Pumpkin Scones

Sunday brunch, pumpkin scones.  It's still cold out, so on the menu are steaming hot scones with melting butter and plenty of tea .

Pumpkin Scones

400g pumpkin puree

600g self raising flour

50g butter

2 eggs

2 tablespoons of sugar

2 or more tablespoons of milk

Extra flour

Rub the butter into the flour.  Add the eggs, pumpkin and sugar, stir gently but thoroughly to combine into a rough, craggy dough, adding as much milk as you need - the dough should be quite moist, rough, not at all smooth.  It's not an exact science - add more pumpkin, flour or milk as you need, but don't overmix.

Turn onto a well floured board, and knead a few times, gently, with floured hands to bring it all together.  The dough will be too moist and rough to roll out, so just pat it out on a floured surface to around an inch thick.

Using a circular cutter dipped in flour, cut out rounds of dough.  It's better to use a metal cutter rather than a glass, because a sharp, clean cut will allow your scones to rise higher, instead of pressing down the edges.

Bake at 220 - 230 degrees (if your oven struggles at high temps, you might need to err on the side of hotter) for 10 - 20 minutes.  The scones should be beautifully risen, and lightly golden brown on top.  Split one open to check if you want - should be moist, but not wet.

Serve with plenty of salted butter and some golden syrup, if you'd like.

These freeze really well for a month or so - just defrost them in the microwave for a couple of minutes, or in a moderate oven.

I find scones to be messy work.  I think it's because the dough is so sticky, and you tend to also fling flour around everywhere.  Pumpkin scones always seem even more messy, as the dough is more vibrant.  My work area always looks like this after scone baking - does yours?  Admittedly, I am quite a messy cook:

While the scones bake, you have just enough time to eat some breakfast.  One of my most regular breakfasts is avocado - lots of it - on rye sourdough toast, with plenty of salt and lemon juice:

When the scones come out of the oven, you can cool them a little on a tray - like below - or put them into a basket and wrap the top with a tea towel, letting the steam soften them a little.  I do either, depending on my mood.

Pumpkin scones are so yellow - they always look like they have saffron or turmeric added, in my opinion:

I like to dust the tops of my scones with flour.  Some people prefer to brush them with milk.  I find the milk darkens the tops too much, so I generally go with flour for pumpkin and date scones, and I use milk or flour for plain scones, which require a little less time in the oven.

I personally believe that really excellent scones are never visually perfect.  To get a perfectly smooth, even, round-topped scone, you need to work the dough until it is quite smooth.  This will result in a tougher scone, one lacking the ethereal, flaky melting quality of a really excellent scone.  The best scones are hastily thrown together with an incredibly light hand - not too much kneading or mixing.  The edges will be rough and damp as you cut them out.

It made me quite cross to watch Masterchef one day, and see some of the contestants told that their less-than-perfect looking scones would 'never sell' in a cafe.  Well, that's nonsense, because after I did a quick survey amongst people I know (who know good scones), we all agreed that we would, in fact, never buy a perfect-looking scone in a cafe, because it would inevitably be tough.

The insides of the scones will be incredibly moist, flaky and delicate, almost melting away as you eat them.  They will split easily in half, without requiring a knife, if they are still hot.

The only secret to scone making is practice.  Several years ago, I decided that I wanted to learn to make really brilliant scones - the sort people remember and request time and time again.  So, every single week (sometimes twice a week) for many months, I made scones.  Plain, date, pumpkin, cheese and herb.  But mainly plain.  No one complained - every time we had guests, they would be given hot scones - and my scone technique and recipes improved immensely.  I can now have a batch of fresh, hot scones on the table in less than 20 minutes including baking.  And doing a half batch of a regular scone recipe, giving you just 6 scones, is perfect for unexpected visitors.

But for Sunday brunch, I think that pumpkin scones are a good choice.

Pork chops, cream and other good things

I've mentioned the dismal weather in Melbourne right now.  I am currently wearing pyjama pants, a cashmere jumper and pink ugg boots, the heater is on, and I'm still cold.

This weather calls for pork, creamy sauces and buttery potatoes.  It's beyond simple to cook, hardly a recipe, but in case you are looking for some easy dinner inspiration, here is what I do...

