The Chaos of the silly season.

Well you are all probably well and truly into the silly season just like us.  School concerts, final assignments, reports, work do's, Christmas shopping to finish, the planning of Christmas day - Ahhhhhhh why do we do this to ourselves.  Well this year with one week (the worst chaos week at that) of school to go my lovely baby gets chicken pox.  As miserable as she is there is an upside to this - instead of racing around like a mad woman all week, I have now been forced to stay home and tend to my baby.  At 7 she is still the baby of the family and a huge drama queen, and when she is sick she just wants to sit with mummy and snuggle. So this week will now be a nice quiet week at home with my little one, so a lovely rest before Christmas is definitely to be viewed as a blessing in disguise (all be it a spotty one).

I got a lovely pressie from a lady at school today.  She knows I knit and crochet and she works at the local op shop so when this yarn came past her way she snapped it up for me to thank me for helping her out this year with some school runs i did when she was unwell.  I never expected anything in return for the helping hand but this was a lovely thought and will be turned into many loved items in the future.

The first incubated chickens

Our chickens are laying up a storm, our numbers are on the way back up as Nish bought home 3 laying Isa Browns from her school project and the little chickens have really stepped up. Also I am a bit excited because the first batch of incubated chickens look to have 4 girls and 2 boy Sussex.   I am yet to decide what is going on with the barnevelders, they all look the same. lol  I also have 4 plain white cross breeds that look like they might be girls to.  This girl heavy flock will allow me to replenish and then all the others will go for food. So as annoying as the fox attack was it wasn't a complete unfixable disaster, and it has moved Ian into sorting out my chicken coup and run.

We had friends come over for a BBQ on Saturday and that bought with it 4 extra adults and 4 extra kids.  I just love watching kids up here running around and yelling with childish delight.  There was some adult giggling when I just leaned over and picked up a lamb for the kids to pat as they are more than 1/2 my size now.  The sheep do look rather impressive bolting up the hill straight at me when I call them.

I would like to introduce you all to the newest member of our family.  Sisma.  She is my little baby and I got her from my little sis Dee. She will become our mummy cat (Ma)  get it Sis-Ma.  We thought we would let the kids experience kittens "just once".  She is lovely and very smoochy.  She has settled in extremely well and has everyone wrapped around her paws, even they other cats took straight to her.

As I was writing this the kids came to inform me that Hercules our lamb ram was stuck in a tree????  Earlier today I saw him walking around the front bush paddock, he had gotten off his tether and I thought I might just let him have a wander around,  he is such a sook and wont go out of sight of either us or Billy the goat so I figured he would be OK.  Well as usual when it comes to our animals I was wrong.  I'm not sure why but he was trying to climb up a tree, I assume the leaves must be tasty.  He had one of his back legs caught between 2 branches and was stuck.  I had to lift him down but then he was limping,  I can't see any damage and he keeps shacking it out so I am thinking maybe just pins and needles so we did a few laps around the house block to walk it off - crazy animal.

I thought today I would share our Christmas breakfast recipe with you.  It is really easy to make, you throw it together the night before and put it in the fridge,  then just put it in the oven in the morning.  We put ours in just before we start with the pressie opening and by the time we are finished breakfast is hot and ready to be served.

Christmas Breakfast
250gms shredded Cheddar cheese
 6 eggs
3 c. milk
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. pepper
1 tsp. dry mustard
3 strips bacon, cut in half

Directions:
Trim crusts from bread. Layer bread then cheese in bottom of greased 7 1/2 x 12 inch flat baking dish. Beat eggs and milk together and stir in the salt, pepper and mustard. Pour this over bread, cheese. Lay bacon on top. Refrigerate overnight. The next morning bake, uncovered, at 180 degrees for 50-55 minutes.
Remove from oven just after guests sit down. Otherwise, it may tend to sink. Tastes just as great, but doesn't look as glamorous. Serves 6.





I hope you will give it a try, its delish and so easy.

Well that's it for this week

Catchya later

Its Late but it's Here

OK so I'm a day late this week, but have had a busy week.  Not sure what made this week busier than normal it just was.  It was our 16th wedding anniversary on Friday and both my and Ian's parents took the 5 kids for the weekend so we could have some alone time.  It was lovely, its not something we get very often so it was nice just to be a couple for a little while.

