It has been a while...

Oops, so much for regular blogs about what is happening here and the new recipes I have been trying. There have been lots of new recipes, I just forget to take photos of the food until about half way through the meal... then it doesn't look quite as good any more! I promise that it will happen eventually.

One of the meals I don't have photos of is Paella. We bought a paella pan back before Andrew visited, and made our first Paella when he was here. It was very tasty, and we have made it a couple of times since with equally good results. The pan fits enough for our family plus 2 extra adults, and it makes for a very easy and yummy meal for guests as it is an all in one meal. We have recently bought another Paella pan (they are actually not very expensive), big enough to fit food for 10 people, so plan to cook Paella for Craig and Sandra + their sproglets. Perhaps then I will manage to remember about the photos.

But there is more to life than food.

A couple of weeks ago the kids had Ag Day (Agriculture Day) at school. Basically this consists of each child having 4-9 different projects they have to get ready at home during the week and then assemble at school on the Saturday. We have decided to rename it Ag Week in reference to the amount of time that is necessary to prepare for it.
We ended up raiding Grandma and Grandad's garden for flowers for some of the items as we have noticed that our own garden is sadly lacking in anything with colour, consisting mainly of grasses and shrubs. I have decided that this needs rectifying, and so over the course of the next year will aim to add some plants that do interesting things.

The kids did well at Ag day with Kyla receiving 3 first places plus numerous 2nd, 3rd and highly commended certificates, and Braden and Lauren with 1 first each plus other placings. Bamboo from the aforementioned Grandparents was very useful for all 3 kids, aiding in first placings for both Kyla and Lauren, and Braden's Pumpkin carriage and horse shaped ginger root with asparagus reins was another first place.
And so it is done for another year. Yay!

Work for me continues to come at a steady pace, generally speaking this means a project to prepare the working drawings for, then a break of a couple of weeks, then another project.....
So, the house gets cared for and neglected in a fairly regular pattern. It is looking reasonably likely that it will be in a cared for stage when Andrew and Sonia arrive, although it is always a battle between the kids and I as to whether it will remain clean.

That is probably enough rambling for now, I have a bit of work to do to complete another set of plans, and then the aforementioned caring for the house which is definitely in a neglected state at the moment.

Soccer season comes to an end.

Well, we won't know what to do with ourselves on weekends as the soccer season has officially ended (apart from one more tournament for Braden tomorrow), freeing up our Saturdays after months of watching Soccer all day.


Prizegiving was held today, and the Palmers featured well in the dishing out of awards with Lauren taking the Player of the year for the Groovy Girls and Kyla being named Sportsperson of the Year for the Eagles. Both were well deserved and very well received.


Following the prizegivings today, we are due to head off to the Mavericks (Braden's team) end of season do, with a plate of finger food. This became a good opportunity to try making something a little different. Here is what we are taking:

These are from an idea that I saw while looking at cooking websites, and really appealed as a bit of a fun dish. They are in fact cupcakes rather than burgers, and are made from plain cupcakes with a slice of chocolate brownie for the meat patty, with red icing for tomato sauce and yellow for cheese slices. Sesame seeds on the top complete the look. Hopefully the kids won't find them too weird to eat.



Other things that have been happening lately?
Well, further to my last blog entry about Kyla and cross country running, she went to the Norwest regional event where she placed 5th. She was thrilled with this, and it meant that she was also selected for the Norwest team entering the Auckland Champs. This was held in Pukekohe and is for teams from right across the greater Auckland area. Kyla placed a very commendable 32nd in her race (there would have been over 100 in her race), beating Daryl's school days effort of 33rd! She was very happy with that.

Well done Kyla!





I am still making nearly all our own bread, and one day while making rolls for lunches, thought I would try something a bit different for my own lunch.
It involved a small baguette, which I then pressed a wooden spoon handle into to form a groove.










Into this groove went basil pesto, halved cherry tomatoes, then a sprinkling of grated mozzarella, which was baked until it looked like this:












Very yummy, and I will do it again, hopefully in a few weeks it will be my own homegrown cherry tomatoes and maybe even pesto from home grown basil!

Yes, we are still alive!

It has been a month since I last posted, and a busy one at that.
In the past month....

I sprained my ankle helping Daryl move a kitchen cabinet at his parents house, turned out it was a bad sprain too, and 3 1/2 weeks later the swelling has still not completely disappeared. At least I had plenty of work to do, so didn't get bored.

