Food, glorious food!

This evening Rob was "supposed" to be cooking but Emer wanted to go around the block and watching him cook slowly was irritating me, so I did it fast. This way, everyone was happier, because Emer didn't want to go for a walk with me and Rob can't cook while Emer tells him what he ought to be doing instead (he did offer to take her in the mei tai while he cooked but she refused).

I sliced a couple of aubergines into strips (about 1cm x 05.cm) and stuck them in a pan of olive oil while I sliced garlic and tomatoes. After the aubergines had browned on one side, Linnea came to watch me turning them (due to a dishwashing malhandling I was using a fishslice and a chopstick, so this was more interesting than it usually might be) and helped me stir as I put the veg in. I added the tomato puree and the basil, she added the black pepper - I don't know when she learned to grind black pepper over the surface of a whole dish, but she did it beautifully.

I left Linnea stirring it, standing on her step in front of the stove, while I washed a pot to cook the pasta in. We had some white pasta shells left over and I boiled them in plenty of water (I usually skimp on pasta water because I can't use it for anything else afterwards; it's too starchy). Rob and Emer came back just as I was pouring the water on the pasta.

While Rob set the table I chopped olives for the sauce (so that they'd be hot but the saltiness wouldn't affect the whole dish) and sliced the last of yesterday's white bread.

We ate the bread dipped in the oil in which the olives had been marinading, which was delicious, and then steamed into the aubergine-covered pasta. My four-person lasagne dish seems to hold enough of any pasta dish for four people; I must try to remember that.

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Also, today Rob rounded up the half-eaten bananas that have been going soft over the past two days and made them into banana muffins. Om, as they say, nom nom nom. We have two boxes of them in the freezer now. I like having a freezer full of goodies.

We also have a little rhubarb clafouti left over. It was fabulous eaten cold with hot custard. Recipe:

4 eggs
1 cup rice milk
3/4 cup flour
1/2 cup fructose syrup (agave syrup or honey or plain sugar would probably be fine but you might need more of the latter two)
3 cups chopped rhubarb

Put the fruit in the bottom of a cake tin. Whisk everything else up together and pour it on top. Bake for 1 hour at gas mark 4. Leave to set a little. Omnomnomnomnomnomnom. Unless you don't like rhubarb, I suppose, in which case, use a different fruit or a whole lot of sugar.

I would like to publicly thank micheinnz for introducing me to the clafouti concept from all the way over in New Zealand. She will never know if I got it right.

Doorknobs and gluesticks

"Linnea, what's that noise? What are you walking on?"

"Nothing. My feet are musical."

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Today I was just settling down for a nice feverish nap on the sofa (our bed being unfit for human habitation due to the demands placed on it by two ill children) when I heard a Situation arising upstairs. Rob was locked out of the girls' room, and they were locked in.

When I went up there, it turned out that the children had closed the bedroom door and then pulled out the drawers of the chest of drawers, making a neat bar-latch for the door. It opens inwards so it couldn't be pushed in. Emer was distressed and Linnea was amused.

I was small-handed and wriggled my arm in the gap and wiggled the drawer all the way out of the chest and pushed it out of the way with the door. Ow. My fingers. Still.

Then I keeled over on Emer's bed and worked hard on not throwing up.

Then we moved all the furniture in the room so that they can't accidentally lock themselves in again. When they are older they can have a bolt or something; I do think children are entitled to their privacy.

Anyway, the room looks good now, though we need to move the central light fitting. We'd intended to wait to move the furniture until that had already been moved; looks like we were overruled.

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We started the day by introducing Linnea to her new computer. "Move the mouse," we said. She looked at the wireless keyboard. "What's the mouse?" "It has a tail." "Aha!"

The laptops have touchpad mice. Whoops.

So mainly she was working on mouse control. Also, we need to learn a bit more about the G-Compris games; I think we've worked out how to turn off the timer and that will help a lot. And it has no net access yet but it does have a little CBeebies icon, which is a shame. I think we also also need to rethink the keyboard thing; the wireless keyboard eats batteries like smarties, so I think she really needs a long-cabled normal keyboard, which would have the added advantage of not getting lost. Perhaps a USB keyboard with integral hub, because Rob says he has loads of USB extenders, and I know we have USB mice.

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I ran the biggest, hottest bath in the world today, and we all hung out in the bathroom in shifts while it cooled down enough to get into, and then we all got in in turns. So we were very steamed indeed. It did us good.

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Two parcels arrived for Linnea and Emer which I had already been told were birthday gifts, so Linnea opened hers; it's a Crayola art and craft set with a blue gluestick. It has some other stuff too, like a bit of string, but mainly, it's all about the blue gluestick. She made a spider. Emer used the inkpad and stamps to make her forehead look bruised and her eyebrows look bloody. Art!

My Favourite Eurovision Song

The most Eurovisionny song of all time - "Wadde Hadde Dude Da"