Cooking day

I had last Wednesday off and had a relaxing cooking day.
Pictured from left: chocolate cookies with ginger, curry powder, almond cake with coffee icing and white bread.



The cookies were made with chocolate buttons and crystallized ginger(recipe by Louise Pickford 'Fresh Baked'). The butter & sugar were creamed first therefore they are resonably 'light'.

The curry powder was made from scratch (my first) and it was delicious (Simon didn't want to get any curry paste from any jars any more!) I improvised a Delicious magazine recipe and dry-fried coriander seeds, cumin seeds, mustard seeds, cardamom seeds, cinnamon and dried chillies before grinding them in a mortar and pestle (my hands were sore!) Garlic, ginger, turmeric, nutmeg and curry leaves were added before cooking. The beef chuck steak was cooked in the curry sauce for about an hour the day before. I added milk and continued the cooking process the following day. The result was a very tender and tasty dish. Even though the spices/seeds I used are very 'old' (bought them a few years ago!) but the curry dish still tasted 'fresher' than supermarket-bought packets.

I've also been making bread ... I made a bread roll loaf (with an egg), banana walnut bread, and 3 loaves of white bread. They are frozen after cooking and can be used slowly later. I now use the breadmaker to make dough only but do all my baking in the oven. I found the breadmaker often under-bake the bread. I have more control over the cooking time when baking in the oven and the bread tastes better.

ps The oven stopped working again....
It looks like we will need a new oven after all :(

After our move ...

The first weekend after we moved in, the hot water system stopped working.
Lukily we found out on a Saturday and could easily get a plumber in. The hot water system turned out to be working, only the pilot light went out. It cost $150 to light the pilot light. To his credit, the plumber did help calling Energy Australia and got what he thought was the problem,gas regulator, changed. It took Simon 5 calls and being transferred from one person to antoher in Energy Australia to get this done. Nobody knows anything about gas regulator. Finally someone requsted the plumber to call them. They organised to replace(?) the regulator after talking to our plumber. The fact is, we are not sure if everythign's working properly. The pilot light had gone out again twice since then and we still have the problem that if we have the gas heating on, the flames on the gas cooktops diminish by almost half. This is something that still needs fixing.

The second weekend after we moved in, our oven stopped working.
The oven was working fine for a week and a half and I even did 2 roasts and baked a bread in it. To cut a long story short, we nearly chucked it out but luckily double-checked-it to make sure it was not the fuse and it was the fuse! So after a week with no oven, this old oven decides to stay with us in the mean time.

And yesterday, our fridge stopped working. This fridge is over 10 years old, and I was hoping it would go soon becaue I want a bigger fridge(be careful what you wish for!!). Being moved 3 times in less than a year proved to be too much for a hard-working fridge and it decided to go silently sometime yesterday. A new fridge and washing machine are being delivered today.

Hopefully this is the last of the appliances not working!

Flintstones carport

This 'Flintstones' carport was a safety hazard (it was leaning on one side and it was held up by a steel rope tied to the house!) so it had to go. FIL was hard at work for a whole weekend to remove this carport.

Roof is almost gone.


Four columns left.


Nearly done.


All gone.

Snaps around the house (1)

Lara playing in the chicken coop:


Zeb and the chickens got along fine. The problem was the fencing around the hosue and the chicken coop. We kept finding Zeb in the neighbour's backyard, front yard or inside of the chicken coop (eating chickens food and their poo!). Today we found Zeb lying in the chickens' house! I was seriously thinking about getting rid of the chickens after they pecked a couple of people and kept flying out of their chicken coop. Life is very busy when you keep finding your chickens and dog wondering around in places where they shouldn't be!

Lara entertained herself on moving day:


Moving day (removalists moving big items) was brought forward by 3 days for a variety of reasons, we then took what was left by ourselves over the next few days - it took more trips than we imagined. Moving early and getting sick (cold) meant we only painted half of the house. There are still many boxes in the garage and study, they will have to be sorted out slowly.

Simon's new vey important, had to have it toy - line streamer:


Nothing escaped the streamer!
Many neighbours came over and said hi. They all commented on how the garden already looked a lot better. We have some ideas about what we want to do to the garden. Exactly when and how we will implement these will take some time to work out.

Making progress

We took possession of our new hosue on Friday. We have been there whole day every day since then. There are so much to do!

We had 3 unexpected but welcomed visits on Saturday. The neighbours on the left told us a few things about this house - it was built just after the war by a physicist and his wife. It was a shame that the last of the original owners died last week so we wouldn't be able to speak to them.

