Wham! Bam! Zucchini and Ham

There's so many things I love about Christmas, especially now that my kid knows all about Santa, parcels and gingerbread men.

But the best thing is the tucker. And boy, does our little household go a little food crazy the night before.

Alfie doesn't really crash until 9pm at night, so we had to hold off on the mega assemblage that was a train table until late, so to fill the time and keep a crazy toddler busy, we cooked.

Twas the night before... Santa and his crew have some treats prepared

Potato and trout salad ("the fish looks like he's eaten an alligator mum"), shanklish + pumpkin + brown rice salad and my specialty; a sensational Tupperware snack wheel of sharply angle cut kabana, pickled onions, cornichons, cubed Coon, Savoys and dip I've put in a container to make it look like it's handmade. Always a party favourite.

But the pride and joy was an award winning prized ham from Andrew's Choice in Yarraville. I don't eat a great deal of meat these days, but was busting at the chops to get this in my cake hole.

After the big day is done, there's only so much ham a family of three can eat. So what to do with the left over pig?

Here's part one:

Wham Bam Zucchini and Ham

Grate the fuck out of a zucchini - approx four normal sized ones (we had a massive one given to us - the size of an arm)
Throw in a cup full of cheese (in our case we threw in the last of the cubed Coon)
Cut up some of that yummy ham into small bits and chuck it in the bowl
Add some salt and pepper (push it)
About four eggs
Cup full of self raising flour, or enough until it has the consistency of a chunky cake mix
Thow it in a pan on some baking paper (non stick you loon)
Into a pre-warmed 180 degree oven.

Test the Wham Bam with a knife around 30 minutes in. If it comes out clean, you need to start setting that table. If it comes out with mixture hanging off it, hold fire and give it another ten or so.

Serve with chutney, mustard or whatever condiment you have left over from Chrissie Day (just not seafood cocktail sauce. Vom).

Enjoy. Now what to do with the rest....

Wham Bam Zucchini and Ham

The morning of...

The day after: Fish n Chips in Queenscliff

I love balls

I  really dig a good ball, especially one that's not only good for you but takes minutes to make.

This LOVELY publication by Lunch Lady arrived in the post a few weeks ago and within days I had read it from cover to cover tucked up in bed, providing me with good foodie dreams.

Firstly, we should support locally produced publications like this so I urge you to head to your local newsagency and spend the dosh for this well earned treat. If your newsagency doesn't have a copy, chuck a tanty and tell them they HAVE to stock it, otherwise head to Lunch Lady online and pop one in your cart.

Secondly, I suck with having all the relevant ingredients in my cupboard when I feel the inspiration the cook. So I made a slight change to one of Lunch Lady's big ball recipes and adjusted the ingredients to suit my pantry line up. Here's what happened:

Lunch Lady balls: big ball style

1 cup almond crumble (or bump and grind your own raw almonds if you have them)
Big ball handful of walnut crumble (you can choose any nuts for your balls)
2 big ball handfuls of sultanas (I soaked mine in warm water to plump up the babies)
1/3 cup cocoa
1 cup desiccated coconut (I LOVE the word desiccated)
handful of extra desiccated coconut for rolling the big balls in

Whack all the ingredients in a blender/food processor until it grinds into a big ball. Remove and shape into your favourite sized balls, roll 'em in coconut and bam, Lunch Lady balls: big ball style.

Our household digs a big ball. These babies are fridge friendly and awesome for the 3.30pm at work/distracted by Facebook snack.

Get these balls into you!

Having a crack at egg free choccie cake

My kid's favourite words are 'chocolate cake'. When I ask him what's in his bag, he responds with 'chocolate cake'. When I ask him what he does in the potty, he says 'chocolate cake'. When I ask him what he wants for lunch, he says (you get it now) 'chocolate cake'.

So today we decided to make chocolate cake but we had NO EGGS in the house. So I searched for an egg-free recipe online and came up with this ripper. I've tasted it and I think it is gold. Give it a crack!

