Ice cream cake

For an upcoming birthday, it was requested to make a chocolate icecream cake. I kept on checking, thinking we'd get back to our normal wierd icing on a vanilla cake, but no, this was quite consistent, for about 2 months. So, icecream cake...
I looked up recipes on the web, but the American versions all seemed to involve sauce/biscuits/nuts/cream exploding out of the middle, and therefore quite complicated cooking (freezing) regimes.
Finally, I got wise, and turned to Women's Weekly...and we (hubby and I) managed quite a show stopper, that definitely fulfilled the wish for chocolate icecream, but didn't involve more than transferring icecream from the tub to the cake dish and freezing in between layers. We are now the proud owners of a rather large springform pan, so I'm happily imagining cheese cake in the future.

Bread tags

I have finally found a way to recycle the bread tags. There is a lady in South Africa who collects them and recycles them, and with the money raised, buys wheel chairs (and other aids, I think, but mainly wheelchairs) for  people with disabilities. Check it out! http://wheelchairfoundation.org/blog/breadtags-for-wheelchairs/

Sultanas on pizza?!

Luckily we caught this before it went in the oven. Another idea from Mr Gourmet.

Breakfast Burritos

These are surprisingly nice. I would call them a fusion - because the burrito is more Mexican origin, but filling them with hash browns, eggs, and bacon is most definitely English. You can buy these frozen in the supermarket (but I don't recommend that), or from most fast food stores that do breakfast. And it sort of contains what is quite a hearty breakfast inside a wrap, so therefore quite transportable? From a serving point of view, they can be made ahead then wrapped in foil and kept warm for a bit. Sort of like the hot dogs at the baseball and football.
This one was a leftover from a men's breakfast that all the men in the house went to this morning.

My big deadline

Applying for first round of permits from county to upgrade water treatment works run by city... Permits are not apparently done electronically here. This is to go to about 20 different departments, each gets at least one full sized set of drawings, some get two, 5 sets for public viewing, plus various reports, application forms, checklists that indicate what each different dept wants on the drawings or in their reports, etc. Four boxes in all, someone from the CAD department in our office will take half a day to drive all this up to the office and deliver personally.

Snow! (for one day)

We got snow, falling, from early this morning, through to this afternoon. Lots of fun! Presidents Day, so public holiday for our family (although not for all, I don't quite understand the public holiday system yet). Unfortunately, icey rain is coming through, followed by a warm wet day tomorrow, so it isn't going to last.

Camp in the basement

It is a long weekend here (Presidents Day on Monday) so hubby hosted a camp in the basement, for both children this time. The baby was super impressed. Lovely weather for a camp out too, the fire was really handy.

Roasting Marshmallows

At about 10F... because we had grilled hotdogs for dinner...Very delicious, but very cold!

Funny snow

Had a bit of a swirl of what I imagine ground up polystyrene would look like as a fake snow. It was blown around on the deck like sand, and disappeared as soon as the sun came out.
Turned out on the same day there was a sudden whiteout in Pennsylvania, and a 14 car bingle as a result, I wonder if what we got was the edge of that.

Valentine's day - pencils!

My feeling of overwhelm about the amount of candy swirling around during the school year must not be unique, because the 'candy haul' from Valentines day was significantly small. As well as some lollies, he got quite a few pencils, and some clever gifts instead. I'm secretly relieved, but he still came home jacked up on candy from the class party (and wearing a novelty headband he won in one of the games, but that is beside the point). There was a lot more emphasis on healthy parties in Kindergarten.

Valentine's day cards

Remember last year? Turned out that was probably a good year, because we didn't completely forget about it until the night before... I had a plan and I thought of it about 2 weeks ahead, but then we didn't end up being able to do it, and we didn't put a plan B into action. We didn't even have a plan B, really. So tonight, we made the much, much quicker version, with supplies found around the house...and tomorrow morning we'll stick a lollypop to each card, and they'll be done. Mr 6 is licking his lips in anticipation of all the candy this is going to yield. I'm sort of sad about that. Good thing he is still at the age where we'll put 85% of it up in the cupboard and chuck it out after 4 months...

New Hampshire Primaries

New Hampshire – located in the far north eastern corner of the USA, had its primary round of voting in the Presidential election today.

Remember that there are two rounds of voting for the president. The first round is generally amongst voters who are registered to vote for the two main parties, and is a vote of deciding which republican and which democratic candidate will get endorsed by their party as the presidential candidate (and go through to the secondary round, when all the independent candidates and voters can participate). So at the  moment, the party candidates are still fighting each other, as well as the opposition.

I think it is officially called a primary because each candidate receives the votes directly, rather than on a precinct level like in the Iowa caucuses. The Iowa caucuses are organized by the political parties, and are a closed vote (you have to be registered with either of the two main parties) whereas New Hampshire is a sort of closed vote – ‘undeclared’ voters can register with either party, vote for whatever party they registered with, then change their affiliation back to undeclared. If you’re already registered as affiliated with a specific party, you have to vote for that party. In New Hampshire this year, about 40% of voters are registered as undeclared. The New Hampshire Primaries are organized by the state.

