School

Ngoobra and the hairy man
Originally uploaded by Crit Chicken

As part of reconcilliation week. D'Arcy's class studied an indigenous story Ngoobra and the Hairy Man. Then last week D'Arcy drew a picture and retold the story. The big red triangular part of the picture is a cave, which in the story, was where Ngoobra met the hairy man, and underwent his manhood ritual. That would be the hairy man on the left.

New Skills

shoelaces
Originally uploaded by Crit Chicken.

It's a bit hard to see in the photo (despite the fact that I got him to hike his trousers up) but these shoelaces were tied by the boy himself. We've existed on elastic sided boots until this year, when I bought him his first pair of 'school shoes'. He's been wearing them, grudgingly, for a few weeks, and refusing to try to tie the laces himself, but insisting that I do them, or appealing to his teacher when they come undone at school. Until friday. I sat down with him. and went through the process again, and this time he got it! Then last night he said to me "thanks for teaching me to tie my laces, mum"

Random Question

"Hey Mum!"
"hmm?"
"What does the Tooth Fairy do with all the teeth?"
"You know, I've always wondered that"

Finally!

toothless
Originally uploaded by Crit Chicken.

Yes, it finally happened. A mere 2 months later than first advertised. When he came back from his dad's this morning, the tooth was hanging on by not much, and sure enough, when I picked him up from school he greeted me with a closed-lip smile. It had fallen out during the morning.

In this pic he is holding the letter to the tooth fairy that he wrote, which you can see in close up on Flickr, should you so desire.

quince post mortem

quinces
Originally uploaded by Crit Chicken.

The quinces cooked themselves beautifully. And here's a photo. They tasted good too.

D'Arcy was fantastically behaved all day, helped me tidy the house, and then voluntarily went and tidied his room. He gave me some lovely DVDs ( Planet Earth) and some Dr Who stuff too, that he chose himself. I failed to take any family snaps of the 4 generations. Bugger.

Late Night Quinces

An hour or so ago, I looked in the cupboard and found 3 lovely ripe quinces lurking behind the rice, and I realised that what I really wanted for Mothers'Day brunch was some nice stewed quinces to go with the french toast I'm planning, if I can be bothered to get the recipe that Maggie used on The Cook & The Chef the other night. So I got to work.

3 quinces
1½ cups of sugar
1 lemon
1 stick of cinnamon
5 cloves
3 cardamom pods
3 cups water

Heat the water, sugar and spices until sugar dissolves, and then simmer for a bit.
Halve quinces, having washed and de-furred them. Don't bother to peel or core.
Squeeze lemon juice on cut quinces (but not cut fingers).
Put quinces and lemon skins in oven proof thing with a lid. Pour over spice syrup from first step.Or put quinces into it, if you started the process in the oven proof thing with a lid.
Whack it in a pre-heated oven @120°C for ages (6 hours should do it, but longer is probably fine). Turn the quinces over a few times in the 6 hours.
When it's finished, the quinces will be a lovely colour and not too astringent. When they are cool, scoop the cores out of the halves and slip off the skin with a knife. Then slice and serve with some good plain yoghurt, or cream, or icecream, and some of the amazing syrup.
There will be syrup left over, use it wisely. You can flavour things like cream or custard with it. I like it as an ultra-decadent bircher muesli addition.

Saturday Morning TV

Saturday Morning TV
Originally uploaded by Crit Chicken.

Due to circumstances beyond my control, when he got up this morning, D'Arcy turned on the TV. Fortunately in our house the channel is rusted on to ABC (kind of) so what he got was Rage where the guest programmers werePeter Bjorn and John. The first thing I saw was The Bangles Manic Monday so I was hooked from that moment on. I also (for some reason) decided that if we were watching Saturday Morning TV we should be eating sugary cereal, so we broke out an old box of SpecialK with forest berries that I found in the cupboard and got to work. This photo shows the end of bowl #2 and please note the special devil-child eyes feature.

I know, what was I thinking?