More choclatey goodness and the strawberry patch.

So, in the name of perfectionism I have been furthering my hot chocolate quest. Today was the Best By Far. Slightly more complicated that the recipe before, but not much.

Hot Chocolate the French Way
Makes 2 servings

1 ½ cups milk
2 ½ Tbsp. water
2 ½ Tbsp. granulated sugar
1 oz. dark chocolate (at least 70% cocoa)
2oz. milk chocolate (best you can get)

Put the milk in a saucepan and add water, and sugar.
Place over medium heat and stir occasionally until the sugar is dissolved.
Bring to a boil.
Remove the pan from the heat and whisk in the chocolate.
Then blend the mixture for about a minute.

Serve immediately

This tastes amazing, just like the Chocolat chaud you get in France. Its incredibly rich, I can only make it through one cup at a time (I KNOW). And a more traditional version wouldn't have any milk chocolate in it.

Spectacular path I built so that there is some form of lighting up to the front door.
And this is the strawberry patch. Yes. Also spectacular. I agree.
Postman: What yer doin?

Me: Planting a strawberry patch.

Postman: Great. Your husband is a lucky man. I wish I had a wife like you.

Me: Trust me. You don't.

Vegies, Clafoutis and the Perfect Hot Chocolate

Extremely cold. Two degrees at 6am and its crept up to nine now. Have spent the morning sitting still sorting out paperwork and now I'm so cold I'm having nipple spasms. Which men think is HILARIOUS but in fact it bloody hurts. Am wandering around the house with a heat pack shoved down my bra - note to self: remove heat pack before going to the shops.

Anyway, enough about my nipples. I think we all heard enough about them during the breastfeeding years of this blog.

So first to the garden. The apple trees are all planted and no sign of anyone popping-their-clogs as yet. To get good apples, apple trees need chilling hours (ie hours where the temperature is under 15 degrees). Its a bit iffy if I'll get enough chilling hours for some of the northern European types of apple I've planted, such as Cox's Orange Pippin, so I am presently haunting weatherzone and becoming ecstatic with excitement when the temp drops below 15. I expect I'll get over this fairly soon! Why did I not plant ALL low chill apples in my temperate garden such as Granny Smith? Excellent question. I shall do a post on it one day. A long, long post.

My quest for at least some degree of self-sufficiency by the end of the year continues. We've expanded the two vegie gardens on the left and right, and are getting the area around the pool ready for growing things as well. Total growing area is now 38 square metres, and books I've read reckon you can be pretty productive on 30 square metres, so we're getting there.

Just in the last couple of days the Snow Peas have started producing.
And next time I do a beef casserole I'll be harvesting these little beauties - they're Turnips...
I also have two quests on the go at the moment as well. The first is all about clafoutis and the second is all about Hot Chocolate.

Clafoutis is a dessert that at its simplest is baked cherries in a pancakey batter. Only it is SO MUCH MORE. The combination of fruit/s and flavouring in the batter are limited only by the confidence and imagination of the cook, from figs to white chocolate. Also it is tops with custard.

So, to the delight of my husband and children I am presently on a quest to find my signature clafoutis. Today its simple raspberry with vanilla.

Before...
And after...Hot Chocolate. So its cold. We've established that. And when the kids get home from pre-school/day care I'm giving them some hot chocolate now and then as a treat (and a way of getting something/ANYTHING into Miss Three). Hot-chocolate-at-home is milo and microwaved milk plus child's bodyweight in marshmallows.

Well, yanno, I tasted some the other day and it really isn't that nice. I mean, its just a bit cocoay and whilst the variety I have has Vitamin B in it (to make my kids SMARTER - yeah right), I was just unimpressed.

So I've been fossicking about in search of easy hot chocolate recipes. And guess what. They're even easier than milo and my GOD do they taste good. This morning (for hubby's birthday) all I did was melt Lindt milk chocolate with some hot milk and voila. The best damn hot chocolate you have ever tasted.

