog.  I lost a lot of work when my first blog went by the way of bloggie heaven by not backing up properly when I moved from wordpress.com to wordpress.org.

Today, I spent quite a while working through what could work and what might to back up the whole website.  Yes, my posts, and comments are saved in my database, but what about the theme, plugins and settings??

This back up is for  self hosted blogs in WordPress.org.  I believe that there is an easy internal back up feature for wordpress.com.

What we have to do is back up BOTH  the database (posts, pages, comments and users) AND the Files from your File Manager which includes all your pictures and other files.

How to Back up WordPress.org

To backup the database, there are several ways it can be done, but I will just tell you about 2 ways here.

Database Backup 1
Simply go to your WordPress admin panel, and click on Tools and Export.  From there, it will download a word file to your computer and save it in a named folder.  If you ever need to upload it to your WordPress account if disaster falls, then you have one backup ready to go.

Database Backup 2
Your hosting control panel will provide a way to back up your database.  I use two hosts, and on one, I can back up my database and website in one fell swoop and then download it to my computer.  Sadly, on Godaddy, I can only backup the database, but considering the database is where most of the work is kept, then it is a pretty important thing to do.

Backing up from your hosts control panel can be tricky as they are all different.  Your hosting provider gives you a control panel, most likely it will be cpanel, but I  managed to find myself on GoDaddy for one blog which doesn’t allow me to back up my files, but I can back up my database by selecting my hosting account and choosing to manage my account, database and mysql – and click the pencil to back up the database.  When it is clicked, a message pops up to tell you that it may take up to 2 hours to backup your database and overwrite your current database.  I would say it is probably good to have 2 database backups at any one time – just in case.

Get the tools for the job for backing up your files.

Plugins, plugins, plugins – oh yes, did I say plugins.  I like to keep my plugin list small(ish), but there are times that an extra plugin or two are pretty necessary for the health of your blog (not to  mention your heart).  If you are lucky enough to have a web host that backs up your files, or allows you to download them as zip files, congratulate yourself on choosing wisely.  The rest of us have to search out a solution that fits nicely with what we need to do.

If your own host doesn’t have the facility to back up your database for you (and most do if you look under database management in the file manager of your control panel)  – then you need to look at a plugin that will back up your database easily and send you the result for you to keep for the future.

Any database plugin is going to be a life saver in the event of a blog disaster, so it’s not the end of the world if you do this and don’t go any further – you’ll just lose your plugins, your settings and contents of widgets / image folders etc and have to upload them all again.

There are lots of plugins that you can use to back up your files, but whether they are all perfect and useable is debatable.  Doing it the easy way is what is important and I would recommend that you keep all your images on a disk at worst and look through the plugins to see what could work for you to make  your life easier.

I chose to try the “Online Backup for WordPress” to try and I had a look at how it works.  The screenshot shows that it can back up the files and the database.  I have not had the need to reload the files so I am not sure if it would work as well as it should, but there are certainly many other plugins out there that can be used to help safeguard your work.   I liked the fact that I could send my backup to email with this plugin, but I was soon disappointed as the size of the backup meant that it couldn’t be converted to email and sent.  It was simply too large a file for the spare php that I had available in my hosting account.

I then tried backing up via the download to computer choice which was much more successful.

The zip file that downloaded was easy enough to do and it took up much less space than the email version that it tried to convert.   It did come up with one error.  My backup file came up at 210 MG and of course, I can’t upload it to see if it works the other way round as it is for emergency only, but at least I have my database backed up in three different ways so the worst that can happen is that I have to upload my photo file and reset my theme options

 

Look at all the plugins and make all your own decisions on which version you want to use.  I am not going  endorse any one plugin as I cannot know how you would use the information, or whether your server would be capable of completing the actions.  If you value your blog or your website, make sure you spend some time on it before problems hit your server.