We bought $500 worth of paint on Sunday. The colour was decided at the last minute (Stowe white won over Berkshire white at the end). Simon now has the big job of painting the whole house before we move in next week. Both Simon and I are a little run-down and Simon's coming down with a cold and wouldn't stop sneezing today.

The new tenants signed the contract on the weekend so we now have a date we have to move out. It feels like things are really happening whereas before it felt like we could move out next month or next year when there was no date in sight. Removalist booked today. We also took things there every time we went (the 2 places are less than 5 minutes away). We are making good progress towards moving.


Grand-dad working on the gutters. The condition of the gutters is not bad.
They just need a good clean.


Chickens having a feed. Lara loves the chickens and wants to see them all the time. The chickens were a little scared of us on Saturday, but by Monday they were picking the bag I had the food in as soon as I walked in. The chicken coop is pretty dirty (as well as the rest of the hosue) and it needs a good clean too.


One of the few photos I took of the inside was this blurred one.
Lara was probabaly saying 'Mum, Honey ate my cheese!".

Chickens, vegetable patches, lots of work

Houses we liked, the last house we rented or even the house we currently live in all have one thing in common - a large backyard.

It is no surprise that our new house has just that. There are several vegetable patches, 4 citrus trees and a chicken coop in the backyard. There are wired frames for tomatoes to climb everywhere you see and lots of strawberries in summer according to the real estate agent. The vendor will leave the 2 chickens currently living there so we will also have 2 pet chickens. The thought of fresh eggs every morning is very appealing (whether the chickens will lay any eggs with a dog around is another matter). Hopefully Zebadee and the chickens will learn to be friends!

There are lots of work to do both inside and outside of the hosue. But it's all very exciting.


Nice day to play in the garden.

ps I'm reading Barbara Kingsolver's book "Animal, vegetable, miracle" at the moment. This book is about the year Barbara and her family living on a farm and only buy food raised in their own neighbourhood, grow it themselves or learn to live without it. We have no green thumbs and will be extremely happy if we manage not to kill all the existing vegetables growing in the new house!

Two and a half!

Talking to a two-and-a-half-year-old can be very entertaining. Here are some of the things Lara says:

"Lara reading... no talking, ok?" - Lara holding and reading a book
"Of course you can, Mummy" when I asked if I could share her biscuits or toys.
"Don't touch it!"
"I'm up...set" with pouty lips.
"Mattew crying... Mattew bump head" when Lara tells me of her day in daycare. She told me "Kyan sick. Kyan home" the other day when Kyan didn't come to daycare.
We only have a short ride home from daycare but I try to ask Lara what she did that day and who was there during the day. She's able to tell me more and more every day.
"Maybe Liz help" when I couldn't open the door to daycare.

Lara knows the names of most kids at daycare. She pointed to a Mum and a girl the other day and told me it was Ryan's Mum. I thought maybe she was confused when the lady turned to me and said she is Ryan's Mum and Ryan was at home that day. When Lara saw people she didn't know, she would ask me who they are. For example, she would point to the check-out girl at Wollies and asked me "Who's that?".

Lara's not toilet trained yet but she loves to sit on the toilet before bath and would sometimes tell me when she's weeing (on nappy). We just haven't timed it right so that she does the act of wee sitting on the toilet. It will happen soon I'm sure.

Blueberry pancakes

I made Nigella Lawson's "Ritz chicken" the other night. The chicken meat was extremely tender after they were marinated in buttermilk overnight. I made these pancakes using the rest of the buttermilk that weekend.
I prefer a "savory" breakfast, but it's nice to have something different for a change when we all sit down leisurely to have the first meal of the weekend without rushing.

Feeling guilty

At the beginning of June, Lara had a small cold. Like other cold she had, it startd with a bit of running nose and coughing. It could go either way from there - it could develope into a full-blown cold like she had many times last year or she could get better. Her cold seemed to go towards the second way this year thank god. She had a temperature on Monady night so I fully anticipated not being able to go to work and had warned work so. That week was a very busy one with a tight testing schedule of a project and a colleague on holiday. On Tuesday morning, Lara miraculously didn't have a temperature so I deicded to take the risk of taking her into daycare. Lara had watery eyes and generally didn't feel great so I was half waiting for a phone call to go and pick her up at midday but reasoned that I would have done some work by then. I didn't get the call and by Tuesday night, she looked a lot better but it didn't lessen my guilt of sending her to daycare ill.