EGG FREE CHOCOLATE CAKE

185g butter
125g sugar
2 tablespoons golden syrup
1 cup of milk
1 1/2 cups self raising flour
1/2 cup of cocoa

Pre heat oven to 180 degrees.
Melt the butter, sugar, milk and golden syrup together on a low heat. Then take off the stove and add the flour and cocoa (I mixed mine all by hand in the saucepan to save on dishes).
Pop in a cake tin or patty cake pans and pop in the oven for approx 30 mins or until a skewer comes out clean when you give it a jab.

Eat on a stoop in the sun with a cold cup of Milo. Don't drop the cake on the ground like Alfie did. The way he behaved you would have thought he had spilt his milk!

Enjoy pals.

x

Thursdays

I love Thursdays. Heaps. The excitement of Thursdays fills our household every Wednesday night as we talk about all the things that happen on a Thursday:

1. Maureen Day

Maureen our cleaner comes and makes everything manageable. She even lines up Alfie's shoes and rearranges his toys to make them look like they have been talking to each other during the day.

I've never met Maureen, but our little kitchen bench notes featuring smiley faces, kisses and giggly messages filled with apologies, 'sorry our house represents a banana peel tip' or 'excuse the sultana squish, it's not rat poo' or 'sorry our house smells like poo fart today. It was a big morning'.
Her responses always make me smile as I walk into our fresh smelling house: 'it's ok about the poo fart, it looks like you have a very busy boy to look after. I took the bike out of the bath'.

We love Maureen.

2. Fruit and Veggie Day

By Wednesday night, we are either so cleaned out in the fridge department that we are eating eggs on toast with beans for tea or we have veggies to 'use up'. Either way, we have a task at hand because on Thursdays we get a big box of rad in season fruit and veg from Vari's Organics. It's so exciting to open the special box left on our doorstep (sometimes we get home in time to catch Vari at our door), we sort through the contents like hungry children and put everything neatly away in the fridge.

Thursday night always means best veggies for tea.

We love Vari.

3.Thursday Friday

Thursday is my Friday in the office. It's my day to get all my things done for the week. I'm lucky that I love my job, so I smash out some good quality publicity stuff in the office and aim for a 5.30pm departure, planning my three day weekend with my son on the train trip home.

Sometimes I take my shoes off on the train and walk home barefoot.

Sometimes I get to attend a super sweet classical concert for work featuring some of the most incredible music you have ever heard. This sound takes me right through the weekend. NB: I don't attend concerts barefoot.

I love Thursday.

4. Lunch order day

As Thursday is Friday, quite often I plan for it to be a lunch order day and don't bring a packed lunch. This is my treat, a little chance to explore some local Southbank cuisine with a colleague. I always buy lollies for the afternoon, because I'm really eight years old. My colleague always buys biscuits - but they have to be on sale. It gives us something to talk about on the walk back to the office. Sometimes I buy Chicken Crimpys to share with work mates if it has been a busy day.

I love lunch orders.

Are you a Thursday person?

Green and Cheese Pie with extra cheese

How good is cooking with your kid? Alfie loves to move his chair up to the bench and watch everything get chopped, cracked and smashed into a bowl.

On a Sunday, I like to use up all my veg from the week and throw it into a soup. But today the weather was so sparkly we decided to chop up all the remaining greens and make a green and cheese pie. The best.

Being a son-of-a-chef, Alfie loves to hang out at the bench and 'help'  cook. We ate chopped up apples and pears while we mixed up the pie ingredients.

And best of all, The Kid ate it.

Here are the deets, give it a crack!

GREEN AND CHEESE PIE 
By Ali and Alfie Webb

• Chopped spinach/kale/silverbeet or whatever green leafed veg you have in the fridge (I used this trilogy)
• A decent sized amount of Parmesan cheese
• One tub of ricotta
• Salt and pepper to flavour-flave
• Puff pastry

We made a selection of triangles, rolls and mini parcels.

Wrap, shape and mould and pop in a pre-heated oven at 180 degrees Celsius.

I popped half in the freezer for another day/week. The rest we had for dinner with sides of pickled beetroot, homemade sauce and cut up fruit.

