You learn something new every day: refrigerated minced meat edition

I learned a couple of new things today.

Firstly, I learned that I am getting too old and wussy for scary movies.  I nearly had a heart attack throughout almost all of Jurassic World, and actually got quite emotionally terrified when a flock of escaped pterodactyls flew across the island toward the crowds of unsuspecting tourists. (I actually got a lump in my throat, and when the pterodactyls started to swoop I for real started shallow-breathing and almost squeezed out some tears. The children! The children! What would I do if I was herding my kids through a stampeding crowd chased by raptors and pterodactyls?? What would I do, dammit?! The horror, the horror....)

So that was number one. I can obviously no longer go and see scary movies, or even enjoyable adventure movies with predictable character arcs and what I am sure is deeply inaccurate science.

But: despite all that, Jurassic World is actually pretty good and I did (kind of?) enjoy it. I am just an emotional idiot.

The second thing I learned was that managing minced meat can be a whole lot easier than I ever knew. I was making bolognese sauce, and you know how once you've heated the oil and sautéed the onions and garlic, you get the beef mince out of its packet and drop it into the saucepan, and it's basically a big red cold brick that you have to sort of hack away at with your wooden spoon, if you don't want to tear it into chunks with your bare hands first? And it's actually quite hard work chopping it all up and mixing it and turning the pieces until it's all broken down and brown and starting to cook?

Well, it turns out you don't have to do that. Today I dropped my red brick of cold minced beef into my saucepan, then turned away momentarily to read a couple of pages of a book I am reading, then got lost in the book and completely forgot about my saucepan... until a faint cooking smell wafted over, and I hurried over to resume. Voila! My minced beef had all "melted" into the pot, broken down and almost all browned, and only needed a couple of easy stirs to get all mixed in and ready for cooking.

So there you go.

Cute Dino Pics

Let It Go

Adrian ImpalaMata

Parenting, as many have said before me, is an ongoing series of lessons in learning to let go. With each stage as your child develops and grows, you let go of something. And sometimes it's hard.

Sometimes you have to let go of something else: an opinion you held dear, or a view you had of yourself.  That's not just true of parenting - it's part of life. But parenting is one of the catalysts that will do this for you. (Anything from "You should never bribe children" or "I'm going to be an earth mother and do everything natural" or "I love kids and would like to have lots of them!" to your beliefs on gender, nature and marriage, or your personal view of your place in the world and how the universe works).

Sometimes it's a relief to let something go. A long-cherished hobby or life goal can be good to let go when it impedes joy in other areas of your life. (Read: 'The Upside of Quitting' at Freakonomics)

Sometimes it can take awhile to let go of something you really cherish or want. It took me a long time to accept that I could never give my kids the Stay at Home Mum lilfestyle, It took me too long and too many stressful mornings and nights before I let go of the idea that I had to be the one to take the kids to daycare every day, or that all our evening meals had to be a traditional plated meat and two veg. When I let go of those ideas, which did not fit our lives, our lives became better. Y did the daycare run more often, and the picnic dinner and the bento box dinner became our friends.

Sometimes, when a thing won't work despite all best intentions and hard work, letting go and moving on is the only option.

When my kids were little, I made delicious milkshakes. I made them with banana, a spoonful of ice-cream, milk and a couple of drops of food dye. Their favourite colour was pink, but we also had blue, green or orange milkshakes. Sometimes instead of ice-cream I used Greek yogurt and honey. My kids LOVED my milkshakes. When the daycare centre compiled a book of favourite family recipes, our contribution was Pink Milkshakes.

I loved my role as HEALTHY FUN MUM WHO MAKES AWESOME MILKSHAKES. I might have loved that picture of myself more than my kids loved the milkshakes.  So when my kids got a little older and tasted actual milkshakes and started to go off mine, I wasn't ready to give that up.

I upped the ante to chocolate and banana shakes. I increased the proportion of ice-cream. I made smoothies: fruit, yogurt, honey, juice, ice and milk, blended up with a couple of drops of food dye to make them look as great as they tasted. But despite many attempts over the years and Y and I loving them, the kids have never really bought in.

