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.

Making fresh pasta for the first time

This weeks Recipe Challenge ingredients were mushrooms and lemons. Due to the fact that the recipe has to be one we have not done before, and we use a lot of lemons, I decided to use Mushrooms. This had the added challenge of cooking something everyone would like as the kids are not all keen on mushrooms.

Having never made fresh pasta, Kyla and I decided to have a go at this.

I made Mushroom and Pancetta Ravioli, with a goats cheese and basil sauce.
The filling had onion, garlic, pancetta, fresh oregano, portobello mushrooms, porcini powder, and a little goats cheese to bind it.
The sauce was made of a stock of porcini powder and water, with goats cheese and a dash of cream, and fresh basil added just at the end.




The ravioli were taking ages to make, and as time was marching on we became very hungry and decided to make half my dough into fettuccine, which we tossed with the remaining ravioli filling thinned with a little cream.

The verdict: taste 5/5, presentation 3/5, texture 3/5 the pasta was a little bit tough.

Making fresh pasta was fun but very time consuming... we did it the hard way, on the bench and hand rolled, while the Kitchen Aid languished on the bench watching wistfully. Jill's pasta machine stayed at her house as Kyla insisted that to use either would be cheating. I believe that next time we will cheat, twice.

While I was completing the mushroom challenge, Kyla was hard at work next to me, making her first batch of fresh pasta, also the hard way.
She made Pumpkin and Bacon Ravioli with Tomato sauce.

The verdict on Kyla's pasta?

Taste 5/5
Presentation 3/5
Texture 4/5 her pasta was better than mine, but the filling needed a little more moisture as the pumpkin was a fairly dry one.


All in all, we had fun and would try our hand at pasta making again, but like I said before, I would try it with the mixer and pasta machine next time!
Kyla is still claiming to be a hand made pasta purist... we shall see.

A new recipe- Herbaceous challenge

On the foodlovers NZ website, there is a forum all about cooking. One of the contributors wanted to start a weekly food challenge, where an ingredient is chosen, and those interested have to cook a dish that they have never made before, using that ingredient.

I was keen to join in, and was nominated to choose the 2nd week's ingredient.

Given the glut of herbs in my garden at the moment, I chose fresh herbs as the challenge ingredient. Savory or sweet, however you wanted to use them... entirely up to the cook.

So then to do something myself.

I have a recipe in my folder that I cut out of a magazine quite some time back, and so decided this was a great time to try it.

Boursin Chicken.

This involved deboning a chicken, which is then spread with a paste of spinach, peas, basil, parsley, garlic, breadcrumbs, boursin cheese, lemon zest and ground fennel seeds. This then has salami laid over it, followed by chargrilled red capsicum. the chicken is rolled up and wrapped with streaky bacon before being roasted.

I was missing the boursin cheese, but the recipe suggested substituting feta, garlic and fresh thyme, all of which I did have. The salami was a venison pepperoni we picked up today at the Kumeu show, and tasted great.

To accompany the chicken, and include another herb into the meal, I made a sour cream and chives potato bake, using a basic white sauce to which I added sour cream and chives. Partly cooked sliced potatoes were added, topped with a little mozzarella, and baked till golden and bubbling.

All of us enjoyed this meal, and it was very satisfying to use some of the herbs that are growing so well at the moment.

Rating 4/5 - missed a perfect 5 as the ratio of chicken to stuffing was uneven, due to using a whole chicken, which clearly does not have an even distribution of meat along it. Will look for a genetically modified chicken next time, or use chicken breasts sliced and laid out flat.

School Camp with Kyla

I have spent the last week with Kyla at Finlay Park for a school camp.

It was a really full on camp, with each day starting at 7am with fitness for the kids. The parents were expected to be at breakfast at 8am, so we got the better deal. From there it was organised activities such as abseiling, water sports and go karts until free time at 3:45. Then time for showers before dinner and night maneuvers, then finally bed at around 10:30. The kids were pretty much exhausted by Friday afternoon when they got home.

The highlight for Kyla was definitely the water sports, which involved jet ski rides and being towed behind a boat. She loved this so much that when she returned to the pontoon, she was squealing and shouting!

I had a turn on the red inflatable sea biscuit along with 2 other mums. The boat driver was determined to flip us, and did so twice. I didn't realize that water could feel so hard when you hit it! It was a huge amount of fun and I can fully understand why Kyla enjoyed it so much.

During free time there were various activities that the kids were allowed to do, one of which was a tyre swing over the lake. When they drop off the tyre, they are around 4m above the lake, and some landed with a real whack.

This is Kyla just leaving the tyre, heading rapidly for the water. She had a good landing, and went back for another turn that day, and again the following day.

And while we were gone...

...the veges kept growing.