Enjoy this sunny week ahead!

Hey, dough face!

It looks a bit like a dog's breakfast, but it tastes like vegetable

As you've guessed, I'm on a food wastage free bandwagon. I've been trying to get our weekly food bill down to around $50 and it's bloody tough. The best I have done is $68 and I was hardcore hanging for a steak by the end of the week. But I'm determined as hell to work this out. Why should we have to spend $5200 + a year on food.

Alfie is a morning sleeper - he has a snooze around 9.30am on a Friday for about three hours - he is so knackered from three hardcore days at daycare. This gives me heaps of time to make some excellent food.

Today I've smashed out a good ol' minestrone using the remaining items of last week's veggie box:
Carrots, sweet potato, potato, zucchini, mushies, kidney beans, end-of-packet pasta, stock and the special ingredient is Rocco's passata sauce purchased from my local Italian deli in West Footscray. Nothing tastes better than a nonna's homemade passata!

Whack it all in a pot and bam, there's lunch for the kid and I. The plan is to pick up some yum pumpkin bread from Sourdough Kitchen in Seddon to dip into the veggie mass. I'm going to have to coat the top of Alfie's dish in Parmesan cheese to disguise all the green veg.

For tea, I've made a quick-as-hell pizza dough, from a recipe on Taste. It's a fucking freezing day so I'm hoping it rises in time - it's got only seven hours to do so.

The dough has already started to rise!

It's a little tradition for Alfie and I to head to Rocco's Deli every Friday and stock up with pastas, pestos and other goodies for the week. I'm going to add prosciutto or parma ham to the pizza and maybe a little bit of pineapple... we all deserve a bit of Tropicana in our lives during winter.

It's going to be a lot of funny making these sweet pizzas with my little man this evening.

How good is it when meals for the day are sorted by 11am?A rarity in our house, but what the Helen-of-Troy, it makes me feel freakin' excellent.

Happy Friday punks.

xx

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.

Heather Dell High

When I was ridiculously pregnant and enormous, I had daily cravings for Neenish Tarts. The pink and brown pattern would wake me in the middle of the night and I would stare at the ceiling, counting the hours until Heather Dell Cakes opened.

There’s something so charming about Heather Dell. It represents your nanna, through its sweet smell, its window display, its tin canisters on the shelves, the curried egg sandwiches, the biscuits and treats, the photos on the fridge, right down to the local fruit and veg supplier calendar with its perforated months highlighting birthdays, anniversaries and special events.

Rocco's Role

I’m greeted by a friendly ‘ciao’ when I enter Rocco’s Delicatessen. The store smells good, like a home cooked meal. Rocco smiles at me and there’s a definite twinkle in his eye. Everything about this place is familiar, like I have stepped back to a moment in my childhood.

Rocco and his wife Adriana opened their store in February 1977, 38 years ago. The store is full of reminders of the past, from the vintage signs behind the counter reminding you to purchase a TAB cola or how you can be a mod while smoking a Virginian Slim, to the family photos behind the register and the sound the door makes when you open it.

A Conversation With... Mark Briggs

I have lived in Yarraville for four years and during that time I have seen the village catapult to being a place where you could get away with wearing filthy tracksuit pants, to an uber-hip inner city suburb where smackie-dacks just don’t pass.

Why? Perhaps it’s all the yummy parentals cruising around the hood with their pimped up prams, or the Sun Theatre with its amazingly awesome choc tops, or even the retail therapy ranging from second hand stores to unique fashion? No. You know what’s brought the change from old school to cool? It’s Mark Briggs.

If you don’t know Mark by now, let’s get you up to speed. Yarraville’s latest acquisition is the former Head Chef of Vue de Monde, was named The Age’s Young Chef of the Year in 2013 and has trained with the best, working in renowned kitchens such as Fifteen London, La Tante Claire in London, and The Old Manor House in Romsley, UK. Now you can find him on your doorstep, at Dig A Pony.

