Fun food

The last wee while has seen us ordering our food co-op basket every fortnight (every 2 weeks for the North Americans).

Here was one week's treat - corn that had pretty red kernels when raw...

 that faded when cooked but still had the red colouring on the cob!

In August I ordered an 'extra' one week - 20lbs of tomatoes.  More about that later.

And this week we have squillions (well, it feels like it) of Hatch chiles.  Quite a seasonal treat down in the Southwest!  We had a casserole version of chiles rellenos for dinner, since it seemed easier than the rellenos I made a while back when Grant visited.

From the mouths of babes...

At 3am Tuesday morning... C practising all his favourite new sounds after a feed...for 15 minutes: "SSSSssth"; "ooooooooo"; "Quardle oodle ardle wardle doodle".  No wait... that was the magpies*, but you get the gist of the babbling!     [*Denis Glover's poem The Magpies.]

Tuesday, after I got cross when he disturbed C just as he was falling asleep - J's first spontaneous (i.e. unprompted) apology: "I sorry.  I wake up Cawib."

A couple of weeks ago, as I got dinner ready I hear, "NO CAWIB!" followed by grunts that usually mean J is pushing C away or forcing his fingers off something gripped tightly.  

I go to investigate, "What's happening?"  C is nowhere near J, has nothing in his hands, looks happy.  

J says, "Cawib eat."  

I check C's mouth.  Nothing, not even a sticker or crayon.  "What did C eat?"

"Cawib eat Jofadin."

Sure enough, two little tooth-like indentations fading from J's forehead!

Public Safety Announcement

In addition to warning you stay out C's way when he is in a fiberglass leg cast (that thing can deliver a hefty bruise if aimed carefully enough), I came across a post the other week that I wish I'd read while I was in teachers' college.  Although I've never needed to rescue someone in my care while swimming, I was looking for the wrong signals.  And I personally know at least one family that tragically lost a member to drowning.

The blogpost linked to a site with an article explaining what drowning really looks like and a further link to a video of what has been termed the 'instinctive drowning response'.  We've been conditioned by television and the movies to look for someone splashing wildly or calling for help, and I can remember being taught to raise one arm if I needed assistance in the water.  But when people really do need help, they're not able to behave this way, and the window of opportunity between distress and needing resuscitation is short - possibly less than 30 seconds.  I strongly urge you to go check out this site before you next head out to spend some time near water.

On a lighter note, do you know how hard it is to keep a crawler away from water in the home?  Even emptying a dishwasher is a hazard for C's cast, since he wants to climb in, and in the bath, and in the toilet, and play with drips from his sippy cup... He is desperately waiting until he can have more than a spongebath again!  Me too.  I'm tired of all the chasing.

Here's one of his favourite dry spots.  It gets him close to J's seat at the table (where all the fun stuff happens) and is a bit of a mission for Mum to reach in around the table legs!

Real Life vs. Reporting Real Life

The title really says it.  It's not that we've not been up to much, we've been up to too much!  Consequently, this blog (and you, dear readers) have suffered my neglect of the blogosphere.  In order to make amends I propose to post many small posts in quick succession (bless the 'schedule' function in Blogger) to catch y'all up with happenings in our family, kitchen, and my head (if I get that far).  So, here goes...

We have discovered what every parent of young children needs to know in a hot Dallas summer - the council splash parks.  These fabulous locations are dotted around our baking hot city and provide free, COOL entertainment for those not inclined to wallow in a deep pool or run their air-conditioner ragged.  They are perfect for young children who cannot be left for a second near a traditional pool, or even a paddling pool.  Chlorinated water sprays from a myriad of fountains, pipes, and moving sculptures (think the Wellington bucket fountain on Cuba St, kiwis!) and then runs off the rubberized surface to drain away and be recirculated.  You'd have to work hard to drown here!

We have had a number of fun visits over the last month to our local spray park in Lake Highlands.  J has no fear!  C tried to out-do his brother in the fear stakes on our last visit and crawled through every jet of water he could reach.  Which makes our abrupt halt on visits all the more difficult.  However, water and casts don't mix.  Yes, poor C has broken his leg!

It happened as we left the splash park on August 5th.  N was carrying C and slipped on the sandy surface as we came down an incline on our way back to the car.  He broke C's fall, and was alright himself, but C hollered for a good while.  We thought, given the fright of dropping vertically very fast and his overdue need for a nap, that he would calm down and sleep it off.  But when he woke and couldn't put weight on his right leg (crawling or pulling up) we knew that something wasn't right, and we were off to the ER to be checked over.  That night he had a temporary splint and we went back the next day to see the orthopedic specialist.  As best we can piece it together, C's foot was caught under N's hip and twisted as he landed.  I'm just thankful that N was able to keep hold of C so well that there weren't more broken bones!

C is now in a cast until September 10th.
It hasn't really slowed him down at all.  In fact, it seems more like resistance or weight training for muscle building.  The cast's toe is showing a great deal of wear from all the crawling.  So here is the 'before' shot and I'll have to post an 'after' shots just before he gets it taken off.

