Earning a day at Disney

Believe it or not, P has never been to Disneyland. She must be the only five year old in Southern California who hasn't. As it happens, I haven't either. People look surprised when I tell them that - it's like saying you've never been to London, as a Brit (same cultural significance) - but given that I moved here in my thirties, it really isn't so strange. Before that my closest Disney option was Eurodisney, and there are about a million better things to do on a trip to France than go to Eurodisney.

And so it is that we are a pair of Disney virgins. I could go to my grave without ever visiting, but P would be a deprived child if we let this situation go on much longer. Up until recently she's been content playing on broken slot machines at Redondo Pier, but we think it's time she saw what a real amusement park was all about.

She's of an age now where kids chat - at least, I assume that's how come she knows about Shimmer & Shine, because it certainly didn't come from our house - and I'd hate her to miss out on something all her buddies get to enjoy. Wait till her schoolmates find out we only have one TV. They'll think she's a complete freak. It's not only caving to peer pressure. I also know she will absolutely love the experience.

So we told P that once she was five she'd be old enough to go to Disneyland. And hope none of her friends told her they've had a SoCal Family pass since they were toddlers. She turned five in February. So what's taken so long?

Well, once we decided we should take her, we decided we should make the most of it. Hence, the sticker chart. The road to Disney, for P at least, was paved with good deeds. For every good deed, she earned a sticker, and once she has a sticker in every spot, we will take her to Disney. As you can see by the state of it, P has got properly invested in the chart, adding her own titles and pictures. She spends a lot of time counting the stickers and the empty spots.

 In case you're curious - ooh, you'd get a sticker for that - she gets stickers for being helpful, kind, brave, curious and adventurous. Aka tidying up after herself, eating vegetables, and generally being compliant. It's really not that hard.

We've enjoyed two months of extra helpfulness, and an incentive for her to do things that are challenging. She's only a few stickers away from the big reward now. I'm pretty sure she'll love it easily enough for us to add some extra empty spots into the next sticker chart. 

Kitchen pioneer

The early settlers in the Americas had to be pretty resourceful. An unfamiliar land, with different flora and fauna, required them to be canny about what to hunt, what to eat, how to store supplies for long winters, how to make a bolt of calico make dresses for all the girls in the household, and so on.

And so it is with me. You'd think one can get all the specialty foods imaginable in a world city like LA. Actually you probably can, but not in the bubble of the South Bay. Maybe Koreans, or Mexicans, can find all the ingredients they need at the local H-Mart, if not the Vonns. But us Brits are a tiny minority. The only specialty store for British food is the lame-oh King's Head which is fine for wine gums and hobnobs but not for proper food (plus driving to Santa Monica is the equivalent of 'going to town to buy calico' in terms of effort). It's a culinary desert, at least where British baked goods are concerned.

Not only do I need to make my hot cross buns from scratch but I have to make the raw ingredients too. I cannot buy candied peel - say for Christmas cake or hot cross buns - for love nor money. Nor can I find stem ginger for proper ginger biscuits either.

So I've learned to make them. It turns neither are particularly difficult. It's a bit of a faff, as in it takes longer to make candied peel than it used to take me to walk to Sainsbury's and buy some. But not much longer. And the results aren't as good - not as neat, or sugary - but they aren't bad. They'll do. Same goes for the end result, really:

Not quite as good as the kind you get in the supermarket. But better than nothing.

I'm my very own pioneer woman, it turns out! And P is working alongside me learning not only just how to bake from scratch, but actually using weighing scales (because that's how British recipes are written), which takes 'from scratch' to a whole new level in this country.

Unlike the Starck lemon squeezer, the scales are not just for show

Now if only I can figure out how to make a proper granary loaf I'll be quite content.