Yesterday I cut up some kiwifruit for the girls and saw a smoothie recipe on the inside of the container: kiwi, banana, honey and juice. I immediately made plans to make a yummy smoothie for tomorrow's breakfast, but when I mentioned it both kids said "NO! Mum! We DON'T LIKE SMOOTHIES!"

Then they happily gobbled up their bowls of kiwi and banana.

I considered my options. I could make my smoothie, which Y and I would like and the kids would not. I could use up all that kiwi and banana in the process, which the kids will not consume in smoothie form but will happily eat cut up in a bowl.

Or I could give them the fresh fruit and let it go.

I LET IT GO.

And it felt good.

What have you let go? What took you too long to accept?

Sunday Selections #185

It's time for Sunday Selections!
Sunday Selections is a weekly meme hosted by River at Drifting Through Life. 

The rules are very simple:-

1. post photos of your choice, old or new, under the Sunday Selections title

2. link back to River somewhere in your post

3. leave a comment on River's post and visit some of the others who have posted and commented

    

I've been absent from Sunday Selections a bit of late, not through design but because Sundays have been fairly busy and by the time the evening rolls round I have thought 'ah well, next week' and trundled off to bed.  Tonight I am just making it, at twenty minutes to midnight.

This week it's another collection of 'slice of life' photos:

For my August resolution I resolved to be a bit more productive by curtailing time spent on my phone. One of the things I wanted to do with that time was clean out the linen cupboard.

Well mark that as done, y'all.

It went from this:

To this:

I can't work miracles. With only two shelves and that huge wasted space at the bottom for our old non-working ducted vacuum, it is never going to be amazing. But at least now I can open the door without a towel or two falling on my head, and I got rid of three garbage bags worth of donate-able and make-into-rags-able old sheets and towels.


I also cooked a bang-up meal yesterday: coq au vin!
Well, kind of coq au vin. I didn't have bacon so chopped up some ham instead; I didn't have mushrooms; I didn't have cognac; and I didn't have red wine so used white instead.

But still: bloody delicious!

Here is it simmering away:

And here's the finished pot:

A rather more prosaic mid-week meal:

Paving. Somewhere. Just because.

The dog has outgrown his tiny dog bed, so I splashed out on a new one for him. He loved it immediately.

Unfortunately so does the cat:

This from the cat who refuses to sleep in a cat bed provided for her.  Poor Harry gets a bit flustered when she parks herself here and only gets brave enough to bark at her when I come over to move her out. I might have to buy another one of these I think. 


Cartoon in today's paper (The Age), about the government's humanitarian aid to the displaced people on the Syrian-Iraqi border. Sadly spot on.

More from the paper. I enjoy this word challenge, but today I can only see one word here, can you?

How was your week?

Why I bribe my kids

My favorite podcast is Freakonomics ("the hidden side of everything"). They cover topics like "Does religion make you happy?" (yes), "What do King Solomon and David Lee Roth have in common?" (use of game theory), and my personal favorite, "The upside of quitting" (let it go, let it go..!)

Last week their topic was "Why you should bribe your kids". (transcript here).

This was timely because I have just recently started paying my kids to eat vegetables.

I tend to think like an economist, so I have no problem with this. That is, I believe that (a) people respond to incentives, and (b) it is very, very difficult to get people to do things that they don't want to do, without them.

Of course, I am slightly uncomfortable with it. I would prefer to have my kids eat vegetables because I have modelled healthy eating, because I am a tough parent ("eat it or starve"), and because I have structured our lives and our menus in a way that the kids have learned naturally to enjoy their vegetables. But I have tried all of these things - some of them even consistently - and I know only that they involve a constant uphill battle for correspondingly little payoff. (See? economic thinking).

Bribery is not my only MO.

I hide vegies too. My kids love mashed potato. They only recently found out that I have always made it with half potato, half cauliflower.  I have chopped up green and orange vegetables so tiny you can barely see them, and mashed them into mincemeat burgers, only to have eagle-eyed seven-year-olds screech "What's that?" after taking one bite. I have mixed too many pureed vegies into bolognaise sauce and made an unappetizing grey gloop that even I didn't want to eat.