It goes like this... Heat milk to simmer (microwave or stovetop). Place 20g chopped up chocolate in bottom of cup. Fill cup up to half way with milk. Stir. Lick spoon. Stir next cup. Add rest of milk. Serve sprinkled with chocolate dust from chopping unless you've already licked it up off the counter top. AHEM.

Now I have the sweetest tooth ever. I can happily eat condensed milk out of the can. But, I did find the above recipe a bit sweet. Am presently experimenting with a combination of milk chocolate and dark chocolate.

Ah Gardening.

So after an excessive amount of hole digging I planted the apple trees in the front lawn. I'd decided that it was going to stop raining at any moment.How wrong I was.

It was also appallingly cold.

SIGH.

Meanwhile work goes on apace with The Bunker. Did I mention a while back that I'd decided to chop 25K out of the finished manuscript? Well that painful job is now complete and I'm trying to tie the rest of the book together in a way that makes some sort of sense, meanwhile wondering how on earth I'm going to find 25,000 more words.

I cannot describe how dreadful it is to rename chapter 11 as chapter 8.

The Week So Far...

Kitchen was trashed.Oh who am I kidding. Kitchen is always trashed.

Baked some scones.
Baked a cake.

Ate the cake.

So baked another one.

OH OKAY. Its the same cake. But I DID bake another one. Its been a cake baking week.

Why?

Well...

THEN today...
Oh sigh.

Puppy Love

How big is he getting? Here he is helping dig holes in the front garden.

Its ALIVE...

Hubby's been having a few health issues of late. So, the other day he went for a sleep test. He had to spend the whole night all wired up like this. Slept like a log. I have no idea how he did it. They even had cameras in the room filming him.

We'll find out in a few weeks if he has sleep aponea or anything like that - as one who sleeps next to him every night my money is on him not having sleep aponea - just cos I'm the mother who wakes up if one of the children is fidgeting more than usual, so I think I'd have noticed by now if he was stopping breathing. But you never know...

I got me some holes!

Okay, I'm excited. The start of my orchard.

I think they're never to young to put to work.So that's the front yard and Louise-next-door's house is the yellow one behind hubby. Oh and ring of sticks around the dog is marking out where part of the path will be.

We're putting in five dwarf apples, a cherry and an almond tree - both dwarf as well. And an espaliered pear hedge behind hubby.

So in about five years or so my boring-as front lawn is going to be covered in fruit trees looking like this...That's an espaliered quince courtesy of http://www.diggers.com.au. There will also be a strawberry patch, an asparagus patch, rhubarb, avocado trees instead of the horrible hibiscus, and even a raspberry/blackberry patch instead of the murryana hedge.

Yup, not a blade of grass in sight. The possums will be in heaven.

In a few years. Hopefully.

Brief Update

1. Children - still driving me insane - BRING ON SCHOOL. They have taken to stealing and hoarding food (I blame their father).
2. Puppy, cute as ever. Still peeing randomly about the house. Seem to spend my entire life cleaning up shit, but am frequently unsure if it is his or 1. above.
3. Vege garden. Doing very nicely now cooler weather has killed all the slugs. Out of season random seed selection planted by 1. above all growing. Kind of.
   
4. Orchard. Fruit trees have arrived and despite repeated nagging nobody has dug holes for them to live in. DIG ME A HOLE (okay five). I gave birth to your 1. above. AND they cut my perineum with a pair of scissors when I did it. A PAIR OF SCISSORS. Is it so much to sodding ask?
5. Counselling. Going nicely thank you.
6. PMT. Present and accounted for. My boobs hurt.
7. Dailybooth. You will have noticed I have taken to plastering more of myself across the internet on a daily basis. I have no idea why I am doing this - only all those trendy Gen Zed-types are doing it; and I just like photographing myself and then laughing at my double chin. Please feel free to email me and a) be amazed I am a natural blonde, b) tell me I'm vain or c) relate a long story about having your perineum snipped with SCISSORS whilst you were WATCHING d) bitch about someone who won't dig you a hole when you ask.
8. Mother's Day - Got a wii fit. It thinks I'm 55 and I have to come up with reasons why I'm putting on weight AND heavier clothes or child attached to leg are not on the excuse menu. Sniff. A wii fit does not make up for 1., 4. and 7. above.
   
