September 12th, 2010
Gorgeous day out in Sydney yesterday. First stop - The Aquarium, where the little one lead the way around all the exhibits and documented her experience with the digital camera. Today, first thing in the morning she created a little “journal” and drew pictures of the highlights of the day. This arvo we printed some pictures and she made her own album. We also picked up some educational materials to support the learning experience from the Aquarium shop yesterday and have flicked through them. The little stuffed dugong we gifted her yesterday has come everywhere with us today and there has been lots and lots of talk about this fascinating creature 
budding marine photographer?
taking a shot of herself :)
enjoying the moment...
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September 12th, 2010
The little cook is showing more signs of independence in the kitchen of late. Recently, she picked some lemons from the tree and proclaimed that she planned on making lemonade. Later that afternoon, she did just that. She remembered back to other times when we made lemonade together. This time however she tweaked the recipe to suit her needs - no stove top heating necessary! She made the sweet syrup simply by juicing lemons and adding caster sugar and water and stirring very slowly until all the sugar disolved. She then mixed the syrup in with some carbonated mineral water and …. mmmm…. lemonade!
home-made lemonade
A couple days later… her mission was pasta from scratch. She saw it made on a kids t.v. program and also remembered back to when we’ve made it before. The pictures speak for themselves
measuring the flour
making a mound and well
cracking the first egg
mixing the dough
dough really starting to form
rolling out the dough
cutting the dough into strips - fettucine!
loooooooong pasta - just the way the cook likes it
into the pot!
3 mins only!
plated up!
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August 29th, 2010
a small area of planted ground <a vegetable plot>
a measured piece of land
a graphic representation (as a chart)
the plot on paper...
Inspired by being out in the garden all day, helping with the clearing, burning and preparing, the little gardener came up with the idea to create a vege patch all her own - right outside her cubby house door. The designing and drawing came first. It was forecasted that the work would take four days. Each diagram relates to a day. Day one: weeding and digging. Day Two: fencing. Day Three: Preparing the soil and making rows. Day Four: Planting seeds (carrot and lettuce are the seeds of choice!).
After the plotting on paper… came the weeding, digging and then hammering in of fence posts.
hammering posts in around the freshly dug plot
Then came the preparing of the soil by adding some fertiliser - the pet bunny’s poo and straw!
turning the straw and manure into the earth
Then soaking the soil to ready it for our lettuce seeds…
watering
Lettuce seeds planted. Tomorrow’s adventures will entail a trip to the shops to source some carrot seeds and purchase them with pocket money then returning home to plant them. And then…… we wait….. and wait…. for the harvest!
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August 28th, 2010
… heaps learned… and a taste of bushtucker….
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August 28th, 2010
with making soap!
The little had seen me making soap a very long time ago. Something must have tweaked that memory because one day she set to work to make soap of her own. She scraped some bits off the hand soap in the bathroom and put them into a bowl. She then added water and stirred. From the front garden she then collected lots of lavender flowers and mixed it all up to make soap. I offered to heat it for her to melt all the soap, so we did that, then poured the liquid into these two tiny teddy molds. Voila… lavender teddy soaps!
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August 28th, 2010
My daughter makes the most beautifully inspired things when she is given the time and space to just play.
In anticipation of the purchase of a little zhu zhu pet she’d been saving up for, she designed and made a whole house and garden for “Spottie” complete with a trampoline, pond, stepping stones and lawn in the yard and a slide, swing, hammock, bedding, food and water inside the house!
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August 28th, 2010
You give them freedom in the garden… to plan, plant, care for, play with, harvest and create with home grown food. The little cook has recently become interested in making her own garden salads. She collects whatever she thinks works well together that she can recognise in the garden - in this case it was: baby buk choy, mint, coriander, parsley, thyme, onion and garlic chives, cherry tomatoes and some rosemary - she then washed the ingredients, chopped them up and tossed them in a bowl after dressing the salad with olive oil and balsamic vinegar, adding a touch of salt. She ate it as a side to her dinner that evening.
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July 19th, 2010
is there room on this blog for another?
is there room in this family for another?
Abso-b*#@dy-lutely!
My huz is a man of many talents - cooking isn’t one I would generally list as one of those talents… BUT… when it comes to bbq-ing he has mastered the art. Last night he made traditional Turkish Adana kebabs…
He mixed in paprika and salt into some lamb mince (ok so he cheated a little here - traditional Adana is made with hand chopped mince - off the bone - and there really is a special technique to it all… not the supermarket bought that we used) then wrapped/sculpted it around some stainless steel flat skewers (like the sort you see in Turkish take away places - you can buy them from any good Arabic small goods shop) and then grilled them over hot coals… Then he served them in warmed Lebanese bread with onion salad seasoned with sumac.
Dinner was great - with dip accompaniments and salads on the side.
We were taught how to make traditional Adana kebabs recently by our Turkish music teacher one gorgeous, lazy afternoon… it was a really enjoyable hands on experience…
adana grilling over hot coals
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July 19th, 2010
Near empty fridge combined with rumbling tummies - the need for lunch was what prompted this creation… with a little inspiration from a google search 
Leek, fennel and chick pea creamy soup with fresh thyme
One leek
one fennel bulb
a tin of chick peas,
one potato
one small tub creme
fresh thyme to garnish
Chop and sautee fennel and leak in olive oil until soft,
add water to pot
add potato (diced)
add chick peas and cook until soft
mash up slightly if you like the soup chunky or puree if you like it smooth
add creme and salt and pepper to taste and warm it through
serve immediately garnished with lots of fresh thyme
fennel, leek and chick pea creamy soup with fresh thyme
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July 19th, 2010
An avid Masterchef fan, the little one was inspired today (after eating a banana) to make some banana cookies. She thought up the ingredients herself and, with some tweaking from me, made some awesome, gluten free, healthful, banana chocolate nut cookies! This is what she used:
1.5 mashed up ripe bananas
some brown sugar (maybe 1/3 cup?)
one (freshly laid) egg from her favourite chookie
some ground up dark chocolate (about 1/4 cup)
hazelnut and almond meal (enough to make a firm dough - roughly 2 cups)
some ground up linseed sprinkled into the mixture
After combining all the ingredients. She rolled the dough into balls, I squashed the balls down into patties and we baked them in a medium oven for about 15mins.
They tasted incredible! Better than anything you could buy at a cafe and the perfect accompaniment to a latte ………….. or a cup of milk
the chef at work
banana chocolate nut cookies
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