French Carbs, and other Joys of Life...

I am sitting here eating, at 6pm, some of the remnants of brunch. It has come straight out of the oven, and it is burning my thighs, as it is carefully cradled on a tea towel in my lap. What I am eating was meant to end up being a cinnamon scroll, but for some reason it didn't rise. The recipe failed me for the first time ever. So, instead of being a cinnamon scroll for breakfast, the dough has just been baked into rolls (without cinnamon), and is delicious, sweet and rich, and flaky (in a good way). Like a cross between brioche and croissants. Mmmmmm.....

This morning I had one of my oldest and dearest friends and her mum for brunch. I have been using my thermomix more frequently in the past couple of weeks, and starting to become more comfortable experimenting a bit. So, I was pretty excited about the prospect of visitors. I decided to make some cinnamon scrolls (which failed me! -  not in the thermomix), some brioche in the thermomix (I turned half the mix into cinnamon scrolls, and they were ok); I made some scones (not thermomix) made some butter to go with them in the thermomix, which I think I did for too long, as it was more like whipped butter, but still good. I also made some hummous, some dukkah, and we had some shop bought cheeses, and lots of fresh fruit. I just love brunch.

And it doesn't exactly fit in with brunch, but I have always wanted to make a Lemon Meringue Pie, so decided that today was the day. I was pretty happy with my first attempt.

What is your favourite Brunch food?

Do you like to experiment with your cooking?

Arachnophobia

I am not scared of spiders.

I don't particularly like big nasty looking spiders inside since I have had children. The first time I remember actually bothering to remove a spider was a couple of weeks after my first baby was born, and I found a whitetail in the kitchen of our studio apartment. Up until that point, I would have actually happily co-existed with the spider, but I felt a little protective of my baby, and decided it would be better for the white tail spider to live outside. After child birth, I also drew the line at huntsmen if they decided to live on the ceiling or wall above my children's beds.

Oh, and the time my hand discovered one under the car door handle, I squealed like a girl. Apart from that, I am pretty cool about spiders.

My husband grew up on farms, he couldn't care less about spiders.

This attitude has been passed down to our two boys. Our eldest has never shown to have any issues with spiders (or any creepy crawlies of any type in fact, often collecting them and letting them live in his bedroom). Our second boy went through a stage of really not liking spider webs. He would visit his grandmother and happily point out all the spider webs she had missed in her dusting. It is quite amazing how different the view of furniture is for a 3 year old!

However, my little girl, is quite a different story. She is two and a half, and at the beginning of the year
she started saying 'spider! scary!'. She would have trouble getting to sleep, because she was sure that there were spiders crawling up the wall next to here bed. There were none that we could see.

I bought a 'lift the flap' type book, that happened to have a picture of a spider that you could lift the flap of. She had very happily lifted the flap of several pages, but baulked when she got to the spider, and flat out refused to touch it.  Even though it was just a picture.

Today we went to the Melbourne Museum to their Bugs Alive exhibition. She found it all pretty interesting, but when I lifted her up to get closer to the window of the tarantula display, she arched her back and pushed away with her feet. Their was no way she was going to touch that window. She then said that they would crawl all over her. Later I asked her about it, she said she didn't like seeing the spiders, but it was okay because they were in their 'homes'.

I find it pretty fascinating, because I don't think she has been exposed to people who outwardly talk of being scared of spiders. Could her fear be innate? The psychologist in me finds the nature/nurture debate fascinating, and since becoming a parent, my viewpoint of much of it has definitely changed.

Do your children have phobias? Are they things you expected?

Are you scared of Spiders?

What is your opinion on the nature/nurture debate? Has becoming a parent changed your feelings on it? I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Wordless Wednesday - After the storm

Really want a macro lens so I can do raindrop reflections properly!!
Playing along with wordless wednesday here

Chaos

I haven't been particularly good with blogging recently. I have lost momentum. Big time.

I am just not managing to do everything, which means that I feel like I am not doing anything well.