Thanks to Mum and Dad R and their kind donation of several bags of their home made compost, my vege garden is growing fantastically well. I am picking cherry tomatoes every day, lettuce, spring onions and celery whenever we need them, and the courgettes started producing well around a couple of weeks ago.

So when we came home, I fully expected to see loads of red cherry tomatoes waiting to be picked, which I did. No surprises there.

I also expected to see at least 2 courgettes ready to pick. I was very surprised to see that in fact there were none that were ready. How odd. A bit later, I find that Daryl had already snuck out to my garden and picked them, intending to dispose of them without me knowing! For those of you that don't already know, Daryl is only barely tolerant of courgettes, much to the amusement of the kids who all love them, and revel in enforcing the one bite rule.

So, after confiscating the aforementioned courgettes from him before he could dispose of them, here is our harvest.

The round yellow vegetables are scalloppini which are a type of courgette... but alas no more palatable to Daryl than the classic long green ones.



I am now in need of some ideas of what to do with some slightly oversized yellow scalloppini. Any bright ideas anyone?
The ones on the left are the size we would normally use... quartered and stir fried or bar-be-qued. Some of these got a bit carried away.
Daryl has suggested a fine julienne, mixed into the compost bin. I wonder if he has thought how many more plants may result from that?

Summer Part 2

Daryl went back to work on the 11th January, and so the kids and I settled into some type of routine (I use the term very loosely in this case) that usually involved us all getting up late.

The kids spent one day a week for the last 3 weeks at Nana's (Mum R), then Sandra's, then Grandma's (Mum P) so that I could have some uninterrupted work time which was very much appreciated.

So our holidays were winding down, and we were starting to look towards School starting again.

Then came the sad (but not unexpected) news that Nana Rickard had died, the day after her 96th birthday. She had been unwell for some time following a series of small strokes that left her unable to do much at all, and had recently moved from the rest home she had been living in, into a hospital.

The funeral was in Palmerston North last Friday, and so we decided that we would go down for it. Daryl bluntly refused to drive (7 1/2 hours) to Palmerston North... can't imagine why? We had enough airpoints to get us there, although to Wellington rather that PN.

We figured that if we were going to use all these airpoints, we would extend the trip and spend a couple of days in Wellington as well, and take the kids to see Te Papa.

So, we flew out at 8pm Thursday night, arriving an hour later in Wellington. The kids were so excited about flying as the last time they went on a plane was about 4 1/2 years ago.. and they basically couldn't remember it. Kyla giggled hysterically as the plane took off - she thought it was fantastic.

When planning where to stay, we figured we would just stay in Wellingtong overnight, and drive up to PN on Friday morning. This was a great plan, but we couldn't understand why the motels in Wellington were all full on a Thursday night. Turned out AC/DC were playing in Wellington Thursday and Saturday nights.

We ended up booking a motel in Waikanae about an hour north of Wellington.
After picking up a rather comfortable Ford Falcon rental, we drove to Waikanae, arriving there around 10:30 at night.

Friday morning saw us driving the remaining hour to Palmerston North, arriving in plenty of time for the funeral at 1:30. Dad took the funeral and Mum spoke about Nana Rickard as her Mother-in-law. Both of them did very well.

After the funeral and afternoon tea, the relatives met at the Esplanade (a great park in that we spent many hours at when visiting Nana and Grandad Rickard when we were kids). This was a chance for the family to sit and chat while the kids raced around a burned off energy.

The kids loved the Esplanade, with the flying fox coming a close second in the favourites list to this...

The barrel rolls as you run inside it, and as you can see, Daryl enjoyed it too.

Friday night we stayed in Palmerston North, and then drove back to Paraparaumu (about 45 mins North of Wellington).

We stayed in a motel 100m from the beach, and due to the gloriously sunny weather, decided to go for a swim. All was going well, and Daryl and I waded out through waist deep water to a sandbank where the water was only knee deep. Daryl thought he felt a couple of nips to his toes on the way out, but all was well. Kyla followed, and squealed when she also got nipped. She made more screamy noises when we saw a crab (about the size of my outstretched hand) about a meter from us in the shallow water around us.
As we walked around looking for crabs (for Kyla to avoid), a few young asian guys called out from nearby to ask us if we had lost something. We replied that no, we were just looking for crabs. One guy proceeded to bend down, and immediately pick up a crab of a similar size to the one we had seen. We quickly told him that Kyla didn't want to get closer to it.
Braden and Lauren were keen to follow us too, but more screaming and squealing ensued when they too felt the nip of crabs. Needless to say, they decided not to swim out to us, and Kyla decided to swim all the way back in without touching the bottom as Daryl refused to carry her back in. There were lots of people collecting crabs and shellfish as it was low tide. Perhaps we should have noticed this first?

