Vtech Gadget Review

Meet Gadget, the Robot. He is a fabulous toy from Vtech and very cute (well for a robot anyway). He is both educational and fun. He is aimed at children aged 3 - 7 years old. We were recently sent Gadget to review and as James is a huge fan of robots he certainly didn't disappoint in our household.

One of the things that I love about Gadget is that hes very interactive, his body spins around and his ears, eyes, arms and even his eyebrows move. He even dances and he never shuts up whilst being played with (unless of course you press the button on the top of his head to turn him off). Luckily for us parents he has two volume levels and if hes not being played with he does have an automatic shut off. He is quite sturdy and is made of durable materials so can withstand a few drops or knocks and is built to last, None of the bits of him that can move are made from flimsy plastic so they definitely cant be broken easily. I hate when you pay a lot of money for a toy that is good but totally rubbish in reality. With gadget you have no worries about this at all. 

Gadget teaches, letters, numbers, objects, music and more. He has six different modes of play that are designed to engage and stimulate your child. He can teach a child basic counting skills and he encourages independent play by asking your child to move certain parts of his body.

He comes with 26 letters / object tokens and 4 funny tokens. These tokens are kept in his green backpack that is attached to his back. The tokens are a reasonable size so cant be swallowed.

Depending on the play / learning mode you have Gadget in depends on what he will ask you to do with the tokens. He may ask you to feed him a certain number of tokens or he may tell you which letter you have fed him and show you a word and an object of that letter that he has eaten. He will store these tokens in his belly and once full will eject them from his special flap.

Gadget is available to buy both in stores or online and will vary in price from around £30. Both James and I think he is worth every penny. He has helped James with his colours and counting. James laughs when he dances and he knows that if he claps his hands Gadget will respond as he has a sound sensor too. 

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Tuna and egg sandwich cake (Smörgåstårta aka võileivatort)

Although it's Sweden that is most famous for its sandwich cake - smörgåstårta - sandwich cakes aka  võileivatordid have been popular in Estonia for a few decades now. We celebrated our older kids birthday parties last weekend - our daughter turned 4 and our son 2 in January, and I made three sandwich cakes for the occasion. One with ham and egg filling, using dark rye bread and decorated with small cheese-filled ham rolls. The other was with tuna and egg filling, using light wholegrain bread and garnished with strips of cucumber and egg.

Here's the recipe for the latter. It's incredibly easy to make, and tastes like one big nice tuna sandwich. As with all sandwich cakes, it's best made a day before, but garnished just before serving. I've made it with dark rye bread previously, but prefer making it with sliced wholegrain bread these days.

You're welcome to follow my Sandwich cake Pinterest board (there are some great ideas for decorating sandwich cakes) or check out the relevant topic on my Estonian site (võileivatordid ja nende kaunistamine).

Tuna and Egg Sandwich Cake
(Maitsev ja mahlane tuunikalatort)
Serves 12 to 18
Original idea: Pereköök, November 2000 (adapted over the years)


24 square slices of (wholemeal) toast bread

Filling:
2 canned tuna chunks in brine or oil, drained
1 medium-sized leek, white and pale green parts only
2 hard-boiled eggs
200 g good-quality mayonnaise (I use Jaani)
150 g sour cream, smetana or creme fraiche
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

To cover:
about 150 g mayonnaise or a mix of mayonnaise and sour cream

To decorate:
2 hard-boiled eggs
1 green cucumber
salad leaves or finely chopped fresh parsley

Cut the leek half lengthwise, rinse, if necessary, to get rid of any dirt. Cut into thin slices. Crush the tuna with a fork, chop the egg finely or use the coarse grater. Mix the eggs, leeks and tuna.
Add the mayonnaise and sour cream, season with salt and pepper to taste. You're aiming for a well-seasoned and moist sandwich filling here - add more sour cream or mayonnaise, if your filling seems to dry.

(You can remove the crusts from your bread slices for a neater finish. I almost never do.)

Place 6 bread slices on your serving tray, neatly next to each other. Spoon half of the tuna and egg filling on top. Then cover with another 6 bread slices, the rest of the tuna and egg filling and the final six bread slices.

That's how easy it is :)

Now cover the sandwich cake with cling film and place into the fridge for at least 4 hours, preferably overnight.

When ready to serve, spread some mayonnaise on top and on the sides of the cake. Cover the sides with finely chopped parsley or some salad leaves.

For the topping, I prefer thin strips of coarsely grated cucumbers, egg whites and egg yolks, but it's really up to you.

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Ham, leek and kidney bean salad

If you have ever visited Estonia, then you know we're fond of various chopped salads with mayonnaise and sour cream dressing. We're pretty proud of our potato salad, which requires hours of dedicated chopping and dicing and tends to be on many a birthday table.

