Saturday snapshot II

One day, when we lived in the town and Téo was little, I was out shopping, and Téo got hungry. I went to the closest food shop, a fast food mall outlet selling things like chips and nuggets ... and a spinach tart type thing, not even a quiche Florentine but a dark green mass of spinach encased in pastry.

You can guess what I bought for him - and to my great delight he gulped it down. Because, spinach! My toddler is eating masses of spinach!

From then on, whenever we were out shopping in town, he'd get the spinach tart type thing for lunch. And even now, years later, when we go to the mall in town, he chooses this tart over everything else as an afternoon snack. Asks for it even. Granted, he probably knows I'd say no to everything else, but still. Spinach! My child thinks spinach is a treat!

Saturday snapshot I

[Imagine a picture of Lukan wielding a magic wand.]

- Abra dabra I turn you into a cow!

- Mooo!

- Would you like some milk?

- Moooo!

- Yes?

- Mooo!

- Or no?

- Mooo!

- Yes or no?

- Mooo!

- Could you please speak in English cos I don't understand you in cow.

e-Recipes

So a while ago I was thinking I really need to better organise my recipes. I have lots of recipe books, but they take up a lot of space and I don't use every recipe in each and every one of them.... and then I also have a blank book for recipes I stumble across in different places, which is now also stuffed full of loose pages of handwritten recipes jotted down by various people and torn-out pages from magazines .... and then I also have a file on my computer for recipes I've copied off the web... and while I mostly know where every recipe I want is, it's all a bit messy. But I don't really feel like writing out/sticking the recipes I routinely use in one book, and anyway even if I did that book would get full and then I'd be back to the overflowing loose pages.

Then I had a brainwave - HTML! What if I organised my recipes that way, with labels and a nice-looking, consistent format? (Yes, this is important to me. Yes, it means things take longer than they should. No, I can't help it.) But then the coding is kind of a pain, and I don't have DreamWeaver or anything like that to do the pesky work for me.

Then I had another brainwave. A blog! Maybe I could just put my favourite recipes on a blog! Ooh, ooh, then I could share them too! And save the files to my computer to create an offline version! Perfect!

I'm not sure how the saving files thing will go, but you can find the first recipe here. (Chosen because this is what I had for lunch today, so I could get a photo to go with it.) I'm also not sure what the legalities are of putting recipes from books onto the blog... but if it's a private blog (i.e., not able to be found by a search engine), set up essentially for my own use and not generating any money, it should be OK... shouldn't it?

Anyway, while this is mainly for me, I hope it might be useful to you as well. Bon apetit!

Burning brightly

It's my mum's birthday today. She won't want me to say how many candles should be on the cake, but it is a number that is generally celebrated rather than just let pass by. It's also a number that is often thought of as elderly... but my mum is far from elderly. She travels, she photographs, she sings at the Opera House, she teaches herself new things. She's an inspiration to me. I hope I look half as good as you when I reach your age, mum, and that I am as active and alive as you too. Happy birthday!

Happy birthday to C's dad as well! We'll sing to you in person tomorrow...

Sunday snapshot

The bright side

At 6.30 I woke to the sound of the door opening, quietly.

There was a rustle somewhere above me then I heard the door close, again very quietly.

I dozed off.

20 minutes later when I got up, still half asleep and not yet remembering I'd had an early morning visitor, this is what I discovered lying on top of me:

He does cause me to fret at times, my boy, and his behaviour and actions can be less than desirable, but he is also so very lovely and sweet.

For mum