Our dishwasher is working again. You may think this is an odd thing to mention, but it has taken a month of trying for the repairman to finally get it sorted! I was beginning to get cross. It has been VERY frustrating, especially so while I was on crutches due to the aforementioned sprained ankle.

The Prelude is gone, after a very fast Trademe auction where 3 people were trying to do the buy now at the same time. They even drove it away, which we thought was brave considering it's refusal to go over about 50km/h. Now only another 2 weeks to muddle through before Daryl gets his new car.

Kyla is running in the Norwest Schools cross country next Thursday after placing 3rd in her school event, and 6th in the Kaipara Schools cross country last Monday. She is very excited, and would love to make it through to the Auckland Champs as last year she would have qualified for this had she been year 7 instead of 6.

Braden received a certificate today for his result in the ICAS Science Exam, this is the current version of the New South Wales tests we used to sit. He received a High Distinction placing him in the top 1% of his year group across NZ- an impressive result.

We are down to the last 2 weeks of soccer games, which will then free up our Saturdays! As Spring seems to be springing early, there will be plenty to do around the house.

My efforts at cooking new recipes have been pretty much non-existent over the last few weeks, but tonight inspiration struck.... although it was a combined effort this time between Daryl and me.
We have, on a couple of occasions, gone to a Spanish Tapas Cafe in Albany called Bolero. They have a great menu that we have shared various item from, and the kids really enjoy it too. Our favourite desserts are Creme Catalana (like Creme brulee) with Raspberries and
Churros con Chocolat.
After browsing the net for a recipe, we tried making Churros tonight, and they were sooo good.
Basically these are deep fried dough (a very simple dough made of flor, hot water a tablespoon of oil, and a little salt and sugar. They are sprinkled with Cinnamon and sugar while hot, and dipped into a rich chocolate sauce to eat. Yum!

Public Transport

Well, the prelude is dead, or very nearly so. Daryl decided one day last week that it would be okay to drive it to work, and the pleas of wife and daughter went unattended. He drove out the driveway, and we watched him go, shaking our heads and wondering why he thought it was a good idea to drive it to work when it clearly wasn't working properly.
Two minutes later, a very sheepish Daryl appeared back home, and informed us that the car had refused to change out of first gear, and thus couldn't go any faster than 40km/h. He had managed to turn around in a side street along the road and drive home.
Kyla and I did an admirable job of not looking smug or saying "I told you so".

So, one car down, and kid's after school activities means that Daryl has joined the users of Public Transport. I am sure he is really enjoying the ridiculously long travel times. Today he discovered that the bus he had taken (to meet us down at the pool for kids swimming lessons) went via Glendene... not exactly direct.

This foray into bus and train travel is set to last for a while however, as he has decided to buy a Mazda 6 from a workmate who is leaving to return to Ireland. The catch is that she doesn't leave for another 6 weeks, so it is just as well Daryl is good at sleeping on trains and buses, as he is set to spend a great deal of time on them in the next 6 weeks. The kids were a little concerned to hear that he sleeps on the bus/train as the fear he will sleep too long and miss his stop completely. We have reassured them that he cannot really end up too far away from home, and will be fine.

I have yet to make a new dish this week (I have done lots of variations on tdishes I have done before but don't think that counts), so will have to get organised as we are out tomorrow (home group) and Saturday night (Family birthday celebration for Jordan), so I suppose inspiration will have to strike on Friday. Watch this space.

Oops, this one is a bit late

Well, this is actually the new recipe for last week, but I didn't actually make it till tonight.

We have been busy the last week or so. The kids are on holiday, and last week was spent amusing them so they didn't kill each other. We went swimming, roller blading from Mission Bay around to Okahu Bay, and spent part of a day with Nana as the power supply company were supposed to be replacing a transformer and this would leave us without power (and therefore running water) for most of a day. The power company did not manage to do this replacement however (due to weather) so we will have the same problem another day I suppose.

Today, Kyla, Braden and Lauren had their first day of Soccer. They will be at the soccer coaching Monday to Thursday this week, and it runs from 9am to 1pm. Daryl decided to take today off work as his car has been playing up, refusing to go into 4th gear and flaring when it goes over 60km/hr which clearly is a problem when SH16 has a spped limit of 100km/hr. We took his car to a mechanic specialising in Automatic gearboxes, and it appears the news is not good. Now we have to figure out what to do as clearly it is difficult for him to get to work without a car. His choices are limited to a 1 1/4 hour bus trip, 1 1/4 hour train trip or 1 1/4 bike ride. No fast option.

