Gone fishin'

We're at the beach for a few more days.  Caravanning it up old school style.  Be home soon.

Back to routine

Well we're back from the beach, trying to get back into a normal routine.  

Trying to stick to new years resolutions - of eating good homemade dinners more often (even if this one is cheese and pastry it was yummy, and good ingredients if not completely healthy).

Also trying to keep our house a bit more tidy and organised.  We've even put away the Christmas decorations.  Getting this done in January is pretty good for me.... the tree is often still up in February.

But all of this routine is just until the end of the week when we head back down to the beach for another week.  Yay!

Actually, the tart I made for dinner was really yummy and really easy for a quick dinner, here's the recipe.

Potato and Goats Cheese feta tart (Makes 2)

2 sheets frozen puff pastry

100g goats cheese feta

cream cheese

2 desiree potatoes

50g pine nuts

Pitted olives

Salt and Pepper

Cut the puff pastry in half.  With one half cut 1.5cm strips and place around the remaining half to make edges on the rectangle.

Spread the pastry with cream cheese and then top with paper thin slices of pototo.  Top with crumbled feta, pine nuts and sliced up olives.  Season with salt and pepper.

Bake at 200 degrees for about 20 minutes. 

How to break your own heart

I'm in the reading zone at the moment, powering through them.  Well reading them quickly for me anyway.  

I like reading these kinds of books, the book versions of chick flicks.  They're fun, you get sucked in quick and before you realise it you've read 100 pages. 

This is a cute story too, predictable but still cute.  Good caravan park holiday reading.

6 months old today

I can't believe it but it's already been six months since little Matilda came into the world.  It's been a crazy but fun six months.

At the moment she loves eating pumpkin but no other kinds of vegies (she threw a full on tantrum today when we tried carrots for the first time).  Fruit and rice cereal are pretty good too, but she seriously loves the little licks of ice cream that her grandma or dad have snuck her when no one is looking.

She has just started to stay sitting up by herself, but she can't get herself there yet though.  She is getting really frustrated at the moment by her inability to move anywhere by herself which means she no longer likes to be left on her mat playing for a little while because it gets too annoying.

She also really really loves the water - beach, pool or bath.  Going for a swim or a bath is a guaranteed way to make her happy if nothing else will.

She's a real Daddy's girl and lights up whenever he is around, she particularly likes when he plays guitar for her.  And she doesn't mind hanging out with her Mum or Dad while they read books as long as she can turn the pages.  And if turning the pages is taking too long, she needs her own bit of paper to play with to stay happy.

We're looking forward to the next 6 months!

The Time Traveller's Wife

Wow. I've had this book on my pile of books to read for at least 3 years now.  I think it's actually been more than that.  I've even tried to read it once and never got into it.  But I picked it up about a week ago to read and got straight into it this time, and I loved it!

I think it's clever and interesting, I cried at the end (which I very rarely do) and I couldn't wait to keep on reading it whenever I put it down.  I love finding a book like that.  I want a sequel.

I didn't realise but it's been made into a movie. I think will be released sometime this year so I'm looking forward to seeing that too.

We're at the beach

For a few days... 

Lying around reading books.

Lying around having afternoon naps.

Even going for a swim or a walk every now and then.

Life's tough.   Hope you're having fun.

Poor Charlie

Gets kicked out the back when little friends come to play.

And doesn't even get to eat any malteaser muffins. She did get to eat leftover bbq for dinner though (yes, Charlie the puppy is a girl - our last girl puppy was named Ralphie, boy names just seem to work for dogs better).

Holiday Reading

I found this meme here and since it's holiday book reading time and I need some new books to read, I'm joining in.

Photo credit

I've just finished reading a couple of David Baldacci Camel Club books (excellent crappo holiday reading) but now it feels like time to read something a bit more girly again.  Eat, Pray, Love is first on my list I think since I still haven't read it.. but I might need to add a few books from this list.

Instructions: 
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read. 
2) Underline those you intend to read. 
3) Italicise the books you LOVE.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen 2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman (just book 1)
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott 
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare 
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger (I've had this book sitting on my bed side table through 3 house moves so far)
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis (I've read 3 of them, does that count?)
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy ugh had to read this for school
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding 
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker I actually got scared reading this book
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker 
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom 
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl 100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Wow, I've only read 24 guess I should add a few more classics to the 'to read' list.

Happy 2009 (and Cinnamon Scrolls)

Happy 2009!  Hope you all had a happy start to the new year... I can't believe it's here already.  We had a very quiet welcome to the new year, I was a bit under the weather so we just hung out quietly at home but we're looking forward to this next year, it should be a fun one.

So far we've spent the new year hanging out with friends and family at the beach and spending quiet mornings on our back verandah with home cooked brekkies.  Looking forward to spending a bit more of January doing this before getting back into anything too serious.

These first few days of January we're also sending out some love to my cousin who had her first baby girl on the 30th December and has just brought her back home... hope it's all going well!

And the recipe for Cinnamon Scrolls.. (from the Donna Hay Magazine, Issue 8)

3 cups plain flour

1/4 cup sugar

3/4 teasp salt

1 1/2 teasp active dry yeast (mix it with the warm milk and water below to activate, little bubbles should form on top after a minute or so - if there's no bubbles the liquid is either too hot or too cold and your dough won't rise much)

1/2 cup lukewarm milk

2 tblsp lukewarm water

2 eggs

120g butter, softened

filling

100g butter, softened

1/2 cup brown sugar

3 teasp ground cinnamon

3/4 cup ground hazelnuts

Preheat oven to 170 degrees celcius. 

Place the flour, sugar, salt, yeast, milk, water and eggs in a food processor and process until the mixture forms a dough.  Whiloe the motor is running, add the butter, a little at a time, until combined.  Place the dough in a lightly oiled bowl, cover with a clean tea towel and set aside in a warm place for 1 1/2 hours or until the dough has doubled in size.

To make the filling, place the butter, sugar, cinnamon and hazelnuts in a bowl and mix to combine.  Set aside.

Roll out the dough on a lightly floured surface to a 45 x 25cm rectangle approx 5mm thick, with the long side facing you.  Spread evenly with the filling, leaving a 3cm border at the top.  Roll up the dough, starting with the side closest to you, shaping into an even roll.

Cut into 8 pieces (although I normally cut it into 10) and place in paper baking cups on a baking tray.  Bake for 25 minutes or until golden.

Instead of putting them in the paper cups I have kind of pushed all the scrolls together and baked them that way and it's worked alright too.