Everything is Gold (Yogurt and date smoothies and link to raw choc raspberry tart)

>Spiced stone fruit on yogurt with fresh raspberries and toasted pistachios

>Chocolate raspberry tart with (an attempt at) dairy free chocolate

>Princess Squirmy 'gardening', aka moving dirt from one pot to another and back again (can keep her quite busy for some time with this)

>Kale smoothie

Everything is gold.

I feel like, somehow, I have been transported to the outback with its hot dusty winds and its vast golden paddocks. Except that I’m not in the outback, I’m in suburbia- Inner city suburbia I might add, and that beautiful wheat gold is actually a collaboration of streets and streets of dead lawns. Summer is here and in full force!

The last few nights we have moved all our bedding downstairs onto the tiled lounge room floor (the only room with air-conditioning) The port-a-cot is now a fixture in the entry way, and all our bedding has been rolled up next to the couch with a throw rug tossed over for effect.  Each night we roll our doona-swag, and toss a coin to see who gets the couch and who settles for the floor.

I believe my point is this: I am really just making more excuses as to why I haven’t been cooking. It’s too hot!

That said, it’s not too hot to BBQ! And boy do we love a webber meal in this house! It’s also not too hot for yogurt with spiced-cinnamon-stone-fruit. Nor is it too hot for green smoothies, date and yogurt smoothies, (well actually any sort of smoothie really) watermelon icy-poles, homemade muesli’s, spoonful’s of hummus or green-olive-chimichurri on everything, and it is never, NEVER, too hot for raw cake!

It’s my personal opinion that raw cake could and should take over this town. It is just perfect for Perth. It’s healthier, super tasty and it’s at its best served straight out of the freezer! And because of that great freezer element, you can chop it up and store pieces in your freezer taking out only as you need. No wasted stale cake! At this point I’m wondering if I should be selling the stuff. I’m not trying to do that here. Honestly. I’m just in-love with the stuff.

If you haven’t had it before and are a little cautious, think of it as more of a no-bake slice. Technically, it’s nothing new- perhaps just the name? I know my Grandmother has been making versions of it for years. However I think with improved home kitchen appliances, the recipes too have improved.

I have linked a raw-cake recipe below, but if you have any great recipes you would like to share with me, please don’t hesitate too! I've also shared the date and yogurt shake I have been having a lot of recently. It’s been a wonderful power-pop for when I can’t get to a proper breakfast/lunch, which is, at this stage of the motherhood game, still far too often.

Enjoy!

Chocolate and raspberry tart. (Thank you to Kellie for introducing this one to me)

Date and Yoghurt Smoothie

1 cup of Greek/plain yoghurt

1 cup of milk

4 ice cubes

12 pitted dates

1 tablespoon of ground almonds

Throw it all in a Thermomix or good quality smoothie blender until smooth.

New..

    

There hasn't been much kitchen action around here the last couple of weeks, at least nothing worth writing about. 
Eggs on toast. 
A few shamefully bad curries. 
Twice a day muesli. 

Moving house, Christmas Banquet for 160, a fundraising event to oversee and just the general hoo-hah of Christmas business all round. It's been an exhausting end to the year. 

Not to mention that Summer is peaking. I glisten all day long and not because I am a vampire but because it is 30+ degrees and I can not handle the heat the way I did pre-pregnancy (one of the odd side effects of baby-creating). 

Lord knows how I will handle it when we work up past the 40's. 

On the upside, the webber has come out in full force! 

Before we left the last house we celebrated with a couple of pear ciders,  a packet of mixed vegetable chips and Chimichirri on steak cooked to perfection the way the webber always does. It was a wonderful way to farewell that house and the season we had there. 

As far as the new place goes, life has moved forward as if nothing really has changed. Princess Squirmy has adapted to her new environment with much ease- mostly I think she just loves the new staircase- and now that we are meeting the end of the unpacking, the place is already starting to feel like a home. It's smaller, but better designed, there is not much garden, no grass, but some terrific parks close by and an enclosed courtyard that P.S. Can run around in relatively unsupervised which is a new and wonderful experience for me. 

I dare say I am ready for 2014 now. Finally. 

Wrap-star

Almost here!
I get very excited about wrapping presents. 
Almost more excited about the wrapping than whats inside. I just find that something simple, wrapped beautifully- sings so much more to me than something extravagant wrapped in supermarket paper.......
I guess that is just the odd way I can be sometimes.
I like the simple pleasures.

Chaos.
Organized chaos may be, but still chaos.

I am starring keenly at my diary this week. I need to be far more organized than I know how to be. Let me give you a quick run down....

Today is the 12th. That is 13 days till Christmas.
In that time I need to finish packing up the house, do all my Christmas shopping, plan a Christmas celebration banquet for over 160 people, move house and clean this rental property up for the final inspection, oversee and pull off that banquet and- all this on top of my everyday life that is actually fairly full already. Did I mention we are down to one car?! Help!

