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....that you can cook whole potatoes in your slow cooker?
Wrap them, jackets and all, in al foil (I spray the inside of the al foil first with non stick spray) and place in slow cooker. I usually put the cooker on slow if I leave them on for the whole day but anything under 5 hours probably needs the slow cooker on high!
This is tonight's dinner! The potatoes are cooked and warm and waiting for chopped ham, crushed garlic, coleslaw, grated cheese and light sour cream! Yuuuuuuummmy!!!!
What else is there to do in Spring?
Why, plant a vegetable/herb garden, of course!
This was a pretty trashy side of the yard that really needed a face lift.
The twelve year old and I went out there a couple of weekends ago and remodelled it!
Now, I'm not saying that we did a particularly flashy job, but it sure beats the barren desert that was once there!
Plants include tomatoes (Mmmm...lots of tomatoes), lettuce, cauliflower, carrots (don't like their chances in the stone-filled soil but oh well!), parsley, basil, mint and (a certain boy's favourite) chocolate mint!
Naturally, they are all being watered with rain water from our new tank!
Fingers crossed that they grow!
Happy Fathers Day to all the dads out there! Today the Eight Year Old is guest blogging on here and is giving you a round-up of our Fathers Day along with her impressions of her dad! Enjoy!
This morning I gave dad a key ring with a light and a measuring tape. I also gave him a book called 'Stuffed With Love'. Then we went to a cafe with my grandad and my nanna and my aunt and uncle and my cousins. My dad got Mario Sonic at the Olympic Games for the Wii from all of us.
I love dad heaps. He's funny. He spends time with me. He's cuddly. He works hard. He's caring to me. He likes to watch sports and he sometimes plays cricket in the front garden. He also likes to go fishing.
I love my dad.
Up until now, I have avoided the whole cupcake phenomenon (and what ever happened to calling them 'patty cakes'? Anyone?)! They always seemed like a 'two step' (ie, too much work) process to me. But yesterday, with rain pouring down, I had a sudden urge to cook some. Don't ask me why....perhaps I am 'nesting' or something......or maybe, just maybe, I was avoiding all of the housework screaming at me!
My first step, of course was to find a recipe. I ended up settling on this one by Nigella Lawson. Then it was a matter of cooking, icing and decorating. Naturally, and typically of my spur-of-the-moment cooking decisions, I had to search for a cake topper for each, eventually settling on fresh strawberries cause they looked yummy scrummy....at least I thought so!
So, what do you think? My only complaint was that the Nigella recipe made flatter cupcakes than I'd anticipated in my wild imagination. Not those little hill-top ones that you buy in the shops. Regardless, Dear Husband and the kids went cupcake berserk when they got home and needless to say that there aren't many left!
Mind you, I am sending the males in my house off to the football tonight so perhaps Miss Eight and I will have cupcakes for dessert as well!
Eeeekkkk!!
Me thinks that Ruby needs a hair cut!
Say tuned to this space....she's booked into her first official salon grooming tomorrow!!
Gulp!!!
Hooray for Spring.....my favourite season of all and right on queue, the warmer weather has come out in style! Woo hoo!
To celebrate (ok, so it was a week early but I finally got the pix off my camera!), my little fam-billy and I decided to try a spot of fishing at our closest (hmmmm...20 minutes drive away) pier! Naturally, we expected to catch...ummmm...nothing, and we weren't disappointed! But Shorncliffe pier is one of my all-time fave places to go so really the whole line and hook thing was just a weak excuse for an outing!
Miss Eight decided that walking the length of the pier was positively preposterous! She-of-the-princess variety only scoots along at times like this. We won't mention the family she almost totalled along the pier cause she was too busy looking at the view but oh well, it was fun anyway! And the fact that she dragged me off to the massive playground back on shore for most of the time cause fishing is far too boring for madames-in-waiting really didn't bother me....really, truly!
The Twelve Year Old decided to look way cool holding onto his father's fishing rod and pretending that he knew all about varieties of fish! Pity it was only toad fish that took his bait but hey...a bite is a bite...right???!!! And that fabbo orange tshirt made him mega easy to spot from back on the mainland! Can you see that little teeny weeny speck in the pier shot? You can, can't you???!!!
As for Dear Husband....welllll, let's just say that although he'd have us believe otherwise, fishing is just not his thing! Impatient brute that he is, he dumped the bait into the water after the first hour and walked away....but I didn't tell you that! (Shhhhh.....it's our secret cause he tells me that he really is a fisherman!)
And me? Well, I enjoyed watching my gorgeous babies have fun and I do love soaking up the sun alongside the water. And if you have ever been to Shorncliffe, you will realise that they don't call it 'cliffe' for nothing.....mountain climbing to get back to the car made the take-away fish and chips bought afterwards all the more worthwhile! Lol!
