St Patrick's Day Breakfast

Green Smoothie

Surprisingly nobody complained about the colour.

Everybody liked it.

Our week in review

Outside our window: Lots of bright yellow flowers are dotted around the garden now. Mainly daffodils but also pansies, forsythia and a few others make the garden look a lot more inviting. And one pot of purple pansies.

From the kitchen: We had Hawaiian chicken drumsticks, a recipe I found online and thought sounded nice but really was too sweet and anyway I think pineapple is for puddings or Chinese take-aways. We had lots of milk left over as for some reason porridge wasn't as often requested by the Monkeys this week. So we made a custardy-blanc-marge kind of German dessert which was easily the best this time round so much so that we didn't share with Daddy Monkey. But he was in Germany anyway so he probably had some treats there. We also had Baked Potatoes with Tuna, Pasta and Cauliflower Macaroni Cheese from the Jamie Oliver 30 minutes book. Apparently he plans to publish a 15 minute cook book next. Exciting because most recipe take about 45 minutes this would mean the chance for a recipe that actually takes only half an hour. In any case I'll keep my eyes peeled, I do like his recipes.

In the learning room: We made another attempt on the bouncy balls with a slightly different recipe. Still no luck so we have given up on this. We still had a good time playing around with the gunk though. Otherwise we mainly focused on revising spellings and maths but we also started on division.

We've been creating: St Patrick's Day decorations. The plan is to hang them in the window, I'll have to do that later.

Missus W came over for a crafty afternoon, I made a few layouts but haven't been terribly inspired mainly  because of being terribly tired. One reason is Little Monkey's inbuilt machine requiring attention early in the morning. But also that I already have to visit the loo several times in the night and a night active baby kicking happily in the wee hours. However, I managed to finish my first She Art painting from an online class with Christy Tomlinson. I'm happy with it but I think she looks a bit too serious but it's the best way to use up the skirting board samples we have laying around.

Things we did: We made green playdoh for St Patrick's Day. As colour we used lemon and lime KoolAid. It turned a lovely minty green shade but the scent was vile. Not good, the Monkeys didn't want to even touch it until I added a few drops of lemon essential oil to the mixture to get rid of the chemical smell. Still, Little Monkey suddenly decided he wanted white playdoh, white! But it's St Patrick's Day tomorrow I said. Green is the best I said. No, white they both want now preferable with sparkle and glitter. Ah, well, next time then. We have glitter so it will be possible but better don't use wholemeal flour...

Favourite things: Magazines with pretty things, on paper or digital are such fun. I downloaded a copy of Martha Steward's Living and it's so pretty with all the lovely moving graphics. Way too many adverts though but still good fun. Daddy Monkey brought back a few magazines from his trip to Germany, one being more of collection of things to buy for the baby than a magazine but oh, the lovely little things there are! We already found a must have set of bath toys in the form of the Barbapapas in boat shape. While trying to find a picture I also found a Barbapapa night light. On the list with it! And green prams! Not that we need a pram but green, it's green. Did you know it's St Patrick's Day today?

Hair cuts and power cuts

Little Monkey thought it was time to smarten up. I, of course, believe he was still terribly cute. Maybe that was the problem?

So we went to the hairdressers who has trains and balloons and sweets and is generally the kind everybody wants to go to if they just took adults too.

That's one very smart Little Monkey. Very cute.

That is now a very late Hipstamatic Friday. For a change I didn't forget to take the photos but then we had a power cut. One of the epic ones that last for hours where the house cools down and the fridge warms up. We have them quite often so at least we have torches and matches strategically placed. I spent several hours reading at candle light to wait for the grocery delivery who was late. They very rarely are so this was a very unfortunate coincidence. But we got a bottle of our favourite apple juice for free and a sample pack of spreadable butter. Well, I say sample pack, it's the regular size so we are sorted for butter until our move even if a butter emergency should arise... ah but someone mentioned willingness to share her perfect brownie recipe.... Thanks, I gladly take you up on this.

