Friday, September 14, 2012

Getting over the bugs...

Of course I succumbed this week to the sniffles after the kids having a fortnight of coughing, sneezing and such. The crappy weather didn't come to much, bit of a hail storm and an overnight frost, so thankfully the garden's looking okay. Sun out today and I'm doing the first watering of the Spring.  Off to have a lie down as I think I'm getting a migraine ;(

SO, hopefully back to my bloggy self in the next day or so. 

Got some lamb shanks braising in the oven for tea, hoping Master Leo will eat dinner tonight. Having some battles with him and this meal at the moment.  Back to sticker reward charts. Hope it works...promise of a McDonalds for 7 stickers. We'll see!

In the meantime, here's a song and video that I've been loving this week...I think this guy's just so groovy and he just makes me smile. Dance like nobody's watching ;)



Catch up soon.

Stef

Monday, September 10, 2012

Typical!

What usually happens where we live in NZ is that you get some lovely start of Spring mild weather where all the plants, flowers, trees and bulbs go "yipee" and start to burst into flower and growth.


What also usually happens is that we will almost always get a late frost or cold snap and they don't recover.  So for tomorrow we have this forecast....

Tomorrow 11 Sep
High 11°C
Overnight 2°C
Hail
Sleety showers, snow to 200 metres. Cold southwester.

Given that we are at sea level we may escape the snow, but there's equally as much chance that we will get it.  And for Wednesday that lovely overnight frost......

Wednesday12 Sep
High 9°C
Overnight -1°C
Hail
Sleety showers clearing. Icy southwester dying

This is how our garden looks today and if the forecast is correct then they may not be quite as perky after Wednesday.






 

Sunday, September 9, 2012

Lazy Sunday...yeah right!

Having the in-laws over for dinner and after flicking through my folder of recipes I thought I'd make a super simple and easy lemon roulade. My friend K gave me the recipe and I've made it a few times, it's pretty foolproof and very yummy! 

 

The lemon curd recipe makes 3 cups and you only use 1/2 cup for the filling so plenty left over for the fridge. The sponge only takes around 8 minutes in a hot oven and cools pretty quickly too.  No creaming butter and sugar.

Lemon Curd

200g Butter
1 cup castor sugar
Juice and zest of 3 lemons
4 eggs

  • Melt butter on medium high heat
  • Whisk in sugar, lemon zest, juice and eggs
  • Whisk continually on medium heat until it just begins to boil and remove from heat immediately.
  • Cool
Sponge

4 eggs at room temp
1/2 cup castor sugar
1/2 cup SR flour

  • Beat eggs and sugar until thick and creamy.
  • Sift flour into mixture and fold together.
  • Line a 25cm x 35cm jelly roll pan and spray with a light coating of oil
  • Bake on 200oC for 8 minutes or until risen and toast coloured.
  • Turn out onto a clean sheet of baking paper and cool completely.
To put together

150ml cream
1/2 cup lemon curd

  • Whip cream until thick, fold in lemon curd.
  • Keeping sponge on the baking paper score approx 1cm along the long edge of it.
  • Spread cream mix over entire surface of sponge.
  • Fold in the scored edge and use paper to wrap your sponge into a roulade; using the paper to roll it like you would a sushi roll.
  • Dust with icing sugar.

Yum!

This is in the oven right now and I'm just chilling with a cup of coffee before my in-laws arrive.


Are you having a relaxing Sunday?

Thursday, September 6, 2012

A rough week...

It's been a bit of a tough week. Ella was vomiting on Sunday night with a raging fever and off school Monday and Tuesday. Leo was up on Tuesday night with a raging fever in the night and we played musical beds for most of the night. He's very off colour with temperatures and up and down in temperament too. Day off pre-school today. Cora been coughing all week and off her food a bit. Thankfully, still sleeping through the night.
 
So needless to say, I'm a bit buggered!
 
We've been negotiating and coercing our big girl to brave it out and pull the front tooth and wiggly number three, out by herself or by me, but to no avail.
 
Until last night.



An hour and ten minutes from bedtime at 7pm she finally yielded and started flicking it with her tongue, which progressed to touching with her finger, to finally pulling the damned thing out!  There was much begging and pleading from us as she has been coughing so much that you could see when she was breathing in, that tooth flicked back quite spectacularly. We thought that rather than having to visit A&E with her having aspirated a tooth, that we'd persevere and it worked.

The tooth fairy was very generous with lots of coins, a hand written letter and a little pot of bright pink nail polish.

She did write a wee disclaimer at the bottom to say that this was the first and last time she would be so generous...coins only in future!



I'm looking forward to next week in the hope that all the kids are well again and I feel more rested.

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Tuesdays

On Tuesdays the kids and I usually have an easy dinner as Antz is at band practice.  Tonight was no exception, apart from the fact that we're all a bit tired. Ella's got a flu bug that had her vomiting on Sun night and off school for the past two days with fever and now a cough. Cora has the sniffles and is generally a bit more clingy than normal. I was up at midnight, 3am and 5am this morning to each and every one of them, so yes, an easy dinner tonight was a blessing!

Without the distraction of daddy coming home, I also usually manage to get them all to bed a bit earlier than normal which is great.
 
Tonight we had pizza. I make my own dough at lunchtime usually when I've got plenty of time, so 5pm tonight was a quick construction effort and into the oven.


Dough rising
 
I used a new recipe tonight from the one I usually use which is from The Pioneer WomanThis is the new recipe and it's okay...not sure which I like best, both much of a muchness to be honest.
 
I usually put the same ingredients on top every time as the kids like it and I suppose then it's nutritionally complete as a meal. 

Caramelised onions
Diced leftover chicken
Diced red and yellow pepper
Grated cheese

To caramelise my onions I dice a whole onion and saute with some olive oil for a few minutes on a medium low heat. The key is to soften the onion without colouring it to allow the natural sweetness of the onion to develop.

 
I often add in a small sprinkle of brown sugar and a drizzle of balsamic to give a bit more depth of flavour then keep it on a medium heat for a few more minutes stirring continuously until ready.
 



Et voila! Some tasty onion to add to your pizza.
 

 
Not the best photograph...taken in haste whilst the kids were begging "where's my dinner!".
 
 


Saturday, September 1, 2012

the pleasure and curse of toys

I'm sure we're just like most other homes with young children, and we certainly don't spoil our kids, but I tell you, kids toys can be a curse sometimes!

Our kids are 6, 3 (almost 4) and 9 months old and in order are girl, boy, girl. This makes for interesting times in the house whereby the rules at the moment are;

Ella's toys....stored in her bedroom.

Leo's toys....split between bedroom and main living area where the cars with wooden garage/road/rail are kept. This is because both he and Ella play with them and nothing is too small or dangerous for little Cora.

Cora's toys...mostly in our second living area that we call the toy room, where you could say that hubby's toys are kept too; paino/trumpet/flugelhorn. Sheesh! 

This was this afternoon when I tried to start sorting Cora's things into one box. You know, to be honest she really doesn't play with that many things as she's so busy watching her brother and sister play.

I feel like we're at so many varied stages with toys that we never get to the point of putting one lot into storage permenantly.  I love that the kids have access to playthings that can be tidied up quite quickly and put in a corner of a room, but it seems like every room in the house is used for play and is constantly in need of tidying.

Please tell me i'm not the only one!

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