Fishing 1/11

  I have taken heaps of photos but just haven't got the chance to blog about them. Here's one I would like to document.

We live very close to the wharf so on a good sunny day, we have decided to go fishing. I bought fish and chips from our favourite F n C place and off we go.

 

 

 

We caught one fish which is undersized so at the end of fishing, we let it off back into the water.

Can you see the small white dot and the other small tiny person ? The white dot is A and the tiny person is N.  They kept themselves occupied by playing on the rocks by the wharf.

School Disco

 

 

 

Noel and Abel had attended their school disco on 4/12.

They had to dress up to the letter S.

Abel decided last minute he would be Superman. He changed his mind about gel-ing his hair like Superman. Noel went as a Scout.  We had to bring a plate. I had attended other discos in their prior schools but none has asked us to bring a plate, so I was not sure whether I should be providing a main meal or snacks. I decided to just buy grapes for them. As it turned out, there were heaps of snacks (potato chips of all sort)  and the healthy stuffs were not really getting eaten.

 

 

Random picture I took during the event.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chocolate Zucchini Bread

At work, I along with 3 other ladies in our team would take turn to cook lunch for each other on Tuesday.  It was my turn again, and this time, I chose to bake Chocolate Zucchini Bread for dessert as zucchini is aplenty in the vegetable shop.

I googled and chose the recipe from www.simplyrecipes.com  I have used its banana bread recipe and her recipe are very easy to follow and the more important part is they tastes delicious too.

Ingredients:

4 cups grated zucchini (that's a lot,)
2 and 1/2 cups plain flour
1/2 cocoa powder (The recipe calls for unsweetened cocoa, not dutch processed)
2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1 and 1/2 cups granulated white sugar
2 eggs
3/4 cup butter, melted which I replaced with 3/4 cup canola oil
1/2 tsp instant coffee granules
1/2 tsp almond extract (which I replaced with 3 tsp of vanilla essence)

1. Place freshly grated zucchini in a sieve over a bowl to catch any excess moisture as it drains, while working on prepping the other ingredients.

2. Preheat oven to 160c with rack in the middle. Grease two 9x5 inch loaf pans with baking spray or butter. (I just lined mine with baking paper)

3. Vigorously whisk together the flour, unsweetened cocoa, baking soda, salt and cinnamon in a large bowl. Whisk until they are no more clumps and the ingredients are well combined.

4 In a separate large bowl, beat together the sugar and eggs until smooth, about a minute.  You can do this with electric mixer on medium speed or by hand on wooden spoon. Add thte melted butter, instant coffee granules and extract and beat until smooth.

5. Mix the shredded zucchini into the sugar egg mixture.  Add the flour to the z ucchini mixture in 3 additions, stirring to combine after each addition.

6. Work quickly and divide the batter between the two prepared loaf pans. (Work quickly because once the dry ingredients have mixed with the wet ingredients, the leavening has begun.)

Place into the oven. I baked mine for 1 hours 10 minutes or until skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean and easily.  Remove to a rack.  Let cool in the pan for 5 minutes and slice.

 

 

 

Chocolate Brownies

I tried making brownies about 14 years back, and it didn't quite work out.
This time, I googled and found this great recipe.  It's taken from www.tallshortandtiny.wordpress.com

 

 

 

Ingredients:
175g butter, coarsely chopped
175g dark chocolate, coarsely chopped
1and  1/2 cup caster sugar
4 eggs, lightly beaten
1/2 cup plain flour
2 tbsp. cocoa powder
1/2 cup chocholate chips
Icing sugar, to dust

Preheat oven to fan bake at 160c.  Line a 17cm x 27cm baking dish with baking paper.

Melt butter and chocolate together in a bowl over a pot of simmering water.  Whisk until smooth, then stir in sugar and eggs.

Sift flour and cocoa powder together then stir into the chocolate mixture; add the chocolate chips.

Pour into the prepared dish and bake for one hour, or until an inserted skewer comes out moist but clean.

Cool the brownie in the tin, then remove and cut into squares.  Dust with icing sugar before serving.

 

Out of the oven

 

Before dusting

Pumpkin bread

I made this loaf in October and I really liked it.  It was a recipe from the packet of flour I bought.
So I am going to share on the blog and it's more that I can refer back when I need to bake it again.

