The secret to feeding a toddler

Sometimes feet also find their way into a
bowl of yoghurt.

I've concluded my girl will eat anything, provided it fits two main criteria*:

1. It is exceptionally bad for you. 

2. It makes an exceptional mess. 

With a sometimes-employed third:

3. It is on my plate and I appear to be enjoying it. Generally this is pilfered, chewed, declared 'cuck!', and deposited back on my plate in a mushy pile. Repeat until all pieces of the food in question are either actually eaten (by me) or returned. 

Examples of food fitting the criteria:

• Chocolate 
• Chips
• Biscuits 
• Hard boiled eggs. Shell must be scattered as far as possible. 
• Yoghurt. Eaten with fingers. 
• Salad veggies from my plate.

Preparing to scatter shell far and wide.

* The exception is meat. She's quite the carnivore. 

Are there any food-related rules in your house you didn't instigate?

Letting go

As part of my recent leap aboard the simplicity bandwagon I've been doing a lot of reading about recognising what you can control and what you have to be able to let go. Obviously most of it is deep and meaningful stuff, but it also brings to light some less serious aspects. On that note, I've decided I have to let go of the notion that:

A) Because I clean regularly (a recent phenomena) I will have a clean house. This reality can also be filed under Should Have Seen It Coming, given the house is now home to a toddler, a cat, two puppies and a messy Sagittarius. 

B) I can live a happy life without eating hot chips from Charleez, our town's take away joint. Best chips ever. They've ruined all other chips for me. 

C) Characters in children's programs are endearing and/or entertaining. Case in point: Mike the Knight is a pompous little prick. 

How annoying is this little upstart?
Image from www.lovedbyparents.com

D) My tastes are unique and eclectic. The new pay tv music channel, Smooth, for example, could have been lifted almost entirely from my library. Which I'm guessing makes me very mainstream and quite possibly drastically lame. 

What sort if things have you had to let go?

Conversation off the menu

Life is always more romantic in cartoon-world.
Image from Dreamstime

They say communication is the key to a healthy relationship. Yet it seems verbal communication, at least, can vary in importance, depending on your relationship stage. 
For example, one couple on our street recently jetted off on a child-free holiday (lucky devils). Value of conversation during holiday: pretty high, I imagine. 
While they're away their 18-year-old daughter has the place to herself. And every time I've stickybeaked happened to be going by I've noticed her boyfriend's car in the drive (lucky young devils). Value of conversation there: a secondary consideration, surely. 
While they are all, presumably, revelling in their rare together-aloneness, I've had a couple of days of revelling in plain aloneness. Well, relative aloneness - I've Rosie, of course, and my mum is visiting. But with my husband away for a few days, my nights have been pleasantly peaceful. And I've spent pretty much zero time in the kitchen. Bonus!
Can you tell we're the ones with the married-for-a-decade-and-now-there's-a-baby relationship? No young love here, folks. Nor second-honeymoon romance yet, either. Value of conversation to us: meh, we can talk later. 
Which is just as well when it comes to things like anniversaries. Of which our 11th is approaching. I have vague plans to celebrate with dinner and a movie. Because we do enjoy each other's company. Really. 
Not that you'd think so if you spotted us out at a nice restaurant. We'd be the couple barely looking at each other and - yep - speaking even less. Even though it's the perfect place for meaningful discussion. 
This is due to my husband loving his food and being an avid people watcher. Deploying the 'men can't multitask' argument, he claims tucking into a seafood buffet while eyeballing other diners is as much as he can handle. 
I've long since accepted that eating out means eating in silence. And why complain, really? After all, I still get to enjoy the novelty of wearing nice shoes and having someone else cook dinner. I can talk to him the other 364 nights of the year. 

Is conversation important in your house? Do you get it when you go out?

Linking up with Jess from Essentially Jess for I Blog on Tuesdays. Thanks Jess. 

Win friends and influence people with caramel slice

I'm told my caramel slice is wickedly good. My husband loves the stuff, as does almost everyone else who has a sample. I'm not a fan myself - I do have sweet tooth, but this is one treat that is just too rich for me. 
It is so popular (not that I'm the kind to brag, of course) that people often request the recipe. To the point where I'm a bit jack of typing/writing it out. So I thought I'd put it up here and can simply point future request-ers to it. Genius or what!
Note: This is not strictly 'my' caramel slice. I just follow a recipe from a well-known cookbook, which I won't mention here and hope the copyright police don't get cranky.

So, you will need:

Base
1 cup plain flour
1/2 cup desiccated coconut
1/2 cup brown sugar
125g butter, melted

Caramel filling
1/3 cup golden syrup
125g butter, melted
2 x 400g cans sweetened condensed milk (I generally use the Nestle stuff but on one occasion it was sold out so tried no-name cans and the caramel was just as caramel-like) 

Chocolate topping
185g dark chocolate (Decent chocolate is preferable here)
3 teaspoons vegetable oil

Preheat oven to 180C. 
Place flour, coconut, sugar and butter in a bowl and mix well. Press the mixture into a 20cm x 30cm slice tin lined with non-stick baking paper and bake for 15-18 min or until brown. 

Crunchy, golden baked base.

To make caramel filling place the golden syrup, butter and condensed milk in a saucepan over low heat and stir for seven minutes or until the caramel has thickened slightly. 
This 'slightly' business is a bit vague. I just make sure everything has been mixed together and on the heat for at least seven minutes and decide that's good enough.

Pour the caramel over the cooked base and bake for 20 min or until the caramel is golden. 

Refrigerate until cold. 

Unbaked caramel. Which becomes...

Rich, golden gooey baked caramel.

To make the chocolate topping, place the chocolate and oil in a saucepan over low heat and stir until melted. Remove from the heat and allow to cool slightly before spreading over the slice. 

Refrigerate until firm and cut into slices. 

The chocolate tends to crack when I cut it, but I found doing it when the chocolate was still a little soft, while being somewhat messy, did result in an intact topping.
Or you can just leave it whole so your husband can lop off massive chunks whenever the urge to scoff a piece takes him.
I forgot to take a photo of the finished slice, which I made more than a week ago so of course it has been polished off by now. You will just have to use your imagination. 

Do you have a fail-safe recipe that always impresses everyone?

Some days, most days

Nuts: Gotta love 'em.
Image source: here

Some days nuts are all that keep me going from breakfast at 5am to lunch around noon. On the days when you're flat out they're a handy option: grab a handful or several on the run and down them, leaving your hands free to do the thousand jobs that have be done in the morning.

You know that scene at the start of The Devil Wears Prada where the fashionista daintily counts out her almonds, taking care not to exceed her calorie allowance? Yeah? Well, that's not me. I grab a fistful and shove as many in my gob as I can chew without spilling any.

Most days ... I have time for more sustenance, and cups of tea.

Some days I can't wait to be a mother. I want to hold a chubby bubba RIGHT NOW! Some days I think my life is perfect as is and it would be madness to change it. Most days I merely look forward to motherhood as a 'down the track' thing. Albeit a 'hopefully not too far down the track' thing.

Some days I learn, either first hand or online, of yet another person experiencing some form of mental illness. And my heart bleeds for them. Most days (every day, in fact) it also heaves a massive sigh of relief that I, and my nearest and dearest, have been lucky to have so far escaped the scourge. Lucky beyond words.

Some days I can hear the birds singing as I leave for work. Most days there is simply the peaceful silence of a country town in the pre-dawn.

Linking up again with Lulu from Cherry Blossom Adventures. Thanks Lulu!

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