On Saturday we manage to finish putting up the Chicken area.  there are 2 separate night time areas and one large outdoor area.  The ducks and Chickens seem to be getting along, or at least have an understanding to leave each other alone.  After our Chicken tragedy the other week the 1 remaining full size chicken has really stepped up and is laying 8 eggs in 7 days.  Also our bantam chickens have joined the party and all 3 of the girls are laying an egg a day, they might be small but 3 small eggs and 1 large egg is enough to scrape by in the house so that we don't have to buy eggs, so that's good.

At the beginning of last week quite a few of the blogs I read and many recipe cites I browse all seemed to be talking about Granola.  So I took it as a lovely nudge  to make some.  I had been complaining to my mum about how expensive cereal is and we go through so much of it for some reason.  We also have a small weetbix problem, nobody will eat the broken crumby bits at the end of the box (which is about 3-4 serve usually), so this solves that problem as well.  I would like to share the recipe with you,  It is a combination of lots of the different recipes I looked at after tweaking for personal taste.  It works out to be about $1.50 for a 3lt plastic cereal container full. That is a lot cheaper than the $5-7 I currently pay for the same amount of cornflakes or cherrios, plus I know what has gone into it and can tweak it to my hearts content.  Dave has already requested a Bar Version be made for his lunch box, so that may be coming in the near future too.  OK here is the recipe:

Dell's Granola

Ingredients:
    1/3 cup brown sugar
    1/3 cup oil (canola or vegetable)
    1/2-2/3 cup honey (fruit puree or golden syrup can   be used too)
    2 teaspoons vanilla
    1  teaspoon cinnamon (or to taste)

    3 cups old fashioned oats  Or left over crushed weetbix
    4 cups quick oats
    1 cup coconut
    1 Cup of dried Fruit (tightly packed) ) or to taste - optional
   
   
Directions:
    In a small saucepan mix together brown sugar, oil, and honey.
    Bring to a boil.
    Remove from heat and add vanilla and cinnamon.
    In a large bowl combine oats, coconut, and sugar/oil mixture.
    Stir until oats are well coated and everything is combined.
    Spread onto 2 trays with sides or pans
    Bake at 160 degrees for 10 minutes, giving a stir about the 5 min mark
    Remove from oven and leave to cool
    Mix in dried fruit.
    store in an air tight container.
 
This recipe is also really  yummy with some yogurt and fresh fruit for a snack - Yummy.  I make it about every second day and it only takes about 15 Min's, give it a try you might be surprised.

On the Knitting front, I need some motivation.  I just really cant get motivated to do any,  I am hoping a visit to Dee's this weekend might spur me on cause I really need to get going I have so many works in progress that my knitting basket can officially not fit any more and don't walk to close to it  it may topple over.    I did get offered a stack of alpaca fleeces from my neighbour this week who just had her flock shawn so I am hopping that will kick start the spinning again too.

Well that's about it for this week

Catchya later








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Lazy Easter Sunday

I really didn't do much packing today, it is easter after all and I was on kid duty whilst Ian packed up lots of shed stuf (read lots of crap everywhere).  So I had a lazy day with the kids.  I recently discovered a lovely Blog mainly about knitting, cooking and life in general (A Friend to Knit With)  I have been drooling over all the knitting and especially the lovely cookies this lady bakes.  Well yesterday I tried one of the recipes,   Here is a metric conversion for you.

Slice and Bake Cookies
Ingredients:
450gms brown Sugar (16 oz)                                   2 Cups oats
450 gms melted butter (4 sticks/1 lb)                   2 Cups Corn Flakes
2 Cups sugar                                                                    4 Cups Flour
4 Eggs                                                                                 2 tsp Baking Soda
2 tsp Vanilla                                                                     2 tsp Baking Powder

Directions
Mix in order (1st column then second column). You are looking for the consistency of a plyable dough (may need to increase or decrease your flour)
Add nuts if desired.
Roll into logs and wrap in wax paper
Chill for at least 2 hours before cutting.
Bake at 180 c (350 f) for 10-14 minutes

Dough can be stored in the freezer for later use.

Check out the orginal here Slice and Bake Cookies (at the end of the page)

This was the best idea,  I got about 9 logs out of it and put them straight into the freezer.  Then when you want to use them just pull them out cut along the log to make circles and off you go.  I wrapped mine in baking paper and then the sheet I needed was even ready to go - so easy. 
This is the outcome of 1 log - I got 9 logs total.  You could probably make them a little bit bigger but I like them this size becuase of course the little chicklets like to take 2 at a time.I can not believe that I haven't come across this idea in any of my Aussie cook books - its great.  Here are some picies (yes I need work on my log shapping).  Try them they are yummy and such a good idea for the school holidays.  Enjoy and don't forget to check out A friend to knit with's blog.