I am queen.

(Of my kitchen, at least.)

I have a roast in the oven.

I have done the shopping for dinner tomorrow night (we'll have 2 extras) AND for another night after that.

Feeling pretty amazing.

I'm told that some people live like this all the time. Not sure how they stay humble.

robomaid just took it upon herself to clean the floor.

Who am I to complain?

We've had her for 3 weeks now.

Thoughts?

Pros.

• The kids can operate her better than I can.
• She shows initiative.
• She works without me! (Until she gets stuck.)
• With Robomaid on the job, the floor is always 70-80% clean. Like a day and a half after a major vacuum. 

Cons.

• She is slow. To keep the house pretty clean she has to be running for a few hours each day. Apparently this doesn't use much electricity.
• She doesn't do corners well. (But if she is on a lot, dust tends to not gather in corners.)
• She is needy. Her whimpering beep "I'm stuck! Help me!" gets on my nerves. My old vacuum never did that. I miss him.
• She gets stuck under the lounge and chokes on our rug. All the time.
• With Robomaid on the job, the floors are never 100% clean. Sometimes you want them to be.
• She doesn't pick up stuff. (Some clip on hands would be a good addition.)

Worth the money? Not sure yet.

Ask in a month.

coming into easter...

...with no food in the cupboards.

No weetbix. No milk. No meat. No vege (except frozen). No pasta. No cans (except another cream of celery soup which I'm not excited about.)

Looks like I may have to go shopping.

Choose you own adventure baking

Today we played masterchef with our boys and two extras. They could make any kind of biscuits they wanted. Micah put muesli and Hundreds and thousands in his. Nathan made cornflake cookies coated in two types of chocolate. Joel and his friends made chocolate biscuits stuck together with melted mashmallows, dipped in chocolate, with cream on top. Extreme.
Micah's probably tasted the best.

Unless...

... I stop finding wee on the toilet seat, rim and lid, everyone will be sitting down from now on. No exceptions.

This is me being patient.

Okay. So there's this bluetack that you've coloured with a significant amount of red biro ink, worked into a ball, and left in the sun for a couple of months. You come back to play with it and find it's become really sticky. It gets all over your fingers. You try to wash it off but water doesn't remove it. What do you do?

cooking

I've been doing it most nights for a long time now.

It's getting increasingly expensive, increasingly time consuming and I'm sick of it.

I don't want to do it any more.

Can I stop?

I'd be willing to also stop eating dinner if that's what it cost.

I bought the polyester thread.

It was so so cheap.  $2.99 for 3 long rolls.  The cotton stuff cost $2.49 for one tiny roll.  Surely I made the right choice!?!

Um.  No. 

Three Egyptian costumes should have taken an hour to make.  The thread keeps going stupid.  I've made one little Egyptian skirt (stopping every 10cm to unclog the machine.)  On costume #2, half a seam has taken me 40 minutes.  I could hand sew faster than this.  I've given up for now.

Am I doing something wrong or should polyester thread come with a warning?

what does healthy mean?

I was just googling around for ideas for an anzac slice kind of recipe.  One recipe, which had heaps of butter, sugar, honey and chocolate in it, attracted this comment:

"Great healthy family snack, I used melted mars bar for the topping."

I think our definitions of 'healthy' may be somewhat different!

slow cooker loaded for tomorrow night

My self-righteousness is exceeding that of the scribes and pharisees!

carrot pancakes

The great thing about the internet is that it gives me a forum in which to feign competence in areas in which I really have very little competence.  My friends generally do not ask me for cooking advice.

So make what you will of this post.

Here's a recipe I made up tonight.  (The cupboards are bare and I need to fill lunch boxes.)  The kids' verdict was 'pretty good' but my cooking is all they've ever known.  I think they'd be better with more sugar (but that would defeat the healthy thing I'm trying to go for.)

Carrot Pancakes

Ingredients:
3 carrots, cooked and 'pulverized' (as Micah says!)
2 cups SR flour
salt
one dessert spoon sugar
2 eggs
2 cups milk

Method:
Combine ingredients.
Beat with electric beaters.
Heat frying pan and spray with oil stuff.
Pour spoonfuls of mixture into pan and cook.  Flip, cook again. Remove from pan.

Crispy No-Fat Banana Bread

It has cooled down now and is crisp.  Andrew likes it.  I find it too sweet.  I don't think we'll have any trouble eating it, though.  I might even take some to bible study tomorrow.  Worth another try with less sugar.

fat free banana cake

Right now I am trying to make a fat free banana cake.  Or banana crisp bread.  Or... something.

