Monday Menu 17 October

Another monday is here and summer is trying really hard to show itself to us. Sadly the rain is trying very hard to hang around which is keeping the air temperature a little lower than I like. Anyway I don't have many internet links this week sorry. If you really like the idea of something not linked leave me a message and will blog it for you.

Anyway on to the menu for this week.

Monday Chicken Wraps

Tuedsay Baked chicken and feta bake with green vegetables

Wednesday Indian Lamb Cutlets with sauteed potatoes and green vegetables

Thursday Garlic and chilli beef with ginger and soy vegetables

Friday Pumpkin bacona and feta pizza

Saturday pasta with bacon, tomato and sourcream sauce

Sunday leftovers

I am linking this to I'm an Organising Junkie.

Lemons and Grapefruit, what to do with them?

I have inherited a prolific producting lemon tree and a grapefruit tree.  While these trees look like they have had little attention (my sort of tree really..little attention required and but plenty of positive results.) they are now bearing so much fruit I am not sure what to do with it all.  It seems like such a waste for this fruit to fall on the ground and go to waste.  So I thought it was time to put my Edward De Bono Thinking Hat on, Green Hat is best suited, and see what the options are for me to consider on top of what I already do.

(lemon photos mine from my tree today)

1. Make marmalade.  See my previous post here about this.
2. Use a cut in half lemon in a saucer with a little water.  Turn the microwave on for about 1 minute.  Then wipe clean.  Such an easy thing to do.
3. Bake with lemons making such things as lemon mereinge pie (or the light version here), muffins, lemon cookies and lemon honey.
4. Then you can stuff the cavity of a chicken with lemon.  Bake it and hmmm beautiful
5. Squeeze lemons and freeze the juice for later use.
6. Candied Citrus Peel
7. In New Zealand a hot lemon, honey in water for sore throats.  Maybe elsewhere in the world you use this.
8. If you have a rubbish disposal system in your kitchen then a cut up lemon down this with sweeten up the disposal and maybe even clean somewhat on the inside.  I use oranges and grapefruit also for this.
9. We use lemon and baking soda on oil that has stained the garage floor.
10. Wipe the inside of my fridge down with lemon juice in warm water.  Hmmm not only is your fridge clean but is smells great too.

I am sure there are other things I can put to this list so please leave all your ideas.  I am sure that I can make good use of them.

My Fabulous Little Helpers.

As you might know my 'yard' requires quite a bit of  manual labour to knock it into shape.  The labour force is all home grown so, even though my DH is away, we began on what a fairly major chore at my house. 

You can see from the photo that pile behind the trees, the pile that is taller than my children, it was the focus of our attention today.  We had already moved a pile slightly smaller and easier to manage yesterday.

Eagerly with gumboots on and wheelbarrows at hand we started. 

Two hours of lugging stuff, you know the sort...wooden fence pails, branches, trees, bamboo etc, we had to finish because there were other committments in the afternoon and my helpers and I were getting tired.  I guess we are half way through the stuff that needs moving but another bin will be required to properly finish the job. At least there is a little more lawn that can be created for the children to play on which was one the big incentives for the move.

I am very proud of my childrens effort.  I have promised that tomorrow should be the last of what can be done without another bin. 

Making Marmalade

I thought, since I have a more than plentiful supply of grapefruit and lemons, I would have a go at making marmalade.  I can't say that I was filled with confidence about my chance of success but it was worth the effort I thought.

So I found this recipe that did not involve me having to peel the fruit and I was ready to go.  I did a little research to work out how to sterilise the jars in the microwave, which by the way was very easy and hot.

Anyway it is now 10.44 pm and I have just finished cleaning up the bench in the hope to avoid attracting the ant colony that seems to know when the bench is not cleaned properly.  It has taken about 4 hours from fruit recovery to having a clean bench at the end with 8 jars of marmalade on the bench.  It is too soon to tell wether it will set property (the spoon test) told me I should be right for an easy to spread marmalade.