I heard a CSIRO scientist on the radio a couple of years ago say he lets his kids pour chocolate sauce on their vegetables, because eating vegetables is that important. I've never done that (my kids have enough chocolate in their lives), but I have simmered green beans in butter and honey (delicious!) and served broccoli with honey drizzled over the top (meh).

I've coated Brussels sprouts in breadcrumbs and toasted them - or fried them. I've made fritters out of flour, vegetables and cheese that are goddamn delicious - all to fairly unenthusiastic reception.

I have kept up serving vegetables, and tried to keep them varied, and I've tried to keep mealtimes light-hearted and natural (don't want to create an eating disorder!)  I've put various vegies on the table and said "You just have to eat one green thing and one yellow thing."

I've taught them how vegetables make them strong, and keep their innards working, and help them go to the toilet. I've told them stories about people who didn't eat vegies and got sick, or didn't grow. I've waxed lyrical on the satisfying crunch of a lettuce slice in a burger, or the tangy sweetness of red capsicum in a taco.

I've served up something I know they won't want, but might actually like, and said "You just have to have one bite. But if you like it, you can eat more, if you want."

And all of these things work a bit, and so I keep going with them all.

But I've had the most success yet the times when I've piled up their plates and announced: "I'm paying 50c per vegetable today", or "Three bucks to whoever eats ALL their vegetables tonight."

I am quite sure that many people will think - or comment - "Wow, when I was a kid we just ate what we were given", or "I don't offer my kids any alternative" or "If they don't eat it for dinner I give them the leftovers for breakfast". All that is great, and if these are your methods and they work, then that's great.

I too, as a kid, ate what I was given for dinner, and I didn't always like it.  I can't remember if I ate all my vegetables. I probably did, or at least ate most of them. I don't remember complaining.

But times have changed and the way we run our lives and food has changed. Kids get more to eat now, and more variety, and yes, that makes healthy dinners harder.

So I'll stick to my mix of tricks: all the things mentioned above, plus bribery a couple of times a week, until the healthy habits stick.

Do you / did you bribe your kids?

Mmmmmm, vegetables...

Sunday Selections #143

It's time for Sunday Selections!
Sunday Selections is a weekly meme hosted by River at Drifting Through Life. It's a way to showcase some of the photos we take, but don't get shown on our blogs. 

The rules are very simple:-

1. post photos of your choice, old or new, under the Sunday Selections title

2. link back to River somewhere in your post

3. leave a comment on River's post and visit some of the others who have posted and commented: for example:

    Elephant's Child

    Andrew at High Riser

    Gillie at Random Thoughts From Abroad

    

I normally go with a theme for Sunday Selections, but this week for a change I'm going "random".  Here are some photos illustrating my last two weeks.


My clever sister was a state finalist this year in the Telstra Business Women's Awards, and I went along as one of her guests to the gala dinner on October 15th. Here is a very badly exposed shot of my sister collecting her certificate. That's Jane Kennedy on the right, who was the emcee.  Mia Freedman also presented, as did last year's national winner, Carolyn Creswell. It was a really great event.

I wore heels that night, for the first time in a year and a half! Since I broke my arm last July, then had surgery, and it still took a long time to heal, and THEN I sprained my ankle this year... Well, since all that, I haven't felt stable enough to wear heels for some time.  Although I wore what always used to be very comfy wedge sandals, and it was a sit-down event, after walking to and from the carpark my poor feet were on fire, and I had a massive blister on the sole of one foot for the next two days. So, back to flats for me since then.

But I came home to this on the whiteboard in the kitchen:

 

My kids are awesome!

This barely shows up, but here is a "charming" little bumper sticker on the back of a van I was stuck behind last week. What a lovely little sentiment. 
"If you don't stand behind our troops, please feel free to stand in front of them."

This one came about when I sat my phone on top of the toaster with the camera app still open.  This looked kind of cool so I took the photo.  It's almost like architecture, isn't it?  Architecture with a garden of toast crumbs.