Somewhere in there I need to follow up on a specialist appointment for Princess Squirmy, re-enroll her in swimming class, attend 2 Christmas events (separate from the banquet) and figure out the bus timetables so that I can do all of the above.

Yet.......

A peace that transcends all understanding

Yet- this is where I stand. In that peace. I know if I can just keep my focus and not loose my head, everything will work out. At this point I am eager to just get settled into the new place. I'm going to buy myself a beautiful bunch of flowers, put them in a vase and place them in the middle of the dining room table. Then I am going to turn on the oven and bake myself something that makes the whole place smell like home. 

Till then......I'll try to enjoy the chaos.

Loosing is Winning

Luke 17:33, "If you cling to life, you will loose it, and if you let your life go, you will save it."

I have eased into motherhood like a woman getting into a cold swimming pool. With all the grace of that grimacing squealing beauty dipping her toe in and removing it several times before convincing herself if she can just get her toe used to the water then may be she can start on the foot. 

Actually at this point I feel like I'm in the deep end and I don't know how to swim. Instead of swimming around and having fun, I'm clinging to the side looking longingly at the sun bathers on their towels laughing and sipping cocktails.

Jerks. 

All of them.

Okay okay, that's not exactly the whole picture either, and I don't think anyone is a jerk.........at least not because they don't have kids.

But there are certainly days when my feelings lean that direction. And that's when my thoughts wander back to Luke 12. 

On the days when I feel like I am loosing at everything. I've not answered messages, phone calls or emails. On the days when people are ringing me regarding those messages, calls and emails because now I am hold them up. On the days when the washing is beyond piling up and I realize that my husband has been wearing the same work clothes for far to many days. (poo-ey!!) On the days when I only eat one meal......dinner......AND only at 9pm. On the days where I mixed up my dates and times and left someone important sitting in a cafe for an hour and a half before leaving (late) for their next appointment. On the days when you are so tired English thinks second speak the window somewhere out...........

On the days when I look around, throw my hands up and say, 'today I lost'. I lost the war on being a good friend, worker, wife, daughter, but the days I chose to loose at all these things, are the days I win at being a mum.  

Of course there are days where I have had to choose to loose the mum battle and win a different battle, but mostly its the first one :)

I am learning that to win in one area is just to loose in another area and that every minute I need to look at all my battles and decide which one I am going to win in that moment. 

So I stand here reminding myself not look backwards longingly, but to walk forward, enjoy the swim and remember that to while winning is actually loosing, loosing is always winning too.

I'm going to go now and discover what I lost while I was writing this blog ...... I think whatever it was just went down the toilet bowl......Oh Help!!

Bye for now!

I have this problem where I make twelve or so cups of tea a day but only actually get to drink one or two. Actually I should say I start making twelve or so cups, but most end up sitting in a sorry state on the kitchen bench until I ditch them and start again. It's one of the small things I never saw coming in regards to motherhood. 

I confess somewhere in my head I wondered if I would have time to learn to paint, or finally learn to play that guitar in the corner of my lounge room. I wouldn't say I went so far as to expect that I would be able to do such things, but I certainly entertained the thought that it might be possible. As per usual, I was wrong.

I read on something the other day about a family with fourteen children.....FOURTEEN!! I cant even find time for a cup of tea with one! 

Sigh. 

The thought of attending a painting class has become a distant memory. For now I will just try and remember that there is a half made cup of tea on my bench and if I can finish making it I am doing well. And if I can manage to drink it while it is still warm, then we are having a great day!

We have been blessed enough to live in some really lovely locations since we have been married.  Despite not always having the pay check to match, somehow we managed to to land ourselves near the city and near some lovely cafe strips. Although we haven't been able to make full use of the restaurants we do wander down regularly for a cup of coffee. 

Granted the last house we lived in for a long period of time was a bit of a hole. It had shag pile carpet that I think was once meant to be cream, (who puts down cream carpet in a rental house anyway huh?) late 70's decor in the kitchen and bathroom, and just for fun, if it was raining and you were on the loo, there was a crack in the ceiling that would drip on your head.

However it was a lot of fun and we made it work. 

At the peak of each summer we would drag our mattress down stairs where it was cooler. For a month of the year we'd sleep in the lounge, drink loads of chilled cheap white wine and watch piles of DVDs. There was a stage for a while there where we acquired a second hand record player, I completed the look with a lava lamp and a bean bag and we would lay back on a Saturday night and listen to Dire Straits or Pink Floyd. Making the most of those shag pile carpets :)

Last week, in the midst of organizing for a fundraiser (sorry I should add as I was packing the car up the day before the big event) I got a call from our rental agent informing us that the owner wanted to move back in. I have to say while I understand this is the life of a renter, still, my heart sank.

I have so enjoyed living in this light airy house with its beautiful wild-flower-filled garden and it's closeness to everything important. 

And there that element of this is where I had my baby girl and brought her home to her first bedroom.

Where she took her first steps.

And perhaps even one of the first places that has actually felt like a home.

............

Such is the life of a renter

So my dining table will be moving. I hope that we will enjoy the next place just half as much :)