 

 

 

Ingredients:

3/4 cup Wholemeal Flour
3/4 cup Plain Flour
1 tsp Baking powder
1/2 tsp Baking Soda
1 cup cooked pumpkin, Mashed (I used Crown pumpkin)
1/3 cup Canola Oil
2 large eggs
1 tsp Mixed Spice
1 and 1/4 cups White Sugar
1/2 cup Chopped Walnut
3/4 cup Pumpkin Seed

Preheat oven to 200c (I think I may have done 180c on fan bake).  Lightly grease a loaf tin with butter and dust with flour. ( I was lazy and just lined with baking paper).

In a medium bowl mix together the flour, baking powder and baking soda.  In another large bowl, beat the pumpkin, oil, eggs, mixed spice and the sugar until smooth.  Fold in flour mixture and walnuts until just combined, making sure to not overmix the mixture.  Add the mixture to the prepared loaf tin and top with pumpkin seeds.  Bake in the preheated oven for 40-50 minutes, or until a wooden pick or skewer inserted into the center comes out clean. 

Cool in the tin for 5 mins and then turn it out of the tin. 

Royal spotting ( 9 Nov 2015)

A  went Royal Spotting on Monday with the rest of the year 1s.  

 Above Abel waiting at Brooklands Park for Prince Charles and Camilla Duchess of Cornwall.

 

 

 

Pics courtesty of Aunty Christine who was there with her grandson C.

Gems and Minerals Show

 

I have a boy who is obsessed with rocks.  So when he saw a sign on the road that say there's a gem show, he got very excited.  I remembered my reply to him was that is only a show for old people.  Anyways he was pretty ill that weekend, and I wanted to cheer him up so brought him to the show.  It was an impressive show.  There were people coming from South Island and Whanganui to be part of the exhibitor. 

The rocks/gem were beautifully set up in the special casing, and people could look and admire them.

 

You could see Noel even brought his own rock kit with him. He thought it was going to be a meeting and people would talk about their rocks. 

 

 

This is a special dark room. And the rocks were very colourful under the special lighting.

These were rocks/gems available for sale from sellers coming from all over the place.  I later found out this event happens every two years.

This is a carver doing his special task of carving the stone.

 

The boys went for their lucky dip.  They were not very excited when they found out it was just magnets.

The kind man in checkered shirts give free rocks to kids from his collection.

I was wrong. There were many children attending the show.  This was a section just for them, finding treasure in a big block of ice.

 

 

 

Abel was super proud with his little treasure. His fingers were icy cold after that.

Polished rocks in the shape of an egg

 

The hall was filled with people from all ages. 

No, I did not get these Amethysts geodes for them.  They were like $1,500 each.

Abel wasted no time in displaying his rocks on his shelf.  He was very daring to ask for prices from the seller. Rocks start at 20c a piece. But the boys had their eyes on more expensive stuffs. Luckily,  I capped their budget at $3 max or I could go to $5 if its very very very special and BIG (*evil grin) because Abel laid his eyes on a tiny piece of rock which was $20!!

 

Noels' collection.

Scouts - dress up nights

 

I am not a fan of Halloween. We don't celebrate it and don't go trick or treating. The scouts leader have asked everyone to dress up for that week.  Noel chose to go as a Japanese boy, and Abel wanted to go just in his uniform (scounts shirt and scarf).  Of course when we arrived, he saw all the children were dressed up so he started to cry. Anyhow, here's a group shot of all the kids. There were bats, optimus primes, bumble bee, ninja turtles, superman, and few witches and skeletons and corpses. 

 

They did group activity with the parachute. Abel refused to join them so he was sitting next to me, facing away from the activity.

Did you know that you can use parachute as emergency shelter? I learned something new everytime I go to scouts.

 

Next they did some experiments.  Above, NF the leader did the volcanoes experiment. Abel decided to check out the experiments so joined the rest of the children.

 

Here they were making clouds 

Then off to the kitchen to see how rain is formed.

 

Finally, this activity is interesting.  It's a goo that is made by mixing 1.5 bag of corn flour with room temperature water.  It made this very interesting tactile activity. If you punch the goo, it's hard, but if you poke your fingers, it is soft.

 

Not scouts related but Abel wants to be a pirate while we were walking one day. Arrrrr,  matey...