Bunny bits

I've got a basket full of bunny bits. Slowly being transformed into bunnies that will hopefully look as cute as this one.

Some of my bunnies are for Easter, but more importantly, some of them will make their way over to Japan.  Pottymouthmama is organising for toys to be sent over to some of the children in the recent earthquake and tsunami disasters.  You can join in here if you want to.

Randomly, I got a newsletter from Purl Soho today with these cute spring flowers on it, and now I want that machiney thing to put flowers on my bunnies.  How cute would that look?  Required?  I think yes. 

In unrelated news I found a lovely recipe for orange flavoured buttercream the other day.  It goes very nicely with organge cupcakes.  Just in case you were planning on baking some :)

Sunday night supper club: fail

Things don't always work out the way you want them to.  I had a nice family dinner planned for tonight - it's been grey and rainy all weekend and a bit cooler so I thought a nice autumny meal and some pudding around the kitchen table would be lovely.

I had a bit of spare time this morning and I actually flicked through a cook book. I decided on lamb with hot feta dressing from this book and plum and chocolate clafoutis from here.

But a nice family dinner around the table it was not... Polly got grumpy, then Matilda got grumpy and didn't want to eat anything.  G got grumpy because the kids were grumpy.  The lamb and vegetables were undercooked and the kitchen was smoked out so I was grumpy.  I don't think it was the recipes fault.  It just didn't happen.  Don't you hate that?

Desert was ok, the kids were in bed. Not sure it was anything to write home about though - but that could just be a grumpy hangover.

Blah. I nearly didn't put this on my blog, but then I figured everyone has fails like this sometimes.

Colourful

We've had a super busy week with catering, uni, play dates, day care and cleaning out my Grandma's house (she's moved into a retirement home).  There's been no time for anything much more exciting than that.

And we've had a grey and rainy weekend, blah.  But, that has made me notice all the bright colours that have been around our house this week and that's something to smile about.

Another thing to smile about is some fun mail we received this week.  Hopefully we'll be able to play with it soon.

Now.. back to listening to my lectures!

Sunday night supper club: arroz de perol

Oooh fancy, arroz de perol.  Well maybe not - the English title is wet rice with chicken and that sounds a bit gross really. 

Maybe the picture doesn't look that appetising either, but I can tell you it's yummy.  I have made it a few times now and I'm into it.  It's out of the Movida cookbook, I love Spanish flavours - saffron and paprika, yum.

Here's the recipe for you:
1.6kg chicken or rabbit cut into pieces (I have only tried chicken, so far)
sea salt
80ml olive oil
1 red capsicum, finely diced
1 green capsicum, finely diced
4 tomatoes, peel, seeded and finely chopped
1.5L chicken stock
300g calasparra rice (or use aborio if you can't get your hands on it)
pinch of saffron threads
1/2 teasp sweet paprika
1/2 teasp thyme
1/2 teasp black peppercorns
4 garlic cloves
200g green flat beans, cut into 3cm lengths (i generally just use normal green beans because they are easier to get)

Season the chicken. Heat olive oil in a large, round-sided pot over high heat. Add the chicken pieces, reduce the heat to medium and cook until browned on both sides. Remove and cover.
Add the onion and capsicum and saute 5-10 minutes, stirring frequently, until the onion has softened. Add the tomato, stir through and cook for 15 minutes, or until pulpy, stirring occasionally.
Return the chicken to the pan and pour in hot stock.  Increase the heat to high and bring to the boil then reduce heat and simmer for 40 minutes until the stock has reduced by about one third.
Add rice and stir through.  Continue cooking for 5 minutes.
Meanwhile, crush the saffron threads with the paprika, thyme, peppercorns and garlic using a mortar and pestle until the peppercorns are well crushed.  Add a few table spoons of hot stock from the pan and mix well.  Add the spice mix to the rice and stir through.
Add the beans to the pot and continue to cook for 15-20 minutes, or until the rice is just tender and chicken well cooked. Season to taste.  Remove from heat and serve immediately.


