Quick, Easy and Fab!

I just made this totally delicious slice. Yeah it has lemon in it and if I eat more than a bite or two there'll be hell to pay. Or hives that look like I've been whipped with a cat o'nine tails, along with some seriously interesting swelling - oh good point, I should go take my rings off right now!

Anyway, back from being sidetracked, this is soooooo easy, super quick to throw together and tastes fantastic. Go make it. Now.

Passionfruit Slice

from Australian Women's Weekly magazine, February 2010

1 cup self-raising flour

1 cup dessicated coconut

1/2 cup caster sugar

125g butter, melted

Passionfruit Topping

395g can condensed milk

1/2 cup strained fresh lemon juice (I used 1/4 cup)

1/3 cup passionfruit pulp

1. Preheat oven to 180C. Grease an 18cm x 28cm slice pan. Line the base and sides with baking paper.

2. Combine the flour, coconut and sugar in a bowl. Stir in the butter; mix well. Press evenly over the base of the prepared pan. Bake for 15 minutes oruntil browned lightly.

3. Passionfruit topping: Meanwhile, combine the condensed milk, lemon juice and passsionfruit pulp in a medium bowl. Beat with a wood spoon until smooth. Pour passionfruit mixture over the hot base. Bake for a further 15 minutes or until just set. Cool in pan.

4. Serve cut into pieces.

Things That Make Me Smile

Nothing big, just little bits that are making me smile at the moment:

- Offspring #1 seems to have settled into the school year very nicely. He likes his teacher, has organised himself a couple of playdates and is happy to head off to school each morning. It's a proud Mummy smile, tempered with a bit of a relief-style smile.

- In a similar vein, because school is going well #1 is just that bit easier to cope with. He's a routine kinda kid (he gets it from me, poor kid) so by the end of the long, long, summer holidays he was a little bit beside himself. Now we're back into a proper routine he's feeling more settled and we're getting to see his normal sweet self instead of the devil-child he has been lately. I've been getting lots of hugs, lots of "I love you's" and the odd cheeky smack on the butt as he wanders past. That's definitely a relieved smile.

- One of my bestest bud's called me this morning. Normally when the phone rings just after 7 in the morning I'd not be expecting great news, instead I heard a chirpy "hello!" and got the best surprise. She was trying to work out something on facebook and it wouldn't work so instead of emailing to ask me she gave me a quick call. She's still on the other side of the country but it was so good to hear her voice. That one was a happy, happy, happy smile.

- I have three different books on the go at the moment. I don't normally read three at the same time but I wasn't loving the first one so started on the second and didn't love that either and started on the third and now I just pick up whichever one is closest. I keep getting the characters confused and the plot-lines tangled and, when you consider that one is a gothic-y ghost-y story, one's a murder mystery and the other one is a sci-fi novel that's just funny in itself. This one's a "yes, I'm a fool" kind of smile.

- Last night I frightened the crap out of myself. Then completely cracked myself up when I realised what had scared me. I was sitting at the computer and could see a light flashing in the back yard. We've a few solar lights in the garden but this was more like a flashlight. Of course in my head that meant there was someone in the yard. With a flashlight. And probably a big knife. To murder us all in our sleep. You get where I'm going with this right? I freaked out long enough for my breathing to become shallow and my heart-rate to rocket. Then I realised that the reason I could see the light was because the kitchen blinds were up. Which meant... it was my mirror ball in the back patio reflecting the kitchen lights. Doh! That there is a "I'm a complete moron and I'm glad hubby wasn't here to see this ridiculous-ness" kind of smile. Actually I laughed out loud at myself, partly in sheer relief.

- And the last one for today belongs to Offspring #2. At the moment she's having a growth spurt with regards to her language skills. She's discovered some big words and she's loving them. Certainly, definitely and seriously are at the top of her list and each time she comes out with them I just smile and smile. Then go into another room and giggle. She certainly is funny. And she definitely knows how to use them in the right context. And she makes me smile, seriously.

I bought the wrong brand of muesli this week. Yes, absolutely disgraceful. What kind of woman would do such a thing? Ummm... one who was trying to drag the shopping bill back down to a I-can-live-with-that level rather than a bill that resembles the national debt. So with my recent muesli-convert husband complaining that he didn't like this brand as much as the one I'd bought the previous two weeks I thought I'd help him out by making cookies. (Did you get what I did there? Turned the negative into a positive - he doesn't like the muesli, I'll bake cookies!)

