December Daily - 3rd

Today its phone photos.  Amazingly I took 16 photos on my phone today and a bunch on the DSLR of my cake preparation (that is for tomorrow).

Tuesday is my day off with the boys.  Ben got some McDonald's hotcakes for breakfast, he loved spreading the "peanut butter" (whipped butter) and dipping it into the maple syrup.  I got myself a coffee.  Ryan wasn't feeling the best, so he went without.  Marko went to school and Jamie went to the casino with his friends for a farewell "do".

Cold hotcakes for breakfast

My work colleague/friend Raihanah had her 4th baby on Friday, so the staff at work put in and I got these items.  A jungle gym, a Hungry Caterpillar towel, some gorgeous clothes from Pumpkin Patch and some bathing stuff.  We went to visit this afternoon, and I got a cuddle from baby Maryam, she's so cute and alert.  Forgot to take a pic - whoops.

Checking out Maryam's stash

The wrapped presents

 My little sickie - a good poop did the trick.  He is causing me so much grief at the moment.  Refusing to go to sleep.  Spending far too much time on my phone watching YouTube videos.  He was asleep at 10.15pm tonight, almost a record for early to bed!  I feel I spend all my time threatening, maybe that's the issue, barely follow through.  Anyway... in true Facebook fashion, this time 4 years ago... my waters had had broken about 2 hours ago, we headed in to the JHH and waited for the much anticipated arrival of our dear middle child.

Ryan felt sick, so had a nap today.

Tonight's dinner was due to me staying up late last night watching Rick Stein's India.  He made this prawn and coconut curry.  It was very delicious and now I have mustard oil in my pantry (yay). 

Cooking dinner

Rick Stein's prawn and coconut curry.

Today mum went in to have her 3rd spinal surgery.  Mr Lu Ton is her fabulous surgeon, who she adores and trusts completely.  Her titanium rod in her back broke (!) so the whole structure needed reinforcing.  Supposedly they did a lot more than was anticipated, but should make it all stronger.  She is spending the night in the High Dependency Unit and then will go to the ward tomorrow.  So thankful that she has gotten though the past year and will start her road to recovery.  They have a massive year planned for next year.  Don't need back pain to get in the way.

More baking

Tonight's projects:

Home made granola - adapted from Joy of Baking. This is definitely not the pretty version of this recipe, but I've made it so many times now that I just add my own things.  My recipe is:

3 cups of rolled oats (every recipe says not instant, but I'm not sure why)
3/4 cup of slivered almonds
1/2 cup pumpkin seeds
1/2 cup sunflower seeds
1 cup coconut - coarse grind if you've got it
A sprinkle of chia seeds
1 tsp of salt
1 tsp of cinnamon
Pour over 1/2 cup of golden syrup and 3 tablespoons of oil
Mix well and spread on a roasting tray, cook at 180C for around 20mins.
I tend to cook until it smells really yummy.  I burned it once, so ever since it has always been a little blonde.
Then chop of some dried fruit, this time I added about 6 dried sliced apple (chopped up) and a big handful of prunes chopped up.
It makes a really dense mixture and its totally delicious and I end up eating too much, so I "watered" it down with some Rice Bubbles.

Then I made a meatloaf for tomorrow nights dinner.  This time adapted from Nigella Lawson's site.  I still have quite a few tubs of sausage meat, so I defrosted one of those and a package of minced pork/veal mix.  1 egg, salt and pepper and two slices of stale bread.  Mix and mush until all combined.  Oh and Worcestershire sauce.  Lay down a bed of meat, then put 3 boiled eggs along it, then put the other half of the meat until its all covered.  Then the best bit - BACON - I swaddled the whole thing in bacon (I'm even starting to sound like Nigella now.


Finally, I made my mini pumpkin pies.  No adapting this time, a straight steal from here.
1 15oz can of pumpking (huh? can?? I boiled up a piece of pumpkin and then mashed it, then I used my "you beaut" scales and found out what the heck 15oz is - around one cup I would assume.)
1 can of sweetened condensed milk (yummmm)
2 large eggs
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground ginger (oops didn't have any of this, left it out)
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/3 tsp salt
1 unbaked pie crust (I made my own pastry!)

Pastry - taken from Betty's Kitchen which is a YouTube channel.  She doesn't have written recipes you have to watch her very long (about 10 mins) videos to get the recipe.

Anywhoo I put the pastry in a small flan tin and then popped about one cup of the pumpkin mix into it, slid it into the oven at 210C and baked for about 20 mins.  They look amazing, currently sampling and it tastes bloody beautiful too...

