Birthday dinner...

With my birthday being tomorrow, we did the birthday thing this evening instead... so Mel made us yummy roast pork, potatoes, kumara bake and peas, washed down with a yummy Martinborough Pinot Noir.  Followed by a really good cheesecake.  Anyway, here's the photos:

Disco time...

2009, 2010, 2011, 2012.  This was the fourth year of going to to Hukanui Kindy Disco.  It was another fun night - the kids were really looking forward to it and had lots of fun dancing around.  I spent most of the evening selling the mystery bottles (of which our family bought a few - we ended up with one bottle of wine, one jar of gherkins, one bottle of shampoo and a pair of oils (olive oil and avocado oil)).  Some photos of the action:

Lunch in the sun

It's been cold the last few days...frosty in the mornings, followed by mostly sunny days (except for friday, which stayed cloudy and hence freezing cold!). At the disco on friday evening, the kids got bottles of olive oil and avocado oil as mystery bottles, so we decided to have fancy lunch (bread and dukkah and oil etc) outside in the sun - it was very pleasant, even though it was only 9C!

Cheats coffee ice cream

I need some coffee flavoured ice cream for a recipe I'm planning to make.  I looked at the supermarket yesterday and couldn't find any...even in the really expensive brands.  I have made coffee gelato from scratch before, but I don't have the time or an ice cream machine to make it at the moment.  But I thought of another way I could make my own (inspired by the 2nd last episode of the current season of MasterChef NZ):
1. Make 1 double shot of espresso and place in fridge to cool.
2. Take 1 litre of vanilla ice cream and soften.
3. Place ice cream in mixer and beat until soft enough to mix stuff into.
4. Add cooled shot of espresso and beat until just combined.
5. Place in container and freeze until needed.

I tasted the softened version and it has a nice coffee flavour.

I have surrendered

After a 10 year standoff, I have finally played my first ever game of risk! I enjoyed the game but after playing for 2.5 hours nobody was anywhere near achieving their mission - which confirmed my original assessment of the game 10 years ago that it involves sitting around for ages getting nowhere.

Crackled chocolate cookies

Tried making these today. They are really good...taste and texture of a choc-fudge brownie in biscuit form!
Highly recommend if you really like the edges of brownies.

(recipe out of the may 2012 issue of cuisine magazine)

Morning ride

This weekend is a long weekend for us, and the weather forecast for sunday and monday wasn't particularly good. So we decided to go out on saturday morning instead. Only trouble was, saturday morning was rather cold and foggy, which meant it stayed cold. By the time we got to the lake it had managed to get above freezing, but only just - probably 1 or 2 C. We'd brought bikes/scooter for everyone (I'd actually ridden because all the bikes plus me don't fit in our car) and rode round to the Innes common side. Three hot air balloons were just inflating, which made naomi's day! The kids had a bit of a play there before we carried on round the lake. A fun morning, just a bit cold to start with!