New Hampshire primaries are important because they’re the first in the country, and people are obsessed with trying to predict outcomes based on one small state. New Hampshire does not have a typical diversity representative of the rest of the USA. But winning New Hampshire, or even, upsetting media predictions, can give huge momentum to a candidate’s campaign. It is state law that New Hampshire hold the first primaries in the election, so they have even moved the date to make sure that they’re first.

Big Fizzle

I was all excited because we were forecast 4-8 inches, even up to the night before, and it turned into a big nothing...The storm was meant to come through at about 10pm, and snow all night. What we got was blustery sort of wind/rain/big blobs of wet snow that melted straight away. And one magical sort of flurry that I watched out the window at work.
Snow is very hard to forecast, it turns out, except when it is some sort of super storm coming through the whole west of America first.
The photo used is not representative of the snow cover now. Because of the rain, and warm (40's!) days, even the big piles are gone (except the super pile in the carpark at the mall, I should get a photo of that for another post).
But I thought it was a cool shot of my work.

Tinned Biscuits and Monkey Bread

Just discovered one of the wonders of the US of A - tinned biscuits (tinned scone mixture).
Comes in this tin, that you unwrap the middle of, and it pops apart, and inside are usually about 8 rounds of dough that you put in the oven. They turn into 'biscuits' as in, biscuits and gravy, that you use as a side at a main (savory) meal, for example, I served them with our Chicken Pot Pie. But there is nothing stopping you turning them into proper scones and jam and cream...

What we actually had them for is Monkey Bread - preschool activity where you cut the rounds into chunks, and the kids dip them in melted butter and cinnamon/sugar mixture then press into a greased loaf pan (I have heard of people using lamington trays and bundt trays too - it really doesn't matter). Then you cook it and voila, a hot, tasty little treat!

Emergency Room Visit

I think I passed one of the tests of parenthood, when Mr nearly 4 split his head open (get this) on a corner of the drywall in the basement. No concrete involved, I promise. I got that call at work from the babysitter "He's hurt his head and theres a fair bit of blood and I think it looks like it needs stitches..." - the one that curdles your blood for just a moment, and sends you out the door without shutting off your computer.
Had a bit of a panic, because I wasn't quite sure what to do, but we ended up at the Pediatric Emergency Room down the road, which was quiet, calm, and quick (2 hours in and out!). No photos really suitable for this forum, but imagine, if you will, me being ordered not to lie on the bed beside the patient (by the patient), then a Dr putting on glue, with the help of a nurse, and me holding a hand, and then, enter a third lady, whose job it was to hold an iPad at the correct angle for the patient to be able to watch his selected episode (in this case, Curious George)! Given that the patient was ultra obedient anyway, this was just icing on the cake.
Now, we have to keep his head dry for a week, then apparently it is all fine and dandy. He himself, apart from needing some pain relief, is probably less worried about the head than I am.

Water Colour Paints

I'm not sure I have mentioned before, but water colours have become our go as a compromise between cream, rented carpet, and boys that love to paint...
We gave them both a container with 12 colours, and let them at it. Of course, some colours were used up before other colours, but we held off buying more until they were down to about 6 colours each.
We recently renewed the supply, so now Mr 4 can renew his love affair with black....

Hint - all the black blobs in the picture above are his. The careful painstaking rainbow fish is Mr 6's.

Iowa Caucus

Iowa (I-owa, not I-o-wa) is a state West of Wisconsin/Illinois, South of Minneapolis. Sort of centre-middle of the mainland US.
They have a system where Iowa is divided into precincts (1,682), and at each of those precincts, caucuses (groups of people) meet - the republicans together and the democrats together (but in a different place) and they vote (in different ways, of course) for who they want to be their delegate. They're voting not for a president, but for delegates in the county conventions, who then decide on the delegates for the congressional district state conventions, who then decide on the delegates to go to the national convention, who then vote for the  candidates in the presidential elections.
Sounds weird and complicated? Apparently there is low voter turn out in Iowa because of poor understanding of the process!
I think this is how most voting stuff is decided in Iowa, but it becomes very important in the presidential campaigns, because it is the first official event in the nominating process. And of course, there is the usual obsession on statistics - on how accurate the vote is according to who eventually gets to the presidential election.

Only voters who are registered with either major party take part in this one.
Just to clarify, we are in the first round voting - that is, both main parties are fielding multiple candidates, and registered party members in each state votes for who they would like to go through to the second round of voting - the actual vote for the president.
Republicans just vote with either a show of hands, or a secret ballot.
Democrats actually physically stand or sit in groups that represent the support for each candidate. After a headcount, the candidate group with the least amount of supporters is dissolved, and those people go and stand in other groups, until one candidate has the most supporters. sort of like preferential voting, except without the ballot paper.
I think actually each state has a certain amount of delegates that go to the final convention and vote for the final candidate. Iowa is a very small state, but it is, as mentioned before, the first official event in the presidential nominating process. People like to theorize about how the results in Iowa reflect (or don't reflect) the mood across America.
More information? http://2016iowacaucus.com/how-iowa-caucus-works/