I've offered you some recipes here on Nami-Nami that fit the category - potato and cucumber salad, potato and beet salad, for instance. This ham, leek and kidney bean salad fills into the same category of salads, though because of the ease of preparing the salad, I tend to think of this more like a midweek salad than buffet table table.

Serve with some good rye or crusty bread on the side.

Ham, leek and kidney bean salad
(Singi-oasalat)
Serves four to six

 

300 g cooked ham
ca 400 g canned red kidney beans (drained weight)
1 medium-sized leek, white and pale green part only
handful of fresh parsley

Dressing:
100 g good-quality mayonnaise
100-150 g sour cream or plain yoghurt
freshly ground black pepper or "lemon pepper"
sea salt, if needed

Cut the ham into neat small pieces - I like them about the same size as the beans. Cut the leek in half lengthwise, rinse and cut into 3-4 mm slices. Chop parsley.

Mix the dressing ingredients in a large bowl, fold in the salad ingredients.

Serve at once or keep in the fridge until ready to serve.

 

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Rose cake

Made this rose cake - my first ever - for our daughter's fourth birthday party last Saturday. I had come across these rose cakes on Pinterest on several occasion (see here or here) and really wanted to make one myself. I found piping the roses surprisingly easy and will happily undertake the process again.

A simple sponge cake (using 4 eggs), layered with lingonberry and apple jam as well as lemon-flavoured curd cheese cream, and topped with cranberry zefir (basically a type of Italian meringue; 3 egg whites and 300 g sugar is enough to frost the 26 cm cake).

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Gro Clock Review

My boys love to sleep, I can't moan  as ever since they were 8 weeks old they have slept through the night unless poorly, which is a good thing as I love my sleep too. However, when they're not at school and nursery they take ages to go to sleep on a night and they are up stupidly early on a morning, and when I say stupidly early I'm talking half past 5 - 6 am so by dinner time they are tired and cranky. The worst of the three boys is James and as hes the smallest at 3 he needs more sleep than his brothers but he is really good at fighting it. So just before Christmas when I was asked if I'd like to review a Gro Clock I didn't think twice.

In the box you will find the Gro Clock, power cable, story book and instruction manual.

The Gro Clock is really simple to set up as the instructions are really clearly set out. There are many features of the clock and they are all designed to make it easy for you to get a child into a routine of going to bed and waking at a "suitable" time. These features are:

• ​Glowing screen shows images of stars and sun to communicate 'sleep' and 'wake-up' time
• Includes fun bedtime story book
• Stars go out one-by-one during the night to show the passing of time
• Key-lock option
• Option to set two separate wake-up times (weekday/weekend or night-time/day-time nap)
• Adjustable screen brightness
• Silent operation
• Optional audible alarm feature
• Mains powered (adapter included)
• Suitable from age 2+ years
• Conforms to highest applicable British and European Standards

The first night we used the Gro Clock James thought it magical, we told him it was his special clock and that it was to help him know when it was time for him to go to sleep and when it was time for him to wake up again. I read him the enclosed storybook about Percy the Pig and all his friends and showed him that Percy had a clock just like him. We gave the moon and sun a name, we called them Monty Moon and Sonny Sun. I told him when Monty is out he has to got to bed and when Sonny is out he can get up. When it was time for James to go to bed each night  I pressed the button to activate the night mode. I had already set the clock so that it changes to the day mode at half past 7 in the morning. His normal bedtime is 7 pm, but has been known to still be awake at 10 / 11pm before now. It took him a couple of days to get used to the idea of what his clock was about but now he knows, it is second nature for him to go straight to sleep after his story.

During the night the clock will countdown the stars. This is a very clever idea because if you have a child that wakes up a lot during the night you can show them that it is still night time and show how many stars there are left until they can get up. As i mentioned before this isn't a problem for me as my boys do sleep, my problem was getting them into bed and then them not waking up really early on a morning.  

If your child takes a nap during the day you can also have a separate alarm set. This will show when a child needs to go to sleep for their nap and when they can wake up again. You can also use this second alarm as a weekend / holiday time so that your child wakes up slightly later in the morning. So we used this alarm to go off half an hour later (8 am) on a weekend and school holidays.

The Gro Clock has changed James' bedtime routine and has helped him to become a little bit calmer, less irritable during the day and overall a nicer child to have on a night time. I look forward to his bedtime as I know he won't be playing with toys until he falls asleep and I know he won't be up before the sun either.

You can purchase a Gro Clock from The Gro Company, it is priced at £29.99.