One of the only meals everyone in my family will eat without argument is apricot chicken. So eat up, family. I'm making batches of the stuff.

I love these tins, by the way. I know, it's fake 50's nostalgia retro, which normally annoys me, but the design is so pretty.

This week the school held its annual disco, and I couldn't resist a shot of these uninvited guests pining outside. 

Looking up at gum trees in the park

My dog Harry likes to sit on my shoulder, like a big fluffy parrot. But he won't sit still for a selfie.

Meanwhile, Tia has a new favourite "house" to sleep in:

Here is a very sad little dinner I had one night when funds were low and I hadn't been able to go to the supermarket. Yes, I couldn't even afford my own tin of tinned spaghetti, I had to skim off the kids' leftovers:

In happier news, I did some thorough spring cleaning today, tackling just one corner of my kitchen, but removing years' worth of grime from the rangehood, splashbacks, walls and the cupboards over the stove.

Then I did the window sill (which I do tackle a little more regularly).  I have to say, one of my least favourite cleaning chores is getting out all the carcasses of dead flies and bees from the tracks of sliding windows. But at least that's done now.

The Amazing A performs some magic. Her lovely assistant has been "disappeared" at this point:

THIS irked me in yesterday's paper. Because yes, every "modern family" has a McMansion and an SUV, of course we do! (says every newspaper lifestyle supplement ever):

And sure, we take holidays like this:

Every year when I see The Age's "52 weekends away" special, I think "oh lovely", then I look through it and sigh, fold it up and put it quietly in the recycling.


But, life's too short to be irked. To finish us off, this made me smile today:

How was your week?

Spaghetti with love

When I met Y in Santorini many many years ago, he was working as a cook in a friend's restaurant. He used to make us pizza for lunch with feta, kaseri and cheddar cheese, oregano and spinach. In Thessaloniki he cooked us beautiful stews and soups and made wonderful salads - just as he does now. He always joked (but also meant it) that you had to put love in your cooking.

If I made a new dinner and it didn't turn out well, he would say, You forgot the love!

Tonight I'm making spaghetti bolognese, on request for M. 

We don't eat spag bol very often, because A hates mince meat. In fact she is not keen on red meat at all, and never has been. When we have spaghetti she has hers plain with oil and cheese, and will not even try a mouthful of meat sauce, though every time I give her a bit in a separate bowl and hope that one day she will.

M loves spaghetti bolognaise. 

Lately we've all been sick and M has been hit the hardest, with headaches and sick tummy coming and going. I kept her home one Monday, and then on the Tuesday after I did reading help in her class, I took her home with me again, just an hour into the school day.

We spent the day relaxing and chatting and she watched TV while I got on with some of the household admin that had lapsed while I'd been sick (do not leave an overdue electricity bill unattended for two weeks).

Since then she's been spending a lot of time in the sick bay and I know there's nothing really wrong; she is trying to get the school to call me to come and take her home. Her teacher confronted her gently and so did I, and last night she came clean and hugged me and cried and said she wanted to stay home with me again "just the two of us."

Over recent months A has had some iss-yoos, and we've been working through them and she's going well. But I always knew we ran the danger of neglecting our resilient, capable and confident M. She is so together and independent and mature that this is easily done. I am always mindful of it and I don't think we do neglect her at all - but I think she's been feeling a little squeezed out of the parental energy supply just lately.

Last night she asked me to make spaghetti bolognese, so tonight I am. We'll have it for dinner tomorrow.

You won't usually catch me cooking the night before Y's day off. His days off are my days off housework and cooking, yay!

But tonight I am cooking the best goddamn spaghetti bolognese I can make. I am cooking it slowly from fresh whole ingredients and minding it well as it simmers and reduces to just the right consistency and rich tomatoey goodness.

And it is FULL of love.

Bento Box Dinners

This is a good variation on the picnic dinner for fun simple meals in a hurry.

After two weeks of eating tons of junk (birthdays, Christmas, tired parents), and M having suffered a bout of gastro, we needed some healthy and simple food.

