Food face

Or should that be s'mores face?

I have encountered many excellent recipes from other blogs, and I am ashamed that I have not yet shared some of mine. So, without further ado, I bring you...

Chicken and Bacon Oven Pilau

This is the meal you make for pretty much anyone (who eats meat). It's only five ingredients, takes a few minutes to put together, and everyone fights over the last mouthfuls (at least in this house they do). And honest-to-goodnes, I found it in a magazine. Don't tell.

You need:

2 onions, chopped

2 chicken breasts, in 1 in cubes

200g/8oz bacon, chopped

300g/10oz rice

330-350g tomato pasta sauce

Preheat the oven to 190c/375F.

Heat about 3tbsp olive oil and a knob of butter in a pot or oven-proof casserole. Add the onions and bacon and fry for about 6 min or until lightly colored. Add chicken and fry for another couple minutes until chicken is browned.

Stir in rice and cook for 1 min until all the rice is glistening and coated. Pour in sauce and 1 pint of boiling water. Season, stir well and bring to a boil. Cover tightly and transfer to the oven for 30-35 min until the rice is tender, the liquid absorbed and the chicken cooked. Yum yum!

If you're looking for a good wine to go with, sorry. I don't do that...

Geocache-ing

My mom is a geocache-r. For the uninformed, that means they go tramping around random spots on the globe, looking for stuff that other people left behind. While for most that means "trash-picker", the stuff that's being left behind isn't trash (well, most of it isn't). The last couple of times Mom visited, we went along with her. It's actually kind of cool - we found a little Woody doll whose aim was to visit all 50 states (he's made 6 so far, I think).

Mom had one weird experience, though. One of the 'travel bugs' she found (the ones that are supposed to visit x number of places) was actually a vial containing some of the remains of a man. Apparently, this man's life goal was to "spend the night with" as many women as possible (good to have goals...), but didn't really get to go far with it as he died rather young. So, a "friend" (apparently) decided that he would help by hiding his mate's ashes in a vial in the woods and asking geocachers to keep the ashes for a night before moving them on. There's a whole lot of weirdness in this world, folks.

For those interested in the world of geocache-ing, find out about it here. Just be prepared to start climbing trees and poking under fallen logs for small plastic containers, and being inordinately excited when you find something.

Clean much?

So the kids are doing some puzzles and have reached the end to find they're missing a piece or two. The ever-helpful Mommy says, "Try looking under the bookshelf", since things are forever rolling or being kicked/posted under. The broom comes out, makes a couple of passes, and out come a veritable treasure trove of items - long lost toys, puzzle pieces (I knew it), and all sorts. The kids all got so excited at the "new" stuff they found, they went "fishing" (as it is now called) underneath all the other bookcases. Below is a mere sampling of the stuff we unearthed - including the library book I had sworn I'd taken back ages ago!

Also, notice the "Welcome Baby" card. Folks, Ellie is 8 months old. That thing has been languishing in the bowels of our bookshelves for almost 8 months. Very grim.

Surely I am not the only one who is so lax in regards to under-furniture hygene. Has anyone else ever found something bizarre/unspeakable/very exciting under their furtniture? A little encouragement, please!

A few more Christmas-y photos...

Miss Eleanor, cute as ever

Noah, super-rocker

This guitar is too funny - my 2-year-old can now do covers of B-52s, the Police, not to mention the theme tune to Shrek. Complete with 'wang' bar, no less.

Nastiness

I love looking at the this website/blog for clever ideas or marvel at another's creativity, but honestly, some things were never meant to be...

What Christmas looked like

Coffee-filter snowflakes

Christmas sugar cookies...

...complete with a arm-mangled Santa and a headless angel (because it's us)
The tree "we" cut "ourselves" (thanks Tobes, for that)

Mince pies - a necessity (because it's us)

A belated Merry Christmas, everyone.

The Aquarium

Here are a few photos of our day at Baltimore Aquarium...
Pretty much the only picture of Ellie, as she was on my back the whole day

Apparently, the aquarium employs elves, in this equal-opportunity world of ours And for your entertainment...



There, wasn't that fun?

I'm an Idiot

What can I say? Trying to redeem the amazon gift card Mum sent for Christmas, I keep putting in the code, and it keeps telling me it's already been redeemed - aka "Someone's stolen our gift!". Get sulky and cross with amazon, emailing to find out how they're going to fix it all, when Toby realizes that the code that I'm using is for the gift card we received last year and has definitely been used (by us). With dunce hat firmly in place, email amazon back to apologize for such folly.
So there we are: a fool, with fun Amazon toys.
For those interested, the aquarium was great, especially when I managed to adjust the rucksack that Eleanor was in so it didn't feel like she weighed 100lbs on my shoulders. Everyone loved the dolphins the best, even though they weren't wooden. I think they would have been a little less dramatic, somehow.
I'll post some photos when I come up for air from my frenzied Christmas-making...

Wooden dolphins?

I was explaining to Abigail this morning that we're due to go to the aquarium this afternoon as a field trip. She was really excited to hear about the dolphin show...
"A dolphin show? I'm so excited, even though the dolphins are only wooden."
"What? The dolphins aren't wooden! They're real dolphins, performing tricks and things."
"You mean the dolphins on the stage aren't wooden? How do they do that?"
Stage? Wooden porpoises? I think she's in for rather a great surprise...

A little excitement

So, I'm having a wonderful morning and afternoon, hanging out with my friend Emily and her son, chatting and such like. The phone has rung a few times this morning, but as I have company, I've been ignoring it. Abigail suddenly comes up the stairs to report that there is a message on the machine from our neighbor saying that Thor (the dog) is wandering around in the front yard! Huh.
Since Emily was happy to babysit while I did a spot of dog-chasing (Praise God and Bless Emily!), I jump in my car, driving around our road and go stomping around in the woods behind the house, looking for this blasted dog. He sees me coming, does a runner, and I manage to corner him on the neighbor's front porch and sweetly persuade him to return home with me. Mind you, this isn't that big a concern for most dog owners (I suppose), but throw in the fact that Thor doesn't like other dogs AT ALL and will happily devour a cat, particularly our neighbor's cat (who is the fattest creature I've ever seen and delights in taunting our canines), and I start wondering just how many cookies I would need to make to apologize for my animal eating someone else's animal.
Who says that housewives have no excitement!?

Getting together

Every year, my siblings all get together at Lisa's house for a little holiday cheer and a lot of food. Here is the evidence...

First up - Baby in a Bucket

Don & Derek, transfixed by the Eagles (for some reason)

Billy and Dave, my brothers - it explains a lot...

Abi, Leah, Anna and Amy, enjoying their ill-gotten candy canes

At least it wasn't only the adults stuffing their faces

Anna with Joy (top) and Mojo (below), the newest members of the Straga family.

That's all I got! I had hoped for more, but some of you (Lisa!) are rather hard to nail down. So don't forget to email me some great photos - they may be immortalized in blogworld!