Our plan for Saturday was to catch the train into Wellington, so parked the car at the Paraparaumu train station, and off we went. We had taken jerseys (of sorts) with us, and felt the need to don these at this point. Yesterdays 28-30° had plummeted to 14-16° by the time we arrived in Wellington.

Here are the kids, and their inadequate attire. We were no better ourselves, and are sure that all the locals would have immediately been able to identify us as Aucklanders!

Quote of the holiday goes to Kyla...

"If this is summer, I don't want to come here in winter!"

We raced from shelter to shelter, and eventually arrived at Te Papa, which the kids absolutely loved. I think they all thought the Colossal Squid was the best part of the museum, although they were disappointed that the eye did not appear to be soccer ball sized as the video said. It was truly remarkable.

Also hugely impressive was the skeleton of the Pygmy Blue Whale, which was about 20 meters long, and apparently was still just a teenager at 20 years old.

The cafe at the museum had great coffee and a nice comfortable place to stop and have a rest too.

Sunday night was spent at our fourth motel in as many days, and this one was definitely the best. Raumati Sands Resort serviced apartments, near Raumati beach, only cost us $35 more that the previous motel, and was far better. There was a great pool, which the kids were desperate to go in, so there we were, Sunday evening, rain, air temp around 16°, swimming. Actually it was really nice, and we had a lot of fun before cooking dinner at the motel in the small but fully equipped kitchen. A great place to stay.

This morning, we had breakfast at a cafe overlooking the beach, then drove in to Wellington, marvelling at the low cloud, wondering if the airport would be open. It was, and we are now home, trying to get ready for school and work by tomorrow morning!

The Summer highlights package begins...

It would be completely reasonable for all of you to have assumed that this blog had come to an end due to the lack of updates over the last few months. I hope to remedy this by doing several all at once. This will give you an opportunity to see what we have been up to. Basically, these few postings will be a highlights package of our summer.

Kitekite Falls

We will begin with our New Years eve excursion to Kitekite falls (Clearly there was Christmas and the accompanying madness prior to this, but I can only write so much).
We have taken the kids once before, and this time we were joined by Craig and Sandra (and kids), Jonathan and Lui, Mum and Dad Palmer and Mum and Dad Rickard.
After a 30 minute bush walk from Glen Esk Road near Piha beach, we arrived, all (well, some of us) ready for a refreshing dip in the pool at the base of the waterfall.

There were a few brave souls amongst us, but alas, most refused the offer of a cooling dip.


Just look at Kyla, Sandra and me, luxuriating in the fresh clean water. I don't know why the others refused to join us..... in fact a number of them didn't even venture so close as to get their feet wet! Jonathan on the other hand, could be accused of going overboard, staying in for so long that even half an hour later he still had purple blotches all over his arms. Not sure that is supposed to happen.

Following the swim and return walk, we relaxed (warmed up) in the sunshine, had a picnic lunch, followed by a stop for coffee at the Piha Cafe, where we marvelled at the fact that there had been a huge fuss about whether the owners were allowed to build a cafe there or not. Basically from the outside it looks like a bach, and in fact, does inside too, with mismatched chairs and tables, several different types of light fittings, and cupboards made from old fruit packing boxes. The coffee was really good too. We recommend stopping there if you happen to be in the area.

Rangitoto Island

It is not possible to live in Auckland without knowing where Rangitoto is, and so on Thursday 5th January, we set out to scale the heights of this distinctive landmark. A 25 minute ferry ride takes you to the base of the island, and then it is all up to you. Well, there is actually a train that can take you up to the summit, but really, that is cheating!

The online guides say that it is a 1 hour easy walk to the summit, and that was about right for us. A few stops along the way so that the kids could marvel at the volcanic rocks (lava rocks as they liked to say), and a few stops to take shelter from the sun and have a drink, and we arrived.


There is an old gun bunker/building on the summit, and the top of this is higher than the ground, so obviously it was the place to be. Once the summit had been conquered, it was time to head partway down to the shady clearing where Dad R had been guarding our belongings. Here was obviously the best place for a picnic as there were several other groups enjoying the cool provided by the surrounding trees.

Trees, however, are not just for shading people, as this monkey proves.

Braden loves to climb trees, and clearly has no concept of what will happen if he falls out of one. As you can see, he also does not need side branches to climb a tree provided the trunk of the tree is not too thick.

After lunch, it was time to head down, with a side trip to see the lava caves. The kids had a great time in these, using their new head torches to navigate their way through, and even leading some other kids through (who did all return safely).

Lauren managed to find a ride down for the last part of the descent, on the "Daryl-mobile". This is steered by the ears, much as you would steer a bike.

Much fun was had by all.