Weekly Roundup - Birthday Celebrations, Water Pumps And A Stroke

Around The Home
Thought I should tell you about what has been happening around here in last few days.

Birthday celebrations were held this week for Alf.  As he is a man he probably won't mind me telling you he turned 47.

Just as an aside, Alf is a very busy man at the moment.  He is putting in 12 to 14 hour days working on our battered city's water supply.  As an engineer with many talents, he has a specific history of working on the pumps for our wastewater plant for some 24 years, before sadly being made redundant.  However, in the city's hour of need, they have seconded Alf (via the new job at the drilling company) to work on the water pumps.  He has so far this week worked 9 days in a row ,and for very long hours. So, it has been an equally long week for us at home, so sorry not much blogging has been done.

Alf's job at the moment is to treat our (previously untouched) water with chlorine because of contamination from the sewerage pipes.  Through his working with the water system staff, we are able to see council-only lab results for the city water.  These emails clearly show the pumping stations around the city that have tested positive for ecoli.  There are masses of positive results, so it's still very important to boil the water after all this time.  As I recently experienced the symptoms of food poisoning, I am extra vigilant on this front.  Alf has kindly brought home some boxes of bottled water from his work, allowing me a small break from the jug.

Busy at work in one of the pumping stations

A container of chlorine being readied for our water

A map our our city, the dark green bit is the only part of the city where sewerage is working.  That's where we live, the rest of the city are using long drops, chemical toilets and porta loos.

Amazing to think contraptions like this are stopping nearly half a million residents from getting very sick.  Alf has the ability to "think outside the square" to find solutions to unusual problems

Let Them Eat Cake

The mere mention of celebrating with food sent Georgia and I into the kitchen to create yummy decadent fare.  Over the last year I have twigged my quick chocolate recipe, adding a slight coffee edge to it.  The combination of chocolate and coffee taste, mocha I suppose you could call it, gets me really excited.  To my chocolate cake recipe I added cooled coffee where the recipe called for just water. Here is my easy chocolate cake recipe.  I will often delete the cocoa, adding extra flour turning these into amazing little quick cupcakes.  I used this recipe a while back for Alf's leaving morning tea, making chocolate cupcakes.

How To Make A Big Chocolate Cake In A Hurry 

Ingredients:
2 cups self-raising flour
pinch of baking soda (bi-carbonate of soda)
4 tablespoons cocoa
2 cups sugar
4 eggs
1 cup water
150g melted butter

Put all ingredients into a large mixing bowl 

Beat with an electric mixer for 3 minutes
Pour mixture into large greased tin (approx. 25x30cm)
Bake at 190 deg C fan bake for 35 minutes, or for 50-69 minutes normal oven

Butter Icing

100gm butter, softened
2 cups icing sugar, sifted
1/4 teaspoon vanilla essense
1-2 tablespoons hot water

Cream butter until light and fluffy.  Add vanilla.  Gradually beat in icing sugar, beating until smooth.  Add sufficient water to give a spreading consistency.

Butter icing with coffee added for extra taste

Ready for icing by Georgia

Handy Icing for when time is short, thoroughly recommend this product

With a little help from mum, Georgia got the cake decorated

Butterfly Cakes

Using the 3 minute sponge from the iconic Edmond's Cookbook, I placed small spoonfuls of sponge mixture into pretty little patty cases.  Once they had cooled, I cut out a cone in the centre, cutting that in half.

Cream was piped into the centre (at this point some lemon curd could be added) and the butterfly wings placed into the cream.  Icing sugar dusted on top. Serve.

These dainty cakes were made in less than an hour

On My Mind

Lastly, my lovely Dad, Jim, suffered an unexpected stroke early this week.  He is a  fit and healthy man, so this has totally come out of the blue for my mother and two other sisters.  They are calling it a min-stroke, luckily the symptoms lasted only about 24 hours. He blacked out while reading the morning paper at the dining table, falling from his chair and hitting the wall.  The only indication something was not quite right was the partial paralysis on one side of his face.  None this less,  it has been upsetting for us all.  Dad came out of hospital yesterday afternoon, and is resting at home.  The stroke has meant he cannot drive for quite some time, and is now taking quite a few medications to prevent any more strokes happening.  We are all cautiously hopeful that everything is behind us, but the doctors did call it a warning sign.  So I am praying that his health remains as good as it is at the moment.

