Week 58 Challenge - Pork and Apple

This is a little out of order, as this challenge was a few weeks ago now, but I thought I would post about it anyway.

It was my week to post the ingredients, and I decided that the classic combination of pork and apple would give people plenty of options. For me, this was a great reason to cook the piece of pork belly that I had in the freezer.

The pork belly was simmered for a couple of hours in stock and apple juice with vegetables, and chilled overnight. The next day it was roasted quickly in a hot oven for about 30 minutes. As it was roasting there was an enormous POP! Some of the fat under the skin had exploded, sending bits of nicely rendered pork fat all over the oven door. We decided to remove it from the oven at this point and try to get the skin to crackle a bit by pitting it into a hot frying pan. Apparently this was not a very clever move, as some more of the fat exploded, meaning that we now had to clean the side panel of the fridge, and spots on the floor!

We served this pork with a cauliflower

puree, apple compote, cabbage, apple and fennel slaw, and a jus made from the poaching liquid.

It was all very tasty, and although we looked at the small servings of pork and thought it would not be enough, it was in fact so rich that there was plenty.

Lauren's 9th birthday

Lauren has now turned 9 - her final single digit birthday. I think we must be getting old if our youngest is 9 already!

Lauren chose to go to West Wave for a swim with her friends, followed by dinner at La Porchetta. She and her friends had a lot of fun, although they were a little disappointed to find the Hydroslide was closed.

Well, I have told a few of you about Lauren's pizza birthday cake, and so here is the promised photo (complete with pizza box), along with one of Lauren and her friends at La Porchetta.

Kyla is now officially a teenager!

Well, we are now the proud parents of our very own teenager.

For her birthday this year, Kyla chose to have Sammie and Mikaela come over, and the three of them spent the afternoon/evening cooking a fantastic meal consisting of 3 courses from the Masterchef NZ and Australia cookbooks.

I know that Kyla is planning to blog about the meal, so I will not spoil that by giving details here. I will remind

her to blog about it soon. Suffice to say, the meal was fantastic, and we are hugely impressed that 3 girls can cook Masterchef food with very little or no assistance! Bookings open soon. :)

Once again we had a family gathering to

celebrate Mother's day/Kyla's birthday/Jayna's birthday. As usual it consisted of lots of fun and good food with a liberal dosing of noise. I made a birthday cake for Kyla and Jayna to share, shaped as a lap pool, due to their shared love of swimming.

Daryl and Kyla made dessert, which was the Croquembouche from the Australian Masterchef cookbook. It was a fantastic effort, and tasted amazing. They are so clever! Due to difficulties in sourcing a Croquembouche cone, a traffic cone (legally purchased) was used. It works really well, so if you ever need to borrow it, just ask!

Easter Camping

Another Easter Camping has come and gone, and it was another fun time for us.

The weather was pretty good - apart from Monday night which was pretty wild really.

The kids had a fantastic time at the beach, sliding down the hill, and making egg protectors which were then tested by throwing them down the hill

. It is amazing what a raw egg can survive!

So here are a few pictures showing the kids at the beach.

T looking particularly tall - or is it Daryl looking particularly short?

Missie

Well, Missie may be grown up now (she had her first birthday a couple of months back) but she is still cute.

As is typical for cats, she has a variety of sleeping positions, and one day I caught her looking particularly cute sprawled on Kyla's bed.

A couple of weeks ago one of the kids came running through the house (not unusual despite the no running in the house rule) shouting (also not unusual despite the inside voices only rule) "Missie's got a mouse!" (very unusual!).

I bravely (or not) followed them down the hallway to see said mouse, only to have one of the kids inform me that it was now in my office, between a chest of drawers and the wall. Missie was trying backing up their statement by pacing around the drawers looking intently for the mouse.

I moved the drawers, and she was able to herd it back into the entry, where she proceeded to continue to play with it before Daryl rescued the mouse and dispatched it into the creek. We figured that was more humane than letting Missie bat at it, which would have been a slow and painful death. So it appears that Missie is not just ornamental after all?