MENU PLAN

Well Tuesday is menu planning day around these parts.....I'm in a rut at the moment though, getting rather sick of the same old thing. I find this happens around change of season, when I need to switch between summer & winter meals, but I managed. We'll have to start cranking up the BBQ again now the weather is warming up :-)
Our income is fortnightly, so I plan for 2 weeks at a time, and I always including 2 "easy" meals (think nuggets, chips, noodles, baked beans etc). Usually I account for Take Away once, but we have a lot on this fortnight, so I'm upping that to twice.

1. DS choice (his b'day...haven't asked him yet)
2. Soft & hard mince taco's
3. Chops + italian potatoes + veg
4. Beef Stroganoff with Penne
5. Green Chicken Curry with rice (kids have the stirfry minus the sauce)
6. Chicken Salsa with mash + veg
7. Hotdogs
8. Honey Soy Chicken wings with salad
9. Chicken Pesto Pasta with garlic bread
10. Veal Tortellini with PN sauce and dinner rolls

We don't do cooked deserts....kids sometimes have icecream, icy pole or fruit......and sometimes I sneak in some chocky after kids are tucked away :-)

K xx

Banana Yoghurt Cake

One of the other "balls" I am trying to juggle, is to become more frugal. Not living on rice & beans and forgoing all luxuries type frugal.....I guess it's more a quest for a simpler life, living within my means, not using objects to gain peace or fulfillment and wasting less, and THAT is where this cake comes in :-)

DD loves her yoghurt, unfortunately she only loves the more expensive "character" ones. I know it would be cheaper & healthier to make our own, but she is the only one who eats yoghurt, so if I bought the necessary stuff, it would be pretty wasteful if she turned her nose up at it, and I assume she would at this stage.

Anyhow....all these yoghurt packs always come with a flavour she doesn't like much, and I was throwing them out a little too often, so I went on a search of a recipe I could use them in, and found this cake, and it is divine (and DS gets some yoghurt without knowing it lol). It's quite dense, but has a really soft but moist texture....hard to describe...but all who have tasted it love it...and I always lose the recipe, so if I write it here, I'll have it for good!

Ingredients:

• 125g of butter (or marg)
• 175g castor sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 very ripe bananas, mashed
• 200g yoghurt
• 1 1/3 cups of self raising flour

Method:

• Preheat oven to 180 degrees. Grease & line your cake tin. (I use a loaf tin)
• Beat butter & sugar in a bowl with electric beaters until pale & creamy. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Fold in the mashed bananas & yoghurt with a large spoon. Sift the flour and fold gently into the wet mixture until just combined.
• Spoon mixture into prepared pan and bake for 50-60mins until a skewer comes out clean. Remove from oven and let stand for 10mins. Remove from pan and let it cool on a wire rack (or watch it being devoured warm ;-))
• You can make a cream cheese icing for it, but I'm too lazy.

And sorry about the dodgy photo, lol, probably should have edited it a bit first....but that laziness is kicking in again :-)

K

MEN!

