Stir It Sunday with Maggie & Rose
Many of our fondest memories have been made at Maggie and Rose, the only family members club of its kind in London. In fact, I do remember saying once to the girls there, "Helena learns more at Maggie & Rose then she does at nursery." You see founder, Maggie Bolger, has just got it right. She's tapped into that massively important role of learning that we call play and created amazing workshops and classes for children's enthusiasm to excel in, and then invested in an extraordinary environment where parents can hang out with their children in total and utter style.
We love our time at Maggie & Rose. We joined when Helena was two and we moved to London from Cape Town. It was my sanctuary and Helena's second home. She was involved in art, in dance, in cooking and made friends for life - we both did. My husband equally loved hanging out there at weekends and when Florence came along, her idea of an indulgent morning was the baby massage classes. Although we no longer live in London we still hang out there as much as we can when we're in town and we've kept all of our recipe cards in our special cookery box and still manage to get excited each time we pull one out (which is every couple of weeks). Belles the cookery teacher made a big impact on our family for the love of cooking and food. It is always so heartening meeting someone who can equally inspire their children of the love and passion of super good food!
So now that the girls birthdays are over (phew) we can concentrate on the preparations of Christmas. First up is the super easy, super delicious Christmas pudding. We've made this every year since Helena joined the club. Whether it be when we lived in Houston, in London, in Scotland, with family around and friends around, I love this special tradition that Maggie & Rose brought to our family. Although it's super easy, this recipe requires 24 hour of total and utter patience as the smell of the fruit stewing overnight in Cointreau is so difficult to leave covered up! I manage to make two pudding basins each year and pop one in the freezer for colder months in January. Equally they make great teacher gifts too!
Maggie and Rose have kindly allowed me to share their delicious recipe with you all. Remember to give everyone a chance to stir and make their Christmassy wish!
You can find out more about Maggie and Rose on their website or follow their adventures on instagram. You'll only wish there was a Maggie and Rose everywhere if you don't live in London!
Happy Stir Up Sunday!
Vanessa x
PS The images of the girls are all from our joyous Christmassy get togethers at Maggie and Rose in Kensington.