Here's what I've done so far.

I beat up 6 egg whites (220g) with 220g of caster sugar and a bit of vanilla essence.  Then I folded in about 220g of SR flour and a mashed banana.  I poured it into a papered square tin and baked it for about 30 minutes in a moderate oven.  I've just removed it from the tin and chucked it into the fridge to cool down.

At this stage it looks like a cake.   The bit that I pulled off the side was pretty chewy.  I'm thinking that I might cool it down fast then cut it open and see what it's like.  I've left the oven on in case I want to slice it up thin and cook it biscotti style.

This sort of experiment can, of course, go horribly wrong.  If it does, I'll comfort myself that the banana had to be used and the cost of the other ingredients was less than $2.

But perhaps it will be a triumph!

Anyone want to take a bet?

slow cookers are great...

...because I can feel self-righteous all day about the fact that I have dinner organized.  Normal frypan meals only give me a couple of minutes of satisfaction between the time when I've done the hard work and the time when the dinner is on the table.  And I don't get to enjoy those 2 minutes because I'm so busy yelling at the kids to get to the table.

Slow cookers all the way.

But I am a little patriotic...

I made damper today with the kids*.

Basically, just a big scone mix (4cups SR flour, tsp salt, 2 tsp sugar, rub in 2 tbsp butter, add 1cup milk, half cup water) chucked in the oven. Be as rough as you like with the mixture.  Spread enough butter and syrup on it and it will be fantastic.

*Well, with one child.  And she wasn't mine.  But all the kids ate it.  Does that still give me good mum points?

hints for making pizza on a pizza stone

1. You need to use a paddle.  Get the biggest one you can find.
2. Put heaps of flour on the paddle.
3. Don't make your pizza hang off the ends of the paddle.  Just because you can roll the dough out nice and thin doesn't mean you should.
4. Stuffed crust seems like a good idea, but is awkward to get into the oven.
5. Even if you turn it into a mutilated mess trying to get it into the oven, don't fear - it will still taste fantastic.

the perfect choc chip cookies

After a couple of months of trial and error and armed with my new digital kitchen scales, I have made the recipe for the perfect choc chip cookies.

I started with the 1:2:3 (sugar:fat:flour) ratio found in this book.  This ratio makes a shortbread-like cookie.  I prefer my cookies less like shortbread, softer and... just different, so I fiddled with the ratio.  I think my adjusted ratio makes a better cookie than the best recipe I've found before.

Here's what I did.

I started with 1:2:3 - 250g:500g:750g ratio, then upped the sugar, lessened the flour and added an egg white.

So, cream together 300g sugar and 500g butter.  Throw in a teaspoon of vanilla essence and an egg white and keep beating.  Fold in 650g flour and a big packet of choc chips (375g).  Roll into balls, flatten onto lined tray, bake for 10ish minutes at 180C.  Easy.  Yum.

disaster cookies

I've had many cooking adventures since getting the ratio book for my birthday.  I've made several batches of biscuits roughly following the 1:2:3 (sugar:fat:flour) ratio.  Most have worked well. 

Last night I thought I'd try a short cut.  I melted the butter and mixed in the (white) sugar instead of creaming them together as I usually do.  I also had some condensed milk which I chucked in as well and white choc chips.

The biscuites weren't a triumph.  The sugar didn't disolve properly and the end results looked like they had been sprinkled with sugar.  Not sure why, but something funny also happened to the butter.  When I pulled them out of the oven, each bikky was frying in a fatty yellow puddle.  When they cooled down they were crunchy on the outside and doughey in the middle.

So not great.  I called them my disaster cookies.  The kids thought this was a little harsh because they still tasted delicious.  Put enough white chocolate into anything and it will be okay.

Next year I'm considering having a regular feature - Simone's cooking adventures.  What do you think?  Perhaps others with the ratio book could try too and we have a bake off!

ratio

I got this book for my birthday last week.

Used it last night to make biscuits by the 1:2:3 sugar:fat:flour ratio. It makes sense. I know how that ratio works, now I tinker it to get a batch of biscuits just how I want them.

Now I need a decent set of kitchen scales. Maybe for christmas.

Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind The Craft Of Everyday Cooking

Thanks Nathan and Mel. I want this for my birthday. (Andrew, take note!)