Anyway, after picking up the kids from soccer, we asked if they were tired, (apparently they were not) and gave them the choice of going to Muriwai beach, or mountain biking at Woodhill Forest. They opted for the mountain biking option. We chose the beginners trail, which was only 6km long. It took us 48 minutes, (actual riding time) and by the end Lauren was pretty much shattered. They all enjoyed it a lot, and are keen to make it a regular activity. This is probably going to happen, as on Friday night (with Rebekah and Jeremy Opie visiting) I committed to joining Rebekah and Katie (Jeremy's cousin) as the third member of their team for the Day-Night Thriller . This should be lots of fun, and a good incentive for me to get a bit fitter.

After the fantastic effort put in by all three kids, we came home to have dinner of chilli (meat and vegetarian options) with wraps, salad and corn chips. Having had that many times before, it was clear the new recipe would need to be dessert. Yum.
Last night we were watching Iron Chef America (a slightly over dramatic cooking show, but it still fun to watch) on the Food Channel. One of the dishes put forward by the winning chef consisted of bruleed figs, with mascarpone cheese and sweet biscuits. This looked really good (except the figs which we have tried once and were not inspired by) and the chef mentioned that the dish would be just as good done with almost any kind of fruit. I decided to try this with Tamarillos, there is not really a huge variety of fruit in season at the moment, and the supermarket in Waimauku is fairly limited in it's range.


Dish of the week
Bruleed Tamarillos with Vanilla Mascarpone and Sponge Finger Biscuits. The mascarpone (thinned slightly with milk and flavoured with vanilla) had a sweet balsamic drizzle, however the flavour of the balsamic was overtaken a bit by the Tamarillos. The sugar caramelised on the fruit worked okay, but the Tamarillos were quite juicy, so the crust of toffee was not as obvious as it would have been on something like peach or nectarine. The sponge finger biscuits were good- really nice and crispy and a great contrast to the creamy mascarpone and tangy fruit.
The verdict- very tasty, but would be even nicer with peach or nectarine. Oh well, summer is only 6 months away.

What else can I do with bread dough?

With the bread dough being so easy to make, I have had time to play with new ideas of what to do with it, apart from loaves, rolls and pizzas.

One idea from the ABin5 website is egg in bread instead of on bread. This involves lining muffin tins with bread dough, and cracking an egg into the dough before baking. They are fun, but the first time I made them I found the dough didn't cook enough for my liking, so this time I partially baked them before adding the egg. Better this way I think. Maybe next time I will add some chopped cooked bacon so it is truly bacon and eggs.

Another bread idea I have made lately used the Challah dough recipe, which I

rolled out into two rectangles, sprinkled one with finely chopped chocolate, and topped with the other rectangle. I pressed the two together, and cut into strips which were then twisted and placed on the tray. After they had risen, I brushed them with egg, and baked. Yum! We will have these again. Best warm so the chocolate is melted. mmmmmm.

Dinner time...

Well, I have to say that my self set challenge to make a new recipe each week was a little neglected last week, unless you consider discovering that you can make bread with Feijoa cereal that no-one likes a new recipe.

I had an urgent job come up, which was a challenge as it had a tight deadline, and thus left little room for anything else, much to the kids frustration.

But, it is done, and my attention can turn to cooking once more, and so, a new recipe for dinner tonight.

You would think that with a cupboard and part of a bookcase of recipe books, that the new recipe would be from one of those books. However, I had decided that we should eat lentils

occasionally, and set out to find a palatable way to present them.

I came across this recipe for Sausages with Lentils and Vegetables while looking at the Taste website. It is very useful when you have ingredients or an idea of what you want to cook, but need a recipe or more inspiration.

Then, today a trip to Nosh (to buy a birthday present for Sandra), where I found some Merguez sausages. These are a lightly spiced Lamb and Pork sausage. So, tonight's dinner came together

nicely, using tinned brown lentils (tinned because the recipe said so, not because I couldn't be bothered cooking them for 40 minutes).

Also at Nosh, I sampled a gorgeous Kaimai Brie, which was oozingly ripe. This we had spread on fresh bread (I cheated and bought it at Nosh too). The kids were appalled when Daryl explained that the white around the cheese was in fact mould, but got over it and ate it anyway.

So, the verdict? Would we have the Sausages with Lentils and Vegetables again? Definitely.