9. Went riding. Predictably painful experience. Going again tomorrow, will try to remember to take some photos. Made tit of self asking what the "horse (like a horse you'd have in the gym to do back flips over)" apparatus in the stable was - was treated to description of how sperm is extracted from boy horses. WHICH I KNEW (having studied Equine Studies some years ago) but was just having a brain-fried moment. Truthfully, I had hoped never to be reminded.
   
10. Ikea: I have to go to Ikea to get a big girls bed for Miss Three. If I went to Ikea now, when suffering from 6. above the problem would not so much me lying on a display bed and sobbing when I got tired. But more coming home with $400 worth of impulse bought woven baskets.

SIGH.

Sydney Eventing World Cup Qualifier

So, thanks to wonderful Kylie who gave us some tickets, the family and I went off to SIEC (Sydney International Eventing Centre which is off Wallgrove road out the back of Fairfield) on Sunday. It was the Sydney leg of the qualifiers for the World Cup in Eventing, so there was Showjumping (above), cross country and dressage (which we missed).

The photo I took on my mobile so I'm sorry its crap and I promise to post up some decent ones when I find them. The kids were great, well except for when Miss Three shrieked unexpectedly and it could be related or not, but at that exact moment the girl in the ring fell off. We left then. Quite hurridly. Just in case.

Had been thinking it was about time I flung leg over horse, and seeing all those beautiful horses has cinched it. I may (or may not) be astride a horse by the end of the week. My arse hurts just thinking about it.

Ug

Bleugh. Have spent the last week or so glued to microsoft money sorting out the household finances which a) had not been glanced at since June 2008 and b) were in an appalling state. Living to a budget has never been a forte of either hubby or I, however, now that I am retired and he is 'casually' employed (meaning we have no way of knowing if income will be arriving in the next week or not) this situation must change.

So, have pretty much got it under control, apart from the credit card, which the accounting program seems to think is $5K in the black, oh if only. IF ONLY. Internet banking is helpfully telling me that this is not quite the case.

I've also been doing meh chores like my tax (last year), sorting out things with Medicare, you know, the beyond tedious stuff. Feeling virtuous about doing it all, as well as a little daunted about the financial situation. Besides this the study is looking less of a mess. But only slightly.

They are trying to send me to an early grave...

Or Why My Children are the DEVIL.

Here is the vacuum cleaner in the backyard. I spent the afternoon vacuuming the patio. As you do when you are totally knackered and about to have a nice sit down with a cup of tea and admire the turnips you just picked.They look quite cute and harmless don't they - my children. Little innocent people, running around with their umbrella hats on.
Only they came up with something better than rain. So much better. They came up with snow.
Yes, they emptied the entire contents of a bean bag onto the patio, and the first that hubby and I knew of it was them shrieking 'snow, snow,' and Miss Four asking when Santa Claus was coming.

Of course they chose a day when the wind was sitting on 30kmph and gusting up to 50kmph. Thus creating snowdrifts ALL OVER THE GARDEN.

This stuff is impossible to pick up, too light to sweep and at the same time so static that they cling to everything. Thank goodness we've got a Dyson, so it was able to suck them up, and then we could empty the barrel back into the bean bag - along with quite a few unfortunate ants. It still took hours, and the wretched little things are going to haunt me for months to come.

SIGH.

Stavros Flatly - Britains Got Talent 2009

If you haven't seen, or heard of Stavros Flatly then click on the You Tube link below. I laughed. A lot.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gHvATmUsSg

Rainey Day Morning Tea

Weather not so good, kids bored. Always makes for a horrible day. So we ended up in the kitchen and the kids made scones.

