Monday, April 28, 2008

Menu plan 28 April 08

Most of the family is down with a lurgi, we have headaches and sore throats and backaches and general miserableness. Caitlin is the only one who seems to be ok. Great start to the school term *sigh*

Cooking dinner tonight was a major effort and when Adam came home he said it was a pleasant surprise - I think he was expecting me to do the pathetic and helpless routine and ask him to get something on the way home. So for the rest of the week I've tried to choose meals that won't seem too overwhelming to produce in the hope that, even if the rest of the house is in a state of chaos, we will at least eat reasonably well. And if I do decide it's all too much I do have the option of pulling out some of the vast quantity of soup that I made last week and have stashed in the freezer in single and double serve containers - I did one batch of vegetable and one of pea and ham and all I can say is it's a damn good thing I own a ridiculous number of plastic containers!

Monday
Baked dinner - veal, potato, sweet potato and peas
no dessert
Tuesday
Beef goulash, noodles & broccoli
Fruit and yoghurt
Wednesday
Chicken rice bake & salad
Custard and fruit
Thursday
Tortellini & salad
Fruit & yoghurt
Friday
Homemade pizza
Ice cream & fruit
Saturday
Hungarian restaurant with the Browncoats No, wait, I've got a better idea. How about we go to a dinner party at Ariane's place which was organised weeks ago. ahem. *crawls into corner and hides head in shame*
Sunday
Tacos & salad
Fruit & yoghurt

Thursday, April 24, 2008

What on earth does a colon have to do with leadership?

The sheer weirdness of associating a punctuation mark with personality traits drove me to do this. I find the results...disconcerting.



You Are a Colon



You are very orderly and fact driven.

You aren't concerned much with theories or dreams... only what's true or untrue.



You are brilliant and incredibly learned. Anything you know is well researched.

You like to make lists and sort through things step by step. You aren't subject to whim or emotions.



Your friends see you as a constant source of knowledge and advice.

(But they are a little sick of you being right all of the time!)



You excel in: Leadership positions



You get along best with: The Semi-Colon


Found via a post by MPJ on Two Women Blogging

Monday, April 14, 2008

Menu plan 14 April 08

Last week's plan held up ok-ish. The beef casserole I cooked was one with onions, carrots and green capsicum and cheesy herb dumplings which was a new recipe for the kids so I reckon I can count that as my new meal for the month. I had cooked it before though, many years ago, I'll be doing it again for sure, I'd forgotten how good it was! My Wednesday got gobbled up by school stuff and I didn't manage to go shopping so we had takeaway fish and chips instead of the fish parcels and Thursday turned into a spag bol night for the same reason. Friday's birthday baked dinner was a monumental effort but very well received so that was worth doing :) and I didn't have to make a dragon cake in the end - phew!

I was almost not going to bother with a plan for this week given that it's school holidays but that seemed to be a sure fire way to end up eating badly all week so I've made the effort. Now all I have to do is clean up the kitchen enough to be able to cook in it, there's still remnants of the party strewn all over the benches.

Monday
Chicken noodle soup
Apple and blackberry crumble
Tuesday
BBQ fish cutlets & oven wedges
Fruit and yoghurt
Wednesday
BBQ steak & sausages with jacket potato and corn on the cob.
Ice cream and fruit
Thursday
Chicken rice bake & salad
Fruit & yoghurt
Friday
Tacos
Fruit & yoghurt
Saturday
We're off to Melbourne for Sue and Darren's wedding and mum has the kids for 2 nights
Sunday
Still in Melbourne

Saturday, April 12, 2008

This was much easier than making a dragon cake

Dave's 11th birthday party was a big success, the boys all had a great time playing Dungeons and Dragons. I was by no means sure that it would work out today as none of them had ever played before, but all went well under Adam's expert GM-ing and by the time we were half-way through the session they were all asking when they could come back and play again. Actually, I enjoyed it too, it's many years since I last played any RPGs, I hope this will be the start of regular games. My level 1 thief did quite nicely and only came within a whisker of dying once...I think the GM was rigging things!

I spent most of the week in denial about the need to come up with a cake design involving a dragon but was rescued at the last minute by an inspiration that involved much less creative agony. Dave was happy with my suggested dice theme and here's the result.

Polyhedral dice cake

More gimmick than culinary art, but then it only took me a fraction of the time I'd normally spend decorating which was a huge plus today!

Tuesday, April 08, 2008

I did the whole SQUEEEE!!! thing in public

Ozfinn sent me an sms this morning that caused me to horribly confuse the people at my Weight Watchers meeting by announcing to all present "OMG Richard Dawkins is going to be on Dr Who!!!!" Blank looks all round. "It's a geek thing...actually it's an atheist geek thing...never mind."

So, when I finally got around to sitting down this afternoon for some serious blog reading I was not surprised to see a post on Pharyngula on the subject. I followed the link via richarddawkins.net to The Independent and I'm currently half-way through reading an article there which I simply couldn't wait to share. So much awesomeness :D

Monday, April 07, 2008

Menu plan 7th April 08

It's been a few weeks since I've had a menu plan pinned to the cork board in the kitchen and let me tell you it has not been good. We've eaten some very odd (shopping not done), late (paralysed by not knowing what to cook and leaving it to the last minute to produce dinner) and boring meals (not spag bol again!) in that time, plus spent way more than we should on takeaway food and eating out. So, back to the planning we go. Nothing particularly new or interesting this week, just the fun of a birthday party at the end of the week.

