be a knight, do it right

I read an article recently about how people's Facebook statuses are bathed in lies.

My cousin-in-law pointed this out when I posted the following pictures of a Saturday morning project on Facebook so I should preface the pics with an accurate description.

It's 5:16am. There are two little people in our bed. (In fact, would you consider it still 'in bed' when my legs are hanging over the side and the rest of my body is squished into the smidgen of bed that was once the only thing we had that we didn't have to share with our kids?)

I'm not complaining but my ribs are also sore from the dozen or so kicks I received in the night - an unfortunate consequence of P's reflexes.

There's snoring. Loud snoring.

And it's not my husband. It's not me. It's not our son. It's our two-year-old daughter.

I'm just trying to get some 'sleep' in those last few moments of the night when four-year-old B has a sudden urge to make an announcement "I need to do a poo!"

The snoring stops and at that moment B also decides to poke his sister in the cheek as a parting gift as he jumps up, launches himself across me, (another foot in the guts) and makes his way down the corridor to the bathroom screaming "MUMMYYYYY! Can you please turn on the bathroom light?"

Sure. I'm awake.

Skip forward to 8:00am. We've been awake almost three hours. The kids have watched their week's ration of television and we fooled ourselves in to thinking we had another couple of hours sleep.

I've whipped up bacon and eggs (fresh from the chookies), we've made good coffee and the newspaper's been delivered.

*sigh* I just love Saturdays. *sigh* I just love family time.

"What's that B? Oh. You've finished brekky?"

And I just sat down.

"And you want me to make you a knight's outfit?"

Sure. Why not? It's not as though I've even opened the newspaper yet.

variation on a theme

When I was about 15 a close family friend asked me to assist her with a catering job. We were catering for the Narooma Blues Festival when it was in its infancy and my first task was to make a batch of brownies. The festival was held over a long weekend and we needed enough for the three days so my task was to make them in a huge tub that came up to my hips - one you might find holding dry stores in a health food shop.

The brownie making wasn't without its challenges, as you can imagine with a batch that big, and we went through dozens of eggs. I remember writing down the ingredients list and then dividing it so that the batch was more suited to a small family!

This is another recipe from Donna Hay's Modern Classic Book 2 but I like to experiment so when I made this batch of brownies yesterday I also added 1/2 cup each of broken walnuts and frozen raspberries. I guess you could add any nuts, white chocolate or blueberries.

J and I could have been found having a cup of loose-leaf (the best kind of) tea and a sneaky brownie out on the back verandah while the kids were inside playing Lego this morning.

chocolate brownie

200g dark couverture chocolate*, broken into pieces
250g butter, chopped
1 3/4 cups brown sugar (I used 1 1/4 cups instead)
4 eggs
1/3 cup cocoa powder, sifted***
1 1/4 cups plain (all purpose) flour, sifted
1/4 teaspoon baking powder

I also added half a cup each of chopped walnuts and frozen raspberries.

* I just used some dark eating chocolate I had stashed in the cupboard.
** I used 1 1/4 cups instead
*** I used carob powder. I loved this flavour combined with the dark chocolate.

Preheat the oven to 160ºc. Place the chocolate and butter in a saucepan over a low heat and stir until smooth. Allow to cool slightly.
Place the sugar, eggs, cocoa, flour and baking powder in a bowl. Add the chocolate mixture and mix until combined. Pour the mixture into a 20cm square slice tin lined with non-stick baking paper. Bake for 50 mins or until cooked. Cool slightly in the tin. Cut into slices. Serve warm or cold. Makes 16 slices.

wrap up of the week

In the kitchen:

Pumpkin, spinach, feta, pine nut 'sausage rolls'

Combine baked pumpkin (baked in olive oil with whole garlic cloves), diced feta, and wilted spinach (then squeezed by hand to move moisture), one egg and toasted pine nuts. Remember to squeeze the garlic clove contents into the mixture. Roll in ready-made organic puff pastry (available at Harris Farm Markets).

I found that the 'sausage roll' style tended to ooze a bit so decided on putting nine generous dessert spoonfuls of mixture on a sheet of pastry (a couple of centimetres apart) then laying a second sheet over the top, cutting into squares and pressing down the edges. My 2 year old brushed them generously with a beaten egg so they browned in the oven (200ºc for about 16 mins or until golden).

Serve with a salad and plum sauce (see below).