Last night Y barbecued steak before heading out to work, and it was bloody delicious. It was tender, cooked just perfectly, and marinated in Y's standard (but effective) olive oil and salt. God damn, that was one beautiful steak.  Add some quickly chopped cucumber, spring onion, feta and tomato and that was my dinner sorted. (Well, I intended to chop the salad but I actually just sat at the bench and ate the steak on its own).

I was serving plain pasta, dry toast and grated apple for M, and wanted a simple meal for A. A is not a fan of most meat and eats very little of it, especially red meat. She has never liked steak.

But why make something extra when there was perfectly amazing and delicious cooked meat right there? I decided to try her on some steak.

Now, I know all about the idea that you shouldn't pander to kids to get them to eat healthy food, shouldn't get sucked into cutting food into fun shapes, etc. Before I had kids I too scoffed at things like dinosaur pasta.



But, for a bit of fun, and to make a healthy meal easy and enjoyable, I used some dinosaur pasta and served it all up in boxes. Why not?

I found two "bento boxes" in my chaotic plastics cupboard. One was a segmented melamine tray for serving nibbles, and one was a plastic lunchbox with a smaller plastic snack box inside.

On A's tray: dinosaur pasta, steak chopped up small, and grated apple.
In M's box: dinosaur pasta, dry toast cut up small, and grated apple.

They LOVED it. Not only did their poor ravaged little bodies crave and vacuum up the simple healthy food, but the boxes were a huge hit. Both girls loved the pasta, and both hoovered up everything in their little boxes and came back for more. And A ate all her steak!



Dinner tonight:

Crumbed fish fillets from the freezer, cooked in the oven.
Y made tomato, spring onion and cucumber salad.
I boiled up dino pasta and chopped up carrots, feta, extra tomato without salad dressing, and apple.

Everything went on the table. Y and I ate from shared plates of fish and salad, M ate her sliced tomato and A ate her feta, and the girls also ate from their "bento boxes":  cut up fish, dinosaur pasta, cut up raw carrot, and chopped apple.

Success and happiness, two nights in a row!

Real Life Wednesday: Snack Foods

Because I am fearless and searingly honest, I am going to break one of the last remaining parenting taboos - right here, right now!

Parents - give - their kids - UNHEALTHY SNACKS.

Yes we do!

Once upon a time, when I was a kid, this was normal. You came home from school and had biscuits. Kids' story books were filled with luscious descriptions of cakes, cookies and ice-cream. We didn't eat raw carrots as snacks. Crackers were salty and greasy and most of the time we ate them with butter. It was perfectly acceptable to have sugar and cinnamon on toast, or jam and cream on bread.

These days, things are different. Yes, we know more about nutrition and yes, we all want to avoid obesity, heart disease, etc. So the whole "healthy food" thing has permeated into everything in kid culture. The reader books my kids bring home from school are filled with kids in daggy trackpants making butterless sandwiches with raw vegetables and grinning like they're eating cakes.

It's funny now to read the childhood classic "There's A Hippopotamus On Our Roof Eating Cake", with the reference to Mummy on a diet eating salad, and the little girl who eats honey sandwiches every day.


At our house here is what my kids eat on a typical school day:

Breakfast (when at home): Sultana Bran, Weet-Bix or Cheerios cereal or two pieces of white toast, one with Vegemite, one with jam.

Breakfast (when at before-school care): Cheerios or raisin toast or pancakes

Morning tea: cheese and crackers for M; a "Stringers" cheese stick for A

Lunch: white-bread sandwich with margarine and jam; or with tzatziki; or wheat/rice wrap with butter and Vegemite; or wrap with cheese and tomato.  Sweet snack: mini muffin or two biscuits or pack of My Little Pony/Scooby Doo biscuits or muesli bar or homemade cake/slice. Fruit: apple /strawberries / grapes / banana, etc