A pork loin chop is my favourite cut to cook like this - pan fried.  The trick to keeping it moist, tender and juicy is to cook in a very hot pan, for not too long.  Don't overcook it - it needs to be slightly pink inside - and it helps to give it a good bashing, first, with a textured meat mallet.

I heat olive oil in a fry pan (NOT non-stick.  I kind of hate non-stick cookware) over a fairly high heat.  I place the chops in the pan, and keep the heat high.  After a few minutes, the chops will brown nicely, getting dark brown and crispy in parts.  Turn, and cook to the same colour on the other side.  Cut into the meat to check the colour - a hint of pink is fine.

Remove to a heated plate, cover in foil and a tea towel, and turn your attention back to the pan.  

Take the pan off the heat, add a good glug of white wine (or mirin, verjuice or stock, whatever you have to hand really), return to the heat, and scrape with a wooden spoon to deglaze.  Add a good amount of honey (a tablespoon or so), about a tablespoon of seeded mustard, some salt and pepper, and stir over the heat for a minute.  Add a good pour of cream (thickened, double, single, sour cream, whatever) and stir.  You want a golden caramel coloured sauce, rich, creamy, thick.  Boil over the heat for a couple of minutes, then return the cooked chops to the pan (tip in any juices).  Dredge them through the sauce, then serve them with the sauce poured over.

Serve with polenta, mashed potatoes, rice, or simple boiled chats with butter, salt and parsley (my current favourite way to serve potatoes).

Tabitha enjoys this dish - her favourite part is gnawing on the bones from the chops.  The Daddy says that you also need some nice bread, to mop up the juices.  Who am I to disagree?

Food delivery and pumpkin spice muffins

I have two people in my life recovering from surgery at the moment!  So some cooking and food delivery was in order.  I made a giant tuna and vegetable pasta bake, and two large dishes of rice pudding.  These were dispatched to their deserving recipients today:

Now, Tabitha only wants to feed herself, even when the food requires a spoon, such as yogurt or porridge.  At first I was nervous about relinquishing control - she has done her own spooning for a long time, but now she wants to dip and scoop herself, controlling the spoon AND the bowl!  The results are a little messy - see below - but I am very impressed at how well she can manage to eat, dipping the spoon and getting some food into her mouth.

Has anyone else noticed that pumpkin is always on sale lately?  I bought a whole pumpkin, and roasted half of it, then cooked and mashed the other half into a rough puree.

I recently read Mrs Jerry Seinfeld's wife's cook book, Deceptively Delicious.  The book revolves around sneaking fruit and vegetable purees into all sorts of dishes - spinach into brownies, cauliflower into hot chocolate, and some more straightforward ones like pumpkin into mac and cheese, broccoli into meatballs etc.  I've seen Mrs S criticised quite a bit - and I disagree with her use of margarine instead of butter, but that's a rant for another day - but I actually quite like the book. Importantly, she stresses that you must still serve proper veggies with the meals (e.g. sneaky meatballs but with a side of carrots and some beans), so that children still learn to eat veggies, but at least you can relax and not stress (a major principal of Baby Led Weaning), knowing that your kiddo is still eating some fibre, veggies, fruits, and is actually getting used to the tastes of these foods, even if they aren't keen on eating them.

Inspired by the book, I made a batch of pumpkin spice muffins - I made up the recipe in my head, which is always a little risky when baking, but these are just lovely.  Moist and spicy and healthy.  Here is the recipe - very easy:

Pumpkin Spice Muffins

1genorous cup of pumpkin puree (about 300g or so cooked, then mashed with a fork or masher.  You might need to add a smidge of liquid to get the right consistency, depending on the pumpkin.  You want a loose-ish puree rather than a mash)

60g butter

1/4 cup sugar

1/4 cup treacle (90g)

2 eggs

375g self raising flour

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon nutmeg (preferably freshly ground)

1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

1/4 teaspoon allspice

1/4 teaspoon bicarb soda

Cream the butter with the sugar and treacle.  Beat in the eggs and pumpkin.

Fold in the flour, bicarb and spices, mixing very gently but thoroughly.  Don't overmix - you will get touch muffins!

Bake in 12 - 16 muffin tins (greased or lined with paper liners) at 200 degrees for around 15 or so minutes - until just cooked inside (really, it's easiest to break one open and check.  Then you get to eat it!).  You want to keep them moist.