I also have a copy of all my files in a folder that I have added to my control panel and named as a backup.  Even if my server goes down, the full website with files will be stored in the backup from a date that it all worked properly and if needs must, I could back up from there.

I am planning to keep a file on my laptop for safe keeping.  Then, I may just get paranoid and also save them to a spare disk, but then again, maybe that is just going too far.

The next time I decide to go for hosting, I will make sure that the host does full website backups as well as just the database.

Have you backed up your blog / website ??  Leave a comment, and if you have any better suggestions, please feel free to leave a comment and let us all know about it.

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Leapfrog LeapPad Explorer – How does it shape up?

We were sent the LeapPad Explorer to review a couple of weeks ago, and because it was so close to middlers birthday, I held off giving it to him until the big day as I didn’t want him to have something so major so close to his birthday.

What is the LeapPad Explorer

It is a tablet device for kids.  That’s it in simple terms.   The age ranges goes from 4 – 9, but I suspect there are many children in the 2 – 3 age group who would get more benefit from one of these than using mum or dads Ipad or Iphone.  They have more information and there is a video you can watch of it here.

It uses apps based around learning, reading and creativity.   A built-in camera which takes photos and videos is included and gives it an authentic tablet experience for children with an attached stylus to help little fingers.   It even has a shake to move ability in some of the games for motion.

Out of the box.

The tablet has 4 apps and the LeapPad really needs to be connected to the Internet to get it to work completely.  It took us about 15 minutes to update the tablet and another 10 minutes to download the apps.  I have to say that we did have some leaplet cards we had bought for our Leapster Explorer and they work in the app store for the LeapPad which was a nice bonus.

We downloaded a full game that took £20 of money worth in cards, but it is the same price in Amazon so that was ok.   There are some E-Books for £5 and some smaller game apps for £5 or less.  The nice touch that I felt was missing when I reviewed the Leapster Explorer earlier in the year, is that you can now buy the apps online, just like in Itunes and they download onto your LeapPad automatically when you log into the account.

Another aspect that I found appealing was how all the apps and games from the Leapster Explorer are transferrable to the LeapPad Explorer so that if you bought a game for one device, it downloads onto the other as well.  For me this is a MAJOR bonus and VERY like how Itunes works with their Ipods, Ipads and Iphones – it’s a nice touch from a games manufacturer.

Testing

Well, I haven’t had much in the way of testing for this lovely little gadget.  Middler has rarely put it down.  At 10, he has special needs and has yet to learn to read and write his name properly, but he is drawing, playing and taking pictures constantly and he loves that it looks like a Tablet computer.  We have the Leapster Explorer with all the same games now and littlest has even been known to sneak one of them away to potter about on, even though he pretends that he is too old for it.

Owning the LeapPad

For me, it is preferrable that my son uses the LeapPad and leaves my phone alone.   On my phone, he tends to delete things I’d like to keep and with the LeapPad he is learning new things each time he uses it.

It’s a thumbs up from us.

Disclosure – We were given the LeapPad Explorer for this review.

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Adoption Week Part 1. Not the Step Forward I’d Imagined

It has been adoption week this week, and as someone with three adopted children, I thought I should add my tuppenyworth to the discussion and share some of my “ranty wisdom”.  I will also do a jollier post later this week about more of the positives.

I felt like taking my remote control and throwing it at the TV when I began to see some of the coverage that adoption was getting this week.  The Cameron man on the telly moaning on about the process just got my back up, but that’s not unusual for me.

And to top it off, my hackles rose when I watched the segment about the woman complaining about the process and how long it takes to be assessed here, but who had plenty of dosh and managed to find the readies to go abroad and adopt the youngster she wanted.

Now don’t get me wrong, I would have gone abroad if I hadn’t managed to find my forever children in the UK, but come on, complaining about the system you have to follow to get those children is just plain wrong if you don’t even adopt from here.