After school snack (when at after-school care): Cup-A-Soup, crackers and fruit

After school snack (when at home):
3.45pm: two biscuits and a glass of orange juice or chocolate milk
3.50pm: "I'm still hungry":  Cruskits or rice cakes or rice crackers or popcorn
4.00pm: "Muuum I'm still HUNGRY": cut-up apple or orange
4.30pm: children attempt to steal sweets from cupboard, I (usually) notice and stop them; tell them to eat fruit or nothing
5:00pm: "still hungry". I tell them dinner is coming soon and to wait. Often end up giving them another rice cake or Cruskit, or if things are bad and I am starting not to care, a sweet biscuit
5:30pm: Ditto

Dinner: Mostly not eaten (Big surprise huh).  Includes cut-up carrot sticks and apple or orange on the table to make me feel better when their only other plant-food intake is two negotiated bites of broccoli (which they used to love).

Before bed: HUNGRY again - because they didn't eat dinner. I serve up the warmed-up dinner but unless the dinner includes plain rice or plain spaghetti, this isn't successful and I end up relenting and giving them a piece of bread and some fruit.



Things that frustrate me:

• My kids used to eat only multigrain bread. Since they discovered white bread awhile ago keeping up the multigrain has got harder and harder and I've now abandoned the effort - we've moved on to white bread 
• I cannot buy enough bananas. Every week at the supermarket I buy two or three bunches. Between Y and the kids, they're gone in three days
• My kids used to LOVE broccoli (seriously). It's also my favourite veggie. We still serve it often but now have to push them to eat even a little
• A used to love wraps with Vegemite for lunch. Now apparently "hates" them and won't eat them
• The kids like Vegemite on toast but not on sandwiches
• I'm not strict enough and struggle to get them to hold off snacks before dinner - then they don't eat dinner
• I have the only child in the world (A) who hates mincemeat. Won't eat homemade meat pie, lasagne, spag bol or any other normal family go-to meal. I have the only two kids on the internet who don't like Mexibake

Things I don't care about:

• a sweet snack after school
• once a week I make them macaroni and cheese (from a box) for dinner
• on weekends they often have a Nutella sandwich for lunch
• icy-poles every day during summer
• a chocolate milk or Milo every day

Things I have got a bit cleverer at:

• So they eat their fruit in their lunchbox, I give them a smaller sweet snack. 
• A is put off by whole fruit so I cut up fruit and put it in a little box in her lunch box. E.g., I cut up one apple and one banana, or one apple and four strawberries, and split it up between two boxes for the two kids
• I sometimes make up a little snack bag containing sultanas, a couple of mini Oreos, and a handful of dry Cheerios; I try to sneak in a couple of almonds or walnuts but they don't fall for that
• Sometimes I make up an after-school snack plate of crackers, tzatziki, cut-up fruit, carrot sticks and two biscuits - so they can graze while watching TV and the entire snack amount is controlled

not available every day

• I use a million chicken recipes for dinner - butter and soy chicken, lemon chicken, honey baked chicken, orange chicken, apricot chicken, crumbed chicken, chicken in tomato sauce, homemade or frozen chicken nuggets...
• Sometimes instead of steaming veggies I boil them in water with butter, orange juice and honey, for a bit of flavour. It makes it easier for them to choke down those vital two bites.

And that's REAL LIFE in our house.

Linking up with Picklebums for Real Life Wednesday.

My Former Life and My Current Life: Greek Avgolemono Soup

Back in 1994 I was 24 and working as a cook in a restaurant on Santorini, in Greece. I am not a chef or even a cook, and this was not work I enjoyed on the whole. Restaurant kitchens are hard work - I cannot watch Masterchef as I find it too stressful!

But this man made this job as enjoyable as it could possibly be. I was very lucky to get a job working with Mike Roussos. Mike had lived in Chicago for 20 years and had just relocated his family back to Greece. He was finding it a little difficult to adjust, being on the one hand used to the amenities of the US and on the other finding the Greece of his youth had disappeared.

Mike is a wonderful guy and he taught me everything he did in the kitchen. He was very generous with his time and knowledge and we worked well together, as it was just the two of us in the large kitchen of probably the most popular tourist restaurant on the island at that time.