Then we had a very civilized morning tea with nice cups (henley shape, pole star, different colours). Note gigantic pile of washing to be folded in background. If you'd like to come over and fold it for me please email. And dead flower arrangement from work to congratulate me on leaving (thanks work :-))

Naturally, I had not had time to get dressed yet (yes, those are my pjs). And don't tell me you don't have mornings where you are so run off your feet you don't have time to get dressed. Well okay so you don't plaster them all over the internet, but I have attention seeking issues. We all know this.Note unwashed hair and gigantic bottom. Yes, that is all my own bottom. Its taken me years to perfect.

And really, at the end of it all, everyone was totally underwhelmed.
But it wasted a couple of hours and I discovered that gluten free flour makes completely crap tasting scones (yes, we've gone gluten free - I cannot describe how this pains me).

Sore Throat & Still in Pyjamas.

Yes, I have a sore throat and a very unnatural urge not to talk much. This is why today's cup of tea looks like a urine sample. Its peppermint tea. Designed to soothe. The cup is in the Gainsborough shape, design called Rose Spray. The backstamp dates this set to between 1945 - 1966. And yes, the handle is a bugger to hold, but you do look dainty doing it.
Operation Clear Out Study is moving along. Okay, so its not exactly got much further, but I have put some books in a pile and realised my copy of The Artist's Way has gone mouldy. This is probably a bad sign.

Its a lovely day and I should be in the garden planting peas instead of feeling vile on the couch. I hate being poorly.

Teacuppery

Yesterday's cup of tea. Now in focus!

Its a Shelley (naturally) and this cup is the Mayfair shape cup which was produced between 1932 - 1940 in mallard green with extensive gilding. Not bad for 70+ years.

Today's Cup of Tea

Here is today's cup of tea. Will look up design name and shape later as have headache due to sleep deprivation and need to go and do something about pigsty of study: see below.
Do not want to think about the number of unpaid bills in there. Anyone got a light?

Easter Monday

Just because there weren't enough calories in all that chocolate.

Children had hysterics due to meal not being MacDonalds and thus no toy.

Merry Easter

Easter feast started simply enough with beans from the garden.Purple beans and rattlesnake beans - in case you were wondering why they aren't green.

Things quickly spun out of control with custard (at the back), bread sauce (front left) and blackberry and apple pie filling (right) with apples from a friends tree.
Naturally the chef kept up her strength with cups of tea... (that is a blue Pole Star shelley teacup in the Queen Anne shape circa 1920 - just in case you were wondering). And seasonal refreshments.
Yes, baking, I am domesticity itself.

Guests arrived...
Lunch was ready... (yes, the chef had moved on from cups of tea to something bubblier).
Pie was eaten...And then everyone ran around and got super-excited about having a tent in the back-yard.Despite his best efforts, he did not eat any chocolate.

Its got Man Flu

Man Flu is a crippling and debilitating disorder indiscriminately striking down male members of the human species without warning. The illness is often referred to pejoratively by female members of the species who are in fact immune from the illness as man flu is now known to exclusively attack the XY chromosome carrier. If Man Flu is kind enough not to kill the infected party it will definitely leave him weak, sick, hurting everywhere and in dire need of TLC.

Medical professionals now also widely recognise that self diagnosis by the sufferer is the best means of identification as the symptoms of Man Flu are far more severe than the simple common cold which predominantly targets the XX chromosome holders (i.e. females). This goes some way to explain the cynicism some women display towards their male counterparts.

Definition taken from... http://www.manflu.info/

Hubby is presently at Stage 2...

Stage 2 - It's not a cold, it's the 'flu. Your beloved will barely be able to lift his fingers to work the remote control by now. There will be dramatic displays of coughing and chest holding. He will present a red and sniffly nose, and a phantom fever. Do not mention (begin sarcasm) Man 'Flu (end sarcasm). Instead continue to serve comfort food and provide him with a selection of men's magazines (such as FHM or Maxim) to take his mind off the illness ravaging his poor body. You may also be required to gently dab his forehead with a lightly dampened sponge or massage his feet. This life threatening stage may last from three to five days.