I try to pick Lara up well before the daycare close time of 6pm. I often get there at arond 5.30pm but Lara is usually the last 2 or 3 remaining. I was the last one again the other week. When I arrived, Lara was reading "the baby owl" book with Liz. I flipped through the book to see what it is - it's about these baby owls waiting for Mummy to come home. And the sentence "Mummy always come back" is repeated again and again in the book. Liz told me they had been reading that book for at least 15 times in the last 20 minutes! Talking about feeling guilty, this one is definitely up there. I have to try to leave work even earlier....

Eventful week

A lot happened in the last week and a half ....

The week didn't start too well. Our (only) oil-filled radiator broke suddenly mid-week. It was extremetly cold living in this house with no heating. We considered holding off the purchase of heaters as our future house might have under-floor or ducted heating. At the end, we decided that comfort, even if only for a short period of time, is important so that weekend we spent over a thousand dollars and bought 2 heaters (Rinnai convection gas heater and Delonghi oil heater) in 1/2 hour.

At the same time, Zeb was limping. She had limped and got better before, but this time it looked bad-Zeb not putting any weight on the leg. We decided to bring forward the operation (was going to wait until we find a house fisrt but as it turned out Zeb would be recovering in the new house anyway). We booked the vet hospital on Friday, dropped Zeb off for surgery on Monday morning. Vet called at 11am to say Zeb just woke up, surgery was successful and Zeb doing well. We picked her up on Wednesday night and need to take her back to remove the stitches a forthnight later. The surgery cost nearly $2000. Our second big expense that week.

In the midst of these, we suddenly got a call from the real estate agent about the house we made an offer on some time ago. She said the vendor decided to sell and wanted us to put in a best offer. To make a long story short, after lots of phone calls, waiting, thinking and speculating, we got the hosue! The vendor wanted a short settlement because he bought elsewhere so we will be moving soon! Finally!

I had an one-hour massage, my 2nd one this year, at the first chance I got to recover from all that had happened. We had a busy week but all is good.

Craft show 12-June-2009

It was a last-minute decision to go to the craft show. You know how it is when you contemplate going somewhere different with a little one - your head is swamped with reasons why you might not enjoy it so you stop yourself going before you even leave. Well, I'm glad that Sarah asked and we went. I got to have a quick look at what was on offer at the show and Lara had fun at the park afterwards all on such a beautiful sunny winter day.

The train rides were hassle-free. The walk from Town Hall station (via Town Hall square, Bathurst st and the pedestrian overpass) to Darling Harbour was extremely flat and easy thanks to the excellent direction given by a helpful postie. The worst part, unexpectedly, turned out to be pushing the pram inside the exhibition centre. Our 3-wheeled pram is not the easiest to maneuver around people in tight places. I hurt my left wrist and couldn't use it at all that weekend. The situation improved slowly before going back to work on Tuesday. But all these typing at work made it worst again. It has been 2 weeks now and I still feel pain in my wrist if I turn it at certain angles or use it too quickly.

Both Sarah and I have inspirations of making our very own patchwork quilts one day. We are starting with something small - pin cushions (I just started tracing the patterns) & Easter wall hangings before we move on to bigger, more exciting projects.


There wasn't a lot of time to look at all these beautiful quilts. I quite like the red pattern on this quilt.

I got an idea

Lara likes to raise her index finger and says "I got an idea" recently - her phrase of the day. When I enquire, there is usually no idea following but she looks very cute doing it.

We walked to the car after coming back on the train from Darling Harbour on Friday. Lara said "I got an idea" after we passed a pizza place. I asked Lara what the idea was and was quite surprised when she said "Pizza is yummy. I love pizza". And that gave me an idea.

Thanks to Lara, we had Crust Gourmat pizzas that night. Garlic prawn pizza is pictured below.

Resolutions and old friends

Over 10 years ago, in what I would imagine a regular get-together of four high school friends, they wrote down their new year resolutions on a piece of paper. And this is what they wrote: (Names removed to protect the innocent but you know who you are!!)

Rresolutions 1995:
(1) Prepare for paino grade 8 exams.
(2) Go overseas. Pass all papers.
(3) Go to gym twice a week. Be more flirtatious. Be more tolerant and easy going. Learn stained glass.
(4) Decrease swearing. Think before speaking. Lost weight and look good in a pink dress. Be sweeter. Go overseas. Learn to drive.