Me and Mike on a rare break

Mike Roussos in the kitchen

I kept an exercise book of recipes Mike taught me, and as I was trying to learn Greek some are in bits of earnest, erroneous Greek or use Greek words or brand names for ingredients I wasn't sure of. It's not only a great souvenir but a truly useful cookbook - I use these recipes often.

My cookbook with Mike's recipes

My favourite of all is avgolemono - Egg and Lemon Soup.
It is absolutely delicious - imagine chicken soup with a zesty tang and that's what it is.

I don't believe Mike would mind me sharing this recipe.


Mike Roussos' Egg and Lemon Soup


Boil a chicken in water until very well done. Remove meat, discard bones and waste.
To the water add salt, pepper and white arborio rice (about a cup), and simmer to cook the rice; once rice has cooked turn off heat and let the stock cool a bit as you do the next part.
Squeeze juice from some lemons - at least 4.
In a bowl whisk 7 egg whites until frothy, gradually adding half the lemon juice.
Add the yolks, whisk well and add more lemon juice to taste. Test it by dipping in a finger - it should taste quite lemony, so quite a bit of juice is needed.


Here is the tricky bit. While whisking, spoon 4 or 5 ladles of broth (without any rice) and pour slowly into the egg and lemon mixture. Take your time doing this, as this will prevent the soup curdling. It is easier with two people.  When the broth and egg and lemon are mixed, slowly pour the whole of the egg and lemon mix into the pot of broth.


Test again and add lemon to taste. If the soup is too eggy or thick, thin with water. 


Add the meat before serving.



Mike, wherever you are - and I hope you're well - thank you.

Kali orexi  (bon appetit)!

Egg and Lemon Soup

How Do I Find The Time To...

I think of myself as pretty organised, but in truth I am in some things and am not in others. I am very organised at procrastinating for example, because I am committed to finding the time to doing things I like, and not so committed to finding time to tidy up my clothes, clean the oven or dust the bookshelves.

I was tagged for this meme by Single Married Mum, and I'm more than happy to play along. I do like a good meme questionnaire.

First (very important)

Here are the rules:

1. Please post the rules
2. When answering the questions, give as much information as possible. It’s all about the finer details people!!
3. Leave a comment on Sex, drugs, rocker…and stroller,baby. (http://sexdrugsrockerandstroller.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/how-and-when-do-you-find-time-tomeme.html) This is so we can keep track of the Meme and take a polite nose into everyone else’s lives.
4. Tag 3 or more people and link to them on your blog.

Second... the main event: How and when do you find the time to….

Do the laundry: The Neverending Story. I have a separate laundry basket for the kids and I do one load of their stuff every night. Summer is easier as things that don't go in the dryer will dry hanging up overnight. Now it's winter here so I have to force myself to slow down with the washing loads because I end up with too many wet things to hang up, as they take 2-3 days to dry. I tend to do 2 loads of the grown-ups' clothes on the weekend, and sheets/towels for us one day and kids another day so that each person's bed gets changed every two (oh alright roughly THREE) weeks. This system has always meant 2 or more baskets of laundry plus clothes on the clothes horse/washing line hanging around the house all week, but I have recently made a change following a suggestion on Smart Working Mother to "commit to wash, dry and fold every night" which entails doing one small load every day, and putting it all away. Some days I manage this and it feels pretty good!

Write a blog post: After a couple of years of trying different things I think I've found my method. I don't try and do a post every day as that way lies madness (for me). I aim for two posts a week and if I manage more then I'm a hero. I do a Fiction Fridays post most Fridays, a Pick A Post link on Mondays and a Listography post once a month, so that takes some of the pressure off and keeps me engaged. I also keep a notebook in my bag where I jot down post ideas, or dictate them into my phone, and some nights when I don't have a full post in me I'll draft up one or two to complete later. That said there are quite a few drafts that have never been finished.

Look after yourself : Oh I am not good at this... I have a treadmill at home and am trying to get on it most days, even if it's just for ten minutes. I dye my hair when the grey starts getting too much to pluck out, in the evenings once the kids are asleep. I don't really do regular hair appointments but book myself in when my hair gets out of control. I rush my make-up and usually do it in the car when I've arrived at work. I'm a bit too much mummy and not enough yummy...

