The Kitchen Playground

This afternoon, I discovered a glut of pears needing to be used in the fruit bowl. I also needed an after school, pre-swimming snack for tomorrow. That is how this pear slice was born. It would be easy enough to make without the thermomix, just soften the butter first for easy reaming with the sugar [...]

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A batch of biscuits that can be mixed in five minutes and baked in the time it takes to shower and dress for an impromptu trip to the park is a blessing. The following mixes fit into that category and have been the perfect addition to many a gathering of Ankle Biters. I make them [...]

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Now that both First Born and Lil Miss are at school, I am working close to full time. Which means that I am making packed lunches for the whole family five days a week, no more nicking home at lunch time for a few crackers, cheese and tomato for me! The main problem with this [...]

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What a cheek! She doesn’t update her blog for six months and then just jumps in with a cake. Oh well, it happens to the best of us I’m sure. I’m not even going to bother offering excuses, reasons or trying to make deals with myself as to how often I’ll be blogging from here [...]

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I’m going through one of my frenzies of cleaning out the fridge and pantry. Every now and again I seem to get a build up of obscure ingredients and just before Christmas when I’m trying to save money is a great time to use them all up. Not only does it tidy up the cupboards [...]

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Shocking though this seems to me, First Born is SIX years old. Really. I’ve been doing this parenting gig for six years. Crazy. In fact, I think this is the third of his birthdays that I’ve blogged about.  Which must mean that this blog has recently had a birthday too.
This year, the boy had a [...]

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In our part of the world, today is Father’s Day. In the interests of serving up a decent Eggs Benedict for breakfast, as it is the Bread Winner’s favourite, the Ankle Biters and I struck a deal. I would cook breakfast, First Born would cook dinner and Lil Miss would make dessert. Everyone was [...]

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School holidays have finished and the Ankle Biters have returned to their term time routines. One thing I have noticed about school holidays is that they could easily become very expensive propositions. Not in this house. I’m not wired that way. Poor Ankle Biters.
Instead, we have movie days at home with popcorn and biscuits. Or [...]

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It’s school holidays here at the moment. Glorious school holidays. Today, the Ankle Biters had some friends over and I got to enjoy the adult company of their respective mothers. One of the mums has coeliac disease so I took the easy way and made soup for the grown up lunch. The tricky part was [...]

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A while back I compiled a document full of slow cooker recipes from a variety of sources. Unfortunately, I didn’t note the original sources. Which was not very bright of me. I think they largely came from cooking forums. Tonight’s meal was an adaptation of one of those recipes and it is absolutely superb. We [...]

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