Remake/Remodel

I wanted to make morning tea for the team I'm leaving behind at work. I made them orange and sultana scones, and chocolate brownie. If you read the KitchenMaid blog, you'll see that her recipe is based on some legendary scones around town. I'd not heard of them until I read her post.

Then I had dinner with a bunch of gals, most of whom were locals to the cafes where these scones come from, and there was much murmuring around the table about their greatness. I don't like dates at all, though. I figured it'd be a dealbreaker.

Anyhoo, I ventured out on a walk that landed me in Lyall Bay a few days later. Sitting on the beach, watching the morning kick in, drinking a delicious coffee and feeling apprehensive about eating something with dates in. Here's a really silly photo of it:

Reader, I married that scone. Or near as dammit. Go get one. As soon as you can. I figure they must soak the dates, so they bake up like ribbons of date-tasting goodness, without that gritty texture that puts my teeth on edge.

Because, as nicely as my interpretation - I substituted stewed apple for an egg - of Lucy's version of these scones turned out, it wasn't anything like so splendid as what they're knocking out at Queen Sally's.

And the brownie?? I went vegan on it because we were out of eggs, and it needed a fully ripe banana, which suited very well.

In other news, it's Hallowe'en party time. I went to a little shindig after work last night, and snaffled a beautifully cut jack-o-lantern to take home. Sweeney and Harper loved it in their room with a tea light.

We took it to Bela's party this afternoon. It performed very well. Note special, festive horns.

 Then I took some photos of it in action, along with the special, festive horns. The tea light had extinguished, and the only other candle short enough was a bit of a whopper, so it's fairly blazing here ...

Then we went back downstairs and about three seconds passed before the smoke detector went off. As a result of all of this, Sweeney really likes Hallowe'en now. And he doesn't even know about trick or treating yet.

C is for Cookie

Sweeney's packed in a swag of preschool-grade goofing off into his last weekend as a four-year-old:

• ran and jumped and clambered with Bela;
• played something noisy and shouty and very, very active with Aariz;
• went to a climbing wall with Joe and Kimberley;
• helped me make sourdough, and fish and leek pie;
• took about three years to tidy his room. By which I mean, empty most of what was in his room into the hallway;
• watched Sesame Street and loved it;
• having watched Sesame Street, understood who Cookie Monster is and went nutty over a Cookie Monster storybook he's previously scorned;
• insisted on having his Cookie Monster stories read to him over and over and over;
• watched Ahhh!! Real Monsters and Angry Beavers, and clearly found them a big, fat yawn;
• ate roti and butter chicken at Aariz's house, kind of sort of almost in the manner that Aariz and his family eat it; and
• chatted, sang, danced, played the piano for a bit, made stuff up, did some drawing, co-operated, refused to co-operate, fed the cat, built things, hung up the towels.

You know, the usual ...

(His) Favourite Things

What a mission this week was ...

• Sweeney's preschool was flooded out and stayed closed for three days;
• Sweeney's grandad spent three nights in hospital with severe bellyache;
• Sweeney popped into work with me for 11.4 minutes and provided us all with visual confirmation of what Running Rampant actually means. Also Gleeful Shrieking and Telling Your Mother's Boss Secret Things About Her;
• Consequently, the next day, Sweeney had a heap of quality-face-time with Joe and Harper;
• We said to goodbye to John from No.20. The quality of street gossip is never going to recover;
• Paths were swept and hosed;
• Frank from No.21 popped over for a visit;
• Rubbish was taken to the dump;
• Delicious stroganoff was concocted and snorkelled down with delicious noodles. Take that, you annoying quantity of crisper-dwelling mushrooms and half-cups of wine left over from Sunday night dinners ...;
• My hair kind of did what I wanted it to, most days;
• Which was just as well, because a photo of me ended up in the paper. Turns out that more important than the Important Social Message I was imparting was the fact that I have an actual age, and semi-Vulcan eyebrows;
• Lamb shanks as big as Sweeney's face, along with some awesome cauliflower curry and other stuff that didn't really match but still tasted amaaaaaazing, were served up for dinner with the W-Ds and M-Zs; and
• The sun shone, the birds sang, the wind blew in rather a pleasant way, there was some insanely lovely full moon action ...