We can't wait until the splash park is back on the agenda!

Random Pictures

We've been doing lots of reading.

M has been teaching C all his new tricks (like crawling and pulling up)

Fun with bubbles!

The total crop of grape tomatoes

Anniversary pressie in the mail...

Full of sweets from my sweet.

The pillowcase and sheet I made (under Grandma's quilt).

One of the new aprons from Grannie.

The Aftermath

Now that N is back home you'd think life would have got slightly less hectic, wouldn't you?  But then you add in a language course and... you get my drift.

It has been a relief having him home though.  The boys are over the moon.  C started to crawl properly (knees) within a day of N being home but reverts to commando style when he wants to get somewhere fast!  And we celebrated our first "total potty success" (a.k.a. "accident-free") day for J last week too.  He's also been telling us when he needs to go (hooray!) and yesterday even took himself off and sat up there without any prompting from us (I just happened to wonder where he was when I hadn't heard him for a couple of minutes).

N also returned with lots of gifts (from family and friends) so they boys have been playing with new toys, reading new 'favourite' books, J wearing his new aprons (sometimes one at a time) and I have been revelling in an influx of magazines.  Here is my stack at present: Dish, Martha Stewart Living, Family Fun, NZ Healthy Food (which came with a slow cooker recipe section - next on my list of things to try to keep the oven off!), Dallas Child, and our church magazine, The Angelus.

We had some of N's language buddies with families over for lunch on Sunday so we made pizza and tried out this recipe from MSLiving.  It was yummy.  We'll be making it again.  Of course, we adapted the recipe slightly (frozen corn, grated mozzarella, spread on unbaked homemade crust).

And I got the good news yesterday that our friends' wedding in NZ today will be streamed live, so we get to 'join' them after all.  Yay!

Homemade: Laundry Detergent

I've been running an experiment lately.  And three people have asked for this recently so I thought I'd better get around to 'writing up my results'.

I've had to hunt hard for detergent that is kind to cloth nappies/diapers (i.e. doesn't have visual brighteners and surfactants, etc. which build up on the cloth and render it less absorbent).  When I do find it, it is often more expensive than the regular detergent, which is expensive enough already, even though it has less stuff in it.  (As an aside, this article went viral recently, exposing a spate of thefts in the US of one particular brand as currency in the illegal drug market!)  So I started hunting for homemade recipes.

The recommendations for our washing machine are for liquid detergent rather than powder so while I found lots of recipes online, the least complicated (once you get past the commentary) was this recipe with pictures based on this one from a reality TV programme here.  When I went shopping I discovered that Fels-Naptha soap actually has some of those surfactants in the list of ingredients so I opted for the purest soap I could find, which turned out to be Ivory.  The ingredient that seems to make it only "99.44% pure" is the mild fragrance - which to my nose is lemongrass.  I guess castile soap (vegetable oil-based) or Sunlight would be the NZ equivalent, though now the closest Sunlight retailers may be in Australia.

I made up my batch in mid-February and I am just getting to the end of it this week (mid-July).  I average at least 1 load of washing per day (often 2 because of nappies and potty training at present), and it has lasted me 5 months!  It took me about 30 minutes work and cost me about $8 in ingredients (for enough to make at least 30 gallons without having to get more supplies) and the 5-gallon bucket with lid for about $6.  The best thing is that it works.  I've been using it for everything I wash, and I just use an ordinary pre-wash stain spray on spills when I see them.  Everything gets clean, smells fresh (rather than scented) and feels good.  I haven't needed fabric softener either.  In fact, I don't think I'll ever go back.  I used a detergent sample the other day on some really grubby toddler clothes and gagged as I pulled them out of the machine because of the overpowering perfume.

So here's my recipe:

Homemade Laundry Detergent (yields 10 gallons when diluted)

4 c hot tap water (plus more)
1 bar Ivory soap, grated
1 c washing soda (make sure it is sodium carbonate)
1/2 c Borax

Stir grated soap and measured water over a medium low heat until soap is dissolved.
Half fill a 5-gallon bucket with hot tap water.  Add liquefied soap, washing soda and Borax.  Stir until all the powder is dissolved.  Fill the bucket to top with more hot water.  Stir, cover, and leave overnight to thicken.  (The consistency is similar to wallpaper paste or school glue!)
Stir, then half fill a clean container with soap mixture.  (I used an old detergent bottle.)  Fill the rest of the container with water.  Shake before each use as it tends to gel again.

The website recommended using 5/8 c per load for top-loading washing machines (approx. 180 loads) or 1/4 c for front-loading machines (approx. 640 loads).  I worked out it was 1.5 caps of my bottle so I usually guesstimated from this based on my load size.  Another variation which I haven't needed yet is to add essential oil drops to the cooled soap (10-15 per 2 gallons).

Addendum: My friend also recommended soap nuts.  We like using soap nuts (we have before), they're environmentally friendly (a berry, after all), but I haven't found a local supplier yet and this recipe is a little cheaper at the moment (8c/load versus 13c/load).