Breakfast for Dinner... part 2

When 'daddy' works late, I often stick to simple cooking. I know it sounds awful, but if I have no adult audience I lower the bar a little bit. Is that awful?

Anyway, because I pride myself on serving my children nutritious (if sometimes unconventional) meals, this meal has become a favourite of mine - and Mr Z's!

Cheap, easy and nutritious, straight from the Lazy Mother's Handbook! (That's the term I use to refer to my shortcuts)


Special Scrambled Eggs

Ingredients: eggs, 1/2 cup of diced/grated vegetables per egg.

(this recipe is just an example of what you can use and serves 3, you can use whatever you have in your fridge)

6 eggs
1 large carrot, grated
1 medium onion, fine diced
2 mushrooms, fine diced
1/2 tomato, diced (or handful of cherry tomatoes cut in half)
handful of frozen corn
2 rashers of bacon diced
1/4 cup of grated cheese
olive oil

1. Fry onion and carrot until softened in a small amount of oil.
2. Remove from pan, fry bacon bits
3. Add onion and carrot back to pan, add other vegetables and stir until they are warmed through.
4. Crack eggs into the pan, keep stirring until eggs are cooked
5. Add cheese and remove from heat
6. Serve


If you need to bulk it up a bit, you can add precooked rice to the mix.

Simple summer dress

Miss Piggy said she wanted to sew a dress together over the holidays. Against my better judgement, I agreed...

What really happened was she occasionally pushed the pedal on the machine, played with the tape measure and whinged about how it wasn't long enough, puffy enough, flat enough, was taking too long... I could go on and on... All I can say is now I remember why I prefer to sew in the wee hours of the morning!!!

We took a piece of material that was 1.5 x her chest measurement, put some lines of shirring in, then sewed it up. A couple of pieces of ribbon and we were done.

The seams weren't all that straight, but she was happy with her pink maxi dress (like mummy's) and that's all that matters ;) It cost me just over a dollar to make and I will let her wear it for wrestling in the garden with her brothers, washing the car and any other crazy, dirty activity I usually veto the wearing of dresses for!!!

Grateful for endings... and beginnings

This week was my first week working part-time in over a year. I've dropped from a five day week to four.

A year ago, we sat down as a couple (and as parents to our three young children) and tried to work out what was best for our family. After an unexpected addition to our family, our best laid plans had come unstuck and we had to replan our future. We decided to try something different - fulltime work for me to help build my career and hopefully allow hubby to find some balance between work and family.

The year has been great for our kids, we've managed to get them everywhere they need to go and with a mix of hubby working onsite/from home, we've only needed to have our small boy cared for outside the home three days per week.

It worked pretty well - except for one thing.. me! I didn't cope very well with fulltime work in conjunction with being a well-rounded person. I also didn't feel I was being a very good parent, particularly given that I have a two year old son who is yet to call me 'mum' (or say much at all for that matter). I was tired, cranky, guilt-ridden and unhappy.

So this week I'm grateful that we are in a position to let me drop back to four days.

The extra day at home means I can take my small boy to music, have some one-on-one time with him (when I returned to work, he wasn't even walking so this is a pretty big deal) and work through a speech program with him. It made my week feel so much shorter and I feel happier and more balanced already.

I'm grateful for time, for patience - for knowing when to say 'enough' and for set ups that allow a compromise (I know not everyone is as lucky as me).

I'm also grateful that I'm here - as a 'replacement' baby conceived after my parents lost their eldest daughter, I know that things always happen for a reason - even awful things. I think that has helped me deal with some of the tragedies that have happened to me over the years - knowing that the awful thing happening to me means that something good will eventually arise out of it for someone.

I always take time to reflect on how lucky I am to be living the life I have on the anniversary of her birth and death. And I hug my own precious children (none of whom turned up when we planned for them) and celebrate how surprising and wonderful life can be. Back in the days when I was lamenting the fact I didn't think I would ever have a baby, I could never have known that it was all in God's perfect timing, that I had to wait for these *particular* three beautiful people to make their way into my life... and I wonder if my parents thought the same of me and my younger siblings.

Soppy, aren't I?

Joining in with 52 Weeks of Grateful over at Kidspot.

Dinner for Breakfast - part 1

Sometimes I just feel like dinner is beyond my realms of capability. When it's been a long day at work, a big day out with the kids (or I just haven't been to the shops in a while) I really struggle making dinner. Well, truth be told, I struggle to make dinner every night! I HATE to cook, but since I LOVE to eat, it's just one of those things I've learned to do.

When we were first starting out (and I was new at kitchen things) we used to eat pancakes for dinner quite a lot. Not the fluffy round ones the Americans make, but thin crepe-like pancakes we enjoyed as kids. The sort my mum used to roll up with lemon and sugar as a treat.

We learned that all sorts of leftovers made tasty pancake fillings - ham, roast chicken, avocado, cheese, turkey and cranberry, even salads.

We often added a bit of cheese, onion or garlic to the batter before frying to give it a bit of extra flavour.