Sweeney scored a boogie board at the Dump Shop today, and a Spiderman toy. At that point, I noticed that he was wearing his full Spiderman outfit, and had been all day. Top marks for eyes, Ange.

Harper and Kimberley came for dinner, and, out of nowhere, Sweeney gave Harper custody of Pooh.

Just like that. His favourite, favourite of All the Favourites since he was ten weeks old. We even prop him up with us to let him enjoy us reading Winnie the Pooh at night better. Sweeney uses him as a pillow, half the time. Last night, when we got home at the ungodly hour of 9:45pm, and he was about three feet beyond knackered, the look of relief on his face as I plopped him into bed and he buried his head into Pooh's soft fur was just magic.

Spiderman is the New Favourite. I know this because he's taken his boogie board to bed, and is lying asleep on it, using Spiderman as his pillow.
*Note that the boys kindly selected Bert for Kimberley to play with, so she could feel all included and stop giving her own child The Rabbit ...

Sometimes It Rains In April

See ya, April!! You were a pretty good month, not that I can remember terribly much in detail about you. Highlights include, but are not limited to:

• kicked off the month with a fab weekend with ladies;
• finished the month with two of those ladies, another one of my fave ladies, and their fine families;
• saw Sweeney's grandad off for a sojourn in hippie paradise;
• went to a party in an enormous, posh house in Khandallah. There was a pool table that kept Sweeney enthralled, and a table straining under the weight of its delicious drinks that kept me enthralled. And of course, the company ...;
• got through Easter with only one truly horrific sugar frenzy. I blame Sweeney's Uncle Ben and Grandad O'Neill;
• took a day off from the world;
• Sweeney had two sleepovers at Harper's. I spent one of them watching Poirot and knitting. The other I spent oozing in and out of consciousness on the couch, notably missing both the Royal Wedding and the party I was supposed to be at to watch it. I blame the fully-enjoyable-but-fast-getting-out-of-control drinks frenzy I went to first;
• encountered one of my more hilarious cousins and hung out with him and his ravishing wee girl. I particularly enjoyed how she got Sweeney's measure superfast - belting out his name whenever he removed himself from view, running everywhere with him;
• turned out a bread and butter pudding in the slow cooker. I come from a bloodline of strenuously delicious bread and butter puddings. It was my first bread and butter pudding. Next time, I'll be sure to add some flavour;
• watched (1) Exit Through the Gift Shop, (2) District 9 and (3) Baghead. (1) Loved it, (2) surprised myself by loving it, (3) surprised myself by hardly hating it at all;
• spent not nearly enough time with pals, swam, went to the beach, ran and ran and ran, built lego, read stories, constructed a stunt car ramp out of toilet rolls;
• made awesome dinners. Replaced some of them with baked beans, for my shorter, more philistine dinner companion's benefit; and
• made some real inroads with my yoga and my running. Then went backwards for a bit. Am resolved to go forward some more ...

Pizza Pie

Check out Sweeney and Blessing giving their lunch two thumbs up today. Albeit in a non-committal kind of way. Actually, more of a could've-done-without-it kind of way. What's with them??

It's a crustless pizza, from Kitchen. I think it's delicious, and it's easy, and it was ready within 45 minutes of me cracking the first egg. Three thumbs up, in my book.

I doubled the quantity, used some delicious ham I found in the fridge, instead of chorizo, and bunged it all into a flan dish. It lends itself to accommodating all manner of vege as well.

The leftovers are in the fridge, and they're calling me for a scoff right now, rather than waiting to schlep them to work for tomorrow's lunch .

In other news, I'm going gluten free for two weeks, as a little experiment. Firstly, to see if I can stick to it. Secondly, to see if it makes any kind of difference to my body. Thirdly, because I was dairy-free for ages, years ago, and the ice cream I ate at the end of that phase of my life was the best thing I've ever eaten. I'll never forget that ice cream. After two weeks, I expect a piece of Vogel's to blow my head off.

Monster

Things I didn't know this time last week:

• Sweeney likes coleslaw;


• I can feel more tired than I did at the end of last year;


• Sweeney is mysteriously familiar with KFC and its range of products;


• You should lightly oil the pan that you're baking your pie in;


• Eta lite mayonnaise is actually rather acceptable.

