We're Off!

And I mean that in a good way LOL. We're about to head off on our holiday to Exmouth and we can't wait.

The Gastro Bug paid us a visit over the weekend and I, who normally come off quite well against gastro, went down with a bang. I've lost 4 and a half kg's and I think you'll understand how bad it was if I tell you the first four were gone in the first ten hours or so :( . Everyone else got some variation of the bug but all seem to have bounced back quite nicely. I'm still on crackers and water, but gosh I'm close to my goal weight!

Anyway, Exmouth beckons. We're staying in a swanky villa, planning lots of relaxing and playing with the kids, some fishing, lots of swimming and hopefully yummy food too!

I'll see you in a week or so with lots of pics from the trip.

The Best Banana Cake

Trish, over at Light. Sweet. Crude. told me she had a terrific banana cake recipe a couple of weeks ago when I had some over-ripe bananas to use up. I used those ones in a different recipe but hid some of the next lot in the back of the fridge, a necessary measure in a house with two little monkeys, in order to give Trish's recipe a try.

All I can say is: make this recipe! It was delicious. It was moist. It was loudly and widely complimented. And, next time I'm not going to wait for it to cool down, I'll be eating it warm.

Here's a very bad pic of the cake but you'll have to go check out Trish's blog to get the recipe - it's under the heading 'What's Cooking' way down on the right hand side. I used three large-ish bananas and cooked it in a ring pan for about 45 minutes - delicious!

A personal note: I had a lovely comment from a new reader that I had every intention of responding to but... now I can't find the comment! So, thankyou new reader for reading my blog, I'm glad you enjoyed it and hope you come back and comment again so I can respond properly and come visit you!

Scrapping, Of Sorts

It seems that Offspring #2 had her birthday ages ago but now that I know the thankyou notes have arrived in faraway places I can post pictures the invitations I made for her birthday party and of the thankyou notes that took me far too long to get to.

The birthday invitation was in the shape of a little purse

And it opened up to divulge the details of the party.

The thankyou cards were very simple but I was happy with how they turned out. Even though we took (literally) hundreds of photos of her during the week of her birthday we didn't end up with one decent picture of #2 smiling, at the camera, without a totally silly face! This was the closest we came to a 'nice' picture and since I was already quite late with the thankyou's I figured that it would have to do.

The Best Pav, Ever.

Sorry for the delayed absence. Let's blame a particularly social weekend, tutoring headaches and a spike in the maximum temps up this way - it was 37 on Saturday - for keeping me from the computer. We can also blame the computer itself as it is slowly dying and causing problems.

We had a great weekend, a little busier than I would normally want in just a few days but lots of fun. Friday night was #1's soccer club wind up and all the kids were presented with medals (photos will be forthcoming in a day or two) and then enjoyed a sausage sizzle. It was lovely to see all the kids at the presentation - they were so chuffed with their medals, or metals as #1 insists on calling them. While we were there a friend phoned to see what I was doing for dinner and if I could be persuaded to join her and another friend at a local restaurant. I was easily persuaded and enjoyed a 'girls night' with a yummy meal, nice wine and fun conversation. Saturday dawned a little earlier than I really wanted but since Red Dirt Daddy had been great about letting me have a little extra sleep during the week I thought it would be nice to return the favour. That night I went round to visit a friend whose hubby is away for three weeks. She has twins in #1's class at school and was in need of some grown-up company. More wine, pizza and lots of gabbing led us to midnight when I declared that I really really had to go home. Again dawn arrived waaaaaay too early. Then we had friends to dinner Sunday night! Three families from soccer and/or school came over for a bbq - we purposely made it an early start so the kids wouldn't be too late and everyone was gone by 8.30. Everyone contributed to the meal and we had some great food, more wine (for someone who rarely drinks I did fairly well this weekend) and a terrific afternoon/evening. One of our guests is gluten intolerant so I racked my brains for a gluten-free dessert that she could eat that didn't have citrus in it so that I could eat it too and finally settled on pavlova. This was the first time I'd made a full-sized pav, I usually make mini ones or just meringues and I also made it using the convection setting on my microwave. It was a little flatter than I expected (but I think I spread it out too far which didn't help) but was absolutely delicious. Certainly, there are more simple pav recipes but this one was worth the extra effort. It received outrageous compliments and went straight to my top 10, which is mostly made up of desserts anyway!

Pavlova
The Margaret Fulton Cookbook (2006 ed.)

4 egg whites

a pinch of salt

1 1/2 cups caster sugar

1 1/2 teaspoons vinegar

1 teaspoon vanilla

300ml cream, whipped (I used 600ml)

punnet of strawberries

pulp of 3 passionfruit

Preheat oven to 200-210 degrees Celsius. Place a piece of baking paper on a baking tray and mark a 20cm circle (the pavlova will spread a little).

Beat the egg whites and salt in an electric mixer until they stand in stiff peaks. Sift the sugar and gradually sprinkle in 1 tablespoon at ta time, beating at full speed only until all the sugar has been added. Lastly fold in the vinegar and vanilla. Spoon large dollops inside the circle on the baking sheet and smooth over the top lightly. Place in the oven (reducing the temperature to 150) for 1 hour. Turn off the heat and leave the pavlova int he oven until cold. If using a gas oven , bake at 150 for 1 hour, reduce heat to 120 for a further 30 minutes and then turn oven off and leave the pavlova in oven until completely cooled.

When the pavlova has cooled, slide onto a large, flat cake plate and remove the baking paper. Don't worry if the pavlova collapses slightly, also expect cracks on the surface. Whip the cream until stiff and scoop over the top of the pavlvova. Hull and slice the strawberries and scatter them over the cream. Spoon passionfruit pulp over the top.

Woohoo!

My camera just arrived back home. The people in Sydney pulled it apart, cleaned it all up, fixed the broken bit and sent it back to me all for free! Hubby found out that our camera had been part of a recall due to a defective part but we weren't sure if that was really the problem(especially after I dropped it on a tile floor and the playback bit never worked again - oops) . We figured it needed fixing anyway so we sent it to the proper people, rather than just the bloke in town who fixes cameras, who promptly declared that the whole thing was part of the recall. So, now my camera's fixed, it didn't cost us anything, and I can go crazy with my photos again!

Like I said, Woohoo!

Oh, and it's just in time for our next holiday. More on that next week.