Sheila Kiely from 'Gimme the recipe' tells us about her typical day.

Six children means a busy, noisy house-hold and a typical day begins with trying to coax them out of bed at 7a.m. without it turning into a shouting match.  The two youngest boys bounce out and are dressed and organised while the eldest continues to groan and beg for 10 more minutes.  The girls find it hard to emerge to daylight too but they’ll drag themselves down to breakfast eventually.  While they get ready I’ll be filling the lunchboxes– who doesn’t loathe that chore?  (I’ve written a school lunch box guide that’s free to download on my blog www.gimmetherecipe.com if you are stuck for ideas.)

 

With the kids at school a nice few hours of freedom stretch out.  I’ll do a quick blitz on the kitchen, throw a wash on and twice or three times a week I go for a run with my friend.  On the days that I run I’m showered and in the office by 10.30, otherwise I’ll be up there by 9.30 or so depending on how late we were for school and I’ll check on work emails and start into whatever reports or accounts are waiting for me.

As I work I’ll dip in and out of twitter to keep up with what’s happening in the foodie community and currently there’s quite a bit of correspondence to be dealt with in relation to the book too.  I’ll generally have both my work computer and my laptop going at the same time and switch back and forth between the two.

The working day flies and I’ll grab something quick like a bagel and cheese with pesto for my lunch.  Most days I’ll be craving something sweet too and will have to scour the various hiding places for a stray kit-kat or something.  If the goodies have been raided I’ll hit the baking cupboard in search of dark chocolate, if that’s gone too I’ll make do with peanut butter and head back up to the office.

3pm sees the first school pick-up and most days I’ll collect the ‘4 twins, do a quick dash into the supermarket to buy the dinner and the next day’s lunch stuff.  Sometimes I’ll shop for two or three days in advance but I’m not a great planner and generally only decide day by day what we’re going to have for dinner.  With the book now published the kids have been taking turns picking what they want and having a list makes it a lot easier.  Back home they’ll start swinging out of the fridge and making snacks while I might do a quick check on emails and then start the dinner prep while they do their homework but dinnertime will be determined by whatever after school activities there are.

 

We eat together with the TVs off but it’s far from the Waltons at times.  I didn’t know that as a parent you were in charge of monitoring chewing habits – “s/he’s eating with her mouth open!”

After dinner a spin to soccer or a dance class may be required.  My husband often has to stay away two or three nights a week with work but if he’s around we’ll share the driving.  I’ll usually do a blog entry one evening a week based on something that I have cooked and photographed at the weekend.  When I was writing the book most of that work was done in the evenings and at the weekends and it was a hectic time so things have returned to some semblance of normality now – whatever that is!