Okay, it's not much of a list. It's been a slow week. Or maybe I've forgotten a bunch of stuff I picked up on along the way.

I've identified the main culprits of food that just sits forever in the kitchen and goes nowhere until rubbish day. The ones at the top of the list right now are the jar of wholegrain oats that were deemed unpalatable as porridge, and the last four bananas. Every week, it's four bananas that defy No Food Left Behind. I caught on that you can freeze them, and I do that, but I'm old school enough that it still gives me the greatest pleasure to use them straight from the bowl on the bench.

Yesterday, the planets aligned and I turned out a batch of banana-oat biscuits. The name says it all, really. I chopped up some almonds and threw them in with some raisins and they turned out okay. The recipe calls for 2tsp of sugar, but I didn't put any in. I reckon next time I make them, which will be tonight, I'll put in more banana. We've got some gosh-darned ripe ones here that could do with being converted into something more appetising.

In other news, I picked this up for Sweeney for Christmas. Mo Willems is just lovely. Sweeney's got some others of his, and Harper has, too. The ideas in Leonardo the Terrible Monster are really quite big and hard for little, little kids, but Sweeney's getting the hang of more difficult/complex feelings and behaviours now. That sounds deep, doesn't it, but what I mean is that there are decisions to be made about how you act towards people, you can choose to be at odds with the world, or you can enjoy being in amongst it.

You can be mean or you can be kind. You can be grumpy or you can be chirpy.

At least, that's how I read it.

Take A Picture

I see from a quick look at other people's blogs this evening, that there's a bit of summing up of Awesome Craft Behaviour from 2010. I'm not doing that. It'd be showing the same knitting pattern made repeatedly, sometimes not even in different wool, and even I, with my high threshold for boredom, recognise that that's not so interesting. And I just can't quite get the hang of how to make my photos into a nifty mosaic yet.
But that's another story ...

Sweeney and I celebrated last day of hols by going up to Waikanae Beach and hanging out with the neighbours for the afternoon. Our little boys helped some bigger boys to build a dam, then we mucked around in the waves. That was splendid, but Sweeney was a little iffy on it. So we headed to the park, and the boys swung on a big rope swing.

I didn't take any photos.

Then delicious nachos in the sun, and off home to tell each other what our favourite bits of the day were. Sweeney's were the ice cream sandwich and the dam. Mine were the ice cream sandwich and when it turned out that he didn't actually have bluebottle stings on his legs.

Well, we were back at school and work this morning. A little bit shellshocked (me), a little bit overwhelmed (Sweeney). And a little bit SWIPED (Sweeney's scooter, left at preschool from Christmas Eve, and now disparu ...). That was disappointing.

I was disappointed in myself to find that I don't have any photos of Sweeney on his scooter. He's had a lot of good scootering on that scooter, even if he never really believed in the power of its brake. So, here's a picture of me when I was two (I think), with my favourite toy at the time. I think that was the last time I really rocked an above-the-knee hemline. I still love a good maryjane shoe, though.

Aww, bless.

But I digress from what I actually set out to blog about. I meant to trumpet to the world how much I'm loving my Kitchen book. I've made something from it most days since Christmas, with the following highlights:

- chocolate banana muffins to take out to Auntie Thelma with the boys and their Nana;

- ham and broad bean salad, using Kimberley's Christmas ham and broad beans grown at our house, and Craig and Dorothy's down the road;

- blondies - a white version of the brownie, to take to Waikanae Beach. Seventeen forms of sugar can't be wrong ...;

- ham and leek pie - leeks cooked off in cider, then added to a white sauce with ham, mushrooms and more cider in it. Best accompanied by cider, and some amazing little purple potatoes from Craig and Dorothy's garden down the road. Then, when you're doing the washing up, have another cider; and

- toad in the hole. Yes. Toad. In. The. Hole. Actually, this really came into its own when the leftovers were fried off in bacon fat when we were camping. Haaaaaaapppy New Year, indeed ...

No, I don't have any photos of those, either. My challenge for myself is to find my camera, and empty the fridge and cupboards using this book. The mantra for 2011 is "no food left behind!!" ... or maybe something equally Lawrence of Arabia-ish, but less crazy-sounding.