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Today I had a first attempt at my Mum (and grandmas) famous cider ham.

It was delicious, not up to Mums standard but still pretty good.

Recently my cousins attempted to document the recipe and got the basics down, now it is my turn to carry the ball forward. The really special bit is the gravy made with treacle, cider and the meat juices.

Herewith one recipe for cider ham.

Quantities and times depend on size of ham, any times indicated relate to a 1kg (2lb) Ham.

Preheat oven to somewhere between 150 Celsius and 200, I use 190

Ingredients ; Ham, bay leaf, 5-10 white pepper corns, black treacle, cider.

Method : Bring ham to simmer. Pour away water and replace with fresh boiling water from the kettle, simmer for 5 minutes, pour away water and again replace with fresh, this gets rid of lots of the saltiness from the ham.

To this water add some treacle (2 tablespoons), bay leaf and pepper corns.

Have a good simmer (15 or 20 minutes) until ham is tender.

Remove ham from water and remove skin, but leaving the fat.

Place ham in a heavy oven dish (My le creuset is what I use)

Score lines into fat then smear with treacle (another couple of table spoons) and pour cider over it (3/4 Pint).

Roast covered in oven at low heat until done. (90 minutes approx)

Remove lid for the last 10 minutes

For gravy use the juice from the meat and thicken with cornflour.

Serve with sweetcorn and roast vegetables.

We heard the babies’ hearts beat for the first time today!

It looks like I’ll be doing all of my antenatal (pre-natal for those in the colonies) care at the local hospital so they can keep a closer eye on the three of us (normal care in the UK would be to alternate back and forth between appointments with my GP (family doctor) and a midwife (they are big on midwives here), only going in to the hospital for scans).

Today we met with the consultant, which means a senior doctor (get this, when you get to be a consultant, they stop calling you “Dr” and start calling you “Mr” and “Ms” again. I was so confused when we made the appointment with “Ms S—–”, wondering why we weren’t seeing a proper doctor!). She informed us that we are having the “best kind of twins” (at least from a medical perspective) as they each have their own placenta and amniotic sac (dichorionic and diamniotic, in twinspeak (which I am learning!) — i.e. probably fraternal).

The babies are a lot higher than they were three weeks ago, now sitting up by my belly button (people, you should see my stomach — it’s bigger EVERY. DAY. Everyone give three cheers to a friend from work who brought me all of her maternity clothes, without which I would have nothing to wear. For real. I would have to call out of work naked). One of their heartbeats is faster than the other, but both are apparently normal (Normal — I have never loved that word so much as I do these days!). It wasn’t as breathtaking an experience as when we saw them in the ultrasound a few weeks ago, but nonetheless, it is definitely amazing to have more evidence that there really are two little people inside of me!