Let me tell you about how the adoption process was before they made it that little bit tougher.  We went overnight from no children to 3 children who were not fully socialised.  Foetal alcohol babies are hard work, I can tell ya.  Imagine your trouble with a crying baby with colic who doesn’t sleep, and multiply that by a factor of 1000 x 1000 with knobs on and that could be the potential.

All those wannabe mums out there think that a little bit of love is going to make it all right – well it doesn’t.  Those cute little bundles may very well end up as aggressive, troubled tots who don’t get the help they need to survive.  Lots of families disrupt, even now when they can’t cope with the changes that children with high needs means.

Make no mistake, if you have a diagnosis of Autism, or an “acceptable” condition, the world will sympathise and help you with your children.  If your children have a diagnosis of Foetal Alcohol Syndrome or your child is Drug affected, you are going to hit your head up against a brick wall to get help.  And if you do say what the diagnosis is, people will think you are a raving alcoholic and start crossing the street and avoiding your kids party invites.

The bottom line is that most of the young children in care nowadays are disabled, alcohol or drug related births.  There are some who are orphans or young mums not wanting the responsibility, but they are certainly not the norm, and potential parents HAVE to get it through their heads that love is NOT enough to bring up drug and alcohol affected children.

I HATED the adoption process.  With an enormous passion.  I thought it was too long and I thought it was ridiculously monotonous and repetitive, but the authorities HAVE to try to suss out as many of the nutters who try to adopt for other reasons as they can.  If they handed over kids to a ring of child abusers, we would all be up in arms that the process wasn’t comprehensive enough.

Lets get down to the nitty gritty.  Adoptions take so long because there is NOT ENOUGH MONEY in the pot to get the work done that needs to be done to keep everyone safe.   Social workers have too many groups to assess, and to be frank, lots of approved adoptive parents sit waiting for the phone to ring rather than being pro-active and finding their future kids across the country.  There are also some fabulous homes not being used because there are not enough staff to get the meetings set up, organised, pulled together and finalised.

I do think the inflated considerations about race and ethnic backgrounds are pretty crap to be honest.  Lets just chuck kids into uncontrolled and often violent childrens homes eg just because they might be black and christian and a council only has white protestant adoptive parents on their books.

If I get the religions wrong, I apologise – as being a non-believer I just don’t care what religion anyone else is as long as they don’t try to sell me their faith.  That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t happily support a child who needed to learn more about their own faith and culture.

I’d like to see the kids put into homes that will stick with them through thick and thin, support their race and ethnic backgrounds, and to hell with the rules of what colour skin, race or nationality we should be before we can help a child escape from institutionalisation, temporary parents and abusive homes.

After care is rubbish.  Yes, there are “supposed rights” but considering post adoptive care says there is no money in the pot to provide anything, then it really is an empty promise unless it is desperate in my experience.

I am afraid that the negativity far outweighed the positivity that it should have showed, and would put people off finding out more, or moving forward with a process that needs to be shored up.

Right down to basics, adoption is about being parents.   In the same way that parents take on responsibility for children and have to fight for their needs, there is nothing different.    There is no special treatment in being an adopter once you are there so think about it long and hard, and treasure the preparation process because it is there for a reason.

If Mr Cameron wants to make the system work, stop complaining and support the Councils who are mostly doing their best with the means they have at their disposal (money, people and imposed rules) and ringfence pots of money for adoption and disability.

Yes, there are problems and yes, there are always nasty people who don’t do their jobs right, or get in the way of things happening, but they are in the minority.

I saw those segments, and rather than feel good about what was being said, I was conscious that if I were a new potential adopter, that it would massively put me off if I thought that the system was as difficult to breach as it sounded.

Mr Cameron needs to put his money where his mouth is to find alternative methods of moving adopters through the system and helping approve positive matches for families with support to help families cope with the potential problems they will face.

I’ve said my piece and now I will settle back and sort out my three adopted boys photos for christmas cards.   The whole process was worth every rotten moment it took to get through.