PS: the juicer thingy for the food processor did not get clean in the dishwasher. It got a one way ticket to the dump for in a couple of weeks time. (fortnightly bin collections have started don't mention it)

Food processor tidy up

I have this cupboard full of stuff for the food processor. Pretty full!

Except half of the stuff belongs to a food processor that I've thrown out yonks ago. Why I have kept that I don't know but these bits are annoying. Are these people not proud of their stuff? Why couldn't they put their company logo on? So I spent a happy hour trying to fit super sharp cutting instruments onto a machine with a strong motor. At least if the knife doesn't fit on the machine the machine won't work. At least no motorized cutting is possible. Only handling induced one. Luckily not this time, phew.

And what is that?

Dirty, yes. That fits on the machine I still own. Cool. Yes, I do have the instruction manual. But no, why would I look into it? That would be way too boring.

Ah, see it's part of the citrus press. I always wondered how that all fits together. Now I want to squeeze some oranges. I don't have oranges, only a sad lonely grapefruit and some tiny mandarins. Next.

There's another riddle, what might that be? 

That's easy it's part of the juicer element. Now I want to juice something. At least that's not a problem, I have lots of apples and pears.

Tadaa!

Two apples and a pear make not even a glass of juice. But the machine did a wild jiggle which was nice but totally useless as I had to hold it, fill the fruit in and squash it down. Slight issue as humans only come with two arms. The juice was nice but how am I supposed to clean the juicer bit? It's impossible, there's lots of mush stuck in the wee little gaps. I hope the dishwasher sorts it out. I don't think I'll do that again. That yield was way too small and the pears looked way too yummy to be tortured like that. Shall I throw that part out now or keep it in case pregnancy related brain freeze prevents me to remember that I didn't want to do juice any fruit ever again with this machine? I don't think it could cope with vegetables other than cucumber to be honest. The juicer lid is rather big and doesn't store well. 

Throw it out or keep it? 

What do you think?

Counterfeit kit lo #1

Finally I got around to use my newly created kit.

Little Monkey imagines a machine inside his tummy which serves tea, coffee, parcels, magazines and various things as needed. He started this on the weekend and ever since he asks us whether we need something. It's terribly sweet and he gets very excited when we ask him for extras like milk for the tea. He starts his service at 6.25 in the morning. Not so sweet that. But after I had my first "cup of tea" he normally whispers whether it's ok to play with Thomas the tank engine and that occupies him long enough for me to have another nap until it's get up time for real.

I added the little frame for the date and the cardstock but everything else is from my kit.

And it contains a number 4 so I also completed challenge #1 just by coincidence. The 4 is because Little Monkey is 4, that means he's a big boy.

Time for flowers

We're ready for some colour in the garden, we need flowers.

Daddy Monkey fixed a new hanging basket at the entrance.

Much better...

Chocolate Brownies 2

I've been after the perfect chocolate brownie recipe for a while now. Recently we made some from an American cookbook and we weren't terribly impressed by them. They were pale and the vague measurements drove us mad.

So this weekend we tried another recipe, this one has proper measurements and it's from the "Baked in America" cookbook, from a cafe in West London. I've never heard of them before but there are lots of interesting recipes in there. The Apple cake and the cinnamon bread were both from there. It's also written in a fun and easy way which always makes it more interesting. I like to hear the stories about where the recipe came from.

So these brownies are called Hepburns, apparently the actress made those. In any case the recipe had us in shock as it asked for nearly two packs of butter and over half a kilo of sugar. That was the point I decided to half the recipe. 

A good decision because even half the amount of ingredients gave us a big plate full of brownies. They are really good, made with cocoa powder rather than melted chocolate chips although the chocolate chips we added as well mostly melted too while in the oven. 

I'm quite pleased with them, they have a nice papery top, are chewy in the middle and have a good dark colour. But I'm not hundred percent sure they are the perfect ones as they are a tad bit fussy to make. I have another recipe lined up to compare.