Blessings

Lee-Anne

Life On The Domestic Front

Life around the home

Christchurch sweltered yet again with a very very hot day yesterday.  Our Temperature peaked at 36 degrees Celsius well into the evening - South-swelters-in-real-scorcher.  As I type this I have most of our downstairs doors open to let all the pent up heat OUT of the house.  I shouldn't complain as a small town south of Christchurch, called Timaru, got to 40.  We didn't really know what to so with ourselves with all that heat and no wind.  Our Church put on a special lunch with sausages, drinks and ice cream.  The children specially liked this, however the ice cream was melting faster than the ladies could handle.  You couldn't talk to people or else you lost your ice cream down you hand.  I took the children for a much needed swim at a local public pool about 4pm. We stayed until around 6.30.  I must say they were lovely cooled and calmed children to take home.


Homeschooling

What has been happening over the last week here? We have been concentrating again on getting the basics started for the year.  This means grammar, math, English and science and some history.

Do you remember our monarch caterpillar called Nibbles? Sadly he drowned in some water in our bathroom several weeks ago (a bizarre accident I know).  The children were gutted as they had desperately wanted to see a chrysalis form, so how lucky were we when a very large caterpillar was found crawling on our next door neighbour's drive.  Clearly looking for a new home and a nice juicy swan plant to nibble on.  Munchy arrived on Tuesday and started his metamorphosis on Thursday night

Amazing to capture the metamorphosis beginning

We kept a close eye on Munchy ALL day Friday until about 3pm when we finished school and mucked around in other parts of the house.  When we came back after 4pm, look what had happened.  You obviously need to be quick when observing the insect world!

We were all very disappointed we had missed the show so we checked out You Tube to see what we had missed .  The good news is there are 2 new little caterpillars on the plant as well, so we may yet get to see the metamorphosis after all.

Filling the Baking Tins

This last week I spied 500gm butter at the supermarket for $5.95. I just about fainted!  I have always baked cakes, slices and biscuits to fill our baking tins, but these new butter prices have forced me to reconsider what I am baking.  I certainly haven't paid that price (yet) for my butter.  I hunt out the absolute cheapest option in what ever supermarket is the cheapest.  In this case it is Pak N Save.  For budget butter I am paying $3.79.  What most people don't realise is that all the butter in the South Island is made in the one factory.  They just put different packaging on for each "brand" of butter, but it's all the same.  My budget butter is just the same as the flash Mainland brand at over $5.95.

When I look  through my recipes for day to day baking, I now have to take into consideration just how much butter is used.  I still believe baking from scratch is far cheaper than buying packets of biscuits and muffins.  A tray of 6 muffins is costing around the $5 mark, almost the price of a 5kg bag of high grade flour. Lets look at what I have been baking in the last week....

Horse Happenings

Georgia has started riding lessons at a new riding school about 30mins north of Christchurch.  Our time at the paddock looking after Spice, the ex race horse, came to a nasty end just after Christmas.  Needless to say, Georgia ended up being treated very badly by the girls and their mothers there.  Georgia left feeling very upset and stressed after being continually accused of stealing since September.  As a homeschooling family, we have been shielded from alot of the rampant bullying that is occurring in our schools and society at the moment.  Perhaps we were naive to think those frequenting the paddock would be like-minded people like us, however that was not the case. Georgia was a rock, sticking to her guns when being faced with nasty accusations and rumours.  Since we made the decision to leave the paddock just on Christmas, Georgia has been quietly de-stressing at home as all that drama did eventually take a toll on her health.  She is, after all, just a 12 year old dealing with nasty 16 year olds. So starting out at a new riding school has been like a breath of fresh air for all of us.  

Below is a shot of Georgia and Tiny at Ashley Downs Riding Centre.