 

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Local Florists with Interflora

This is a Featured Post

This year has been a fabulous year with Interflora for the Scottish Mum Blog.

For Mothers Day, Interflora sent me a gorgeous bunch of flowers to review and gave me one to give away.   They were absolutely beautiful, and I can’t resist showing you the picture again.

There were many smiles in this house (mostly from me), and the vase has been very useful for the bunches of flowers that came after.   I had got out of the habit of having flowers in my home, and Interflora kick started a regular buying habit.   There is just something so welcoming in any house that has a flower in it.

My husbands’ grandmother used to say “a house without a flower or a plant is no home at all.”   Perhaps there is wisdom in that phrase as the smell and sight of a lovely bunch of flowers or a well cared for plant makes many of us feel better.

Interflora also sent a fabulous bunch of flowers to  my mother who really deserved the treat.  She absolutely adored the roses which gave her some much-needed colour and scent to make her little flat seem a more welcoming place to be.

I was pleasantly surprised to find there are 6 Interflora  florists in Aberdeen and that they are easily contactable by telephone.   It was easy to pick from the local florists in my area, and with next day delivery there really is something for everyone.

I know that most of my readers are not just in Aberdeen, so I thought it would be interesting to look at some other cities in Scotland. When someone searches for florists in Glasgow or florists in Edinburgh, they have to enter in the first part of their postcode, and then they can choose from the list of florists close to where they want the flowers to be delivered.

I really like that option, as it means that we don’t have to only order online, and we can call a local shop directly to see what they have available if we need a quick delivery (for when we have forgotten a birthday).

I picked the closest florist to  me, which is the Four Seasons at Rosemount and visited the website.   We all have different ideas of what is safe and what is not, and for me, it was nice to see the Interflora branding on there.   A branding that I recognise does make me feel more comfortable.  I like to know that I am dealing with a reputable supplier, which makes me feel safer when I am handing over my payment details for online or telephone sales.

I couldn’t resist the temptation to go and look at the Interflora Christmas flowers as I would love to get a nice bunch from the man in my life to decorate the Christmas table.   I think I have narrowed my favourites down to these two.

Warm Wishes Festive Christmas Basket

(I may leave some pictures lying around, or simply send my husband the link these flowers by mistake.)

Christmas Perfect Gift

What do you think?  Which one do you think would look fabulous on my Christmas dinner table this year?


 

 

 

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Chocolate Brownie – Blind Bakeathon – Scottish Mum Style

I couldn’t get the internet to work, so I decided to bake a batch of brownies.  The only problem was that I didn’t have all the right ingredients for it, so I compromised – Do you think it worked?

Ingredients

  • 190g unsalted butter
  • 185g chocolate  (I had half Galaxy and half cooking chocolate)
  • 130g plain flour
  • 100g chocolate spread (I used Nutella)
  • 3 large eggs
  • 275g caster sugar
  • 40g chopped hazlenuts or choc chunks or fudge pieces etc.  (I had chopped hazlenuts)
Before you start – put your oven on at approx 150c or 140c for fan asssisted.

Step 1
Easy to do, just put the chocolate and the butter into separate bowls and microwave until melted.   With cooking chocolate you have to do it 20 seconds at a time or the chocolate might curdle.  Mix the butter and chocolate together and leave to cool.

    

Step 2
Put the eggs and sugar into a mixer and whisk.  It may take up to 10 minutes depending on your mixer for it to go light and fluffy in colour and texture.  When the mix leaves a trail if you dip a spoon in, it is ready.

Step 3
Fold the butter/chocolate mix into the eggy mix until completely mixed.

Step 4
Put the chocolate spread / Nutella into the microwave for 1 minute

Step 5

Sift the plain flour into the bowl and fold into the mixture.  Try using a figure of eight in alternation with a regular fold.

Step 6
Fold the nutella into your mixture.

