More food challenges and a bit about Easter camping

We have done a few more food challenges over the last few weeks with varying results, but then I suppose the whole idea of it is ti try new things, and some are bound to be better than others.

There was the chocolate and peas week, where I tried a recipe for pumpkin and chocolate loaf from the Green and Blacks Chocolate book. Daryl was not convinced, and even less so when he found out that it had pumpkin in it. A bit too close to pumpkin pie taste for his liking.

One week we had fruit as the ingredient, which left things wide open, and in the end I made an upside down peach and almond cake which went down a lot better with Daryl.

Last week the ingredient to try was dates, which left me with a bit of a problem as Daryl does not like dates, which meant I really was destined to fail. He likes sticky date pudding, but as I have made that many times before, I could not make it for the challenge. I made a Chicken Tagine instead, and have to say that it was actually really nice. We had it with Couscous, and the kids ate it well. Daryl maintained that it would have been better without the dates. Aaargh!

Kyla had never made a sticky date pudding before, so she made it for the challenge.
Check out the photo of her dish.

I would have uploaded the photo to the blog, but it was put onto the other computer, so the link was easier this way.

The ingredients for the challenge this week are Almonds and Cabbage. Mmmm.
I am thinking of trying asian pork and cabbage rolls, cooked in the bamboo steamer I bought a while back and have yet to use. I have found a recipe, so may try it tomorrow night, or on the weekend.

Apart from cooking, life goes on pretty much as usual. Soccer season starts this weekend, and we have had the great result of ending up with all 3 kids soccer teams practicing at the same place on the same day! Fantastic! That will make life a little easier.
Daryl leaves tomorrow for his yearly jaunt to England, via Singapore. He will miss the kid's first games of the season, but at least this time he is only away for one weekend, although he won't be much use next Saturday for Soccer as he arrives back in the middle of the day.

Well, that was a blog that doesn't really tell you much, so I will try to make the next one a little more interesting.

Oh, I will add one photo that may interest you...
This is what you get when kids slide down the hill at Tawharanui on an old inflatable mattress when the grass is damp. They only stopped because they hit the fence at the bottom, leaving them with bumped heads and ears, and wire lines on shins and shoulders.

They were actually very lucky they were not badly hurt as the next day Annelise ended up with a concussion after going down the hill with Jonathan and a few kids.

Camp was great fun, as usual, with lots of boogie boarding, fun and food. We even got up early enough to watch the sun rise one morning.... actually wasn't really very early as it was before daylight savings ended, so sunrise was a bit after 7:30 in the morning.