Note - you could happily add some chopped dates or sultanas to these, or some nuts (finely chopped if they are for young 'uns).  You could also sprinkle some demerera sugar on the top before baking if they're not for babies.

Like most muffins, these will freeze really well.  Muffins' enemy in freezing is air, so I cram them into a snap-lock bag, then use a straw to suck the air out, essentially shrink-wrapping them!

Someone asked me the other day, 'how do you manage to cook so much with Tabitha?'  Well, I generally let her 'help organise' the tupperware draw.  My tupperware draw is 1.2 metres long, and very deep.  There is a whole lot of stuff in there to play with!  It now looks like a permanent shamozzle, but it keeps her happy:

Rainy and Miserable Weather

The weather here in Melbourne is dismal.  Cold, wet and grey, with icy winds that threaten to freeze your face.  Most mornings, I like to take Tabitha for a walk (in the Ergo, wrap or pram) down to our local shopping strip to get a coffee - a nice fifteen minute walk each way.  But the weather has made this difficult, so we are suffering from a touch of cabin fever.  To make matters worse, Tabitha has had a lingering cold for nearly a week now - she's grumpy, clingy and snotty!

Since we're mostly housebound, I fiddled around and made some sweet potato chips.  They are so delicious.  I just sliced some sweet potatoes really thinly, tossed with oil and plenty of salt, and a little cumin, and baked them on a baking tray for about 15 minutes at 190 degrees, turning half way through.  Tabitha ate a few.  I ate a lot.

Here is Tabitha multi-tasking.  She is eating sweet potato chips and riding around the kitchen on her (toy library) bike:

I met my friend Amy at the Prahran Market - just for a little field trip to get out of the house.  The market is one of my favourite places, so it was a brilliant distraction.

We got a whole lot of outstanding little organic mandarins:

Some organic Australian garlic, and some shallots (which I am obsessed with eating, roasted):

From the fabulous potato stand at the market, a few kilograms of Desiree chats, one of my favourite potatoes.  We eat a lot of potatoes - with the skin on, potatoes are one of the most nutritious foods there are.  If you buy more potatoes than you will use in the next few days, you need to keep them away from light, and with a little ventilation.  I keep my potatoes in a large cotton bag, in a large, low cupboard:

I am completely obsessed with raw Jersey milk - that is, unpasteurised, unhomogenised milk from Jersey cows.  Thankfully, you can now buy it in Melbourne - a couple of places sell it, including an organic stall at the Prahran Market called Paddywheel.  They sell a couple of brands, both full-cream certified organic raw Jersey milk.  It is sold for 'cosmetic purposes', e.g. bathing, because it is illegal to sell raw milk for human consumption in Australia.  Of course, what you do with it when you get home is up to you - I drink it.  Lots of it!  Because it is unhomogenised, the fat rises to the top - Jersey milk is nearly half cream, so when you buy it, you can see all the delicious cream on the top.

It's a little more expensive than the regular organic milk I buy (normally from Elgaar Farm) but it is so, so good.  The difference, in flavour and mouthfeel, between raw Jersey full-cream unhomogenised milk, and your standard supermarket milk, is like the difference between freshly squeezed, in season orange juice compared with stuff in a prima-pack.  Supermarket organic full-cream milks sit somewhere in between, I think - maybe like a high-quality bottled orange juice?  There are plenty of benefits to consuming raw dairy - THIS website is a good place to start, if you are interested in learning more.

When I got home, I made a large pan of chocolate hedgehog.  To eat, mostly on my own.  This cheered me up immensely.  Actually, there was a small mishap - I was wearing Tabitha in a front carry (rookie mistake when cooking!) and she reached out and upended a whole bowl of crushed Marie biscuits.  All over the floor.  I could have cried - instead, I let her sit in the crumbs, happily dragging her hands through them, eating bits of biscuit off the floor.  It wasn't a high point of my parenting career, but it seemed to make her happy, and it allowed me five minutes uninterrupted to crush another bowl of biscuits!

I have mentioned several times my love of Vanilla Caster Sugar.  It's simple to make - you just chop up a couple of vanilla beans and add them to a large container of caster sugar.  I keep around 2kg on the go, and 2 vanilla beans are ample to flavour this quantity of sugar.  Every time the container gets about half-empty, I just fill it up again with new caster sugar and give it a shake.  The same vanilla beans have been flavouring my sugar for a couple of years, and are still giving off a beautiful flavour and aroma.  I use this vanilla sugar in almost every recipe requiring caster sugar (I generally still add the full required amount of vanilla extract too, if the recipe calls for it).  It is also sublime stirred into some hot milk as a before-bed treat - I use a scant teaspoon.