Nigella's Pesto Pasta

This is definitely going on our menu at home and on our Christmas holiday

Nigella Lawson's Pesto

500g potatoes cubed and boiled until soft.
500g linguini - put into the same pan as the cooked potatoes
200g green beans - again in the same pan as the above ingredients.

In a blender
100g basil
100g parmesan cheese
1 clove of garlic
100-200ml of olive oil
Add some of the cooking water to thin it out.

Strain the pasta and add the pesto.
VOILA.

Eating / Cooking

It appears I'm going to end up having a family of big eaters.

Today (Saturday) Breakfast
Mark - huge bowl of cereal
Ryan - 2 weetbix and a banana, followed by a honey sandwich
Ben - 1 weetbix and banana followed by a vegemite sandwich
That is just breakfast.  It does slow down a bit over the day.  They enjoy lunch - a tin of spagetti (each for the little ones).

So that got me thinking, how am I going to feed them as they grow up and get bigger.  I did a google search "large family cooking" and that took me exactly where I wanted to be.  Religious home schoolers with big families.  One of them - Responding in Faith - has made me laugh because of her breakfasts.

biscuits, gravy and eggs

grits, sausage and egg casserole
waffles
omelets
french toast

apple dumplings

southwest breakfast casserole

Imagine going to that much effort for breakfast.  Hasn't she heard of cereal?  A smoothie?  Toast with vegemite?  What the heck are biscuits and grits (my initial guess is scones and well I just dont' know about grits)

Then comes lunches:

grilled sandwiches, chips, carrots

chicken nuggets, mac and cheese, fruit cups

pizza burgers, chips, carrot sticks

hot dogs or chili dogs, fries, fruit cups

sandwiches, applesauce, cottage cheese

pasta, apple sauce, garlic bread

fish sandwiches, veggies, yogurt

SOOOO much effort.

Snacks and dinners are fully planned too.  I didn't read the blog too much, but I'm guessing she homeschools.  How does she have time to homeschool, cook, clean and do laundry for her 5-7 children.  I need to have a little lie down thinking about it.

Planning and starting afresh

I've been down recently - like really down, bordering on depressed down.  Felt mildly suicidal* at times, but it gets sorted with a good cry.  I do health assessments on people and during these health assessments I say a certain mantra "everything is improved with diet and exercise"
Since returning from Thailand, my diet has dissolved into a puddle of peanut butter and I haven't moved.  No exercise at all.  I'm getting fatter, my tummy is bigger than my boobies and I'm exhausted.

"Everything is solved with diet and exercise"

 The time has come, the time is now.  Christy D Storer will you please go now... and do some exercise.


 If you haven't already worked it out, I'm going to exercise, join a gym, the one next to the crèche.

My promise to myself is

1. I will go to bed earlier.
2. I will wake up earlier.
3. I will go to the gym and work my butt off.
4. I will improve my eating - more vegetables, less bread
5. I will take time to enjoy my children.
6. I will take time to enjoy my husband.

*  Thought about it, no definite plan, just looking for an out.

FOOD

Grocery shopping today.  I do love to grocery shop.
If my printer was plugged in, I'd have a full menu plan.  Why did I not just hand write it.
Tonight it something delicious that I am going to find at LaManna

Some things I need to make, summer veg and haloumi salad.
A roast of some sort
I need to finish that lemon slice.

OK time to get the boys up.  Daycare today.  A free day for me.

I like hosting shin-digs

Today we had our dearest little chap's first birthday party.

Just so hard to actually believe little Ben is one year old.  In some ways it seems so much longer.  This last year has been very, very intense.

Today was a "Milk and Cookies" themed party, which in all honesty didn't really take off.

When we lived here 9 years ago we used our back door almost exclusively as "the door" but this time around because of now having two dogs and two little people, its easier not to have to tackle the back gate and just use the front door.  Connie still uses the back, but she is the only one.  The sliding door is hard to unlock as well.  What does this have to do with the party you ask?? Well I set up the "dessert table" to face the back door, it was quite visually exciting, I had bunting, a balloon centrepiece, a cupcake stand and other deliciousnesses. It looked great when approached from the back door.  But everyone came in through the front!  SO when you turn around the corner it was nice, but not the WOW factor I was after.

We had sausages in bread, hamburgers and coleslaw for the main course.
A pretty spectacular cake (if I do say so myself) done in the shape of a 1.
Heaps of cookies, cake pops, m&m's and jaffas.
Sugar overload, let me tell you.