Step 7
Fold the hazlenuts, or chocolate chunks into the mix.  When it is ready the mix will look like a treackly gooey mix.

Step 8
Pour the mix into a greased baking tray.  Mine is a rectangle shape about 20cms long.

Step 9
Bake for approx 45 minutes until the side begin to shrink and the middle doesn’t wobble when you shake the tin.

Step 10
Wait until the brownie is completely cool, cut and turn out of baking tray.

Voila – Verdict – They were too nice to leave lying around.  Sadly I will have to make them again.

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Littlewoods Christmas Giveaway….. Ends 15th November 2011 – Goodie Basket

It’s that time again, and Christmas is just around the corner.

I know, I know, I can hear you all sigh, groan, stamp your feet and run for the hills at the mention of Christmas in October and Early November.  The reality is that we either get moving and organise our Christmas presents, or we run around at the last-minute like headless chickens.

I watched this video a few times to write this post, and it made me smile.   Littlewoods seem to have captured a Christmas family favourite to showcase their Christmas gift ideas.

Littlewoods also have some fabulous 3 for 2 offers on jewellery & beauty, and some toys with as much as half price reductions.

Competition

To launch their christmas ideas advert, Littlewoods are offering a fabulous christmas giveaway for one of my readers.

The prize is going to be a goodie basket with the gifts in the picture for a mum and her child.

To enter.

  • Watch the video at the top of this post.
  • Leave a comment here saying which gift in the video would be your favourite surprise gift on Christmas day and why.  Any funny stories will be greatly welcomed to help spread Christmas Cheer around.
  • Make sure you leave your twitter id, or email address in your comment so I can contact you if you win.
  • If you would like to tweet the competition, I would be very grateful if you would click the retweet me icon on the page.

We will end the competition on the 15th November, and the Littlewoods representative and I will choose a lucky winner to receive the basket.

The winner will have 3 days to claim their prize and send their address details to me, or we will re-draw by random generator.

Good Luck and Happy Video Watching
Scottish Mum
x

 

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Tickets Giveaway for LEGOLAND Discovery Centre, Manchester – Ends 15th November

One of the places I have always wanted to go to in Manchester would be the Trafford Shopping Centre.  It is one of those places that just seems to have the ability to draw people toward it.   It is perhaps the reputation that goes before it.  Maybe it also has something to do with Old Trafford and the football stadium that draws us in as my boys are huge Man U fans (don’t ask me why, almost all the kids up here are).

Whatever there is to do, and there is a lot – I think I would have to have a pocket full of money before I headed down from Aberdeen again.  I spent a week there in 2003 for work, and I always vowed to go back, but sadly I haven’t made it down again yet.

There seems to be plenty of things to do in Manchester, and if my children were to have a say in where we go and what we do, then they would definitely decide to visit the LEGOLAND Discovery Centre as they are lego maniacs.

Halloween Manchester style seems to be overwhelmingly colourful at the LEGOLAND Discovery Centre, where they are holding a monster mash LEGO building challenge every day between the 15th and the 31st October.

Giveaway

I have a family pass which will allow up to 2 adults and 2 children to experience the LEGOLAND Discovery Centre park for a day.

To enter, simply

  1. Leave a comment to say what your favourite memory of lego is.
  2. Leave your contact details in the comment, ie email address or twitter id so I can contact you if you win.
– The closing date will be :  Tuesday 15th November
– If the winner has not claimed the prize within 3 days, I will redraw another by random generator.
Good Luck
Scottish Mum
x
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Thank you to the lovely @amelielovesthis on Twitter for the Lovely L’Occitane Basket

Winning Basket from L'Occitane

Winning Basket from L'Occitane

I have to show you all this lovely basket I won from L’Occitane En Provence

It is a fabulous prize with lovely shampoo, conditioner, eau de cologne, soaps, face, body and foot creams, and more.   It is an absolutely fabulous gift.  I don’t win things very often, so this is a very welcome prize.

