Thursday, 31 March 2011

NOSH

It's the name of my new favourite gourmet grocery store. It only opened in Hamilton earlier this month, but has already become a weekly stop in my food shopping itinerary. Like anything that attaches the 'gourmet' label to it, a lot of the stuff is expensive, so I usually only buy some of the stuff that features in their weekly specials - which can make the price the same of even cheaper than the mainstream supermarkets (for the things that mainstream supermarkets stock!) and is better quality. It is also nice to have a place to go to get those more special ingredients that mainstream supermarkets don't stock eg. speck (I looked everywhere for this for one of my Christmas day dishes, and couldn't find it anywhere!).

Wednesday, 30 March 2011

Yum

Yesterday afternoon I made the White Chocolate 'Berrymisu' that's on the front cover of the current Super Food Ideas magazine. It is really good (although not so good for the calorie count - just have to eat very small portions!)...Peter doesn't like normal tiramisu (he will not eat any dessert or baking that has a coffee flavour), so I'm always looking out for a good non-coffee version. This particular recipe does very well to capture the bitter flavour of authentic tiramisu - most other ones I've tried don't get this sweet bitter balance and so they just taste really sweet! It also use cream cheese instead of mascarpone, so doesn't break the bank. And because raspberries are in season here at the moment, I used fresh ones instead of frozen.

Hard work...

It is very hard work putting on make-up when you've just done an intense chest and arms weights workout. Jelly arms when having to precisely put on eyeliner requires intense concentration!

Sunday, 27 March 2011

Need help...

Doing Matthew 7: 1-12 for kid's church next week. The main point is 'Be more concerned about what you should do instead of what others should do.'

Need some ideas of activity/craft to do with kids age 3-8years. Any ideas?

Saturday, 26 March 2011

Tramper girl

I mentioned a couple of months ago that I intended to take each of the kids for an overnight tramping trip sometime this summer. With summer slipping away, I'd only managed to get Naomi up Mt Pirongia a few weeks ago. So we planned to head out to the Kaimais at the next suitable weekend, for me to take Joanna to Waitawheta Hut and Mel to camp with the other two at Dickey Flat. This weekend suited us, and the weather had been looking mostly OK, so we decided to go, even though the weather forecast had worsened. Joanna and I were dropped off around 11am and we started the 9km walk up the old tramway (that carried huge Kauri logs out until the mid 1920s). It was drizzling pretty much the whole way, but we stayed dry enough and warm enough under our raincoats that it didn't really worry us. Joanna walked the whole way except for where I had to carry her across the river - it was way, way too deep and fast for her to even consider trying to walk herself. We arrived at the hut after about 5 hours walking (it's rated as a 3 hour walk, so I don't think Joanna was doing too bad to do it in that time!). Someone had got the fire going in the hut so it was nice and warm inside. We relaxed for a while and then had some dinner. Joanna was in bed at about 6:30 and slept perfectly until just before 7am when she woke up needing the toilet! After consuming loads of porridge, we headed back down the track in pretty persistent rain and found that the river level had risen an appreciable amount overnight. The river crossings were deeper and faster than yesterday, but we managed to get across safely enough - a friendly tramper gave us a hand to make sure we didn't get in trouble! I ended up carrying Joanna some of the way - she was a little tired by this time.
All up, it was actually a really enjoyable trip, even if it was raining the whole time. Joanna had heaps of fun and stayed plenty warm enough (those two are definitely related!). Photos up at flickr as usual.
(And compare this to 2 years ago with Ben: photos of that trip here)

Working with big brother...

Naomi loves doing whatever her big brother and sister are doing (her brother more than sister). So last week when Ben was playing outside, she toddled off outside to join him - and when he had a paintbrush to do some "painting" of our fence, she wanted to join in. We got her another brush and she had a great time painting just like her cool big brother!

Wednesday, 23 March 2011

First ever manicure!

I had my first ever manicure today...at the mechanics! Our car's warrant of fitness (road worthy certificate) expires this week, so I had to take the car in to get it checked out and renewed. The place we go have a gimmick on at the moment where you can get a free express manicure while they do the mechanical check! So I now have red painted nails (which Naomi had tried taking off, because she knows it's not normal) and Joanna has matching ones - the first time she has ever had nail polish on.

Sunday, 20 March 2011

New tent

We bought a new tent yesterday...we now own 4 tents!

A 2-man










A 5-man










A 8-man












A 10-man






The new one is the 8-man tent which we intend to replace both our 5 and 10-man tents, hence reducing the number of tents we have to store. The 8-man is slightly bigger than the 5 (obviously) and is also split in to two rooms making it more user friendly for us and the kids to have separate space. Obviously it is smaller than the 10-man (which also has 2 rooms), which makes it quicker and easier to set up (can be set-up by one person) and also means it takes up less room in the car, so we can actually fit everything in the car that we need to take camping.