The new recipe challenge begins

Daryl has mentioned on at least one occasion that I have too many recipe books. Clearly this is untrue as it is just not possible to have too many!  I have however decided that it is time I tried some new recipes, as I have fallen into the habit of cooking familiar recipes most of the time... put it down to laziness.

So, the challenge is to cook at least one recipe each week that I have never cooked before.

This weeks recipe is Individual Ginger Pear Puddings. 

Daryl (he is so helpful) has pointed out that really this is a cop out, as although technically I have never cooked this before, it is actually very similar to one I have done before, albeit with a different presentation.  Anyway, they were still cute, yummy, and low(ish) in fat, so here it is.

The pears are peeled and most of the core removed, and cooked lightly.  They are then pressed into the ginger pudding mixture, and baked, before finally being glazed with warmed, sieved, apricot jam. We served the puddings with a vanilla, greek yogurt cream.  They were judged by the kids as very good, and worth making again.  We think they felt grown up getting an individually presented dessert.

I will try to make sure the new recipes include both savoury and sweet dishes, and try to do this while staying within a newly set grocery budget.  Should be fun!

Andrew has been and gone..

and now the kitchen can recover from the indignities that were inflicted on it by Andrew during his visit.

Cheese sizzlers... not real food, pretend meat.

Chocolate Brownies that sadly, were contaminated with rum essence, dried cherries and marshmallows? Would not have scored highly in the Chocolate Brownie survey that Kyla did for a school project last year.

Microwave Big ben pie.... not proper food.

Andrew's taste in food seems to swing wildly between healthy Japanese and asian food and overly processed, um, junk?  He is very good at cooking asian food, and most of it was very tasty, even the anaemic worms (udon noodles).  The kids were not completely convinced about the Salmon roe however.  Just imagine what they would have thought if the kina had not been so expensive that we didn't buy any.  They even managed to munch their way through quite a bit of Salmon Sashimi which surprised us a little.

All in all he was reasonably well behaved while visiting, and the kids were sad to see him go (oh, and us too- He does dishes without being asked!!!).  They suggested that as he didn't have a job to go to, he may as well just stay here.  Hey, maybe he could be my cleaner?  

So, yes Andrew, you will be welcomed back again.

Welcome to winter

Andrew arrived for a visit a little over a week ago, and to begin with, it was reasonably mild weather, fairly typical for the end of autumn in NZ.  Wednesday morning last week however, we woke to a gorgeous if slightly chilly morning.  From the way Andrew was carrying on you would imagine there had been a foot of snow overnight instead of a bit of a frost, but I digress.

Thursday morning dawned bright and clear again, with another frost.  Oh, don't worry Andrew, It won't stay this cold.

Friday morning brought the 3rd frost in three days, and according to the papers, it was -3° in Auckland.  mmmm.  Yes, it really did feel cold that morning, but the kids thought it was fantastic to look outside and see the ice on the containers of water that were sitting in the garden and on the deck.  And even with temperatures like that, Braden still wore shorts to school!  

I did see a lovely looking spider web between 2 fence rails that I thought would be fun to photograph....  but it was so cold...

Happy birthday to Kyla, and Lauren

As you may or may not remember, May is the start of kids birthdays in this family. So far we have had Kyla's 11th, and Lauren's 7th, and Braden will turn 9 in a couple of weeks.  I am trying to persuade Kyla that she needs to update her blog, so will leave it to her to tell you about her party and show you her cake.

We have a few birthday cake books that the kids love to look through and choose a cake idea from.  

This year, Lauren chose a particularly detailed fairy castle that involved colouring white chocolate to use to create such details as shingle roofs and wrought iron gates.  The instructions said the cake was not difficult, but was time consuming.  They were not wrong.  After simplifying the cake slightly (the original used 4 cake recipes + jam rolls) it took me a mere 3 1/2 hours to complete.  She was thrilled with it, so I guess it was all worth it, and it was kind of fun.

Soccer and Salmon

After a week of wet weather, the rain stopped long enough to let soccer pitches dry sufficiently to allow all games to be played.

9:10am, Huapai Domain, The Groovy Girls vs the Crocs

Score 2-0, both goals scored by the prolific striker "Lovely" Lauren Palmer (actually not very lovely on the soccer field, more like a tenacious terrier).  Nana & Poppa and Grandma & Grandad were there to witness the goals and would agree that she is indeed tenacious. 

Lauren was particularly thrilled to be awarded the player of the day for her efforts today.  Luckily Poppa had his camera with him to capture the moment.

