Remember the chocolate with the breastfeeding image?

It’s been a long time since I was given the bar of chocolate with the beautiful painting by Stanislaw Wyspianski on the packet. His painting depicts a mother breastfeeding her child; a completely normal scene. Yet a beautiful scene.

I was very pleased to receive the chocolate – ah the perks of publishing! – but I promised myself I wouldn’t eat it until Musings on Mothering was published. I hesitated for a long while, but finally found a good time to use (and indulge myself – and others – with) this lovely chocolate.

My daughter’s school was fundraising for Children in Need last Friday – and they asked for parents to bake cakes. Aha, I thought! So I decided to turn the chocolate into a creamy ganache and use it atop the fairy cakes I made. Here is the result: and by pure chance I photographed the cake on our cake/biscuit tin, which funnily enough portrays another beautiful image: Summer Evening on the Skagen Southern Beach with Anna Ancher and Marie Kroyer, 1893, by Peder Kroyer.

Oh, and the cakes were tasty!

Mummy, I love you because…

At a recent La Leche League meeting I went to, romance was in the air… well, it was more that mother love was in the air…

Some meetings focus on breastfeeding challenges and difficulties, and how to overcome them, but this February’s meeting the focus was on us, as mothers. We got little chocolate hearts with a label that said “I love you mummy because…” and we had to fill in what we thought our baby or toddler would say. It was lovely to just reflect on what we, as mothers, mean to our children and to take a pause from the daily hubbub of life.

“I love you mummy because…”

hmm… perhaps a good start to a poem?

Breastfeeding art and chocolate

At the October 2011 La Leche League Great Britain annual conference, I got the opportunity to meet lots of lovely mamas who were keen to help me out with the anthology project. The lovely Nik Harris even gave me a very special bar of chocolate, which alerted me to the wonderful work of a Polish artist called Stanislaw Wyspianski.

A Polish chocolate manufacturer had seen the obvious beauty in the painting titled ‘Motherhood’, and decided to put it onto the chocolate wrapper. They obviously have very good taste!

As for the chocolate, well, as much as I love to eat chocolate, I daren’t open the beautiful packet. It will sit on my desk and continue to tempt and inspire me in equal measures!