We are hoping to take it for it's first overnight camp next weekend (if the weather is fine). Ben, Naomi and I will sleep in it while Peter and Joanna go tramping overnight. We then plan to take it camping for 4 nights over the Easter weekend. If all goes well, after that we will probably sell both the 5 and 10-man tents, as we don't think we will have a use for them any more.

Trip to the beach

Last Saturday, we took our last trip to the beach for the summer. It was a gorgeous fine weekend, so we went to our favourite beach - Mt Maunganui. The kids had great fun playing on the sand and paddling in the water. We also went for a walk part way around the base of the mount to go looking in the rock pools. The rock pools didn't turn out to be very good, there was the usual shellfish stuck to the rocks and then the only other live things we saw were 2 crabs (one the size of my hand, the other one even smaller). The kids also got to play at the park and try out the spinning dome thing that has replaced what we used to call the spinning christmas tree.

AND...we experienced our first tsunami! This was the morning after the Japan earthquake and there had been a tsunami warning for the mount. We thought it never arrived although at one stage we were confused about the tide times as the tide seemed to be coming in when it was suppose to be going out. We then discovered during the week that it had been a rolling tsunami (a collection of little wave surges, not just one big wave like we normally think a tsunami is), and the high tide was 8cm higher than normal. It also explained why the tide seemed to be coming in and going out at weird times.

Good day in the garden

A lot of the summer crops are coming to their end and winter crops are calling to be planted (so they can get a head start on growth while there is still some warm weather about). So yesterday morning I spent a couple of hours in the garden cleaning out the old plants - out came the lebanese cucumber - which has given us an amazing constant supply (actually oversupply) of cucumbers; out came some cherry tomato plants - which gave us more tomatoes than we could cope with, resulting in a stack just dropping to the ground and rotting (or been eaten by the chooks); and we harvested our last crop of potatoes - which gave us a reasonable yeild.

I still need to find some more time to pull out all the roma tomato plants - which have made us some yummy roasted tomato sauce and semi-dried tomatoes; the pumpkin plants - the four I planted have only produced a couple of very small pumpkins, the one t
hat sprouted randomly by itself has produced 6 nice large pumpkins; a couple of the zucchini plants - the green ones have got powdery mildew all over them, one of the yellow ones seems to have got a last minute growth spurt (I can see lots of little zucchini on it); and the basil - which has grown very well and will make a nice couple of final batches of basil pesto.

After all that is done and I've dug in some sheep poo and compost into the garden beds, it will be time to plant out the winter garden. I've already planted out some root vegetables -
carrots, beetroot (normal purple as well as golden), swedes and
turnips - as well as some leeks. I still need to sow some rocket, spinach and swiss chard for leafy winter salads. I also have a collection of cauliflower, broccolini, romanesco broccoli and bok choy seedlings that I'm carefully caring for in my makeshift glasshouse/shadehouse waiting until the cold weather really
arrives to get rid of all the cabbage butterfly caterpillars (which would happily munch them into oblivion) before I plant them out.


What's going on?

Overnight and this morning my head is making me feel like I am currently sailing on the seven seas (without getting wet).

Thursday, 17 March 2011

A great summer

On my way to school this afternoon, I overheard a couple of women comment that this has been a great summer. And I agree. The climate has been great - the warm weather started earlier than normal, it has been consistently warm and sunny for the past 3 months and apart from last weeks cooler weather, is still nice and warm and sunny. I guess that it is also been a great summer because we have had family visit us; Ben has started school smoothly; and there have been many enjoyable times spent together as a family.

Turned a corner...

I have been feeling totally exhausted all this week, with no obvious reason...I'm not pregnant, had no other symptoms, have been getting my normal number of hours sleep a night. It was like having glandular fever again. Anyway, today I seem to be feeling better, just the normal level of tiredness for this time in the week and I actually feel motivated to do some of the stuff on my 'to-do list' (which I haven't touched all week so far).

Tuesday, 15 March 2011

New technology?

This afternoon, Ben was telling me about one of his friends taking silly pictures of himself on the 'lamptop' during class today. Thanks to the specific context, I quickly worked out that he was talking about the class 'laptop'. Another word fixed up.

Another first

We attended our first 'Learning conference' for Ben today (funky word for parent-teacher-student interview). On the whole, we learnt nothing new - which is how we think it should be. It was a good chance for Peter to see Ben's classroom, meet his teacher, and learn in a bit more detail what Ben's been doing at school (which confirmed I had heard all about from Ben, just through the bits and pieces he chooses to tell me during the afternoons).

