I'm feeling wrecked

I am feeling so tired and it is only Tuesday! Joanna has been a little off-colour the past 2 days (undetermined slight illness), so has been a bit more high maintenance with wanting to be held/cuddled more etc. So that has been tiring me out a bit more than normal. It also meant I didn't get the baking done yesterday afternoon that I needed to take for playgroup morning tea this morning (it was my week on the roster). Which meant that instead of being able to blob after the kids went to bed, I spent my evening in the kitchen baking.

Roasting sucess

Wednesday night, last week, I couldn't go out with Tom Cruise, because I was cooking lamb roast. (Not that I would want to go out with Tom Cruise. Also I don't know if the Lamb people would choose him now - getting a bit old, scientology fanatic, crazy jumping on the couch incident on Oprah etc.)

Anyway...it's the first roast I've cooked in quite a while for a number of reasons.
a) time factor - not actually me having to stand there cooking, just it takes a fair bit of cooking time, which means I need to be home a couple of hours before dinner. Which when I was working, didn't usually happen. And since having kids I just haven't been bothered planning for.
b) past failures - back early in our marriage, we (back when Peter and I had time to cook together) tried to do roasts a few times and always had trouble getting it cooked all the way through. Now I think about this it might have something to do with the previous point - and us not factoring in enough time for it to cook properly.
c) no need - Peter's mum used to do roasts a fair few times when we were there for dinner, so we weren't totally missing out on them, even though we weren't cooking them ourselves
d) Peter doesn't like all the dishes/washing up that cooking roast creates (dish for meat, potatoes, other veg, with associated baked on sticky oil/meat juice etc.)
e) only small part of year when weather is suitable in Brisbane. Don't really want to be cooking roasts between September and May as it's too hot to have the oven on. (Which is actually a reason I'm thinking of having roast more often over here, it helps to warm the house up!)

I now remember the last roast I cooked. It was for Christmas day 2007 (I did the catering for the main meal for my family's Christmas lunch) - it was a beef eye fillet roast and it turned out really well. a) because it was being served cold we cooked it the day before and therefore had plenty of time; b) being a pretty good (and expensive) cut of meat, it was easier to get it to turn out nice.

Anyway this time I used an 'oven bag' to help cut down on the mess and hopefully help it to cook more evenly. To flavour the lamb I just cut a few slits in the top and stuffed a whole garlic clove in each and sprinkled fresh rosemary on top. I used a recipe from 'Destitute Gourmet' for the baked potatoes which meant they cooked in the correct amount of time and were nice and crispy on the outside - for the first time ever!

The family verdict was overwhelming approval. The favourites were:
Ben: potatoes and mint jelly (I bought a bottle of this from the supermarket)
Joanna: pumpkin and potatoes
Peter: potatoes and lamb and pumpkin
Me: all of it - potatoes, lamb, pumpkin, gravy...

Lack of posts...

I realise that I haven't been posting as much recently...This is not for lack of things to say, just when I think of stuff to say I don't have time/aren't near a computer. And when I do have the time/am near a computer, I've forgotten what I wanted to say - I blame it all on pregnancy brain.

Rugby...

Last weekend I decided to take Ben out to a game of rugby - it seemed like a good thing for Dad and son to do. We headed to the university to catch a bit of premier grade Waikato club rugby - they were playing Morrinsville (a little farming town about 30km away, as opposed the sprawling city of Hamilton!). Anyway, Ben enjoyed watching a bit of rugby, enjoyed some hot chips even more, and enjoyed running around with his football and falling over in the slightly muddy grass even more than that.
He also wanted to wash his pants off outside when we got home so Mum didn't see the mud :)

It's cold today...

The air is quite chilly. I think I need to invest in some stylish winter hats to keep my head warm when I'm walking for kindy drop off/pick up. (Only have a daggy beanie - suitable for when we're camping/bushwalking, not for walking around town)

Weird weather

Well, not exactly weird, just extremes. Brisbane has flooding, we've been having an early winter.

Movies we've watched...

Last week, I borrowed a couple of movies from the library to watch during the week.
First was 'Music and Lyrics': nice romcom (romantic-comedy) that wasn't too brainless.
The other was 'Elizabeth - The Golden Age': neither Peter and I know much about british history, and haven't watched 'Elizabeth', so we had to do a bit of research on the internet to find out the history for the period, plus what had happened in the first movie, as well as the general plot of this movie so we weren't totally lost. Again, nice enough movie - we managed to follow/connect the events to make some sense, but it didn't help watching over 3 nights and having numerous interruptions on the 1st night (from a little boy who didn't want to go to sleep).

Yummy risotto...

I made a really yummy risotto last night. I just made up the ingredients myself, so I thought it might just be average, but it turned out really good.
If you're interested the ingredients were:
2 Chorizo sausages chopped
1 carrot chopped
1 onion chopped
1 clove garlic chopped
1 1/2 cups arborio rice
1/2 cup semi-dried tomatoes
1 1/2 cups brocolli
chicken stock
1/4 cup grated parmesan

Pie taste test...

The pie tasted pretty good. It was steak and cheese flavour (ie. chunks of steak) and the meat wasn't junky and was nice and tender. But as Peter and I both commented, fundraiser pies have to be fairly good, otherwise people won't buy them when they have the next fundraiser.

Pies have arrived...

The fundraising pies were delivered to kindy today and I was able to bring ours home. They look like any generic family pies. We are having one for dinner, so I'll fill you in on how they taste later.