Nothing beats homemade soup

When I mentioned on Twitter and Facebook that we were having homemade pumpkin and sweet potato soup for dinner, I had a few people ask how we Bill made it.

So Bill says you need: (and he’s not one to measure, so apologies for no measurements) pumpkin, sweet potato, cream or sour cream and a chicken stock.

Peel the pumpkin and sweet potato and cut into pieces. Throw pieces into the slow cooker, along with (about 1 litre) of chicken stock and 1 litre of water. Cook on High for about 2 hours. Add 600ml of cream and then, while your wife is busy blogging about Ferrari parts, blend until mixture is smooth. If it’s still too thick for your liking, add more stock.

Add a dollop of cream or sour cream on top to serve and enjoy with crusty bread rolls.

Yummo!

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I survived Girl Guides camp

I wish I was a Girl Guide when I was a kid. This weekend, Giorgia and I participated in a Mother/Daughter camp. Out of the 11 mums that stayed overnight, there were only 3 of us that were never Guides. The others told us about the fun times they had when they were Guides back in the day.

It was quite obvious that the young Guides these days have it way too easy because our camp was an “indoor camp” with beds, showers and an indoor camp fire because some of the girls, (and most of the mums) were not too keen on singing camp songs amongst the leaches!

The theme of the camp was “fairytales” with the activities based around The Ugly Duckling, Cinderella, The Emperor’s New Clothes and a few others.

The girls (and mums!) all had a great time and I must admit that it was more fun than I thought it was going to be. I actually packed a book and a notepad/pen just in case I needed to find something to do but we were busy having fun the whole weekend!

But the highlight of the camp was watching the new girls (Giorgia and Cayley-Ann (Peta’s daughter) included) making their promise and becoming fully-fledged Girl Guides.

It was an awesome weekend! Giorgia is so excited that she is a “real” Girl Guide now and said that she loved the camp. So did I…and I tell you, it was much better than spending the weekend doing housework and laundry! LOL

(faces blocked out because I didn’t ask permission to put their photos online)

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5 things I’ve always wanted to do that I haven’t done (yet)

If I really took the time to think about this, there are probably a whole heap of things that I’ve always wanted to do but haven’t…yet.

But these are the ones that I thought of now as I write this post…..

1. I’ve always wanted to go on a whale watching boat but I’m a bit worried that I would get sea-sick and then if I throw up over the side of the boat, the spew might attract sharks and then a big shark might jump up and eat half the boat and all of us…..
2. I’ve always wanted an baby orang-utan for a pet…or at least get to play with one for a little while.
3. I’ve always wanted to have a cocktail party….the one time we got close to one, we got so drunk our coc- sucking cowboys were more like milkshakes.
4. I’ve always wanted to write a children’s book…but I guess you need to start with a story idea so I guess that what I really always wanted to do is come up with a good story book idea…
5. I’ve always wanted to turn one of the bedrooms in our house (if we had enough rooms) into a huge walk-in wardrobe for the whole family ala The Duggars. THAT would be cool.

So, what are some things that YOU have always wanted to do that you haven’t done yet?

Leave me a comment if you do this so I can come read about it

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Heads down, bums up!

I seriously can’t let this Wordless Wednesday post go wordless! This guy was having such a fun time dunking his head under the water and flapping his feet about We were all standing on the bridge, cracking up at him! LOL

This post is linked to Wordless Wednesday and 5 Minutes For Mom.

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Picassa does that?!

Remember I mentioned that I was doing an “Introduction to Photoshop” course? Well next week is the last week of the course and we haven’t even opened Photoshop! Granted, the course is being held at the school that Giorgia used to go to and when the TAFE teacher tried to install Photoshop on the computers, she didn’t realise that the Dept of Education would think that it’s not an authorised software program.

So, instead, the teacher introduced us to Picassa (or re-introduced, in my case because I have used it before). But I had no idea how much it can actually do. It’s quite nifty for a free program!

While it can’t do everything that Photoshop can do, you can still crop, fix red-eye and add some basic effects as well as be used as a photo library to help you keep your photos in order.

While walking along the lake this afternoon, I took a photo of a black crow about to fly out of a tree. In Picassa, I played around with the photo, adding a warmify effect, a soft focus effect and a tint effect.

Not bad for free software.

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350 pierogi!

Penny (my sister) and I got together this afternoon with a mission to make a whole heap of pierogi, which are Polish dumplings that can be made with various fillings. We did it the way our Babcia (grandmother) always does and that’s with mince and onion.

So we chopped and fried off the onions, browned the mince and then combined the two:

The dough consists of flour, water, a pinch of salt and a couple of eggs:

While we (actually I lost count how many Penny had) had a couple of these:

…we kneaded and rolled and cut out the dough in small rounds and filled each one with some of the mince and onion mixture, sealing them tightly so they don’t come apart while cooking:

I should say here before Penny rings up and complains that I didn’t give her enough credit that Penny did do most of the hard yakka……

We made 350 of these little suckers! All lined up and ready to be cooked in boiling water. Penny assured me that they were ready when they suck to the bottom of the pot. I assured her that they were actually ready when they floated to the top LOL

Delicious with some melted butter and sour cream….good for lips, but definitely NOT good for the hip!

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