Fish cakes with Vietnamese salad

A few weeks ago J spreaded the last of my grandfather's ashes (on his way to work) from his kayak between North and South Head in Sydney. Within minutes he'd hooked a 50cm long Australian salmon (thanks Brownpa) so we researched a few good things to do with salmon aside from grilling the fillets. We came up with this variation of fish cakes. Unfortunately J didn't catch any fish this week but Harris Farm was having a special- buy 2kg of bream for the price of 1kg so I made these again.

Salad: finely slice purple cabbage, grated carrot, spring onions and capsicum. Add a handful or so (depending on taste) of finely sliced Vietnamese mint, coriander and Thai basil and drizzle with lime juice, sesame oil, and fresh chilli dressing. Sprinkle with sesame seeds (or freshly roasted peanuts) and serve immediately.

Fish cakes: place fillets of fish, few kaffir lime leaves, half a lemongrass stickand equal quantities of fresh coriander, parsley, spring onions & finely diced potatoes in to a food processor. Process until a thick paste is formed. Shallow fry in organic coconut oil and serve with the Vietnamese inspired salad and sweet chilli sauce.

Plum sauce

I used the recipe from Stephanie Alexander's Kitchen Companion.

Mangoes: preparing for hibernation

Mango season is so short and I dream about mangoes when its not Summer so I've come up with a way that I can cherish mangoes - for smoothies or cakes. Slice fresh mangoes and squeezed mango pulp and juice (from pips). Place in sandwich bags (or spare containers) and place in freezer for use in Winter.

A girlfriend was only telling me today that she's done the same thing with fresh passionfruit that was given to her. She has frozen the pulp in ice cube trays.

Tomato concentrate

My grandmother and my friend both had a surplus of tomatoes that they gave me so I have retained some for salads this week and have made a batch of tomato concentrate with the remainder.

Tomato concentrate: fry off two red onions and four garlic cloves. Add diced tomatoes and a tin of water. Add basil (this is where my frozen basil leaves came in handy), and handfuls of parsley. Reduce until thick and blend in blender. Freeze.* You can also add red wine before reducing but I forgot. I'll add it to my thawed sauces instead.

Bread: It's easy to forget that convenience of a bread maker but I am getting back 'into it' this week. It's definitely as convenient as going to the shops to buy bread, and cheaper.

In the garden:

Turns out our tomatoes are finally ripening. Some of them are blistered and many of them are being nibbled by a keen possum or two but I am managing to salvage a few.

Chooks: 

Our chooks are finally laying more regularly. They went off their laying for a while there. It's hard to say if it was the adjusting to the three additional chooks or the heat. They are giving us, on average, three beautiful eggs a day.

my peanut butter & carob chip biscuits

Ingredients

125g unsalted butter, softened
1 teaspoon vanilla extract (or vanilla bean seeds from one vanilla bean)
1 teaspoon lemon rind, grated finely (I use a fine mandolin)
1/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup brown sugar, packed lightly
1/2 cup unsalted crunchy or smooth peanut butter (I prefer Sanitarium from the healthfood isle because the ingredients are just peanuts.)
1/3 cup carob buttons broken into pieces
1 1/4 cups plain flour
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
Pinch salt

Method

Preheat a the oven to 180°c.

In a larger bowl cream the butter, vanilla extract, lemon rind and sugars. Add the peanut butter and mix well.

Add the sifted flour, bicarbonate of soda, salt and carob pieces and mix with a spatula until well combined.

With your hands, roll into balls the size of walnuts and place on trays lined with greaseproof baking paper. Press each biscuit gently with a fork - first crossways and en lengthways.

Bake for 15 minutes or until golden. Cool biscuits on trays for 10 minute then transfer carefully to cooling racks.

Makes approx 24

threading...

The weather has been quite unpredictable in Sydney of late so I've had to think of a few indoor activities for the kids. Earlier this week I bought a bag of oranges which reminded me of weaving activities I'd set up for my Kindy kid.

I had some twine and I tied one end to the end of a strip of orange bag then wrapped a piece of sticky tape tightly around the other end (much like the end of a shoelace) so it was easy to thread.

B sat for some time threading the twine in and out of the orange bag and then announced "Mummy! I've made you a shower ball!" and that's exactly what it looked like when he'd finished.

Fine motor skills include molding play dough (squeezing, pulling, stretching), manipulating small objects (e.g. jigsaw pieces), cutting with scissors, drawing, tracing. Strengthening the muscles in the hands helps to develop the pincer grip and the muscles used to coordinate a pencil when writing, manipulate a fork etc,.