10:00am Bay City Park, Norwest Mavericks vs East Coast Bays Bees

Score 6-0 Braden didn't score today, largely because he typically plays defense!

None of the boys on Braden's team like to be subbed off, so after about 30 seconds of being on the sideline, the query starts "when can I go back on?"

A well played game with team effort put in to get the goals.

11:00am Huapai Domain, Norwest Eagles vs Oratia Cheetas

Score 0-4 This was a disappointing result for Kyla's team as the previous game showed a lot more skill and team effort.  Today everyone looked a bit sluggish, as one Mum said, "like they had been up late partying last night" ...... actually Kyla had, but she was one of the few actually running hard.  Kyla is most often playing in a mid field position, which ends up meaning she runs from one end of the field to the other, joining in with defending and attacking.  This Wednesday she will be playing in the year 7&8 girls soccer team representing Waimauku School at the North West area Soccer Tournament.  She is looking forward to it, and will practice with the school team on Monday and Tuesday, as well as her club team practice on Tuesday after school.  After the tournament on Wednesday, she has swimming at 6pm for an hour.  Just as well she is fit!

2:30pm Riversdale Reserve, Western United vs. MNL Spirit

Score 6-0 Daryl scored his first goal of the season, a nicely placed header into an open goal.  He came home with the largest blister that I have ever seen, on the back of his heel, and a marginally smaller one on the other heel.  They are now steri-stripped flat, and covered with large plasters.  Apparently his winter boots give him blisters and he forgot to use plasters during the game.  Well, he won't do that again in a hurry, will he?

So, all in all, not a bad day of soccer for the Palmer family.

After all that soccer, we had a very hungry family.  Braden sat down and ate cereal for afternnon tea, and was still hungry at dinner.  Tonight we had one of the family's favourite fish dinners.

Maple, Balsamic and Orange Glazed Salmon on Green Pea Risotto

The first time I served this to the kids, they were very suspicious of the green rice, but it has since become a favourite of theirs, much to the amusement of Grandma who had Lauren suggest that she could cook Salmon and Green Pea Risotto when Lauren stayed over one time.

The glaze is from a recipe book of Paul's and is really nice with Salmon, pork or chicken.  The risotto is a variation on a recipe by Nigella Lawson from her book "How to eat".  The snow peas were freshly picked from our very own vege garden!

European Peasant Bread 2 ways

The recipe I most often use for our bread is the European Peasant loaf.  It is largely white flour, with the addition of some rye and wholemeal flours.  This makes a nicely textured and coloured loaf with a bit of added goodness.  

The classic round shaped loaf is called a Boule, a free formed loaf sprinkled with flour and slashed before baking.  I have been trying for quite some time to get the crust a lovely golden colour and slightly shiny where it has been slashed.  

From reading on the Artisan Bread in Five website, (www.artisanbreadinfive.com) I found out that what I needed in my oven was to use a pizza stone, and have steam for the first part of the baking.  

The first method suggested was putting hot water in a roasting tray in the oven, which works, but is a bit fiddly and unpredictable.  

Another method shown, which I have discovered is the easiest way, is to place the bread on a pizza stone, with a stainless steel bowl over it for the first 15 minutes, and then remove the bowl for the remaining baking time.  And voila, it works.  A gorgeous crusty loaf.  

The third method I have read about is one I believe Paul has used, which involves using a preheated cast iron (or clay) baker with a lid on for the first 15 minutes, and then removing the lid so the loaf can crisp up.  I am waiting to see his results, as a cast iron dish here is an expensive beast to buy.  I may try it with a standard lidded casserole dish and see how it goes.

For school lunches, I have baked various

things including ready made hot dogs using a kransky sausage with cheese wrapped in bread dough and baked.  Mini sandwich loaves are one of our new staples, and the kids find it to be a lot of fun to slice the loaves and make miniature sandwiches.

We have also had sticky cinnamon rolls, pizza and calzone, all made from this basic dough recipe that we store in the fridge.

Growing food and a new acquisition.

As we have a reasonable amount of space here, it made sense to plant a vege garden.  So far, we have only completed a small section of the garden, but already have been enjoying fresh produce from it.  We have been eating lots of lettuce from it, spring onions, snow peas and parsley.  Still to come are carrots and broccoli. We have planted Marigolds in the vege garden too, as they apparently repel various small bugs that would otherwise be a nuisance.  Not sure if they work but they add a nice touch of colour. When we get the rest of the garden finished and filled with dirt, it will be time to add more plants, to hopefully end up with most of our fresh veges being home grown. 