Presents were great too...

Nan & Pop = clothes
Margie & Frankie-Pop = coat
Dunn family = Tonka truck
Geary family = Moon car (to go with the rocket we already have)
Holloway family = Trike with a trailer
Pulcifer family = clothes.
We got him a tractor that makes an awful amount of noise.

Today's cooking.

I'm making Beef Stroganoff for dinner (minus the mushrooms).
Dessert is going to be some sort of apple puff/turnover, need to find a recipe for it.

I played secretary for MyNetHost this morning, two of our clients needed some help, so I did phone support and got them through it. Very satisfying that. It also baffles me in this day and age that I rang a client and they gave me their credit card number no questions asked. I still have it written in front of me. If I was another person (ie my evil twin or just plain criminal) I could do some online shopping.

Babies are both asleep. Neither really napped at all yesterday, so I am looking forward to a peaceful day.

I was sick overnight, that was yuck. All better now.

Coffee.

We have a Caramali coffee machine. Its pretty awesome and Jamie makes great coffee out of it, (I'm still learning).
Last week whilst it was heating up, there was an awful smell. Plastic melting or something like that. No smoke, so we checked out our downlights but alas, it was the poor coffee machine.
It has since been pulled apart, de-scaled and is currently soaking in hydrochloric acid (eek). Having a LOT of trouble to source the offending part that melted, but in the mean time its getting clean and hopefully put back together.

Curries

As a family we are getting mighty addicted to curries. Makes it hard when one of the eating members of the family is a toddler.

Jamie loves his vindaloo... dont' know if he really loves it, or loves the idea of it. I made one from a supermarket vindaloo paste and was told it wasn't right. So I suggested he throw it out, oh the flavour is right, just not hot enough! Surely the flavour is more important and the pain of excess heat is not necessary.

Mark and I are loving butter chicken, had it from a jar tonight and in a word - yuck.

Tonight's vindaloo was made from scratch, I used the mortar and pestle for the first time, he said the heat was "just about right", the flavour was right but the colour wasn't the same as in the shop. One day I'll get it right.

Must attempt the butter chicken from scratch next.

Tomorrow I'm making Margaret Fulton's Meatloaf, which we had at mum's house and it was super delicious.

Masterchef

I have a strange relationship with this show. I want to like it. I watched the first season with a passion - recorded every ep for when I was on arvo shift. But then wasn't able to watch the final week because we were on a ski holiday and the house only had Foxtel!! So three months of solid viewing to be robbed of the last week.

I didn't watch Celebrity MC because it didn't interest me. Same for Junior MC. Same for series 2. But I wanted to watch this one. Even made a Facebook critique group.

But 7.30 is a bad time for me, channel 10 no longer works in our kitchen where I'm trying to clear up after dinner. Mark has an xbox, so he's in the lounge room where channel 10 does work.

But two weeks with my mum in Melbourne and I got hooked. It was New York week. But it was stupid. One of the challenges was making a 3 course meal, but they had to do a treasure hunt to find what the recipe was within Times Square, then make their way to that restaurant, then to the Four Seasons Restaurant, then cook a very intricate dish all within 3.5hrs. Another challenge was Harlem Soul food that they had to reproduce within a ridiculous time limit and were not given recipes. If someone told me to cook "collared greens" or "gumbo" after one taste I'd be screwed. And I'm 10-15 years older (ie more life experience) than most of the contestants.

Why give them time limits, make it you have a day (like real chefs do - they prepare in the morning, cook at the time) and the producers can do their thing and EDIT the footage. There is no reason that anyone should have undercooked chicken because they spent most of their time peeling potatoes.

In the soul food episode they should have shown us how to make the roux for the Mac & Cheese. Where are the recipes?
Fried chicken, someone should talk us through it.
Ribs... what was in the sauce?

Frustrating!

Food

Have I talked about food recently?

I haven't actually posted recently, so that'd be a no.

I'm roasting some chicken pieces for Mark's sandwiches. A lot of effort for sangas. But to buy a precooked chook is $10 and I got 2kg of frozen chicken pieces for $10
Tonight I shall roast, tomorrow I shall turn them into sandwiches. That being said, I should rescue the bread from the freezer.

I also want to make some vegetable muffins.

The spice mix for my beef vindaloo that Jamie is having.

Also need to make an alternative meal for the rest of us, damnit, should have bought the pork.

Also have choc chip cookies on the menu (to be made).

Off the computer and back to the kitchen.