  

Spend time with your other half?: *Squirms guiltily*. Well, we do hang out a bit in the evenings once the kids are asleep, though he's often watching TV and I'm on the computer... Every now and then we have done a "date night" when the stars have aligned. I enforce the "family time" dinner rule and we all have a bit of a chat and a laugh over dinner, which helps.

"The Lorax" preview
family fun day

mini golf on holiday

Do fun stuff with your Little Ones: Currently my kids are a bit "over-scheduled" with Greek school, swimming and dancing classes in addition to school, so Sunday is a "rest day" as I call it, or a "boring day" as my kids call it. I do a craft with them most Sundays, or we bake a cake. We take the dog for a walk or go to a cafe or I take them to a park. My husband works weekends but every so often he has a Sunday off and when that happens we try and get to a beach or do a picnic or go out for coffee and cake (always fun!). As they get older though, they are wanting to do more things with friends than with their mum. I try and make home time fun by joking around with them during dinner, bath time etc. We have some kind of laughs every day even if the kids don't see it as a "fun day".

Spend time with your family: That's an easy one, as Y works most weekends my mother and/or father tend to visit most weekends. I catch up with my sister every few weeks, usually with us visiting her as she has a toddler. I'm very close to a cousin who lives about 20 minutes away and we catch up every now and then too which is also fun for the kids to hang out with her cooler, older kids!

Socialise with friends: I'm very bad at this. I tend to use Facebook to fill the cracks, as it's just so hard to catch up when most friends are working and have kids. One friend and I try to do a movie night once a month or so - we don't always manage it but the idea is there and we do tend to catch up on a semi-regular basis. Recently I've made a little list in my head of friends I haven't seen in awhile but with whom I'm still in touch, and I have resolved to fix up a visit with each in the next three months. I know, very ambitious!

Prepare an evening meal juggling a baby/toddler bedtime routine? Ditto to Single Married Mum's comment: "I can't take my foot off the pedal - I need to keep up the homework-tea-bath-bed-momentum, or it can all go pear-shaped pretty quickly." Exactly that. When I was working full-time I used to cook 2-3 nights for the next day, Y cooked 1-2 nights and the other night was a "picnic dinner" which worked pretty well. Now I work 3 days a week, so I cook on the 2 days I am home, and this gives us enough to stretch to 4-5 nights' dinners. When it's dinner time I need to be able to heat/finish the meal and get it on the table fast, so I worked out some time ago trying to start and cook at 5 or 6pm is no good for me - even those "15 minute meals" are too hard and take too long at that horrendous time of day.

After dinner it's homework then bath then wind down for bed. 

Deep clean your house: I don't deep clean, but every few weeks I will go into something of a frenzy and do a couple of extra things, like clean out the appliance cupboard, clean skirting boards or wash the windows. But I don't do them often enough, so my house would be a prime contender for one of those "how clean is your house" TV shows. It's all surface baby.

Do the food shopping: I tried online shopping a few times when the kids were toddlers but it just frustrated me because every freaking time there would be a few things out of stock and I'd end up having to go to the shops anyway. It was easier just to go to the supermarket at nighttime when Y was home and the kids in bed. Now I tend to go on my way home from work or on my days off (now that I have days off!). We do use Aussie Farmers Direct and get milk, bread and orange juice delivered, which is fantastic. 

Do bulk ironing: I don't iron. I put school dresses and the odd other thing in the dryer for 10 minutes to de-crease them, and anything else gets re-washed and re-hung to de-crease if needed. Y irons his own shirts and pants. Pants these days come with permanent creases in them - yay! 

So that’s how I find the time....sort of.

Now I am going to break rule 4 above and not tag anyone to join in - because I recently did a Liebster Award post I don't want to start annoying too many people by tagging them every second post. But I do thank Single Married Mum for tagging me, and I had fun joining in.

Would you like to join in? Feel free! Say that I tagged you ;-)

How do YOU find the time?