pinterest // a new place to squander time

oh dear.

Source: remodelista.com via Tracey on Pinterest

OH BOY! this is just one little pin up from one little pinspiration board on pinterest.

you can browse boards by subject matter, but mainly it is of the home/diy/art/design/scrumptious food persuasion.

a good place to start, if you want to be inspired.

what we ate

we ate some yummy things this weekend. there was healthy stuff involved (rice bowl, tuna salad) and there were some not to healthy things involved (ahem, peanut butter cookies, sticky date pudding, fish and chips).

LUNCH//


lemon zest and parsley tuna salad on fig and caramelized onion crackers with organic cherry tomatoes

this is often what lunch looks like for me and the kiddos. i don't love sandwiches so i often struggle to figure out easy lunches.

TREAT//


peanut butter and chocolate chip cookies.

oh geez. these cookies turned out really well, not surprising considering their ingredients. i'm eating one right now actually. they have a very sandy texture, and a short-bready sort of feel. mmmmm.

here is the recipe.

DINNER//


red jasmine rice bowl with grated veggies, deviled eggs and nutritional yeast dressing.

inspired by the growing season's rice bowl, we ended saturday on a healthy note! organic red jasmine rice with some chickpeas thrown in and grated raw seasonal vegetables. sprinkle black sesame seeds, pepitas and sunflower seeds, and add deviled eggs and a delicious nutritional yeast-based dressing for your B-vitamin fix (notoriously difficult to find in vegetarian diets). mmmm, umami overload! you feel healthy just eating it! here is a rough recipe for the dressing, although i am not known for accuracy in these matters - i tend to make salad dressings by taste. you may want to taste and adjust the balance of sour and savoury on this one according to your own tastes!

buttons and bottle

this game, requiring only buttons and an old bottle has really captivated him. he is pretty good about small things. although he thought the bottle looked ready for a sip once full of buttons. ahem. luckily it was an adult supervised activity!



Bea goes to a montessori preschool, and there is an emphasis on giving children 'real' versions of adult objects as well as avoiding having all toys with the same plastic texture.



i love how he concentrates hard on new tasks, honing new skills. he loves to put things into containers. he still thinks tidying up is an exciting activity - one that requires clapping and rejoicing. not so his big sister. each object placed within another punctuated by a definite 'there'! (although to my mummy-ears only, non-mother ears may here something that sounds more like 'deh')



he is a very active little guy - i definitely notice a difference between him and his sister at this age. i'm just learning he might need to be directed into quiet activities more than she ever needed it. for the moment, this bottle and buttons are holding him captive.

chocolate wafer yoyo cookies (aka diy oreos)

i made these 'oreo' style cookies recently. i found them at smitten kitchen. mine didn't look the way they were meant to, but still, were pretty impressive really. sort of looked like what macarons would look like if macarons were cookies. which is a roundabout way of saying they turned out macaron shaped.

however, i felt a little confused about why i decided i needed to make oreos from scratch. in retrospect, i don't even really like oreos that much. i would probably never buy oreos from the shop. i think i was simply seduced by the photos and the idea.  she smote me with her scrumptious description and pristine stacks of perfectly formed chocolate wafers with icing betwixt.

i am happy with the inspiration though - i think i will definitely be on a quest to make my own sort of wafer-icing combo, perhaps a nice spicy gingerbread with cream cheese icing. i LOVE cream cheese icing, probably a million times more than regular icing.

do you ever wonder why you are making something when it is easily accessed at a shop?
the short answer is that the food made from scratch in your own kitchen often cheaper, healthier and tastier. you know exactly what went into it (grubby kids fingers included).

further points in favour include (but by no means are limited to) less packaging, less brand recognition and associations taking up precious space in your kids and your own brains, the resources saved by shipping bulk items rather than value added products and the pure satisfaction of smelling the heavenly scent of cookies wafting through the house and out the door into the neighbourhood and down the street (wind providing).