3 words

Happy New Year

What do you do with your left over cranberry sauce. Ours usually sits in the fridge for 6 months before being thrown out. I often wonder if I should just throw it out once we finish the leftover turkey. This year I stumbled across this recipe at Coconut and Lime. It looks pretty innocent doesn't it.
But inside this sweet chewy cake is a ribbon of cranberry sauce. The tart sauce contrast beautifully with the cake.
I must say it's not a cake I'd go and buy a jar of cranberry sauce for but it is really very good. It is particularly good straight from the oven.

We're currently eating our way through our Christmas Ham. Here are some of the meals we've had or will be having:

• ham and egg pie
• ham and potato frittata
• ham and zucchini cake
• vegetable fritters
• ham, mushroom and spinach carbonara
• stuffed mushrooms
• and the old classic - ham, eggs and chips (We've had this twice in the past week!)

I've also been busy revising our household budget that was written for 2007. I discovered that our cost of living has increased by 21% in the past 3 years. Now part of that is going from a family with one breastfed, cloth nappy and hand me down wearing baby to a fully fledged family of four but a lot is just how much more expensive things are. Our combined land and water rates, for example were $1200 in 2006 and nearly $2000 in 2009. Practically everything except water consumption has increased. It makes you really feel for people who are living on government benefits. How do they survive?

On a different note - as I was driving the other day a talk back host was inviting people to share their 3 words that sum up their 2009. People were saying things like "big personal growth" "best year ever" "glad it's over". The first thought that entered my heads were "Brand New Baby" which is probably fitting as it has been life altering for all of us. Russell's 3 words were "Too much Bot". He's a little tired of nappy changing and our streaker 3 year old. Rainbow's would have to be her favourite saying "I need attention" and Moonshine's (limited by her vocab of 4 words) would probably be "mama boo (breastfeed) bubba".

How would you sum up your 2009?