Latest culinary discovery

For a little over 2 years now we've been making most of our own daily bread in a breadmaker.  But I was still buying what Peter calls 'fancy bread' from the markets (sourdough loaves) to go with our soups and other situations where a nice crusty loaf would be best.  A bit over a month ago I saw a book on the shelves at the library called 'Artisan bread in five minutes a day', so I decided to borrow it and see what it was like.  And since then I've been baking this bread reasonably frequently, making bread rolls, small loaves, brioche and foccacia style breads.

It works on the principle of having a bulk batch of dough that you mix up and then store in the fridge for up to 2 weeks in which time you can pull out a lump of any size to bake, and leave the remainder in the fridge.  This means making last minute loaves and being able to bake a batch of rolls when I have time is easier than the breadmaker which takes over 2.5hrs as you have to start the whole process from the beginning.  With this 'fridge dough' method there is only a 40min prove and then bake!  You do need to have the space in the fridge for a 5L container to live (which we do, just), so it might not suit you if you have a small fridge and don't already have spare space.

(here's their website if you want to have a look)

Tent Number X-1

We have also managed to finally get rid of one of our older tents!  The Invert 6 mentioned just before was intended to replace our old Coleman tent that we'd bought in Australia about 5 years ago (for $99) and only ended up using a handful of times.  We sold it on TradeMe over the weekend for.... NZ$242!  Prices for tents appear to have gone up a bit, but still, that's a LOT more than we thought it would go for.
Now, where's that other tent that we need to sell...

Tent Number X+1

We have yet another tent... well, not quite.  On our South Island trip earlier this year, our tent had leaked a couple of times when the rain had been really heavy - through the floor.  We'd been meaning to get around to doing something about it, but hadn't.  Until last week.  I checked with the store what we should do, and they said to just bring it in and they'd have a look and work out whether to repair it or replace the floor or whatever needed doing.  When Mel went and dropped it off, they couldn't find a record of when we'd bought it (which was supposed to be on their computer system), and for some reason that we can't quite understand (but don't mind), gave us a brand new tent instead.  Same make and model, just the slightly newer version.  Here it is:

There are slight differences from the previous model (pictured here)... the ones we've noticed:

1. Biggest difference is the extra pole at the back (left-hand side of the picture above).  Previously the back room was quite slopey (imagine the roof going from the edge of the blue part straight towards the ground), which was fine for us - that was where the kids slept and it was perfectly big enough.  The extra pole makes that room substantially roomier.
2. Because of the extra pole, the windows on that room are a lot bigger - square rather than triangular.  Good thing for ventilation.
3. The poles are different - they're now slightly skinnier in the middle apparently, which makes the walls slightly steeper.
4. The main room is slightly taller.  We think.
5. Two poles for propping up the front door are now included.

None of the changes are a bad thing, none are really big changes.  We liked the original design (hence why we bought it!), and the new one still looks like it's good!

Angry Fruit!

For our advent calendar, the kids are getting bits and pieces from the Angry Birds game over the month... and so far, all they've got is blocks.  So, in the absence of birds and pigs, we decided to try out a game of Angry Fruit instead - with a piglet instead of pigs.

The setup:

Shot #1: Angry apple

Shot #2: Angry pear

Shot #3: Angry strawberry