Gettin' loose with orange juice

I've become a little obsessed with wastage.

Every week our bins are choccas, so full that I have to do a midnight run in my Hello Kitty nightie around the street to shove crappy nappies in other people's bins, because mine just don't have the space!

I read recently that over 30% of an average food shop is wasted. What. The. Fuck? Meaning, we throw out a third of our weekly, hard earned and spent, grocery stash.

Hell.

So I went and spent a third of that dough on a book by Rhonda Hetzel titled Down to Earth. This woman is pretty incredible, basically living the life my parents gave us as kids in self sufficient country Victoria. Living off the freaking land. But it's not all woodfires, macrame and hand washing, there's some great stuff in there for city dwellers such as myself and my gorgeous-as-hell family.

Our weekly box of organic fruit and veg arrived today  - $35 from local grocer Vari's Organics - and as I was putting the goodies away, I made note of all the remaining fruit and veg I needed to use up before starting on the fresh stuff.

I came across three super ripe and juicy oranges and using Rhonda's Whole Orange Cake recipe, I whisked up this amazing treat. And my goodness, my house smells like a freaking citrus orchard.

Two dishes too, so even someone like me can handle it. My son  is going to lose his face with squeals when he tries this tomorrow.

Rhonda Hetzel's Whole Orange Cake
This is one of the easiest  cakes you'll ever make and it's full of flavour and orangey goodness. It's all mixed up in  the food processor too, so there's very little washing up. Easy peasy, orange squeezy!

1 orange, washed and quartered (I actually used two and drank the juice of the third)
3  eggs
180g butter, melted
1 cup white sugar (or less)
1 1/2 cups self raising flour

1. Pre-heat your oven to 180 degrees and grease cake tin
2. Put the orange quarters in the  food processor and process until they're completely broken down and no large pieces remain.
3. Add the rest of the ingredients and process again for around 30 seconds or until you feel awesome
4. Scrape the batter into the tin and bake for around 40 minutes or until the cake is golden  brown and if you stab  a fork into it, it comes out clean.
5. Cool it - both you and the cake. You don't want to cut it too soon.

Serve up a decent slice and sip it down with a cup of chamomile tea and a side of a Channing Tatum YouTube clip.

Delicious.

Pressure

I recently stopped myself during another hardcore clap-slash-high-kick-hip-shaking-sing-songy-wiggly-giggly dance move in front of the high chair.

What on earth was I doing?

I was dealing with pressure.

We are not talking about the pressure that comes with working in a busy press office that I deal with four days a week. We are not even talking about the pressure involved in creating an awesome PowerPoint presentation for important people using Microsoft two-thousand-and-still-no-idea. We are certainly not talking about the pressure involved with making VERY important decisions VERY quickly using other people’s budgets and money. And we are definitely not talking about the ‘just give me five seconds to do a wee’ pressure.

Mumz

I have to admit, I was super nervous when I received a letter in the post when my son was 8 weeks old announcing that my parent’s group would start meeting the following week.

I was nervous because I hadn’t really needed to go out and source new buddies since uni or since starting my last job, let alone meeting a whole posse of chicks who I may or may not have had anything in common with.

I was late to the first meeting by about twenty minutes and even though it was winter I was sweating – probably more from trying to breastfeed and watching Channing in Magic Mike.