If you don't bake regularly, a small jar will do - I have prepared this jar, below, which contains about 3/4 cup of caster sugar and one chopped vanilla bean.  I am giving this to a woman in my mothers group who likes rice pudding - if she uses 1/4 cup or so of vanilla sugar to make the pudding, then tops it up again with caster sugar, the jar will provide her with several years' worth of vanilla sugar.

Have you noticed that Hass avocados are on special everywhere?  Great big ones, too!  My supermarket has them at 4 for $5.  Tabitha and I are really, really into avocados, so 4 of them will be gone within a few days.

My cats are cold and grouchy.  They, like me, have cabin fever, and spend their days wrestling with each other on the floor, stalking around the house looking for warm places, and sitting at the window, tails swishing angrily, watching the rain.

Clever baby Possum spends most of his days sitting high up on top of the reptile enclosure - not only is the room warm up high (of course, the heat from the heater rises) but he also gets a warm bottom from sitting on top of the massive heat lamp for the lizard.  Here he is, half-asleep and warm, peering down at the room below:

Tabitha has suddenly noticed that everyone else has plates and bowls, whereas she eats her food directly off the table.  She is most unimpressed by this, and will now not even touch her food if it is not on a plate!  But once she has the plate, all she wants to do is sit there putting the food ON the plate, then taking the food OFF the plate, ad infinitum.  And also waving her plate around, with an expression on her face of "HEY check it out!  I have a plate!  I am one of you!  Look at me with my fancy plate!"  So not much eating gets done anyway, at the moment.

Because she sometimes drops her plate, I give her a cute Melamine one instead of a china plate.  I suspect it will only be a few days before she realises that this is an inferior substitute, and starts demanding a proper plate.  We'll see...  

Before we had a baby, our fruit bowl normally consisted of a couple of lemons, a bit of garlic, an avocado and maybe a banana.  I wasn't really a big fruit-eater.  But since becoming pregnant, I have developed more of a taste for fruit and, of course, I need to offer it to Tabitha each day, and eat it myself to set a good example.  So now our fruit bowl generally looks like this - garlic, mandarins, tangelos, lime, lemons, apples, avocados, bananas.  Often also a pear.  And in the fridge, melon and berries.  I feel quite virtuous!

Last night for dinner, we had a friend over, and I made slow roasted lamb shoulder.  Our friend is studying to be a vet, living in the country, and is home at the moment on holidays.  The cats loved him - they wouldn't leave him alone!

We had buttered parsley potatoes (boil chats until tender, drain and then cut in half, shake around in the pot to roughen them up a little, then add a good amount of melted butter, salt and freshly chopped parsley):

Also green beans (buttered of course!) which I always think go well with lamb:

With this meal, I make a mint and caper gravy - just the right amount of piquancy to go with the deliciously fatty lamb!

Here is the lamb - the shoulder is easily my favourite cut!  Slow-cooked, it is texturally more like a shank than a leg.  The meat melts and falls apart - you don't need a knife to carve the roast, you can pull it apart with a couple of forks, leaving you with a completely clean bone.  The shoulder is also an incredibly cheap cut.  This piece of lamb, 2kg of shoulder (bone-in) cost around $20.  It had enough meat for 4 (really big) serves.  With the potatoes, garlic, beans, and herbs from the garden (mint, parsley and rosemary) the entire meal feeds 4 hungry people, at around $8 a serve.

Here is my recipe, adapted from one of Jamie Oliver's:

Slow roasted lamb shoulder with caper gravy, parsley potatoes and green beans

2kg lamb shoulder, with a few deep slashes in the skin side

4 – 5 large sprigs of rosemary

A whole head of garlic, broken up but cloves unpeeled

Salt, pepper, oil

2 large shallots

400ml chicken stock

2 tablespoons of plain flour

1 tablespoon of capers, rinsed, drained and finely chopped

2 tablespoons of mint, finely chopped

1 tablespoon of red wine vinegar

1kg chat potatoes

40ml butter, melted

Salt, a few tablespoons of chopped parsley

A couple of handfuls of green beans, rinsed and ends trimmed

Melted butter and salt.

