After a couple of fairly slack weeks, I have completed another challenge.
This week I used fish - gurnard was available at a reasonable price, and looked fresh so that was the fishing done.
I smeared a paste of basil, coriander and chilli onto the fish, and wrapped it in rice paper rounds that were soaked in water to soften them. These rolls were then fried in a little oil, until the fish was cooked, and the rice paper lightly golden.
We had these served on stir fried greens (cabbage, broccoli and bok choy) and drizzled with a sauce made of sherry, soy sauce, ginger and sugar simmered together until thick.
The meal was extremely tasty, and low fat as it turned out! The kids loved it, and asked for more - so I think this meal gets a 5/5 from us. Even better, the whole meal cost about $20 to serve the 5 of us.
For dessert, I made a recipe that I fist made several years ago, and then forgot about. It is called apple couscous pudding. Apple juice, raisins and cinnamon are brought to the boil, and couscous is then added. This mixture is layered with sliced apples, and finished with more sliced apple, and sprinkled with a little raw sugar. The pudding is then baked until browned. It was really tasty - alas no photo of this one. The kids loved this too, and again it is a very cheap dish - total cost about $5 for the whole dish!
So, an economical and well liked dinner. A win-win situation I think.
I have been having a bit of a bagel making session today, after making a batch of 12 yesterday that the kids practically demolished, leaving only 2 in the freezer for school lunches.
Bagels are very expensive to buy, at around $4 for 4 bagels, but very cheap to make as I worked out yesterday. The cinnamon and raisin bagels work out to about $2 for 12 regular or 16 smaller bagels, and the plain ones at around $1.50 for the same quantity. So they are well worth making if you like to eat them.
I made three slightly different batches today. One plain, one cinnamon and raisin, and one wholemeal cinnamon and raisin.The dough for the cinnamon and raisin batch was made in the breadmaker, and the other 2 batches were done in the Kitchen Aid mixer. Both machines coped fine with what is really a fairly stiff bread dough.
Here are the bagels shaped, and waiting to be boiled.On the left and half of the back tray are the plain bagels, with the cinnamon and raisin at the front, and the wholemeal cinnamon and raisin variety on half of the middle and back trays. I made 16 of each - they are slightly smaller than bought ones. A batch of 12 gives a bagel more the size of a typical bought one.
After the bagels rise for around 15 mins, 
they are dropped into a pot of boiling water with a tablespoon of molasses added to it. They are only boiled for around 30 seconds on each side. They puff up a bit during this stage, and look sort of lumpy when you take them out.
This is what they look like after boiling, ready to go into the oven.And the final product:
Back left is the wholemeal cinnamon and raisin, Back right is the regular cinnamon and raisin, and the Plain Bagels at the front.
Needless to say, the kids were very pleased to see them when they arrived home from school. We gave a lot of the plain ones to Sandra and the kids for their lunches, and Jordan,Zach and Jayna were all very impressed and happy to try one straight away.
Having never been a cross country runner myself, I am continually amazed that all 3 of our kids manage to perform very well in this sport.
This year has been no different.
Last term, Lauren's syndicate at school had their cross country, and Lauren placed a very impressive 2nd place in the year 4 girls race. A great effort.
Earlier this term, Kyla and Braden's syndicates had their cross country races. Braden placed 2nd in his, and Kyla 3rd in hers. We were very impressed!Last Monday saw the Kaipara Schools Cross Country being held at Woodhill Sands. This is an event which has about 8 schools participating. Both Kyla and Braden went to this, and did well there too. Braden placed 5th, and Kyla 4th.
Thursday last week was the Norwest Cross Country, involving schools from Kaukapaka down to Swanson and Massey - around 22 schools this time.
Braden placed 11th in his race, and Kyla an impressive 2nd place!!!
We were very proud of them both,
and look forward to seeing how Kyla does at the Auckland Champs on 2nd September.
Week 18 - Polenta or mussels
As nobody in our family likes mussels, the choice for this week was limited somewhat. For the polenta, I decided that having made soft polenta and set polenta on a couple of occasions, I could not really do either again.
I really ended up running out of time a bit on this one, so in the end made an Orange syrup Polenta cake. I was a bit disappointed with it, as I was hoping for a reasonably dense moist cake, and it was really a bit too spongy and dry for what I wanted.
Verdict 2.5/5
I wouldn't bother with that recipe again, but will try to find one that is more to my liking sometime.
Week 19 - Potatoes or Kumara
This was my week to choose the ingredients. I chose potato because I thought it would be fun to try making gnocchi. I did try making it once, about 15 years ago, and it was dense, doughy and stodgy. In other words a dismal failure.
