Week 51 Challenge - Slow Cooker

Instead of an ingredient this week, we were challenged to use a slow cooker for a recipe we had not made before. I took the opportunity to try a dessert idea that is in the Alison Holst slow cooker book.

I made a coffee creme caramel, and cooked it in the slow cooker with a little water in the bottom. I was hoping for a lovely smooth texture, but unfortunately the result was very disappointing. As you can see from the photo, there were lots of air bubbles in my creme caramels, which I think indicates they were overcooked. I am surprised by this as the recipe said 4 hours on slow, and they would only have been in the slow cooker for around 3.5 hours at the most.

The creme caramel tasted really nice, and so the texture was a real let down. I will try this again sometime, as I know it should work, and if I can get it right, it will be a great easy dessert.

Finally - a break!

As some of you may have noticed, we were not in Auckland for the weekend.

Ever since the Christchurch earthquake, Daryl has been ridiculously busy with work - working at least part of each weekend, and long hours during the week. The craziest he did was last Monday - working from around 7am, then joining us at Mum and Dad's for dinner, before heading back to work around 8pm. He showed up at home around 4am and packed his suitcase ready to a trip to Sydney before coming to bed at about 4:30. He then had to get up at 5:40 in order to catch a taxi to the airport at 6am. In Sydney he worked a full day before having dinner at 8:30pm Sydney time, and finally getting back to his hotel around midnight NZT. That is a lot of hours with very little sleep.

On Friday afternoon, I was at the point of thinking "we have got to get out of here and have a break". So I had a look on the internet at Kuirau Park Motor Lodge. It is a fairly basic, and reasonably priced motel in Rotorua that we have stayed at before. They had suitable rooms available for the weekend, so I tried ringing Daryl to see what he thought of escaping for the weekend. He was (as usual) difficult to get hold of. Turned out he was in a meeting, but he did respond to a text. It was still looking like it would be too hard to organise, as I was not able to actually talk to Daryl to figure out if it was worth doing.

Eventually his meeting ended, and a short phone call to the motel resulted in them saying they would leave a key out for us as we would be arriving after the office closed. A flurry of packing ensued, and bikes were loaded on the car. We joined Daryl in town for dinner, and then headed down to Rotorua, arriving at about 11pm. We found the room, and it was time for bed.

Saturday morning was beautifully fine, and the kids were keen to get going. We started by having breakfast at Lime - a lovely cafe that does great food and coffee.

From there it was off to the forest for a spot of mountain biking. We ended up doing 20km which everyone managed very well. Kyla and Daryl sped off ahead at times, and Lauren set a very good pace for Braden and I to follow. Mountain biking was followed by a swim at the motel pool, where Lauren and Kyla took turns performing belly flops into the pool. We had dinner at an Italian restaurant, and then a wander over to the playground by the lake for a game of Lava (try to get all the way around the playground without touching the ground) before having dessert at another restaurant.

Sunday was going to be a more relaxed day. We went to a bakery and get some breakfast which we then ate at the park before hopping on our bikes for an easier ride around the lakefront. However, the path continued, and soon we were at the far end of Rotorua, not far from the forest. Daryl asked the kids if they would like to keep going and do a quick forest loop as well, and they were all keen, so off we went. Somewhere in all of this riding, the kids had decided that if we managed 30km that day, then the weekend would total 50km. So, ride we did, and by the time we got back to the lakefront for a late lunch, we had managed an impressive 33km, totaling 53km for the weekend. The kids really do have impressive stamina!

After lunch, we packed all the bikes back into and onto the car, and drove past Nongotaha to a place called Hamurana. There we went for a short walk, to see an absolutely amazing spring. The spring is 15m deep, and the flow rate is an amazing 4,500,000 L per hour! It was worth the detour to drive there and see it.

Unfortunately in the rush to get away on Friday, I neglected to pack a camera, so we have no photos to add to this.

All in all, we had a fantastic break, and really enjoyed the time together as a family, doing things we all enjoy. Missie was very pleased to see us back after a weekend on her own.

Week 50 Challenge - Tomatoes and Lemongrass

I have completed another challenge, and this time I have (unintentionally) used both ingredients!

I decided to have a look for a Thai style soup that used lemongrass, as that is something I have never tried to make before. I found a recipe for

Thai Chicken Soup with Coconut Cream and Lemongrass on the Tegel website that looked like a good one. As it happened, the soup used both Lemongrass and Tomatoes, and even though I made it with both ingredients, it wasn't until I posted about it on the Foodlover's forum that I remembered that Tomato was the other ingredient for this week!