I remembered a friend saying that she'd made muesli cookies with her daughter a while back and rang her for the recipe. Some time later (we were chatting and catching up on all the news) she found the recipe for me and away we went. I had a go at the version she gave me but they ended up kind of soggy. You know? The kind of cookies that are soft but the middle seems too soft. So today I had another go and changed a few bits and pieces. I played with the measurements a bit to get the texture I wanted and reduced the sugar. The original recipe called for unsweetened muesli but since I was using up what I had (toasted and sweetened as all get out) they were waaayyyy too sweet. If you're using unsweetened muesli, ie cardboard, go ahead and up the sugar a little.

Wah-lah! Yummy cookies for the lunchboxes this week and I've used up some of the muesli. Even better, you mix the whole thing in a the saucepan you melt the butter in, so less washing up. Go me!

Sultana and Muesli Cookies

makes about 16

100g butter

2 tablespoons golden syrup

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/3 cup sugar

2/3 cup muesli

1/3 cup sultanas

1 cup wholemeal flour

Preheat oven to 180C. Line two cookie trays with baking paper.

Melt butter and golden syrup in a large saucepan. (You'll need it to be big enough to put the rest of the ingredients into.) Set aside to cool slightly.

Dissolve baking soda in 1 tablespoon of hot water. Add the soda to the butter then add the dry ingredients. Mix well

Drop tablespoons of the cookie mixture on prepared trays, leaving room to spread. Press lightly with a fork.

Bake for 10-12 minutes or until golden. Allow to cool on trays for 2 minutes. Place cookies on rack to cool completely.

Mary Bennet Grows Up

Here's the next instalment in my reading list. I got a great haul from the library last week - it's so much easier to find some good books when you've got a list of what you want to read rather than looking over the shelves for something you might like and haven't already borrowed. Especially in a small library like ours. Thanks to the suggestions some of you have made, as well as some ideas from various other places, I now have quite a few books I'd like to investigate further.

One that really took my fancy this week was Colleen McCullough's The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet. I love Pride and Prejudice. LOVE. And I've always had a soft spot for Mary. She was such a ridiculous figure with her terrible singing and overwhelming piety and, to my mind, was always the left-out middle child. Jane and Elizabeth as the eldest daughers were best friends and confidantes and Kitty and Lydia as the youngest daughters were silly and undisciplined and poor Mary was left to her own devices. The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet is set twenty years after the marriages of Elizabeth to Darcy and Jane to Bingley and shows us a very different Mary to that seen in Pride and Prejudice.

I loved Mary's story and enjoyed revisiting each of the Bennet sisters. Parts of the story will quite possible horrify die-hard P&P fans but I was impressed with McCullough's working of the characters. I have read other P&P sequels and haven't liked them nearly as much, in fact I've not finished a couple because they annoyed me so much but McCullough has retained the sense of each character while allowing them to grow up (or not, as the case may be!). Darcy's still arrogant, smug and conceited and it hasn't done him any favours with his family. Elizabeth is still pig-headed and thinks she knows best. Lydia is still man-crazy, particularly if the man happens to be a soldier and Jane is still sweet, forgiving, Jane. But it's Mary who is at the centre of the book and she very quickly became my favourite character. She is clever and witty, self-deprecating and completely unaware of her own charms. She has 'grown up' and is horrified by the girl she was. As she quite rightly points out she could have been a much nicer person if one of her sisters had but told her she had a terrible singing voice and that people don't like being preached to. Instead they laughed at her behind her back and made a polite show of listening to her perform. Mr Bennet takes something of a bashing in the novel and I did find that a little difficult initially but the reasons are... um reasonable and I was easily swayed.

If you're a P&P fan but are far enough removed from it to cope with the characters being played with I'd really recommend this one.

**A warning - there is some fairly crude language in there that will offend some readers. To be honest I'm not sure it was entirely necessary but it did prove the point McCullough was trying to make and, despite what we might think, it is historically acurate for the time.

First Day

Well school started back and the boy-child headed off to Year 3 while the girl-child started her first day of kindy. All together now... Awwwwwww.

I know! How did she get to be big enough for kindy? That's about 17 different kinds of wrong. And Year 3? That's 23 completely different levels of wrong!

They both had great first days. Offspring #1 thinks his new teacher is "AWESOME" - the reason is hilarious and doesn't actually make sense but he's happy and that's all that matters. Offspring #2 thinks kindy is terrific fun - her teachers are very nice, they did drawing and painting, read stories, played and played some more and she came home "all worned out."

Yay for a great start to the school year. They're happy, I'm happy and it's all good!