We have finally got our new kitten!
Some of you will realise that there is a remarkable resemblance between Cara (our previous cat) and this one, and you would be right.
The new kitten (as yet nameless) is also a seal point Birman. The brown markings on her face, legs and tail will darken as she grows.
We picked her up from her previous home last night after the kids had swimming lessons. That was an adventure in itself as the house was in Papakura, and not in the township, but out about 10km into the surrounding farmland. We had very good directions to get there, although the part of the directions that we got off Google maps was the windier route to get there.
She managed well on her first night here, sleeping in the family room in her bed, although not all night... she came out from under the couch this morning. Still, I had half expected her to cry all night and wake me up, so in the end I was very pleased. It was actually Daryl that woke me up with a text from London at about 3am that said simply "miaow". He was in a painful mood it seems. I have however had my revenge, by texting the very same "miaow" back at around 2:00pm this afternoon, which converts to around 3am in London.
She has quickly decided that she likes her bed, and like this evening, will just wander over and hop in to have a sleep.
Sorry about the quality of the photos, she is too curious for easy photographs!
We will be sure to tell you her name.... once she has one.
Well, we survived the craziness of last week, and now I have time to give a brief summary of how it all went.
The "Kids for Kids" concert at the Bruce Mason Centre was pretty good really. There were 450 children from various schools across Auckland in the choir, with Suzanne Prentice singing the solos. It was well done, and Kyla had a great time.
On Friday, Kyla took part in the Kiapara
Schools Triathalon. She chose to enter as an individual rather than as part of a team, and so she did all three parts herself.
In the swim leg, she swam at a steady pace, but was not fast and was 3rd to last out of the pool.
On the cycling leg, she did well, passing several other competitors.
This left her in a good position, and on the run she passed more competitors to finish in 2nd place!
Well done Kyla! (and she looked like she could have just kept on going for a while longer.)
After competing in the triathalon during school, she had her birthday party on Friday night. She chose to take a few friends to West Wave to the pool, and so they spent about 1 1/2 hours swimming and going on the hydroslide. Following this, we went across to West City for dinner. We gave the girls $10 each, and let them decide what to buy for their dinner. They had a lot of fun doing this. After dinner, they went for a short wander to look at shops, and eventually spent some change we had given them on lollies. They all seemed to enjoy the whole evening, and I think Kyla really enjoyed the freedom and feeling a little grown up.
On Sunday we got together with the extended family for Mother's Day, and to celebrate Kyla and Jayna's birthdays.
Kyla had a birthday cake which she kindly shared with Jayna. And so, Kyla is now 12! We are feeling a little old.
Oh, and they did all play soccer on Saturday again. 3 more wins, Braden's team won 6-0, Kyla's won 2-1, and Lauren's team also won, but I am not sure what the score was.
This is a crockpot recipe I have been meaning to try for a long time. It reminds me of being in the US last year where we tried a BBQ pork bun at one restaurant chain.
The basic idea is that browned blade steak (or some other cheap cut of beef that needs slow cooking) is dusted with a little flour, and browned. It is then put in the crockpot with 1/2 c water to 1.5kg of beef, and cooked on high for about 4-5 hours, or until you can shred it with 2 forks.
The liquid is removed, and the shredded beef is returned to the crockpot. To this you add a sauce of 130g tomato paste, 1/2c tomato sauce, 2T molasses, 2T balsamic vinegar, 2T worcestershire sauce, 1tsp mustard powder, 1tsp chilli powder, and 1tsp salt, along with as much of the retained meat juices as you need to get a nice consistency.
The beef is then reheated on low for a couple of hours.
This is served in rolls with red onion slices (the recipe says raw red onion, but we decided to be less odourous and cook it). Really tasty, and easy. I think that I will give it a go with pork some time, and see how that goes.
The kids loved it, and the 1.5kg of beef gave us enough for dinner, Daryl's lunch the next day, and a little bit to go with our wraps for dinner last night. Not bad for $15 of meat.
So, tonight we are off to the Bruce Mason Theater in Takapuna to watch the Kids for Kids choir performance.... a bunch of kids choirs from various Auckland schools singing with Suzanne Prentice to raise money for World Vision. Kyla is part of Waimauku School's choir. That is after the kids soccer practices that start at 3:30. Braden's team has a practice game this afternoon, finishing at 5:20. So after that we will head home to get them changed, then get to Takapuna by 6:30-6:45 when Kyla is supposed to be there. Something is missing from this plan? Oh, that's right... I need to feed them. Hmmm, not sure when that will happen.
Tomorrow Kyla has an inter-school Triathalon, and after school her Birthday party down at West Wave pools. Then soccer Saturdy morning for all 3, pick up a new bed (off trademe) for Kyla on Saturday afternoon after Daryl's soccer game at 12:30, bake dessert for mother's day when we get home, then church Sunday morning, ice birthday cake for Kyla on Sunday afternoon, dinner with the whanau Sunday night...
Time for a lie down I think.
It does indeed seem that all I ever do is cook and take kids to soccer at the moment, or it may look that way as that is about all I manage to write about here. There is indeed more to my life at the moment, some days I clean or work too.
Anyway, the soccer results for this week (minus details as I was not there for any of them)
Kyla's team: won 1-0
Braden's team: won 6-1
Lauren's team: won 6-1
And the food challenge for the week? 
Kyla had the privilege of choosing the ingredients for this week, and chose pumpkin, marshmallow and passionfruit.
Kyla decided to make baby pumpkins stuffed with tomato and bacon risotto.
She scooped the seeds out, and roasted the pumpkins, then filled them with the risotto, and topped them with parmesan cheese before popping them under the grill to brown. We had them with lamb and salad (the garden is still producing well). Score: 4/5 - the taste was great, but the texture of the pumpkin was not very good - the variety was the issue here, not the cooking.