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3 things to do in Tel Aviv and 3 things to do in Jerusalem

Katrina (born in Tallinn) of The Gastronomical Me blog (written in London) dropped me an e-mail few days ago. I quote:

I'm flying to Israel tomorrow, for a week, will stay in Tel Aviv and Jeruselem and the Deadsea. I know you went there during summer through that social group. I've read a bit on your site already but if you were to pick say 3 places that surprised you the most, perhaps the places you don't think people are likely to discover just by wondering around, what would you recommend?

I had the pleasure of visiting Israel last June in the honorable company of David Lebovitz and Ms Marmite Lover as well as two lovely young American food writers. I haven't managed to blog nearly as much about the trip as I would have wanted, but here's my TOP 3 recommendations for both places. I have met Katrina on a couple of occasions, and think I have a vague idea of what would interest her - hope I'm not too wide off the mark, Katrina :D

JERUSALEM

1) Drinks and nibbles at the rooftop restaurant of the Mamilla Hotel. Wonderful views across the city during sunset, excellent modern Israeli food. We had nibbles there on the first night in town, just getting to know each other and our wonderful hosts Adi and Joanna (hi there!) and our packed itinerary.




(More Mamilla photos here)

2) A tour of the Mahane-Yehuda Market is a must - and I've actually managed to blog about that.


(More Mahane-Yehuda photos here)

I also think Katrina would enjoy a quick khatchapuri at the Georgian café Hatchapuria (5 HaShikma St, just outside the market). Here's their lovely Adjarian cheese khatchapuri with soft egg:



3) Hummus and falafels, mint tea, cardamom-spiced coffee, mutabbaq - all on Via Dolorosa. We popped into a hummusia somewhere between the seventh and eighth station. Excellent first hummus indeed! We then followed up the stairs and just on the right at the end of the last station, stopped for mutabbaq, the super sweet Arab filo pastry, mint tea and cardamom coffee.




Both photos by David Garb, one of the photographers on our tour

TEL AVIV

1) Haj Kahil is an Arab/Palestine restaurant in Jaffa, and the lunch we enjoyed there was probably one of the tastiest and most memorable during the trip full of really excellent food. The mezze table alone was ten points out of ten, a wonderful selection of fresh and delicious vegetable dishes.



Here's the waiter with the main course - just before our "argument" whether I should have a huge portion as I was eating for two (pregnant with bebe number three, remember :)) - his view; or whether I should only have a small portion of that beautiful 8-hour-lamb, as there was a good-sized baby taking up all that free space in my belly already - my idea:

David Lebovitz has written a beautiful post about that restaurant and I would definitely go back for a meal or two when in Israel again. This is my Number 1 recommendation for Israel!

2) Eyal Shani's The Salon only opens twice a week (Wednesday and Thursday), 8 Ma'avar Yabok, Nakhalat Yitzhak, Givataim, telephone 052-7035888. Apparently it's hard to secure a table and it's pretty pricey, and definitely not a place if you want a quiet place to enjoy a meal. But I trust Katrina would enjoy the rowdy and positively crazy atmosphere of the place. The food was delicious as well, of course :)

Eyal Shani in action.

3) A leisurely breakfast at Manta Ray at Alma Beach. The food was good, but I have especially fond memories of having breakfast at the relaxing seaside café - the vibe and the atmosphere were great.  


Remember - there six recommendations are posted here with a specific food-loving girl in mind - might not be the same places I'd suggest to a retired couple or a young family with three small kids :)

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Octonauts Sea Eels and Ladders Game

As a member of the Ravensburger Puzzle Club every month we get sent a puzzle to review.The first puzzle we were sent for 2013 is a something different to what we usually review. This month we have been sent the Octonauts Sea Eels and Ladders game.

Inside the box you will find the two sided game board, two dice (one is a normal dice with numbers on it, the other has colours), four player pieces, 6 sea creature counters and instruction booklet. The game board comes in 3 pieces and fits together like a jigsaw puzzle.

The games board is double, it has 2 different games for children to play. Octonauts Sea eels and ladders is a fun game designed for children aged 3 years old+ and can be played with 2-4 players. 

I like that the board has two different games, you can either play a simpler version with the coloured dice,or a harder game with the numbered dice. The boys liked playing both games but I think James preferred the coloured dice version (he won both times he played so maybe this was the reason) as with the numbered version he needed my help to count out his moves. Nathan liked both games too and made funny noises when he landed on the eels, ladders or the animals. Both games last 5 - 15 minutes depending on the number of players and how well their goes turn out. This is perfect for the boys as they never play with anything for more than 20 minutes at a time.

I think this game is a perfect addition to any Octonaut fans collection. You can buy the Sea Eels and Ladders Game from most good toy retailers priced around £10 but this will depend on the store where you make your purchase.

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