These four friends finished uni and found jobs. They live in different parts of the world so they don't see one another very often. They try to keep in touch via email but they are all so busy. Then one day 10 years later(2007), one friend was tidying up her room and found the old piece of paper on which the original resolutions were written and emailed it to share with the other friends (otherwise who would remember such a trivial thing that happened so long ago?)

They decided to do this resolution thing again. This time they wrote their dreams and hopes via exchanges of emails.

Resoultions 2007:
(1)Publish at least one paper at work. Visit friend overseas. Buy a hosue. Pick up piano again.
(2) Buy a house(at a good price). Learn to cook and be a good housewife(no nagging. Work in another country. Travel(eg Europe/Beijing). Make CV look more marketable. Maybe kids. Save more.
(3) Learn to paint. More travelling locally and overseas. Keep a diary. Sell a house. Kids next year. Live in another city/country for a year.
(4) (not written down)

These email exchanges were discovered again recently. I am writting them down here for safe-keeping. How sweet are these old memories with dear old friends?

Long weekend

It was Steve's birhtday on the long weekend. We bought a nice chocolate mud cake for the occasion. We wanted to cheer him up a little as he is going through some major changes in life at the moment. Lara insisted that it was her birthday. We did slot in a quiet '...and lara' when we sang 'happy birthday to Uncle Steve'.

My amazon books arrived just before the long weekend for me to try the bread in 'Artisan bread in five minutes a day' after reading so much about it. We took a nice long walk in the morning while the dough rested. It came out of the oven smelling great and looking like a shop-bought bread. The crust got a little softer when the bread cooled. I think it was a little undercooked so I did a second loaf that afternoon. (You make up enough dough for 4 or 5 loaves in the fridge and just rest and cook one loaf every time - that's why it only takes 5 minues (of active efforts) a day thus the name of the book)

We had the second loaf as lunch on Tuesday. It was much nicer. I still need to improve on the crust at the bottom(a little hard). Maybe I'm just a little too ambitious trying to bake bread in this basic oven where the temperature at the bottom is a lot higher than that at the top of the oven. I'm trying a bread with a softer crust next and am definitly going to get an oven themometer to work out the real temperature of this oven!


(First loaf - I like this simple 3-line pattern better)


(Second loaf - trying a different pattern)

House stories

Our little unit in the city received a mention in the Sunday paper a couple of months ago to demonstrate how the first homeowner's grant was making the inner city housing market crazy. Our unit was on the market on a Monday. Agent said she would take a couple of people to see it on Wednesday night. 7 groups of people turned up, and by 9pm on Wednesday, we had 5 offers, 2 willing to pay over the advertised price. We exchanged contract on the Friday, all these happened before the first open-for-inspection. That was crazy! We felt quite sad to say good-bye. It was a long time ago, but the fond memory of walking leisurely to QVB to have afternoon tea from the unit on sunny weekends was still fresh in our minds. I guess if we have decided to sell, then it's better to have it sold quickly. This was the best result we could expect.

***********************************
Another house story Simon heard from his colleague A.

A's neighbours were getting a divorce and they couldn't decide on the settlement so they decided to sell the family home (this was early 2000, maybe 2002). The wife bought the house back at auction for $1.3M and did a minor renovation (nothing structural- just paint, new bathroom/kitchen that sort of thing). She sold it recently for nearly $2.5M! I wondered what the ex-husband think if he hears about this?

***********************************
Our home is very cold. It feels colder inside than outside, especially when the sun is out. I don't know if this is a contributing factor but despite still having 10 months lease left to go, we made an offer on a house three weeks ago. The house itself is basic and in 'original' condition but we think it has great potential. We waited patiently and for a while we thought we would be moving again. The real estate agent finally got back to us after over a week. The vendor wanted more than what we were willing to pay so... the hunt continues...

Something blue

I made some blue playdough last week as requested. I let Lara watch while I made it. She found it fasinating that it felt hot to touch when we rolled it on the table.

Her obsession with the colour "blue" continues. She wants to drink milk from her blue bottle all the time (we only have one blue bottle), not her pink or purple or green bottles. If I stand my ground and have a take-it-or-leave-it attitude (usually when time is not an issue), Lara would eventually drink from any colour bottles. To save time in the morning though, I make sure we use the blue bottle.

For nappies she wants pink(Huggies), not blue ones(Mammia from Aldi). I guess she doesn't care the blue nappies are more absorbent, she has less leaky accidents in them and cheaper. For breakfast, it's weetbix (or fruit'bix) with colourful loops. Yes you guessed it, blue loops are her favorite.