This time, I made sure I kept the potato very dry by cooking them in their skins in the microwave. I then peeled them, and used the potato ricer to mash them. Then it was time to add the salt and knead the flour in. The dough still felt very light, but given my previous experience I was hoping this was a good thing.
The dough was rolled into long ropes about 1cm thick, then chopped into 2cm pieces. The recipe said to drop them in boiling water, and that they are cooked when they rise to the top. This only took about 2-3 minutes.
We had the gnocchi with a sauce made from fresh Italian style sausages which I took out of their casings, and browned with onion and garlic before simmering with tinned tomatoes. A bit of parmesan cheese on top, and dinner was ready.
The verdict? 3.5/5 from me
4.5/5 from Daryl
The gnocchi was light, not doughy but seemed to me to be lacking in texture. This may be right however as smooth potato mixed with flour is never going to have a lot of texture, I suppose. The sauce was great, and I will definitely do that again.
One recipe for gnocchi that I saw added parmesan cheese to the dough. I would like to try that some time as the flavour would be good. The gnocchi really didn't taste like much... but then I suppose that is reasonable given the ingredients.
All in all, not a dismal failure like my first effort 15 years ago, so maybe I have learnt something!
Kyla chose the ingredients for the food challenge this week - Pasta and Eggs.
it would seem that Spaghetti Carbonara would be the obvious choice for this challenge, but I have made that several times before, so it was really out of the running. Kyla will make it later this week however as she has never made it before.
I chose to make fresh pasta. Technically I have made it once before, and all by hand which left my RSI prone arm very sore for a couple of days afterwards. This time I used the Kitchen Aid (it has to earn it's keep) and Jill's pasta machine, which to my knowledge has been used only once before.
The difference in the ease of making is just phenomenal when you use a couple of machines to do all the work! The resulting fettuccine was great. In fact, Daryl assumed it was bought fresh pasta until he spotted the pasta machine on the bench, and was genuinely surprised that I had made it!
We had the fettuccine with a pork, paprika and sour cream sauce. Very tasty and a little bit different. I have made the sauce before, although in a slightly different way, so that was not a new recipe, but still very tasty.
The pasta gets a 5/5 and I will be regularly making fresh pasta from now on. I plan to try making lasagne sheets to make a spinach and ricotta cannelloni next.
Yes, we did actually get around to choosing a name for the kitten, and it didn't actually take us this long!
So Missie has settled in well, has used the litter tray well - no accidents, and is gradually learning not to bite and scratch us. She has some odd habits - particularly with her sleeping. 
She likes to sleep in odd positions - often with her head lower than her body, which surely is not that comfortable. This is Missie sleeping on Kyla's legs - a prime example of a strange place to sleep.
Here is Missie with her very first kill.
Clearly she is not going to be a very talented hunter - given that the fly would have already been feeling a little woozy from the insect spray dispenser we have!
We have mentioned to a few people, the mystery of where Missie was hiding while we were out.
We would come home, and walk through the house looking for her, often without being able to find her.I was gradually able to narrow it down to somewhere in our bedroom. One day I came home, and went quietly down to our room, determined to work out where she was hiding. I looked under and around everywhere, including our ensuite, and all with no luck. Then I found her sitting next to the towels on the shelf in our vanity. I had already checked there, including behind the loose panel that covers the waste from the vanity. I also knew that she had not sneaked in there past me as she has a collar that rattles when she walks. This left me very confused, as the only other option in the vanity was inside the drawers. To get in there she would have to climb over a panel next to the drawer, through a gap of around 40-50mm. We found two cat hairs in Daryl's vanity drawer one day, and a warm moisturizer bottle in my drawer over the next few days, convincing us that we had indeed found her hidey-hole. Now to catch her in the act!
A day or two later, Daryl arrived home 
before me, grabbed the camera, and went to see if our theory was right. Here is the evidence, although some of the photos are blurred.
Here she is in the vanity drawer.
And here is a very blurred photo (but the only photo we have) of Missie getting out of the drawer, via the open shelf that the towels sit on.
She is very definitely an odd kitten!
It is hard to believe that it is over a month since I last wrote anything here, but we have been fairly busy.
I will catch up on what has been going on, but will probably do it in more than one post so it doesn't get too long.
Lauren turned 8 on the 21st May. She chose to have a birthday party at home, and had about 8 girls over for it. Her choice of a swimming pool birthday cake this year was somewhat simpler than last years fairytale castle, for which I was very grateful.
If the amount of giggling and noise that there was is anything to go by, then a lot of fun was had by all.
We had these served on stir fried greens (cabbage, broccoli and bok choy) and drizzled with a sauce made of sherry, soy sauce, ginger and sugar simmered together until thick.