Yesterday afternoon I made mallowpuffs for the first time. They were not particularly difficult, although I was amazed how sticky and messy you can get trying to get marshmallow mixture into a piping bag! The chocolate dipping also proved to be slightly messy.
The score: 4/5
Very tasty, and I think nicer than bought ones, especially as they have dark chocolate on them and the biscuit is nicer. The kids seem quite happy to eat them.
(and no, I didn't eat both of them from the picture!)
Squid, Chickpeas and preserved lemons....
These three ingredients were those chosen for the foodlovers challenge this week.
We had to immediately exclude preserved lemons from consideration as we didn't have any and it takes a few weeks to make them.
Kyla decided to make Salt and Pepper 
Squid.
We have had this a couple of times when we have been out for dinner, and all the kids love it, so were very pleased with Kyla's choice. She made a tempura batter, and dipped the scored squid pieces into it before deep frying it. I did help at this point as the thought of leaving Kyla to it (capable though she may be) was a little too worrying.
I chose to use chickpeas this time.
I don't normally buy pre-prepared food, but one that I have been buying lately is Lisa's Felafel Mix. It is really tasty and convenient as it stores in the fridge for a few weeks in it's nice little plastic pouch, just waiting for a busy day.
So, I thought I should give felafels a go myself. I did cheat and use tinned chickpeas as I did not have time this weekend to soak and boil the dried variety.
It was easy to make as you just throw everything in the food processor, then chill for 2 hours. I think that I pureed them for a little bit long as they were a bit smooth in texture, and should have had a bit longer in the fridge... It was getting a bit late to wait for them to chill fully. They tasted really good though, and I will definitely make them again. The garden is still producing parsley, tomatoes and lettuces so they were nice and fresh for this.
Last weekend Sandra and Craig took the kids to the Dad's soccer game while I did some work. They dropped into the Swiss bakery on Rosebank road, and bought some pretzel rolls. This afternoon we were at Nosh, and we got the kids a soft pretzel from there. So, the next thing to do was to see if I could make them.
Kyla had described these little rolls to me, and so after a look on the very useful net, I settled on a recipe to try. After a bit of further searching, we discovered that the caramel/brown colour on the rolls was dur to dipping them in a lye solution.... which seems slightly alarming when it comes with a warning about how caustic the lye solution is! Due to not having lye on hand (surprise, surprise) I had to do a bit of trial and error.
I did half the rolls dipping them in a cold baking soda solution (on the right of the photo), and the other half (on the left) were dipped in a boiling baking soda solution for about 30 seconds.
Kyla snuck out of her room (she was supposed to be going to sleep) when she heard the oven beep, and was quite impressed with my efforts. She tells me that the ones on the left (boiling baking soda solution) look the most like the ones they had. She has yet to taste them, but we have tried them and they are really nice.
This weeks soccer scores:
Kyla - her team had a bye
Braden - his team won, 6-1 (the 1 was actually an own goal scored by another defender - not Braden)
Lauren - her team drew 3-3 against a team called The Champions. They are actually really good team, so they did well.
Daryl - the old boys won 2-1, a hard game, and apparently it was supposed to be one of the easier teams in the league!
You could be forgiven for looking at the title of this blog and struggling to find a link.
There really isn't one.
So the soccer bit first.
This weekend saw the start of the kids soccer season, and Daryl managed to miss it by being in Singapore. He ended up arriving home today at about lunchtime due to the Icelandic volcano with the unpronounceable name preventing him from catching his flight to London.
But I digress, so back to the games.Lauren's team was the first to play, and given that they only had once practice together beforehand, it was interesting to see them play and see who was good at what. All in all it was a good game, and they are learning to pass well now. Lauren had a great assist, where she was at the back of the field in defence, and kicked the ball over everyone's heads, and it landed neatly in front of another player from her team who slotted it into the goal! Final score 5-0.
Kyla's team was second to play, and that was a great game to see. Everyone played well, including the 2 new girls who had never played before. Kyla scored a cracker of a goal from about 10m back, and was justifiably pleased with herself.Final score 4-0.
Braden's team was the final game for the day, and due to the game being at Shepherd's Park in Beachaven, I was only there for about the last 10 minutes of the game. I did notice that Braden (who is a defender) was playing well into the opposition's half, and it soon became clear. He tells me that his team's goalies (one for each half) did not touch the ball as goalie. It really was a bit of a walkover - and the score would have been much higher if the goals had been the proper size instead of the tiny ones that were being used.
Final score 7-0
So , a successful day of soccer, and apparently Daryl's team won too, 1-0, even though Daryl was not there to help.
So, now to the Cabbage.
The foodlover's challenge for the week was to use cabbage or almonds (or both) in a recipe we had never cooked before.
I did Chinese steamed pork and cabbage rolls.
This gave me a chance to use my Bamboo steamer for the first time, which was fun.
The kids and Daryl all liked the rolls, which we had with rice, Andrew's sprinkles from Japan, and soy sauce.
The verdict was a 4/5, I would probably do this one again. A good way to use a vegetable that up till now I have tended to only use in coleslaw or sauteed or in colcannon (once).
Kyla chose to use almonds, and due to the fact that we had been to Blossoms for lunch and had cake today (we met Daryl there after he arrived home from Singapore) we didn't need another cake. So she made Praline, which we had with cream/vanilla yogurt mixture, and peacherines.
This was also voted 4/5. Very yummy indeed.
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.
We picked her up from her previous home last night after the kids had swimming lessons. That was an adventure in itself as the house was in Papakura, and not in the township, but out about 10km into the surrounding farmland. We had very good directions to get there, although the part of the directions that we got off Google maps was the windier route to get there.