I couldn't find fresh Kaffir Lime leaves, but

did manage to find some dried ones, and as they are removed from the soup before you eat, I figured they would work just as well.

We had the soup poured over some rice stick noodles, to try and fill the kids up.

It was a good, quick meal to make and tasty to eat, but I thought the lime was a bit overpowering, and the subtlety of the Lemongrass was a bit lost. The flavour of the ginger did not come through either. Apart from that, it was good, and I would give it a 3.5/5. I will try this again, and play around with the balance of flavours to see if I can get it so that all the different flavours are there.

Week 47 Challenge - Mexican Food

We eat several different meals that we consider to be mexican, although in reality they are probably a very loose interpretation of what Mexican food really is. The challenge for this week was to cook a mexican dish we had never made before.
While wandering around on the internet looking for ideas, I thought of Mexican Pork and Beans - something I have never had, but must have heard of somewhere. As it happens, there are literally thousands of recipes for Mexican Pork and Beans. I was wanting to make as authentic a dish as I could, which is made more difficult when you have never seen or tasted the dish before.

I came across this recipe for
Mexican Pork and Beans. The ingredients and spices looked to be a good balance from what I had read in numerous other recipes.
It also helped that there were no strange ingredients to source.

I made this on Friday night, for Craig and Sandra (and kids), and Paul and T. I cooked it in the afternoon, and we finally got to eat after Summer Soccer.
We had it with Rice, Tortillas and Salad.

This gets a 4.5/5 from me. Really tasty, with just the right amount of chilli in it to make it warm but not hot. Having beans in the dish meant that the 1kg of meat stretched to feed 6 adults and 6 children. I used a pork shoulder roast, deboned and diced. There could have been a bit more meat in the dish, but realistically we probably didn't need more - it was just tasty enough that we would have eaten it if it was there.

Yet another recipe to add to the repertoire.

Week 46 Challenge- a budget meal

With our regular meals, I try to keep to an average of $10 meat per meal to feel our family of 2 adults and 3 kids. With the challenge for this week being "a budget meal" I decided to try and make the whole main course for as close to $10 as I could, including meat.

I found a Destitute Gourmet recipe for Peanut Pork and Rice. This recipe also happened to be a one pot meal, where everything is cooked together, which is always a bonus when it comes to cleaning up afterwards.

I think the total of ingredients added up to $11.47, which fed us all plenty, and there was enough left over for Kyla to take in her lunch the next day. Having garlic, courgette and beans from our garden certainly helped to keep the total cost down.

We would give this a 4/5 and I will certainly make it again.

Week 45 Challenge - Grains

This week, the challenge was to use a grain that you had never used before.

I bought a bag of pearl barley last week, having read about making a pearl barley risotto. The challenge gave me a push to actually make it this week.

I was a little dubious about how this would work, and after a quick look on the ever useful internet, found a recipe that looked good.
I didn't have any mushrooms, so they just got left out of the dish, and I added some slow roasted tomatoes that I had done. The texture is quite different to a regular risotto, with a bit more bite to the barley grains. The risotto tasted really good, and the kids all happily ate it. Incidentally, Pearl Barley has a very low GI rating (25) which means that it does not impact your blood sugar level very much. This will make it a very good recipe for me to cook for Jill sometime.

I would score this at 4.5/5 and will definitely be making it again - probably trying it with different flavours as well, just as I would with a regular risotto. And at $1.90 for 500g, it is significantly cheaper than risotto rice. I used just under a whole 500g pack, which provided a large serving each for 5 of us, and a large lunch for Daryl the next day. Pretty cheap really.

A high school student

Kyla has officially started High School now, and is only a few months off becoming a teenager! She is also now eligible to go to Youth Group, which starts this weekend.
Clearly we are all getting very old.

I thought you might all like to see Kyla in her school uniform, ready for her first day.
It has been/is a big adjustment for her, but she is doing very well. She caught the bus to school yesterday for the first time, and this afternoon will catch it home. This is a big thing, as up till now she had never had to do this. Fortunately she has a friend from Waimauku School who catches the same bus, so they have been organizing to do this together.

She is in the GAT (Gifted and Talented) Class, and so there are very high expectations from the school about how hard they will work this year. Kyla has a very good work ethic, so I do not think this will cause her any problems.

No doubt she will grump at me for this blog entry, but I figured you may like an update anyway.