Why is it, that HE can come home...do minimal work, minimal kid wrangling, and get to sleep by 9pm and most likely sleep till 10am?????
I have been up since 6am....granted I didn't start "working" till 6.45am....but I got kids lunches ready, woke dreamy kids up, made them hot chocolates, coerced them into to dressing & eating breakfast, all set out by me, made beds, had kids teeth brushed, settled arguments, again bribed them to get dressed & eat breakfast, ate my own breakfast of promite on toast, and skulling coffee whilst tying shoelaces & doing hair, still bribing (well close to begging now) that they get dressed & eat their breakfast, force feed DD her anti-biotics with the promise of juice & hell anything she wants by now.....oh and yeah I fit a shower in there somewhere...AND getting dressed...BONUS! Only to get them to school ON TIME! DH...well...he ambles out at 7.30 or so...makes himself a coffee...heads out the back for a fag...for 1/2 an hour or so...ambles in for a Shower, shit (or 3 ) and a shave, barely says goodbye then is out the door!
I drop the children lovingly at school with kisses & cuddles galore...then race to the shops for "homework" & a few grocery items (same dif)...come home...check emails....finish my MR (morning routine (which I will publish at a later date)) Then I do the dishes, pick up all the crap left by my 3 "housemates", vaccum house, dust house, mop....then try and crumple in a heap on my lounge. Best buddy comes to visit, which I am SOOOO thankful for, but it really drained what supplies I had left IYKWIM. When she and her adorable kiddies leave it is time to pick up kids.....by this stage I feel like I am likely to fall asleep at the wheel, so we miss our usual Friday arvo coffee/video/chat. Come home & I don't stop! Dinner, baths, refereeing, cleaning yadayadayada.
DH ambles in at 7.00pm, sits out the back with a scotch chatting on the phone. I say "hi, how was your day?" "EH" is the response!!! I feel like telling him what EH is fucking like!
I finish up baths & dinner, and breaking up fights & dobbing...call DH & kids for dinner...kids come...no DH....decides to show up later...scoffs his meal, mutters a thanks and leaves the table, whilst I sit for half an hour getting kids to EAT!
ALLL credit to him...he finished the dishes (without breaking anything!)
Plus he set the kids up for their "movie night"
Then he goes and parks his arse to watch TV. My sis calls, and we end up on the phone for ages, as you do, and we haven't spoken in ages, And the kids are rippin' the house apart whilst DH snores his arse off in the lounge....*sigh*
More kid-wrangling...DH disappears,,,,found him in bed at 9pm, snoring like a locomotive with a few extra engines added for effect, and sleeping over the WHOLE bed!
So now I finally have the kids asleep in the lounge, where I am going to have to squeeze into soon also + I have the added benefit that they will wake me up first! Whilst thy master will sleep for as long as he pleases....I WISH I COULD DO THAT! Why can't I???
Simple....no-one will look after the kids!
I make a vow now, seeing I should have gone to bed half an hour ago, but decided to ramble incoherently instead....I will not let a foot hit the floor till 8 am....even if I don't get a sleep in...I will enjoy a LAY IN!

And AMEN!
Kirstie

The SOB has been given his marching orders!!!!

WOOHOO!!!!

And yes! It is a he...the proof....he leaves crap wherever he sits, frequently gases out the neighbourhood, is a pain in the arse to get started, doesn't last long distances and is embarrassing to take out in public!



Here he is in all is glory.....
(oops I need to fix the date thingy on my camera)





Oh and SOB actually stands for Smokin' Old Bomb......even my psych calls it that...lol.



So how did this all come about? Well yesterday I had the kids all ready for school, and go to warm the little beastie up.....turn the key....nothing....turn the key again....the radio comes on, but that is it.....DEAD! DH is still away in woop-woop, and seeing he is the main driver, he has the NRMA card, so I call him up, and thankfully he was more annoyed than I was....and we won't mention who left the lights on accidentally for a few hours the night before....

Anyhoo......

NRMA was here in record time, and jumped him back to life for me, but he also informed me it would be dangerous for me to drive, even around the corner to the petrol station, as there was NO oil in him whatsoever, so I bought some oil, which he put in for me, but I had to let him run for half an hour before turning him off, so needless to say the kids were late to school, and the neighbourhood got well and truly gassed out.....oh the shame! The kids offered me their money boxes to buy a new car...god bless them....poor things were coughing and spluttering as much as the car for most of the short trip to school.



DH was pi$$ed as he'd just filled him up with oil not long ago....and that was the clincher...we will be getting a new (to us)car in the next few months....yippee! Our main requirements would be power steering (it's like driving a mack truck), air con (it only blows hot smelly air in summer & cold in winter), a radio that postdates WW2, and that it is not triple the age of our first born!



Our debate on buying a new car is a long one....me yes...DH no....and whilst I am the official owner of the Smokin' Old Bomb, A few years ago DH took over as the main driver, whilst I was given his (brand spanking)new work car, except when he needed to visit clients, or went on work trips to woop woop (like this week).....so my side of the debate kinda fell flat seeing I hardly drive the thing!



