Wordless Wednesday 26 October

It is three photos today.  Not the best photos but I hope they tell they story.

Firstly there are the trees at my place.

Then there is the ladder that McKenzie and her cousing built.  They used only sisal for this part.

Finally the tree house.

So we have plenty of bamboo and some figure eight rope tying skills were developed but two days of work during the school holidays and these two were happy.

I am linking this post to My Little Drummer Boys.

Toasted Museli

I have been looking for a new breakfast.  Toast was getting really boring so I have taken with this homemade toasted museli.  I double the recipe because my children love this too.

2 cups of oats
1/2 cup of pumpkin seeds
1/4 cup of sunflower seeds
1/4 cup of sultanas
1/2 cup of maple syrup

Mix all above together well.  Cook in a fan baked over at 160 degrees celcius for about 20 minutes.

There it is straight out of my oven.  You really need smell-a-vision.  Just perfect to look at better to smell.

Serve with yoghurt and fresh fruit.  Hmmmm I cant wait for the morning.

Monday Menu 24 October

Well Monday here in New Zealand was a Public Holiday so my blog took a break too.  But I did have a menu so here it is

Monday   sirloin steak, potato and green vegetables

Tuesday  Steak and Kidney crockpot on rice.

Wednesday  Chicken wraps filled with salad vegetables.

Thursday  meatloaf and salad

Friday  tuna burger and salad  (McKenzie wants to make this for dinner so this is the night for her to have a go)

Saturday  quick quiche and salad

Sunday  Leftovers


I did think that this week I would make toasted museli.  You will find the recipe here on my blog.

I am linking this to I'm an Organising Junkie

New Water Tank Part 2

Following on from this post you might have guess that our 30,000 litre water tank in now installed and working.  Of course it has not rained to start filling it.  The new pipe work all done by my Father and DH who have pottered around at this for 2 days.  I have to say that they have done a marvellous job.  It is so neat and tidy. 

So after the first days work no pipe work but we still had water from the older concret tank.  You might as why we need to install a second very large tank.  Well it is very simple Hayden.  Yes we do many things for him and his needs.  He creates one load of washing mainly consistently of bedding on a daily basis.  He needs to use the toilet twice as much as the rest of use and thus flushing, then there is all the water he drinks, the water he plays with etc.  Of course I can not ignore the fact that I will have teenagers in my house soon and the whole idea of a short show will be foreign. 

Here is the tank after the first day.

It is not a good looking tank but it supplies us with all the water we use.  At the moment it is about 3/4 full and summer is just about here.

Then there are my wonderful workers studying the pipe work that was in existence.

Then there it all is.  Lovely looking pipes.  I still have water running, my big hole (yes right there in front where the dirt pile is) just needs a little grass seed tomorrow and some plants to make things look a little more like eye candy. 

 Naturally I still have a few more jobs before we can sit on the deck and enjoy the summer but that will be for another post.

The New Water Tank Part One

We have been waiting sometime to put together the cash to finish installing the water tank and today was the day to being phase two.

The Little Yellow Digger needed to return to finish the hole and help us find the feeding water pipe.  While at our place a couple of other jobs were finished too but that is another story.  As you can see we have an exsisting concret tank from the 1980's.  While there is nothing wrong with that tank Haydens medical condition uses a lot of water through washing and flushing the toilet etc.

Behind the fence the hole is for the next much bigger tank.  Then the little bit of grass that is good enough to mow was defaced because we needed to find that all important pipe.  Hmmmmm more mud created.

So back to the hole.  In rolls the digger.



He increases the depth and width of the hole that we had there already.  Of course it is always worth a look I say.

Especially when this is what the action looks like.

So tomorrow I will post Part two with it all in site and my wonderful helpers.

Wordless Wednesday 19 October

Here is my photo this week.  It has rained here a lot during the school holidays.  A trip to the movies was an obvious choice so here my lot are after we got home having thoroughly enjoyed the 3D version of The Three Muskateers.

I am linking this post to My Little Drummer Boys.

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.