I’m married to a chef and whenever I explain what my husband does for a living, people jump up and down clapping and squealing about how lucky I am. What a lot of people don’t understand is that chefs don’t really spend that much time at home cooking for their family, as they are normally cooking for you. So in a sense, you are a part of that extended family.

When I asked Mark about cooking at home he said he likes to put on a roast, but, with his signature smirk, “my wife complains that I make too much of a mess”.

Being a chef is not just about dishing up good food, and with Mark’s incredible experience to date, creativity and inspiration can start with a simple staff meal.

“I’m always thinking about food and idea’s come up all the time, whether I’m at the market, watching TV or cooking a staff meal”.

“My favourite staff meals to cook are childhood favourites or a traditional local dish. It’s really exciting when one of the chefs buys a load of ingredients that I’ve never heard of and cooks up something from their own childhood memories.

“I have also experienced a lot of awful staff meals. I mean, the staff meal is a place where chefs can test out flavours and ingredients.  Some don’t always go to plan. One I will never forget was a sausage and bread stew. The chef who made it still gets a hard time about it six years later!”

(Don’t worry, I asked Mark – that chef doesn’t work at Dig a Pony!)

So what do the people of the inner west like to eat? Apparently we are a trendy bunch, who love our food.

“The healthy options are always popular along with the unusual, like tripe and liver. It’s great to cook for locals who have a good knowledge of food and appreciate fine ingredients.  We are always trying to bring something a little different to Yarraville: new tastes, flavours and dishes – and so far it seems to be working!”

“I love spending my days off at local haunts Cobb Lane and the Cornershop in Yarraville where I can always find excellent dishes. For dinner, I can’t go past a steak at The Station Hotel in Footscray. We are so lucky to be surrounded by so many great options for dining!”

When Mark explained that his favourite people to cook for are his friends and family, I couldn’t help but ask the question as to who the most famous person was that he has ever rustled up a meal for.

“It would have to be Ferran Adria from elBulli in Spain. But if you are talking famous people known to everyone it would probably be David Beckham or Rod Stewart”.

Phew! From Maggie May to Yarraville, it seems like Dig A Pony might be the place to be this summer or autumn or winter or spring – the menu changes with the seasons. So get in quick and try something new.

Dig A Pony is open Tue-Sun from 5pm. Closed Mondays.

58 Ballarat Street, Yarraville
www.digapony.com.au

(Photos copyright Paul Large: flickr.com/people/pmlarge)

This article first appeared in The Westsider, November 2014 edition. (http://thewestsider.com.au/a-conversation-with-mark-briggs/)

Chicken Crimpy

Our car is such a tip. Which is strange, as my house is somewhat clean because I keep it that way. I wash a gazillion loads of clothes every week, I wash the floors all the time, I wipe down surfaces, I even polish my stainless steel appliances.

So why is it that my car smells like banana, even though I can’t for the life of me find one in there? That the floor of our car is covered in millions of sultanas which could easily be taken for an invasion? There are wrappers, tissues, sticks, rocks, dinosaurs, mandarins and other fruit-like matter, old balloons, balls, an umbrella stroller, a plastic motorbike, other peoples picnic rugs, an esky I’m too scared to open, a random backpack, crumbs, coffee cups and for the love of God, a goddamn Chicken Crimpy biscuit sitting on the dashboard. I hate that biscuit. We don’t even eat Chicken Crimpy’s in our family.

I see the Chicken Crimpy every morning as I drive my kid to daycare. It annoys me but I don’t do a thing about it. I promise myself that I will, the next time I leave my car with nothing to carry. Ha!

The Chicken Crimpy has been on the dash now for weeks, maybe months. Last week it brought me to tears.

Someone had parked outside of my house meaning I had to park 50 metres down the street. Now I know 50 metres isn’t much of a walk, I’m sure my son being the size of a teenager could probably jump it in three go’s, but walking from the car to my house in work clothes and heels with a busy toddler, two bags of dairy groceries, my laptop, my backpack, my son’s backpack, Blah Blah, and a Big M was no easy feat. It was hard. I struggled. I held the tears back for that whole 50 metres. It took me 10 minutes to walk that small distance with the plastic bag bursting along the way, 2 litres of milk pouring into the gutter. Milk that I needed for my son. I got to my house, dropped off everything then walked the 50 metres back to my car, put Alfie back in his seat as he struggled and fought, and drove back to the supermarket to get more milk.