Monday
Mango chicken curry & rice
Fruit & yoghurt
Tuesday
Beef casserole - not sure exactly what version yet, probably beef bourguignon.
Fruit & yoghurt
Wednesday
Baked fish parcels & wedges
Fruit & yoghurt
Thursday
Chicken rice bake & salad
Fruit & yoghurt
Friday
Baked dinner - Subject to approval from the birthday boy, I haven't had a chance to ask him what he wants yet.
Rice pudding
Saturday
Pizza - We're (alright, Adam is) running a D&D game for Dave and a few friends for Dave's 11th birthday and there's really no choice involved, if you're role-playing you eat pizza, that's all there is to it.
Ice cream. And birthday cake presumably....god help me, he wants something with a dragon.
Sunday
Soup and bread
Fruit & yogurt

Friday, April 04, 2008

I can't make up my mind about this one

As I walked up the hill from the car park to the bank today on my way to do the Uniform Shop banking I was accosted by a bloke I've never laid eyes on before who said to me "Excuse me, I saw you walking up from the car park and I just wanted to say how nice you look, you're very attractive". I think he was a little younger than me. It was...odd. But kind of nice...I think. There was no creepy vibe or anything like that, he was very polite and as soon as he'd said his bit he walked off in a different direction to the one I was going so I didn't feel like I was supposed to respond in any way (I did say "Oh! Thank you."). But still weird.

That was the week that was

It began with a weekend of not much, though I did manage to take David bowling on Sunday morning, we won't talk about my score, I'm getting worse instead of better.

Monday was supposed to be my first day to myself with nothing in particular to do in ages, instead I ended up with Caitlin at home with a lurgi. I spent the day sorting out my bead collection into some new storage containers, fun but of dubious importance in the hierarchy of stuff that needed to be done. Monday afternoon I went for a parent/teacher interview with Tom's teacher (who happens to be someone I've known since we were kids), she gave him glowing reports in pretty much everything except for his handwriting - which leaves much to be desired. Ah well, he's left-handed and barely ever picks up a pencil voluntarily, it'll all come good eventually.

Tuesday saw Caitlin still off school so she got dragged off to Weight Watchers - I weighed in the same as the week before, I'm really struggling to get back on track with both food and fitness.

Wednesday I was at the school all day, craft group followed by canteen duty. Then dad came over for dinner. By the time we'd finished eating the world was spinning and I was burning up, Caitlin had shared her lurgi with me.

Thursday I skipped beadmaking class with the intention of staying in bed until I had to get up to go pick the kids up from school. Then I got a phone call at 9:00am from the previous P&C president to ask if she could come over and drop off all the files and stuff I'd be needing to do the job. So there went my snoozing plan. Once she'd gone I plonked myself on the lounge and watched Dr Who dvds for the rest of the day. I was feeling almost human by the time I went to pick up the kids. Then I had to take Tom to soccer training. And he wanted me to stay. So I stood around at the oval in the rapidly cooling evening air for an hour. And came home with my lurgi nicely recharged.

I decided it wouldn't be a particularly good idea for me to cook birthday dinner for Adam's mum what with the being diseased and all so we took her out for chinese instead. She's had another bad fall, this one's left her with a probably cracked rib and a doozer of a bruise on her forehead. She seems to have lost weight again too and Adam's pretty sure she's drinking a bottle of wine a day (which, given that her liver is dodgy, is actually much worse even than it sounds). I find it enormously difficult to deal with having her around and I feel guilty that I'm not more loving towards her, but I don't know what to do or say. I feel like I'm failing both her and Adam in this.

Today I was at the school till almost midday working on Uniform Pool stuff, I'm so looking forward to offloading the last of my responsibilities there and going back to being just one of the normal volunteers who can bugger off when they've had enough for the day rather than being obliged to stick around to the bitter end each week.

Mum got back from her month long trip to Europe this morning, she spent a few hours with my brother's and sister's families before catching a train out our way. I picked her up from the station and we had a quick cuppa before going to get the kids. When Tom saw her in the playground he was so overjoyed that he burst into tears! Which, OMG so gorgeous :) Mum was pretty blown away by that I think. He said to me tonight as I tucked him into bed "Mum, you know sometimes people get so happy that they cry?" I asked, "Is that what happened when you saw Grandma today?" "Yeah."

My day finished off in theme with the rest of the week when I got a call from Tom's soccer team manager to say he was stuck at work and wasn't going to make it home in time to go and pick up the team's new shirts, which they need for their first game tomorrow, from the clubhouse. It was supposed to be a matter of walking in there, telling them which team I was from and grabbing the pre-packed box of shirts. HAH! Nothing so simple, when I got there 3 other mini's team (under 8's and younger) parents were waiting twiddling their thumbs watching as other team's shirts were collected in a matter of 30 seconds while people made frantic phone calls to try and find someone who could interpret the labeling on the mini's boxes. The labels didn't match the team names you see...

Half an hour later I finally got my box. I headed home hoping that the dinner I'd left coking in the oven would still be edible. It was, phew! Proscuitto wrapped pork fillets baked with red onion and apple apparently doesn't mind being cooked for 15 minutes longer than it should have been.

I'm still feeling a bit worse for wear and I'm really hoping Adam gets home in time tomorrow morning from his sleepover at Crash's place to take Tom to his soccer game. But I won't be holding my breath.