The next bit of news is that I was particularly spoilt this Mother's Day with my family (read Daryl organising it) giving me a shiny new Kitchen Aid mixer.  This will replace the electric beaters that wore out and died recently.  Since then I have discovered it is remarkably tedious having to beat egg whites with a hand whisk, or beating egg yolks and sugar till  pale and thick by the same method.  Not good for an arm that has OOS tendencies.... and besides, it looks so good on the bench!

So far it has been used to knead dough for pizza bases, caramel mud cake for Kyla's birthday cake, the filling for a cheesecake type dessert and the egg whites for the sponge part of the same dessert. 

Another Soccer weekend...

Yay! Lauren's soccer team (the groovy girls) won their game- a first! The score was a very respectable 3-1 with Lauren scoring one of the goals and assisting in another.

The parents were all thrilled at the win as we feared it could be a season of losses with the girls all new to soccer.  

Braden's team won their game 4-1, so they were also very pleased.

Kyla's game was cancelled this weekend as we have had a lot of rain over the last week and lots of the grounds were closed on Saturday.

Soccer (last weekend)

This is out of order in that soccer was before the bread baking, but I thought I would catch everyone up on how it went.

Soccer starts with Lauren's game at 9:10.  Her team is an all girls team (wasn't intended to be, just ended up that way) and none of them have played club soccer before.  That makes for a few disasters to start with, and a very steep learning curve.  This week was wet and cold, and 2 of the girls were not keen to join in after watching a younger sibling play, and getting cold and wet doing so.  That meant that we only had 4 players when we needed 5.  The other team loaned us a player, and even with that bit of help, we were soundly beaten.  Score 9(?)-1 (lost count)

Braden's game was at Greenhithe at 10am, meaning with Daryl away, I had to call on Nana and Poppa to take him to his game.  So, they had the privilege of standing in the cold rain, watching him play.  I believe he played well.  Score 2-2.

Kyla's game was at 11am at Huapai.  So far this season, her team has lost both their games, but this week was quite different.  They played well, and were only 1 point down at half time.  Nana and Poppa arrived in time for the 2nd half, and were there to see Kyla score a goal to make it 3-3.  Later in the game she scored another goal to make the final score 5-3!  A fantastic result, and a very happy team.

Pain d'Epi (wheat stalk bread)

Since my recent obsession is baking bread, I thought it only fitting that the first blog be about baking bread.  

Last night Kyla wanted to make Curried Kumara Soup for dinner, so here was a perfect opportunity to use some of the dough sitting in the fridge to make nice bread to go with it.  It was also raining and very cold, so there wasn't really much to do.I had previously tried this particular form of bread, with limited success.  The first attempt was using stored dough again, but it must have been slightly too wet for this, as although they tasted great, the wheatstalks looked more like caterpillars. (Craig and Sandra can vouch for this.)  So, time to try again.

This time I put a lot more flour around the dough when shaping it ("cloaking" according to the book I have), and let it rise for a couple of hours while doing other stuff.  I then dusted with a bit more flour, and cut to shape the dough.

Here it is just before going into the oven.

And after 25 minutes baking, 

it looked like this:

The kids were very impressed, and between the four of us (Daryl being in London at present) we managed to get through almost all of 2 of these.  They were very tasty and nothing at all like small segmented larvae.

I believe Paul was going to try the brioche recipe from the same book/website (Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day) so I am sure we will hear/see about that.  It looks very yummy but the quantity of eggs and butter used to make it so rich is just a little off-putting.  I guess for the sake of learning we will have to put ourselves through the ordeal of testing it anyway.  

I am thinking Blueberry and cinnamon brioche? mmmmmm.

The Beginning and Purpose of this blog

So, I have finally joined the ranks of bloggers.

I have lofty ambitions of keeping this up to date and interesting, we shall see how that goes.  I am sure there are people laughing already.

A brief glimpse of our life at the moment would look like;

food, school, work, soccer practice, food, swimming lessons, food, soccer games, food, and so it goes on.

I love to cook, and am particularly interested in baking, particularly bread of late. So, I will occasionally tell you about my adventures in baking the perfect loaf, or share some of what we cook for meals, or the other tasty morsels we create here.

You will no doubt see and hear what the kids are up to, and as we spend a ridiculous amount of time involved in Soccer this season, there are bound to be blogs about their efforts.

So please, grab a coffee (another love of ours) and enjoy.