Tonight we made them for our kids and they were a hit! We put cheese, ham and shallots into the 'dinner' version, and nutella in the 'dessert' version.


___________________________

Basic pancake recipe

3/4 cup flour
1 egg
1 cup milk (or 1/2 milk, 1/2 water)

Optional:
1/4 cup of cheese
Handful of chopped shallots/onion

Method:
1. Combine all ingredients with electric mixer
2. Fry as per crepes on a flat pan
3. Add desired filling, roll and serve

Cheap and cheerful :)

Grateful for

Today I'm grateful for:

1.Sunshine! I love Winter but my kiddliwinks really need their outdoor time. The cold and damp had us all coughing and sneezing and we were just sick of being cooped up.
2. Holidays! So nice to spend time with my babies... Lots of cuddles and giggles. Lots of time to answer strange questions and tell stories. Looking forward to my four day weeks next term.
3.Nights out! A lot of landmark birthdays in our group this year... So nice to leave our responsibilities to one side for a night of fun with friends. We might be sporting a lot of grey hair, but we still remember how to make each other laugh. So much fun :)

Linking up to Maxabella Loves grateful list at Kidspot :)

Verona artwork

We had such a happy, relaxing time in Verona earlier this year and I wanted to make something as a personal reminder. Something small, but something I could look at and smile while I remembered what a beautiful few days were spent with my little family.

My house is a little bit old fashioned on the inside - we have a country style kitchen with small blue tiles on the tops and up the walls, stained glass in our cabinets and blue trimming sneaking out around our house with the lower half of our walls painted eggshell blue (it's ok, it's not as weird as it sounds). I wanted something classic and blue, I thought kind of like a Willow dinnerplate but with a difference.

While we were at Juliet's house (as in Romeo and Juliet, as in the girl who inspired the novella that inspired Shakespeare to write his play) I saw some plate fragments that had been unearthed and pieced together and I knew they might help me in my quest.

I also wanted to incorporate some Italian phrasing I'd seen on a travel show. Apparently, on a bridge to Tiber Island, in Rome, there is grafitti which reads "Ti amo da qui... alla fine del mondo.. di nuovo qui... all'infinito..." which roughly translates as "I love you from here.. to the end of the world.. to here again, on and on forever." It's the sort of way we feel about each other round here!

So here it is: rocks, waves, leaves, love... and since it's done in sharpie, it will last infinito!

And in case you were interested, here are some of the plate pieces from Juliet's house:

Mr Z managed to sneak into this one ;)

and me on Juliet's balcony ;)

and he's done it again!

So... what do you think?

Masterchef... fing..?

We're not sure how or why, but somehow our kids have become experts on Masterchef. Not sure if this shows anywhere but Australia, but it involves amateur chefs battling it out in the kitchen. They prepare amazing dishes using supermarket bought products and then wait on the decision of a panel of foodies to see who will stay and who goes home. Much like a dozen other reality shows, really, but usually it's good, clean, family fun.

The funny thing is, it starts at bedtime, so the kids have rarely seen more than the opening credits as J and I run between cleaning up the kitchen, brushing teeth and getting stories read to our little darlings. It has been running since they were infants, it used to be cute to watch them bobbing up and down to the music while praying they didn't pay too much attention to the smiling, knife-wielding people on-screen!

Despite this limited exposure, Masterchef was very first thing that Miss Piggy added to our school holiday to-do list. Maybe they're playing it in the sandpit at school or something because she had very explicit instructions:

... we'll each have fifteen minutes... we have to make three dishes... there'll be a timer... we'll need a judge... oh, I'll need an apron... mum, you can only go to the fridge once... who will be first to go?

So.... today was 'Masterchef Monday' and J went to work with some trepidation. I think, "I'm afraid to what I might come home to find" were the exact words he used. The girls in this family do not list cleaning up as a strong suit.

Miss Piggy discovered that softdrink does not become jelly, no matter how long you leave it in the fridge.

We feasted on Agrum in a pie dish, bananas with whipped cream eaten from a muffin tray (with plastic spoons at my insistence - didn't want my tray scratched) and chocolate mug cakes (that's what I whipped up as a contestant).

Mr Z played 'judge' and said things like, "Mum has more experience in the kitchen but I like that you made two dishes", "you should have realised that your jelly would not set" and "I'm sorry, but you'll have to leave the Masterchef kitchen".

In all, the morning was considered a grand success, and they've already started begging for a repeat next Monday!
______________________________________________________

Here's my Chocolate Mug Cake recipe:


4 tbsp plain flour
2 tbsp sugar
3 tbsp milo
handful of m&ms/choc buttons
1 egg
3 tbsp milk
1.5 tbsp oil
dash of vanilla essence
extra m&ms/buttons to garnish

1. Add ingredients in order, stirring as each is added.
2. Microwave for 3 minutes (1000W microwave)
3. Serve with cream/icecream on a plate or eat straight from the mug.

Easy enough for kids to do independently :) Fun to eat. Ingredients we all have in our cupboards!