Salad Dressing

We've had glorious weather this past week with maximums in the mid to high 20s. Today I was making a batch of vinaigrette to take on holiday for a week camping at Esperance, when I was hit with guilt as I promised this recipe to a dear friend a long time away, who has recently moved to England. So I thought if I type it for her, I might as send it out to all of you, particularly those who are finishing up their summer.
This and balsamic and olive oil dressed at the table are the two dressings we have most often with a green or garden salad. I keep a jar of this in the fridge and simply shake before serving. It should keep indefinitely, though if you are keeping for a while it might be worth boiling you jar and lid for a few minutes before adding the ingredients.

1/4 c white vinegar
3/4 c olive oil
2 T lemon juice
1 garlic clove (crushed)
1 t seeded mustard
a generous grind of salt and pepper

The recipe also includes 1 shallot (which I've never added) and 2 T soft herb. I've never added the herbs preferring to add them fresh to the salad. You could actually put whole branches of herbs in the mix and the flavour would permeate.

I'm hoping to be a better 'blog friend' soon.
Hope you're well.

A Rainbow Day

Hi all,
Sorry I've been away. My day time recreation has been dramatically cut by a little one with back to back colds and in the evening the computer is being used by my husband who is completing some post grad study. This is actually about two weeks old. We haven't had any playdough around here for a long long time but we finally got around to making a batch. This is the usual recipe. I don't add the food colouring until after it's cooked then Rainbow and I knead different colours into each portion. Rainbow requested we leave one portion white this time.

This is actually Moonshine's very first ever play with playdough. You can see how fascinated she was. I can't believe she's already rolling it (with chants of 'roll roll roll')!

Then as we already had the food colouring I decided to dye some new pasta for threading. Big pieces for Rainbow and little ones for Moonshine. Normally I put it in a jar and shake it but we didn't have any with lids so we ended up stirring it in a bowl. In this picture Rainbow is painting the food colouring onto the pasta. I did hear later, from Rainbow's grandmother (who is a kindy teacher) that they dilute dye with water and briefly immerse before spreading out to dry.

This is Moonshine having her first attempt at threading, onto a chopstick standing in a lump of playdough. A stationary pole is a good starting point. With Rainbow we then proceeded to the stiff texture of pipe cleaners (chenille sticks) before moving to shoe laces (or wool with tape wound around one edge)

Moon Sand

You have to do this. As Rainbow plays with her homemade Moonsand she shrieks and squeals "This is so much fun." I will show you this picture first as a warning. It's messy. Very messy. But it's a dry mess. In fact DON'T wipe it up - it will make a river of food colour. Just sweep it up or even better get your little one to sweep it up. There are many recipes out there all the same ration of sand, water and cornflour. We used our sandpit sand so sieved it with the cornflour first. Then mixed in the water mixed with food colouring. Go easy here. The texture you want is dry sand that when you squeeze it stays in a ball. If it is too liquid it won't hold it's shape and won't come out of the molds.

It's quite different to play with then playdough. Because of it's dry texture you can't roll it. Rainbow uses as selection of kitchen pieces - measuring cups and spoons, little bowls... You can also use cookie cutters if you place them on the table, fill with sand and press down on the sand. You also have to pack it quite firmly into a mold, much more so than damp beach sand.

Then when you're done, you crumble it back into the container. Then next time sprinkle on a little water and off you go again.

Reviews I've read on-line say it doesn't behave identically to the commercial moonsand but we had fun and it used ingredients that we have on hand.

Stay Home All Day

We had a lovely 'stay home all day' day yesterday. We don't do this very often but it was a lovely day. We designed a great train track, painted, played in the garden and ticked off an activity that's been on the list for a while waiting for such a day.

Rainbow has been asking great questions recently like "How are houses built?" A few weeks ago Rainbow asked me "How do you make bread?" so today we did.

I actually own a bread maker but don't really use it much but today we made bread from scratch.

We did it all - mixing, kneading, proving, knocking down, kneading, shaping, proving...

