In which some of us are dragons from Northern Ireland

I don't even know where to start with this one, except that I truly believe that imaginative play is one of the most profound learning experiences and besides that, it's fun...for them playing and for me, overhearing randomness and trying not to laugh!

Hannah's friend is here today and they started by L towing Hannah up and down the laminate floor in a fleece blanket, the dog in pursuit and both of them shrieking with laughter. Somehow the game evolved into something that involved Hannah being a baby dragon. I made her some wings out of a small fleece blanket (bit of a theme there today!) tied on with string. There was a break from the dragon game for lunch and watching Transformers then back to being dragons, this time randomly with Northern Irish accents...no idea why!

In other news, the Cooking Round Britain project continues. Last week, when I didn't bother to blog, we made Aberffrau biscuits which were featured on Great British Bake Off. These are very simple, shortbready type biscuits, baked in the shape of a scallop shell. Originally the biscuit dough would have been pressed into an actual shell, but as we don't live in Anglesey,whence the biscuits come, we didn't have a scallop shell handy and pressed the dough out into circles and then made lines in a scallop shell pattern with our fingers. There are two explanations for the choice of the shape: one links them to the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in Spain, whose pilgrims wear a scallop shell to denote their quest. The other is far more romantic, a legend that once a Welsh Prince was holding his court in Aberffraw (not too unlikely, the place also hosted the Eisteddfod in the distant past), and his wife was walking on the beach there, and spotting a pretty scallop shell asked for a cake to be baked in the same form. Take your pick!

There was supposed to be a pattern of alternating sweet and savoury dishes, but cooking on a Monday naturally lends itself more to sweet stuff that can be taken as a snack to drama and not so much to cooking something for dinner as we don't get home till gone 8! Maybe next week we can cook on another day and do savoury. This week we made welsh cakes. These were very easy and most delicious. I would almost always have the ingredients on hand so it's a good one to add to the repetoire of quick snacky things to make. These could be from any part of Wales and am not quite sure what to do in terms of the Welsh counties, which traditionally were quite few but there now seem to be 22 of them, some tiny and because they are modern creations, they don't have traditional recipes. I think we'll have to just make all the recipes we can find for Wales and colour in all the counties when we're done!

Just come back from dropping the girls to drama and am very excited because Hannah is starting her LAMDA classes this week.