Everyone from the kindergym instructor to Lara's daycare teachers all know Lara's favorite colour. Brook from daycare told me a girl from her last year's class (2-3s) also obsessed with the colour blue. She exclaimed 'it's always girls and blue'! Funny, isn't it?

When you are a two-year-old, the colour of things is very very important. Luckily , there is a big bottle of blue colouring in the cupboard to keep this particular two-year-old happy.

Kindergym

The first time Lara visited Kindergym, she didn't want to go (even though she didn't know what it was). But once she got there and had lots of fun, she didn't want to leave when the class was finished. It took me almost 10 minutes to "convince" her we would come back but she still cried and cried when I dragged her out.


I call this "foam pool". Lara is never tired of jumping in again and againa and that was pretty much what she did on the first day.

The seond time we went, Lara couldn't wait to get in and play. I dragged her out as soon as the class was finished -she still cried and was the only one in class who cried. By the thrid visit, she must have realised that there was no use crying and that Mummy did keep her word about coming back, she left happily and willingly when it was time to go.




Lara was more adventurous and tried the trampoline and beam on subsequent visits.

We love kindergym on Fridays very very much!

[2 years 4 months] Mummy's little friend

(Hat ware is a must even before going to bed)

Frequently-used words: "wait", "not yet", "do it like this", "great idea".
Lara critics my driving, saying "not very good" if I had to go forward and backward a couple of times to back the car into driveway. When we are on the road, Lara tells me to 'be careful' or 'watch for cars mommy'.

Lara has a very good memory. If I say she could have yoghurt pop when we get home, Lara always remember to remind me. She also reminds me to take keys before we leave home. She knows the difference between "me" and "you" and uses more "I" and "me". We were running in the backyard the other day. I shouted "Wait for me Zeb". Lara also said "Wait for me Zeb", but added afterwards "Wait for Lara me!" Lara is my little friend and a great company!


(Loves to look at photos in camera)

Lara does a lot of pretend-play. She likes her 'Wiggly Safari' dvd, an Easter present and she loves Steve Irwin. She looks very cute doing the dingo dance. Lara saw her old baby rocker and said "Lara not baby, Lara big girl". She tells me "good girl" when I do things 'right' by her. And she knows the difference between boys and girls most of the time - "Lara not boy, Lara (is a) girl", "Da-da boy".

Lara likes to do things by herself in her own time. She's most unhappy when I intervene or interrupt her. Getting out of the door in a reasonable time was a challenge in some mornings. I try to forewarn or prompt her about what we are going to do next to speed things up.





Lara started playing golf (hitting one object with another object in the golf pose) after a 'Pokoyo' episode. Now she plays with a club. Even though Lara has an indoor toy golf club, she prefers the real thing on the grass. Grand-dad had an old left-handed golf club's handle cut and made it Lara's size - Lara is most definitely left-handed. We hope Lara likes golf - she has already shown the traits of famous golfers - getting frustrated and throwing clubs when the ball rolls off or doesn't go where she wants it to go.

Books Jan-Apr 2009

Persuasion by Jane Austen
I like "The Jane Austen book club" movie and after watching it decided to read all the Jane Austen novels again. I enjoyed this book a lot - I couldn't put it down when I got to my stop in the morning. The plot was swimming in my head during the day and I couldn't wait to read it again on the way home.

Digging to America by Anne Tyler

The Magician's Way by William Whitecloud
Subtitle: "A story about what it really takes to find your treasure". The book is a little "out there" compared to other 'self-development' books. The main thing I got from this book is to focus on the end results, not what you have to do to get there. And sometimes, be relaxed about things and not trying too hard actually achieves more.

Morality for Beautiful Girls
The Full Cupboard of Life
Tears of the Giraffe
by Alexander McCall Smith
I read "The no1 ladies detective agency" and "the Kalahari typing school for men" a couple of years ago, but they did not make as a great impreesion on me as now. I don't believe you have to read the books in the proper order to enjoy these simple warming stories. The descriptions of the vast land and cattles in Bostwana, the leisurly pace and traditional values all had a very calming effect on me. It reminded me of what is really important in life. I am reading the 6th book in the series "In the company of cheerful ladies".

Brunch in Surry Hills

Branch at Fifi Foveaux's with PY & husband.
The great company made the yummy cooked breakfast and coffee even more enjoyable.
Why don't we have a cafe like this closer?