New Job!

It feels like the last month or so has gone by in a blur. I've been dealing with the transition of moving from a that job I love to an exciting job that I hope to love just as much; particularly sleepless children and everything else! Meanwhile poor Stuart has been trying to finish his 20,000 word dissertation.

Saying goodbye to Credo has been sad, I had a fun lunch with staff and a goodbye 'moment' at the Credo Partners jazz night. It was awesome to see 'old' grads from when I was a student to recent grads from the last few years. Thanks everyone who came and said goodbye and thank you!

Working for Barneys has been hectic, after 3 weeks of only working one day a week there is a backlog of stuff that I feel like I haven't caught up on because there's always new stuff to do! Add to that the general challenge of learning new things and moving our services to a brand new building, it's no wonder I collapse in a heap after the boys are put to bed.

If only they would stay in bed...

Aston and Stuart rehearsing with the band in the new Barneys building

Zachariah exploring mummy's new office

 

Slow Cooked Lamb Shanks

We celebrated the Queen's birthday public holiday by doing lots of cooking. Aston and I made "pink cupcakes with hundreds and thousands on them" (by request) and I took advantage of a day at home to do some slow cooking. 

I was going to use the slow cooker but Stuart suggested using the oven in an effort to heat up the house on a cold and rainy day.

The original inspiration for this recipe comes from my friend Jodi at Little Foodie Steps. I didn't have all the ingredients so made some substitutions, I wasn't sure it would work but it did and it was yummy! Aston ate it all up without stopping for breath and Zachariah enjoyed munching on the soft vegies and lamb. Unfortunately I didn't take a photo so you'll just have to imagine what it looked like.

Ingredients:

• 2 lamb shanks (these were almost 1kg in weight and not trimmed or trendily cut in anyway)
  
• 1 onion chopped
• 2 tsps minced garlic
• Cumin (ground)
• 1 tin tomatoes
• 2 tins water (I used the tomato tin)
• A swede chopped into 2cm cubes
• 4 small potatoes chopped in quarters (I left the skin on)
• 2 carrots sliced
• a couple of handfuls of red lentils
• Salt & pepper

Preheat the oven to 125C

Coat the lamb shanks in cumin, rub and let rest while you fry the onions and garlic. I used a pot that can go on the stove as well as in the oven, if I was using the slow cooker I would fry on the stove and then shove everything into the pot.

Add the lamb shanks, turn to brown all sides and then add the tomatoes and water. Throw in the vegies and lentils, season to taste and let it simmer for a little bit and then put in the oven.

I cooked it for about 4 hours and stirred it twice in that time. You can leave it for as long as you like once the meat and vegies are tender (just make sure it doesn't dry out). If using a slow cooker I would put it on auto for 4-6 hours or high for 2 hours and then low for 2-4 hours.

 

 

 

Unexpected Groceries

Occasionally Woolies online get confused and we end up with someone else's groceries. One time we ended up with a bag of 4 different types of frozen potato- including mashed!

A couple of weeks ago we discovered a bag of meat we hadn't ordered, there was steak, pork sausages with ginger and shallots and 2kg of chicken necks. It was pretty obvious what to do with the steak and sausages but chicken necks?

I got out my slow cooker, added some potato, carrot, garlic, onion, chives, peppercorn and salt and let it simmer on low for most of the day. The result? Yummy home made chicken stock.

I didn't stop there, I then fried an onion and some chopped up leak, added 2 cups of stock some chopped potato and corn and let it simmer on the stove.

Aston and I peeled the sausages and rolled the meat into balls which we then added to the soup to cook.

It looks a bit average but it was really yummy! Aston even asked for seconds!

 

 

The Ultimate Cake Wreck

Last week Aston had a birthday party in the park. It poured with rain beforehand and at one stage we were thinking of canceling. The rain stopped, praise God, and the kids had heaps of fun splashing in puddles! Here is the cake I made.

It looks impressive doesn't it? It's even more impressive when you know it's the second "red and green rocket cake" that I made!

I was very organized and baked the cake on Thursday ready to decorate on Friday afternoon, so far so good. I cut out the template (from my super edition of the Women's Weekly Kids Party Cakes Book), made a big batch of buttercream icing and got out the food colouring.

Not wanting my buttercream to go too runny I had bought proper gel food colouring from a cake decorating supplies store on eBay. I also knew that this type of colouring would have a better chance at turning the icing bright red.

Apparently I was wrong. I added a few drops of food colouring, the icing was pink, so I added some more, still it was not red so I added more and kept on adding more until I used the whole bottle! Even then it was not quite red but I decided it would have to do.

I finished icing the cake and put it in the fridge ready to add the finishing touches after dinner. By this time the kitchen was varying shades of red as were my hands (it's a week later and I still have pink under my nails)! As I was cleaning up I decided to taste some of the left over red icing.

It was terrible! It had a really strong toxic taste to it like it had been mixed with nail polish remover! It turns out food colouring does have a taste to it when used in large concentrations!

I panicked. I cried. I Facebooked and then tried to fix it.

I went to the shop in search of red things, I bought liquid red food colouring, red jelly crystals, desiccated coconut, and hoped some kind of inspiration would strike. (I had a brief moment where i thought about changing the colour of the rocket but my client had been very specific in what colours he wanted).

Initially I tried to scrape the icing off the cake but when I tasted the top layer the evil toxic taste had seeped into it, so I started again.

It was finished by 11pm which is not too bad, working with a warm cake is tricky though as it kept crumbling. I tried to colour the new buttercream with the red food colouring but it turned out a lovely shade of pink so I used the food colouring to dye the coconut and spread that on top.

Aston was very happy with his cake and still doesn't know I made it twice.

 

This Week

It's been one of those weeks. Stuart, Aston and Zachariah have been sick, all with different symptoms so we are not sure if they all had one weird virus or a few different ones. As a result I 'worked' from home on my 2 work days and while I did get some work done I felt mostly unproductive and guilty.

To add to our already disrupted and unwell week, Aston gave us a fright by waking in the early hours of Wednesday morning with an allergic reaction. Not anaphylactic, praise God, but still quite scary (complicated by the fact that we had no antihistamines in the house). I watched him sleep with his epipen by my side just in case.

Here is what is face looked like once the sun came up and after we'd applied steroid cream. It was worse in the night and his lips were swollen. We think it may have been a reaction to eggplant. As you can see he was still in good spirits.

Today everyone seems to be recovering so hopefully next week will see a return to normality (whatever that is)!

 

 

Brothers at 6 months!

August 2009: Aston 6 months old, 8.8kg, 63cm

 

February 2012: Zachariah 6 months old, 7.9kg, 66cm

The New Church

Over the last few months Aston has been fascinated by the story of Barneys. It started when he heard me mention to a neighbour that the church had burnt down. 

 

He watched the latest video update of the progress of the new building and was inspired to compose his own song about 'The New Church'