Thursday, 10 March 2011

One year on

Exactly one year ago (give or take an hour or two), we got the keys for our house. It's been a busy year and we've managed to do a few things around our house:
  • Got a pretty impressive vege garden going... we've enjoyed potatoes, carrots, strawberries, lettuce, bucket-loads of tomatoes, beetroot, cucumbers, zucchini, sage, chillies, basil and probably a few other things I can't think of right now.
  • We painted most of the window frames. That was supposed to be done as a condition of our home loan, so we got that done pretty quick.
  • Painted most of the inside of the house - we've still got one bedroom and the hallway to do. And then skirting boards and doorframes. And the outside of the house.
  • We put in a heat pump (reverse-cycle air conditioner) - which is great in winter, doesn't really get used in summer.
  • We've replaced some of the scungy old curtains. A few more to go still (we've got the new curtains, just need to hem and hang).
  • We've replaced some of the scungy old lights. A few more to go still (yet to be purchased).
  • We've built a very cool tree house. Much loved by our kids and any visiting kids.
  • We've built a sand-pit. Not used quite as much as we thought it might be. Still cool though.
  • We got four chickens. We're now down to two...
  • We still need a new kitchen! (Mel's request)
  • We've built shelves in the playroom
  • And... we've enjoyed having our own house to do with whatever we like!

Fireman Sam moment

We had a Fireman Sam moment at dinner last night...

The contributing factors:

We've been burning citronella candles on the table during meal to try and deter the flies from bugging us and our food while we are eating (the citronella is suppose to work on flies the same as mosquitos). Last night we also had the pedestal fan blowing to try and blow the flies away (the fly population is particularly bad in Hamilton at the moment - near plague proportions). There was also a sheet of paper towel on the table which had been covering a plate of food, to keep the flies off it, before we sat up for dinner.


What happened (I think):

The fan blew the sheet of paper towel into the flame of the candle and caught on fire. There was then that moment of blah, what do we do? and we then smothered it with some hastily grabbed tea towels.

I think the experience was a good one for the kids as they realised how quickly fire can turn from a helpful thing into a harmful thing. And that having fires that need the people like Fireman Sam to attend are actually dangerous and quite scary and can easily harm; not all fun and enjoyable excitement like an episode of Fireman Sam.

Tuesday, 8 March 2011

New pets

We made our latest addition to our animal family yesterday...a colony of worms. After having been given a worm farm when we first moved in here (which will very soon be a year ago), I finally decided with the cooler weather approaching to purchase some worms and start using it.

Now you may think with the chooks, a normal compost heap and the bokashi bins, that surely we have nothing left to feed the worms with. Well, we have discovered the chooks don't like eating most of the veggie scraps (ie. carrot peelings, broccoli and cauliflower stalks etc.), but they are great with bread products and leftovers from breakfast, lunch or dinner. The bokashi bins are great at doing the initial fermenting of the stuff the chooks won't eat, which speeds up the decomposition process. But it still needs to be buried somewhere in the garden or put in the compost heap, and therefore needs to be balanced out with an equal amount of dry waste (carbon containing stuff eg. dry leaves, newspaper), which can be hard to find enough of in winter. Which leads to the compost heap, which takes a long time to break down stuff due to the cooler temperatures for a large part of the year here.

So the worm farm will help speed up the breakdown process of our kitchen scraps (that the chooks won't eat) in the cooler months, leaving us with worm manure to add to the soil in the veggie beds and worm wee, to use as liquid fertilizer on the plants too. Both of which will save me spending money and hence make the veggies we grow even cheaper. Also when the worms multiply we can either give some of them to the chooks as a little protein treat or sell them for a bit of spending money.

I commented to Peter that maybe we should get a hive of bees next, to complement our slightly weird choice of pets.

Monday, 7 March 2011

Hello autumn

March is traditionally regarded as the start of autumn... so, right on cue, we've had our first blast from the south. Yesterday was breezy and struggled to get up to 19C, this morning was decidedly cool at 5C, although it's now a gorgeous autumn day (beautifully sunny and clear). We're hoping some warmish weather returns sometime soon - we'd like one last day at the beach before we pack away swimmers for the next 7-8 months!

Saturday, 5 March 2011

Rainy day

Its a nice grey, rainy day today. Nice day for staying inside. And what I'd really like to do is to sit down in the peace and quiet to read a book and drink a nice cup of coffee while listening to the rain. Unfortunately, there are three noise machines in the house, so peace and quiet is non existent, therefore I am unable to hear the rain. So instead, I'm drinking my coffee while typing this and am then going to cut up a batch of tomatoes to dry in the oven.