Thanks

Awww... you guys are great. Thanks for leaving all those lovely comments. You really made my day!

I've come down with the flu and Offspring #1 has managed to break his little finger (playing football with his Dad, but according to those in the know it was a fantastic mark!) so things are a little quiet around here. Last night's leftovers are on the cards for dinner. I tried a new recipe that turned out better than I'd expected so I'll share that with you in the next couple of days.

I'm off work today and both the kids are at school so I'm planning to settle on the couch with a blanket, a book and some day-time tv.

Milestones-A-Plenty

It's my third blogiversary today AND this is my 500th post! Who woulda thunk it?

Three years ago we'd not long moved to Red Dirt Central, my big kid had just turned four, my baby was about to turn one and I'd decided to start a blog so that family and friends could keep up with what we were doing. I figured I'd share news of our life in the red dirt along with photos and updates on kids and, in the process, hopefully feel like we weren't quite so far away from everyone. In the next three years I made some great friends through the blogging world, baked more new recipes than I ever thought I would and ended up with people as far away as Italy, Texas and Germany reading about my corner of the world. We also moved back home to the Perth hills and, while I mislaid the blogging mojo for a while, I kept blogging.

I thought I'd share some of my favourite posts from over the past three years.

One of my favourite places and definitely one of my all-time favourite holidays was Exmouth in October, 2007. And looking back at some of the dumb things I've done, but blogged about anyway, has made me giggle. I've also enjoyed looking back and and seeing how much the kids have changed and grown as well as being reminded about some of our not-so-traditional family traditions. I still love this post about Offspring #1's artwork and his attempts to explain it to me.

I also love this post from when I did a work trip from Red Dirt Central to Sydney. To say I was terrified and freaking out would be an understatement and realising, once I was well into the trip, that I could do it on my own was an amazing feeling.

And of course, finding some truly fabulous recipes and sharing them with you has been one of the highlights for me.

Thanks for keeping me company and for reading. Would you do something for me? To help me celebrate my milestone? Please, please leave a comment. Just a quick hello would really make my day. You can be anonymous if you want but I'd love to know you're here.

Going Bananas

I scored a huge bag of bananas for $2 while I was doing the grocery shopping yesterday. There was at least a couple of kilograms of lovely yellow bananas - I have no idea why they were going out cheap and, frankly, I don't care. Hubby and the kids go through bananas faster than I keep up but this was a heap of them, even by our standards, so I got busy searching out some recipes. Last night we settled for plain old banana splits - nothing fancy mind you, just banana split lengthways and some ice-cream, today I made our favourite banana bread and tonight I tried a new banana dessert.

This recipe was easy, fabulous and a huge hit. Even Offspring #2, who is fussy at the best of times and prefers her ice-cream unmarred by other sweet things, succumbed and declared it to be "very deee-lish-us". I doubled the recipe to make four one-cup puddings and realised, too late, that the servings were going to be far too big. Next time (yes, there will be a next time!) I'll make the recipe as is but put them into half-cup ramekins.

Banana Maple Puddings

from No Time To Cook by Donna Hay

2 tablespoon caster (superfine) sugar

2 tablespoons maple syrup

2/3 cup mashed banana

50g butter, melted

1 egg

1/2 cup self raising flour

thick cream, to serve (we added ice-cream too)

extra maple syrup, to serve

Preheat oven to 170C. Place the sugar, maple syrup, banana, butter, egg and flour into a small bowl and mix until combined. Spoon mixture into 2 greased 1-cup (250ml) capacity ramekins and bake for 30-35 minutes or until cooked when tested with a skewer. Serve puddings warm with a dollop of thick cream and extra maple syrup.

Catching Up With Friends

Trish, over at Light. Sweet. Crude. has moved house. Her new blog - Eat, Shoot, Blog - is lovely. It's clean and pretty and all nice and new. She's moved all her old stuff over there and added lots of new bits and pieces but essentially it's the same Trish. Great writing, gorgeous photos and enough funny to make me snort hot tea out of my nose. Often.

Pop round for a visit soon. I'm sure she'd love to see you.

When Life Hands You Lemons...

Take photos of them!

These beauties are on the lemon tree down the back of the yard. They are a gorgeously bright yellow with thick waxy peel and smell divine. Darn shame I'm allergic to them and this is about as close as I'm willing to get.