The Chicken Crimpy stared at me in the car.

This wasn’t the time to remove it. I arrived back home, this time having to park further down the street than before. My hands were full with Alfie and milk, so I couldn’t remove the Chicken Crimpy. I swear it stuck its little crimpy bit up at me.

My husband walked in from work just after Alfie had gone to bed. I’d been fighting off tears the whole time, through Alfie’s tea, his bath, his story. As soon as I saw my husband I sat on the ground, still in my work clothes and cried.

He asked me: “what’s wrong?”

I cried: “It’s that f#$king Chicken Crimpy. It’s ruining me.”

My husband looked confused. “Why are you crying about a biscuit? Do you need me to get you a biscuit? Is that what’s wrong? Is it Tim Tam time?”

No. I didn’t have my period. No. I didn’t want a Tim Tam. No. The Chicken Crimpy represented so much more. The Chicken Crimpy represented time and how hard it sometimes is to do everything and be everything. Why do I always have to carry ALL the groceries from the car to the house? Why don’t I do this in a couple of trips? Why do I always say yes to everything and find myself over committed that I have no time to sit and fart and cut my toenails and look at YouTube? Why am I always carrying so many items that are awkward and misshapen?

So after my Chicken Crimpy meltdown, I tuned out of social media, turned off electronic devices, said yes to only two social outings for the week, caught up with my girlfriends, cut my toenails, read a book, hung out with my family without a phone stuck to my face, patted my dog, tended to my roses and cooked. It was heaven. It lasted a week.

Alfie and I were heading to Williamstown in the car. On our way to the beach to watch the boats, I stared at the Chicken Crimpy while waiting at a traffic light. I turned off at the car wash before reaching the sea and Alfie and I washed the car together. It was the best, we both got satched from the hoses. We laughed at the vacuum sucking up the sultanas, and when we found the banana, I giggled remembering the time I handed it to Alfie mid-car tantrum on a trip to the country.

We finished the epic car clean and continued to the beach. When we were back on the road I smiled at the clean car, sparkling and smelling like faded banana. I parked out the front of MY HOUSE and sat in the clean car for just a few minutes. The Chicken Crimpy remained on the clean dashboard. I kept it there to remind me that every now and then, I need to stop and smell the banana.

Mums and dads: Don’t forget to every now and then, Stop. Collaborate. And Listen. Find your inner Chicken Crimpy.

This post first appeared on Bubba West.

Crap snack

My son is a collector. Unfortunately we aren’t talking antiques or Chapel Street Bazaar or even something you could sell on IWBSS. My son loves collecting crap.

When we go out my pockets are quickly filled as I am handed miscellaneous goods such as rocks, sticks, lolly wrappers, and most recently a condom packet. Disgusting. But so sweet that he cares for the environment and wants to clean up Australia. Good on ya Alfie.

We are regulars at a local park and love kicking back in the sandpit and doing the playground activity lap (even though I am extremely challenged by it). We take props such as a bucket and spade, a truck or even a little car to push around and make brrrm sounds with. It’s bliss, especially if there’s a group of young men playing basketball on the courts. Fresh air and park life = brilliant.

There’s one problem though. Every time we go to this one particular park, Alfie goes straight for the waist strap on the baby swing – you know the one, the safety chain thing covered in clear plastic that you clip around your kid’s tummy. He goes straight for the strap and sucks on it. Hard. It’s really foul and each time he does it a little vomit forms in the back of my throat.

I mean, it’s not like he isn’t well fed and that I don’t have a fabulous array of snacks in my backpack soaked in water from the leaking sippy cup. It’s not like there isn’t a variety of sticks and leaves and other ‘natural’ items available he can put in his mouth. I offer all of the above and pick him up and take him away from the strap and he LOSES it. Face down on the grass slamming his fists and feet into the ground. How dare I. He gets back up and runs for the strap. Gross. I repeat the actions above. Then I give up and let him suck at it.