Thank you very much.

xx

 

 

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Making Soy Milk (Dairy Free) at Home Is this a Fabulous Food Find ??

Looking at the title of this post, I can imagine some of you are making some strange assumptions.

On Twitter, when I first mentioned it, there was a comment or two that arrived joking about cows in the garden.  The milk is dairy free so suitable for those who are lactose intolerant, but it is really the bees knees?

I buy a lot of shop bought soy milk so I reasoned to myself that making it out of the soy beans would be infinitely cheaper than buying ready-made soy milk every couple of days.

A dedicated milk making machine costs upwards of £100, so I attempted to make it by hand – which was easier than I first thought to do.

I am not kidding when I say that it is actually very easy to make the soy milk.  This is what I did, and I will share my thoughts at the end.

INGREDIENTS

125g white dried soy beans for “approximately” 1 litre of milk.   I bought Tesco soy beans to practice with.

METHOD

1 –  Soak the beans

The beans are dried, and they really need soaking overnight so that they are soft and pliable.  Cover the beans in a container with water.  Change  the water a couple of times if you can and then just leave them to do their magic.

Some recipes seem to say that it would be good to dehull the beans after they are soaked, but considering they are going to be liquidised later, I don’t see the need to do that.

Make sure you take out any discoloured or damaged beans as you don’t want to spoil the quality of your soy milk.  Soaking can probably be done from 6 – 24 hours to be able to use the beans, and they are ready when they are soft to the bite or soft and pliable when you squeeze them.

2 – Microwave the soy beans

Some recipes recommend heating up the soy beans before using them for milk as it takes away the beany taste.  I was not sure about that, but I did micro mine for about 2 minutes before doing anything else with them.

3 – Liquidise / Blend the Soy Beans

In a blender or liquidiser (or a coffee bean grinder which I used) put the beans AND 1 litre of water in if you can.  I had to do  mine little by little as I used the small grinder to do mine, but I would root out the blender next time and do it in one go.

     

4 – Boil the Liquid

As with any heated milk, it has the potential to froth up very quickly when you get it to boiling point.  Anyone who has heated milk in a pan for slightly too long will know what I mean by that.   It is a good idea to use a fairly big pan so that the milk doesn’t boil over the top as you will need to boil the mixture for about 5 – 10 minutes to get it right.

Stir the liquid while it is cooking all the way through.  I did not stop stirring with mine, just in case, but I imagine you could get away with some time away from the pot at a time, but I wouldn’t risk it.

As with any milk that you boil, if you are taken by surprise and it looks like it is going to boil over, add some cold water and the foam should shrink back into the pot.  If you don’t take care at this stage, you could end up with a right mess on your cooker top.

When it is ready, the milk will have separated from the curds and the mixture will look slightly grainy.

5 – Separating the curds from the milk.

To separate the curds (ochra) from the milk, use a fine sieve, or a cloth bag and strain the mixture.  A bit of squeezing of the mix, or using a spatula might get every last drop out of the mix.  The ochra can be used for soup, stews as a filler, but I just threw mine away.  In future, I might be tempted to give it a try to see what it tastes like and how it cooks.

     

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To end with it, I forgot to take a pretty picture of it in a glass to make it pretty – sorry.    Next time.  There will have to be a next time as I really did not get much milk out of my recipe.  I would guess that I needed much more water than I used and on my next attempt, I will add 2 litres of water to the mix.

I might also microwave it for much longer at my next attempt, as it tasted very very beany to me which I really didn’t like.  I’ve read that cows milk has a lot of salt added so I might try adding some sugar or salt to see if I can get to a taste that I find palatable for using in coffee, which is what I really use it for.  It looks idea for making tofu, so that might be an idea for the next time as well.   I definitely left mine too long and too much water boiled off.

Have a go yourself it really is quite easy.