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Now, I know that may seem like a lot - and it does take about 1 1/2 hours to cook - but I actually like this as a mid week meal.  Mainly because you can do little bits at a time and then leave it and I find that an easy way to cook with Matilda and Polly running around.  Cook a little, play a little, cook a little, feed Polly her dinner...

Finally, the plan is that this will not be renamed Tuesday night supper club... I just need to get my life back in order a little.  I'm playing catch up at uni, but I'm nearly there and then I hope my life will have a little bit more normality to it again.

Balance

I really enjoy being a mum and staying home with my kids, who are seriously cute most of the time. They can drive me nuts and I go a bit crazy but overall I am grateful that I have been able to do it. But as Polly is getting a little older now and we're not planning on having any more kids I've been trying to work out what I am going to do with myself and it's a really hard thing to work out. How do I balance kids, my own interests and all our financial goals happily??

I could be a full time mum, but in reality a bit of extra money would make things a fair bit easier in this household and allow us to do a little bit more fun stuff so I figured I needed to earn some money somehow.

Since we sold our little cafe last February we have been doing some catering and it is fun and going really well but we've really been doing it a bit more like a hobby. I think I could turn it into a successful business but that would take some financial investment, staff and me working full time (like most small business owners that reads 24/7) - stuff I am not really prepared to do at the moment.

I thought about trying to make stuff to sell or maybe an online party kind of business, but I think really that would be in the same boat as the catering, plus I don't know that stuff I make would be good enough to sell :) So I think the answer for me is a part time job, ideally 2 days a week, but 3 would be fine.

Then I had to work out what kind of job I wanted. In my life before kids and the cafe I used to do some project management and business analysis stuff and my last job was managing a team of Business Analysts and System Testers for a financial company - I did enjoy it but it took up all my head space and really finance isn't that interesting, I mainly enjoyed it because I worked with a really ace bunch of people. That's out. Maybe some kind of admin job or retail job?? Yeah, that would have been ok but nothing really to get excited about.

In the end I've decided to go back to uni. I'm doing my masters so at the end of it I can be a Librarian. Being a Librarian was always something I thought I'd like growing up, still do. I've spoken to a couple and I think it could be a good job to do as a mum (I really hope so now).

So that's the plan. I'm enrolled, it's happening - I've already missed 1.5 weeks of classes :) Nothing like a last minute decision.   I've enrolled full time, 1.5 years as opposed to 3 years seemed like a good idea to me. I have no idea if I'm going to cope with that, it's been ten years since I was last at uni. I figure I can always change to part time if I need to.

Arghhh!!

Birdie Cushion

While my internet has been sleeping I did a little making.

A birdie cushion for a new little baby girl.

I want to make another couple of these, they are easy and I think cute.

Sunday night supper club: using leftovers

I know it's late (we've been having some internet troubles), but I still need to do it. I am compelled, I can't leave things unfinished even it takes me years to get around to it.

Anyway, this weeks supper was made from leftovers. I was quite impressed with myself if I do say so, I am not really that good at using leftovers unless giving them to G for lunch the next day counts. And I really don't like throwing things out unnecessarily.  I digress.

It was craft night again last Tuesday night... we ate chicken roulade with spinach, mushrooms and goats cheese and prosciutto around the outside. There was a ridiculous amount of chicken left over and it wasn't really the kind of meal you could just pack up into a lunch box.

So for dinner the next day I made a white wine pasta sauce, chopped up all the leftovers, added a bit of fresh spinach and parmesan and there you go. Yummy prosciutto, chicken and mushroom pasta.  Tasty and leftovers were all used.

We had creme caramel for desert too, inspired by My Kitchen Rules.  I have cooked it before, no probs and I have to admit after watching it on MKR I thought 'I can do that easy peasy... how could they stuff it up that much'.  Then proceeded to second guess myself the whole time I was making it and freak out that it wasn't going to work.  So of course, it didn't work.  They were a bit underdone... still yummy though, we just ate them from the ramekins.  Lucky Pete and Manu weren't here!  I wonder if they can craft :)