To make the lamb:

Preheat oven to to 250 degrees, or as high as it will go.

Slash the skin a few times, quite deeply, then rub the lamb with olive oil and plenty of salt and pepper.  Poke a few cloves of peeled garlic into the deep slashes on the skin.

Put in a roasting tray, with a few large sprigs of rosemary, and a few cloves of garlic (skin on) underneath it.  Lay a couple more sprigs of rosemary and a few more cloves of garlic (skin on) on top of the lamb.  In the roasting tin, add a couple of shallots, peeled and cut in half.

Cover the roasting tray tightly with tinfoil, then put in the oven.  Turn the oven down to 170 degrees straight away, and leave for 4 hours.

The lamb is done when the meat easily falls apart when probed with a fork.

Remove the lamb, sit on a warm plate, covered with foil and a tea towel - leave to rest for around 15 minutes.  When ready to serve, shred the lamb with a couple of forks, and pile the meat up on a plate - if you do this at the table, people will say 'oooooh!  Look at that!' because the meat is so tender.

For the gravy:

To make the gravy, discard the rosemary, garlic and shallots from the roasting tray, and pour off most of the fat.  Sit the roasting tray on the stove, sprinkle over a couple of tablespoons of flour, stir in, then add 400ml hot stock, a little at a time, stirring over medium heat, scraping at the bottom of the tray.  Once the gravy is thickened nicely, stir in the chopped capers (rinsed and dried), the finely chopped mint, and a tablespoon of red wine vinegar.

For the parsley potatoes:

Boil 1kg of chat potatoes (such as Desiree chats) until a knife can easily pierce them.  Drain them, and shake them around in the pot to rough them up a little.  Cut them in half, and toss them with 40g melted butter, a teaspoon of nice textured salt, and a few tablespoons of chopped parsley.

Along with the caper gravy and the parsley potatoes, and the green beans, I serve this with some excellent bread and butter - you need it to mop up the gravy! 

For dessert, I made golden syrup dumplings.  I didn't manage to snap a photo - they were gone too quickly!  But here is the recipe.  I thoroughly recommend making it, and promise that a serve of these will make the dismal weather seem a little more bearable...

Golden Syrup Dumplings

Dumplings:

1 1/4 cups self raising flour
30g butter
1/3 cup golden syrup
1/3 cup milk

Sauce:
30g butter
3/4 cup brown sugar, firmly packed
1/2 cup golden syrup
1 2/3 cup water

Rub butter into flour, gradually stir in syrup and milk. It doesn't have to be perfect or smooth.

Combine sauce ingredients in a medium saucepan, stir over heat, without boiling, until the sugar is dissolved.

Bring to the boil, without stirring, then reduce to a simmer.

Drop tablespoonsful of the mixture into the sauce (about 8, which should serve 4 people)

Simmer, covered, for about 20 minutes, or until the dumplings are cooked through.

Serve with a little of the sauce,  and some cream or ice cream.

Sunday Sleep In

Tabitha has another molar coming through at the moment - her fourth - and it is giving her, and consequently me, a little grief.  She has a runny nose, and so with that and the tooth pain, she was up looking for milk and cuddles for most of last night.  I think I managed to snatch a few hours of sleep in there, albeit broken into 20-minute blocks!

So when I woke up very tired this morning, The Daddy kindly took Tabitha out for a two-hour walk around the neighbourhood, by the river, parks, to get a coffee and home again, which allowed me to snatch another two hours of uninterrupted sleep.  I felt much better by the time I woke at 10am!

When I awoke, they had returned and were making me pancakes and bacon, so I got to eat breakfast in bed, with a nice cup of tea, in peace while they had their breakfast in the living room.  It was a lovely start to a Sunday.

The Daddy is the pancake chef in our house, and he uses a Nigella Lawson recipe, which makes deliciously fluffy, American-style pancakes.  I had five, that's right, five, each as large as a plate, with a pile of free range bacon and plenty of maple syrup.