One of the reasons I am finding it hard to get things done is because of my terrorist toddler. She is going through a very '2' year old phase. Which is perhaps fitting seeing as she is 2. However, my second child didn't have a two year old phase, never had a tantrum, was always good at reasoning, listening, doing what he was told, etc. I stupidly, (and smugly), thought it had something to do with parenting. My third child has taught me that I was mistaken in this belief.

Rocket got the wrong box out of the bookshelf while looking for the Wii games. He mistakenly removed the puzzles and games box from the top shelf (where it can't be reached by little people), and put in on the couch (within Molly's reach). He then came and puzzled to me that he couldn't find what he was looking for in the box. Two minutes later I came out to help in find what he was looking for - this is the chaos that had ensued in the meantime.....

An afternoon spent putting puzzles back together to check we had all the pieces before putting back in the box. Not fun, and didn't feel productive. Puzzles are not my strong point, even ones that are designed to be simple enough for preschoolers.

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday with Faith Hope and a whole lotta love

Hollandaise - daze

Perfectly soft poached free-range eggs topped with a good dollop of hollandaise is one of my favourite things in life. When out shopping on weekend mornings, I glance longingly at cafes where people are eating Eggs Benedict (hollandaise and ham), Eggs Florentine (hollandaise and spinach), or Eggs Atlantic* (hollandaise and smoked salmon).
Yum. All things good.

However, I barely ever go out for breakfast. It is something that has to be done in relative peace, and you should be able to linger. Linger is no longer something I am able to do now that I am a mother. At least not at places I want to linger.  Apparently we can linger at the toy store however.

So go alone I hear you saying?
I know I could, but it is just more satisfying going with someone else. Weekend breakfast has everything to do with love, and should be shared with those we love, our friends and our family.
It also feels like an overindulgence to go alone, and that takes the gloss off a little for me.
So, it just doesn't happen.

The other day however, I decided to attempt Hollandaise at home. I was nervous, figured it would be a disaster, and that I would be the only one who would eat it, even if it worked.

Imagine my surprise when....

Perfect, creamy, prehaps just a little more than a dollop of delicious-ness on a plate....mmmm...heaven.....

What is your favourite breakfast food? 

Do you have things you love to eat when you are out that you don't attempt when you are at home?

*At least that is what our local cafe calls it. 

Do you Geocache?

Found! Yay!

This week a friend of mine suggested we go Geocaching. Geocaching is a relatively new thing, as far as I know, and I had never come across someone who knew much about it, but when I first heard about it last year, it sounded seriously fun, so my answer was 'definitely'!.

Geocaching is described as a global treasure hunting game where participants locate hidden physical containers, called geocaches, outdoors and then share their experience online.

There are quite a few Geocaching Apps, but we used one called Geocaching.com. Apparently Geochachers have hidder Geocaches on ever contintent from Antartica to North America. I was really surprised to hear that there were quite a few in our suburb, including one at the top of our street!

Can you see it under the leaves?

We found two Geocaches, before the smallest two in our group began to fade a little, and we decided it was time to retire for the day. Inside the Geocaches are small items that you can swap with items of your own. The children swapped for tiny dice, pencils, rubbers, and stickers. It was all very exciting!


It's a great way to spend some time outside, and there are some little people in our house who are looking forward to doing it again soon!

Wordless Wednesday

Playing along here

Mindblogging

Well, it has been a long time since my last post. Things got hectic a couple of weeks ago, between the last week of school, a house inspection, many visitors, our 10 year anniversary, that I took a slight break, planning on making up for it last week when we were on holidays. We rented a holiday house in Phillip Island for a week. I figured I would have plenty of time to catch up on blogging. I hadn't counted on access to internet being mostly non-existent.

So, during the last two weeks, I have been spending a LOT of time mindblogging. Do you do that? I asked a IRL friend blogger if she mindblogged, and she said, 'ALL.THE.TIME.'.

My most productive time for mindblogging is doing the dishes, when I have my rubber gloves on, and there is no way I could write down the ideas I have.

The thing is, I find it really hard to remember the ideas I have of what I want to blog about. Even when I do remember, I often find it hard to get it down onto the computer, mostly because I know it was so much better the first time. When I wrote it in my head.

I am wondering, is this a common problem?

Do you have a solution?