It turned out really well and we ate it still warm with vegemite for Moonshine, raspberry jam for Rainbow and home made lemon butter on the crust for me. Rainbow's response was "It taste different to bread" as she ate it all.

Retro Baking

My mother is not a baker by that I mean it's not something that she terribly enjoys or would choose to do. Where as I am always trying out new recipes, she however has a number of signature dishes that she has mastered and can call on when the occasion arises. Lemon Coconut Slice (pictured centre) was one of them. Through out my childhood when ever she was require to 'take a plate' this would be her offering.
Today Russell was rostered on providing morning tea so I decided slices were the way to go.

Mars Bar Slice Lemon Coconut Slice and Raspberry Coconut Slice

There great for that kind of thing particularly for the busy Mum and are good for serving large numbers. The first two are even non-bake. The final one does require baking but ever so simple. Blend the pastry in the food processor and squish into the tray. Bake. Spread on jam straight from jar. Pour on eggs whisked with sugar. Bake The other great thing about slices is you don't have to be really careful about the measuring so perfect for kids in the kitchen. There is also lots of 'getting hands dirty' kind of jobs - snapping chocolate, squishing into the tray, spreading icing, stirring melted chocolate...
Have I convinced you? If so here are the recipes I used.

mars bar slice

lemon coconut slice

raspberry coconut slice

If you do make the last one, I know it says to let it cool in the pan (so it doesn't fall apart) but do steal a slice while the jams still hot and gooey. Cooks privilege!

So do you have a favourite recipe that you always fall back on?

Our Luna Park

One of our favourite things after visiting or doing something interesting is too relive it at home.
Here's our version of Luna Park. Luna Park is a theme park in Sydney right on the river next to the Harbour Bridge. This first photo isn't mine and I'm hoping it's Sydney as there is a second Luna Park in Melbourne. Here are our train people entering through the iconic Luna clown face.

Next they had a ride on the ferris wheel. This is one of my creations. This might sound strange but I've always wanted to build a ferris wheel.

Then on to the carousel. Another of my creations. The plate is secured to the yoghurt lid with a tack so that it can spin. The people are secured on to the carousel animals with rolls of sticky tape hence the crazy angle of the man riding on the frog.

Next a ride on Rainbow's roller coaster. Moonshine enjoyed spinning the above two rides but she particularly enjoyed screaming as she maneuvered the car down the steep incline.

Finally here's Rainbow's own invention. Coming soon to a theme park near you. It's called something like luminator and it's like a hovercraft that lifts off then flys around. The passengers can lie or sit in it.

Painting on Foil

I had planned to post this before we left but ran out of time..

About a month ago my nephew celebrated his birthday and the girls made him a transformer inspired robot card using aluminium foil that had been glued onto card then cut into shapes and arranged.

It got me thinking about whether you could paint on foil and get that look of applying gold foil. So here are the different methods we tried. You can skip forward to the end to see our most successful, though you do get some interesting effects in the other method!

Materials

All of these methods were suited to both girls (18m and 3 1/2) and used poster paint and aluminium foil. This is a great way of reusing aluminium foil after cooking. Just rinse, dry and use. I glued the foil on to card from cereal box to make it a little sturdier. You could get interesting effects from painting on foil then using it to wrap around 3D sculptures.

Method 1

Simply paint a picture on the foil. Sorry no picture you'll have to imagine.

Method 2

This time the girls completely covered the foil in paint then drew on a design using a cotton bud. We've used this method before on our glass cutting board and taken prints of it using paper so it was interesting to draw directly on to the picture.

Method 3

Crinkle the foil (perfect after baking potatoes), glue onto card and paint. This was a little more like what I'd imagined though Rainbow just saw it as a challenge filling in all the cracks.

Here is Moonshine. She just loves painting but you can't turn your back on her for a minute or it goes everywhere. Her painting shows the effect I was aiming for with the metal shining through.Method 4

This one we stumbled on by accident when I washed Moonshine's brush midway through a painting. If you use a very wet brush dipped in paint the paint pools in some areas and is repelled in others. I'm not sure why this happens perhaps someone can enlighten me.