The Nigella recipe uses a blender, so it's very easy to whip up a batch and start pouring:

The syrup was a real treat - our good friend Sarah recently visited from Canada, and brought us some Canadian maple syrup in a pretty tin:

Speaking of lovely gifts - I went out to dinner last night with a couple of girlfriends, and my friend Shalini brought over a birthday gift for Tabitha.  It is something I had mentioned to her ages ago, that I had heard about and wanted, and she tracked this down.  It is a traditional babies' anklet with little bells!  So you can hear where they are in the house, as they crawl and walk around!  So cute.  The sound the bells make is exquisite, a delicate little tinkling noise.  This one is Cambodian.  As she gets older, it will fit her to wear as a bracelet:

Tabitha has quite a bit of hair now!  I managed to scrape some into a cute little fountain ponytail:

Her spooning skills are increasing rapidly. One of the frequent concerns I hear from people about trying Baby Led Weaning is the fear that 'they will never learn to use cutlery if they eat with their hands'.  It's nonsense, I assure you.  We have practiced BLW since day one, and at 12 months, she is quite a proficient spooner - more so than many non-BLW babies I know.  I think that BLW gives them a good awareness of the textures and feel of food, and it also increases their fine motor skills, as they have to maneuver their own food from 6 months of age.  She can happily spoon a whole bowl of yoghurt, rice pudding or porridge, if I help her a little with loading the spoon.

In fact, the messiest food she eats seems to be cream cheese on corn thins - she likes to lick all the cream cheese off, discarding the 'empty' cracker part.  This results in a fair amount of cream cheese on the face:

When she eats she plays a game where she lays her head down on the table, then I do the same, then we both jerk them upright at the same time and laugh:

Remember my pretty tulip gift from last weekend?  The tulips are still looking so stunning and cheery on my kitchen windowsill:

Collingwood Children's Farm

Yesterday was a glorious day - the kind of Winter day when you become thoroughly convinced that Spring is just around the corner (until you check the weather forecast and see a week full of rain and frost ahead).

Our mothers' group ventured out to the Collingwood Children's Farm, one of my favourite places in Melbourne.  As with last time, and the time before, I forgot my camera (actually, my memory card this time).  There seems to be some kind of farm/camera curse upon me.  Never mind, one of the other mothers in our group kindly emailed me a few snaps of Tabitha enjoying the farm.

Here is Tabitha peering over the fence at the lovely, kind, gentle goats.  Their ears are so silky:

One of my favourite parts of the Children's Farm is the guinea pig room - Tabby adores them too!  They are calm and nice to hold and stroke.  At long last, Tabby is learning to be gentle with animals, and can actually pat one, with supervision.  This guinea pig is called Possum, just like one of our cats!  Possum the guinea pig is a Grey Agouti, with gorgeous, thick, tufty fur:

In honour of our trip to see the animals, Tabitha wore a sweet top with a navy blue bunny on the front, with a pink ribbon and real bell around its neck. She also wore her bangle with the little baby fawn.

I wore my Marc Jacobs 'mousie' shoes, and a leopard print scarf.  Many people would think that wearing black and white spotty shoes, with a leopard print scarf, and a blue-and-white pinstripe jacket is a grave crime against fashion.  Not me!  I do love my prints, and never shy away from wearing them all at once.  Plus, as a mother, I have realised that prints really come into their own around babies and children - Vegemite smears do not show up nearly as much on leopard print as they do on plain colours, and bits of egg seem to camouflage well against a cheerful floral background!

Tabitha was in quite a funny mood today - she didn't want to be in her pram, didn't want to be carried (unless she was pushing the pram - without mummy's help thank you!).  She wanted to walk along, holding the pram, which is very slow.  Plus, every few steps, she wanted to stop and eat dried grass and dirt.  Hmm.  So, as you can see below, we got into a couple of battles of will - here, she wants to push the pram, and I cannot seem to prise her away from it!  It looks like she is hanging from the pram.  I think this is all just part of becoming a toddler - suddenly she knows exactly what she wants, but lacks the communication skills to tell me.  So if things don't go her way, she gets quite cross and upset.  I completely understand!

It is so fascinating, watching as Tabitha learns more about the world, and starts to express her own preferences and desires.  Although this can be frustrating for her (and me) if I don't understand exactly what she wants, it is so exciting to see her start to communicate much more.  She points to shoes and says 'zzzoezzz' or 'ooozz'.  If anyone says 'no', she shakes her head wildly from side to side - such as 'no biting', 'no touching' but even if I say no in another context (such as telling my husband, on the phone, that we have no milk), she will start to shake her head!  Cute.