After about five minutes he gets bored. I’m sitting on the edge of the sandpit waiting for him, trying to hold back my vomit from the strap sucking. Finally he comes around and hangs out with me in the ‘pit passing me bits of sticks and leaves.

We dig a hole. He has a snack. He tries to put the snack in my mouth, yum. Whatever. We dig some more of the hole. I’m distracted by my phone beeping and I check out a text. He pushes some more of his muesli bar in my mouth. I eat it. Whatever. He goes back to his hole and I start responding to the text message. He pushes something into my mouth. I bite into it thinking it’s the muesli bar but it’s not. It’s a crusty sun-bleached dog shit.

I spit. I squeal and dry wretch. I’m scraping the inside of my mouth and pulling out everything except my tongue. My hand is covered in sand and the texture is making everything worse. The cool mums wearing puffer vests around the edge of the sandpit are staring at me over their soy lattes. Then it happens. I’ve dry wretched so much that I start convulsing. I can’t stop thinking about the poo. I’m horrified. I spew in my kid’s sand bucket.

I get my shit together, realign and refocus. I’m a mum. I sort myself out. I’ve got to. People, including my son, are watching.

I look at my little boy sitting in the massive hole we’ve dug together. He’s laughing at his car as he pushes it through the sand. Perhaps he didn’t notice my behaviour.  I pick him up to put him in the SuperTrike and I notice there’s something in his mouth. It’s another piece of the white crusty turd and he’s chewing on it. I try to fish it out. It’s so gross.

We wheel home with our pooey mouths and spewy bucket, through Yarraville village passing all the parents who look so together. I decide to grab a coffee and when I pull out money from my parka pocket, the miscellaneous condom packet falls out.

Seriously unfair.

This post first appeared on Bubba West.

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.

Hankering for sausage

I woke up this morning with a hankering for sausage.

My buddy Miss P and I had a plan to take our babes on a pram trek to the amazing (and hidden) Rocco's in West Footscray. However, a quick look at the weather chart showed that the morning would be a glorious 22 degrees but the afternoon promised a good saturation. So a car trip it was.

Reg and I discovered Rocco's when we first moved to Yarraville following a heads up from a foodie pal. From the outside, the joint looks just like a regular old school milk bar with the potential for a sensational 1980s-esque lolly counter. However, upon entering you are instantly taken to a sweet-as Italian deli filled with glorious treats all to the familiar sound of the classic milk bar door chimes.

She put the lime in the coconut

Oh, hi. How are you? Sorry, we were laying low for a while. We survived three months. We are officially parents.

Fishy feasts, flooring and freakin' hot weather

Our roof is going up tomorrow. ROOF!

The majority of our pad has an original tile roof, but the new addition at the back will have a hot new tin roof minus the cat.

This is huge for me. As a fan of Lego construction and serious dollhouse set up, I understand that it's super important to get the structure right and then BAM! you can start to make things pretty within.

Hocus pocus, we come home to disappointment

I'm totally on to you Todd. I've worked it out. You can't trick me anymore. I'm one smart cookie.

Tuesday morning:
Ali (on tip toes leaning into site, putting her hand up to ask the question): "What's happening this week Todd?"
Todd (takes hands out of pockets and slowly puts on a hoodie): "Just a few things. Maybe later this week or next you might see the beam go up - but don't get too excited - and maybe some plumbing. We'll see how it goes."
Ali: (fist pump, little tap dance): "Oh, ace. Plumbing next week. That's like water and stuff. Cool! P.s. did you get to the snow on the weekend?"
Todd: "No, it's January."

Cooking with Reg, outdoor style.

Cheef and pig in barrow

I'm guessing you are over the 'hole' conversation as much as we are, however I believe there are still a few more deep ones to dig.

Reg has been chipping away at the holes on his day off to cut down on labouring costs and I tell you what, I'm glad I'm pregnant as digging through grey clay and rock looks a wee bit hard in the heat of summer.