So stay tuned as we go car hunting :-)

K

PS: Just remembered a funny story to convey how much of a menace to the environment this car is....
DH has a basement carpark at his work, and as the SOB needs quite a warm up before he'll agree to travel, DH usually goes down, turns him on, then goes back up to his office to pack up his gear to leave. One day a lady came racing into the office shouting that someone was trying to gas themselves in their car..........nup it was just the SOB warming up LOL

Worst I've had is the people at Macca's & KFC drive throughs slamming their windows shut as we are gassing the entire restaurant......sigh......it really is his time....

E's visit to the dentist

The dentist visit went GREAT!
Firstly, and of least importance, I WAS FINE. I really had to push myself to go, was convinced I would panic & make a fool of myself, and E would not be seen, but I did just fine.....I had
"moments" and the worst was picking them up from school early, and J having to pee in the carpark, lol...but another TADA for me.
The dentist visit itself gave some great results....but maybe some background info first.
E has Ectodermal Dysplasias (ED). It is basically a genetic disorder that effects the ectoderm (outer layer) of an embryo....you can google it, but she has a very mild form. It is still a bit of an unknown disorder, but generally effects skin, hair, teeth & nails. She was diagnosed when she was 1, and due to no history from either of us parents, it seems to be just a freak mutation at conception. We are blessed thus far, that her main problem is her teeth. They are conical shaped, and there was a big possibility that she would have next to no second teeth. Her nails are paper thin, and she gets a lot of those sores/cuts around the edge. She had very little hair, until about 18 months, but she now has a full head of the stuff :-) albeit thin & a little wirey & hard to manage. She has occasional skin issues such as excema....but considering some of these kids have no sweat glands...it is nothing, and fairly common these days. She has also had recurrant ear infections, and has had grommets put in her ears.....but so has my son, and he is not ED.
Anyways...back to the dentist. We go to the top paed dentist around these parts, and he is at Westmead Dental Hospital....due to both these things he is very hard to get into, but he is FANTASTIC! So after a long wait....and 2.5years since last seeing him...today was the day!
He checked her out, and then sent her for an x-ray. The last xray she had done she was quite young and wouldn't keep still, but it didn't look good as far as 2nd teeth go. But todays showed much better results....she is only missing her 4 bottom front (2nd/adult) teeth, and 2 incisors. Her 6 year molars are there waiting to come through, which he said looks positive as far as the older ones developing too. Her teeth are at the "age" of a 3.5 year old, which he said was not a worry. The ones, without adult teeth, were the best outcome, as their roots are long and could be built up to "look" more in place...and at a much later date, implants would work well. So at this stage we are doing nothing. We will have another appointment in a year. But if I feel something needs to be done (caps most likely) to call in the meantime. She apparently is called "shark-girl" at school...it breaks my heart...but, for now, it is more "cool" status. than teasing....we'll see how that goes...and I'll try not to be tainted by the tauntings I got at school for my teeth issues (which was dodgy dentist induced, NOT genetics......well actually a bit genetics, but not ED). At the moment she has been invited to just about every party happening, so as long as she continues to do well (and I know kids tease for anything and parties aren't the be all and end all) we will continue to go on as normal, and tackle things as they come :-)
Best get these kidlets to bed...and stop avoiding the housework :-)
K

Cut Loose.....

Well I have "graduated" from seeing my psychiatrist on a monthly basis to an as needed one.
It has been long suggested that I set up a blog or a journal, but my attempts in the past have been very short-lived. I think my problem is my wanting a theme....or it getting too personal than I am truly comfortable with sharing with the entire world. So I still have my written journal for those moments, and will try this for the rest :-)
I am currently fighting a losing battle with my teeth...... Driving me insane. Pain meds help very little......alcohol is better.....but obviously not a good option when I have kids & need to drive (and of course I still wake up with an aching mouth but I also have a hangover which makes the pain worse).....so today I'm trying to keep myself distracted....and avoiding using my mouth as much as possible.....
DH is away for work, the house is trashed, and I have to take E to the dentist this afternoon. Really should try and clean up a bit....that should help the distraction side of things.....I hope!
arggghhhhh
off to see what mush, I can conjure up to eat too.....not sure what's worse, the effects of not eating or the tooth pain when I do......I think the human body can survive 10 days without food....I'm just not sure how long it is until the body (and mind) stop functioning.....will keep you posted.