So fingers crossed for a marmalade that can be used on toast not one that acts like a sauce.

Wordless Wednesday 11 October

Wow it is Wednesday again.

After yesterdays hospital visit with Hayden I thought that this photo was very appropriate.  If it was to have a title then that would be 'Still Waiting'

I am linking this to My Little Drummer Boys.

A Day in Hospital

Hayden needed to spend 6 hours in a planned hospital visit today.  He was having a renal function test done and that requires time to get it right.  The day went something like this

1. Arrive at the hospital, go to Daystay to get the needle inserted into Haydens port a cath
2. Go the Nuclear Medicine Department....wait
3. Have the special dye inserted into the port a cath access point (the vein)
4. Wait for two hours.
5. Have blood taken
6. Wait for one hour
7. Have blood taken
8. Wait for one hour
9. Have last blood taken
10. Go home

The hardest part of this day is that there are limited things to do at the hospital and Hayden, with a short attention span, did all of these things in half an hour.  Oh boy.  The rest of the time was simply difficult and tiring.

Here is the port a cath ready for todays action.

Having a ride on one of those $1 ride things.

Hayden got to particiapte in a holiday programme and made this fish.

Monday Menu 10 October

Mondays menu is here again.  I am linking to I'm an Organising Junkie


Monday  Sausage(from our homekill man), baked potato and mixed vege

Tuesday  Indian coconut beef curry on noodles

Wednesday  wonton soup with stirfry vege

Thursday  bacon and pumpkin pizza with salad

Friday  Freezer meal

Saturday  vegetable samosa on noodles with yoghurt

Sunday  leftovers

Have a fabulous week.

(source photo of bacon and pumkin pizza from here)

The Holiday List

I loved Melissa's idea of making a list of things to do in the holiday.  This is especially so because I am a list sort of girl.  So I thought being the beginning of the holidays I would make a start remembering we have some serious manual labouring to do to the outdoors of the house we have just bought.

1. Visit the Fan Zone at Queens Wharf, Auckland.  I guess a must do thing as the Rugby World Cup is being held in New Zealand and the finals in Auckland.
2. Take Hayden for his EDTA kidney function test
3. Go to the movies
4. make Toilet Roll Seed Starter
5. make marmalade
6. make Rocky Road Bites
7. send my scrapbooking books off for printing.  Very exciting.
8. start a photo time capsule
9. bake with the children home made bread.
10. make dinner together starting with these homemake pita breads
11. Go walking in the Hunua Ranges.
12. make Strawberry Lemonade
13. take photos for Christmas Card with this template as inspiration.
14. hire a bin to fill and take all the rubbish away from our new house.  (Ok so the bin was not nearly large enough but one bin is full and one more will need to be hired.
15. Movie and popcorn afternoon at home.
16. plant grass in my large needy spot
17. finish bracing the deck.
18. pizza garden

Lastly lots of  outside play and fun.

How much rain is too much?

I know that living on a block of land requiring rain to keep us in water is something new.  I know that we have been crossing our fingers and toes for a little rain to keep our water tank full until we can get the new one installed but really and truely the weather Gods truely took my hopeful thoughts way too litterally.  This was after about 15 minutes of really heavy rain and a dash of large hail balls.   Just take a look.

My husband out chicking the current water tank to make sure we are collecting maximum water.

A closer look and you can see the DIY moment as the water collection pipe is going to need futher repair on a dry day.  I can just see the children listening to 'dont't play with the wood please'.

Then ofcourse you find our yet to be grassed spot well watered.  I suppose when the seed goes in next week the sun will shine for weeks with no rain.

Wordless Wednesday 4 October

Another Wednesday.  This week you can see the story of this moment.

Here is father and son just last weekend.  Hayden is disabled but is paying a lot of attention to the art of DIY.

Fixing the drill bit.

Immitating fixing the drill bit.

Just check out the goggles....hair stuck inside but Hayden is oblivious to it.

I am linking this post to My Little Drummer Boys.