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!

¹plot

noun \ˈplät\

Definition of PLOT

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!

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!

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!

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.

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

Leek, fennel and chick pea creamy soup with fresh thyme

• What you need:

One leek

one fennel bulb

a tin of chick peas,

one potato

one small tub creme

fresh thyme to garnish

• What to do:
  

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

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