Diet compatible Banana Bread Recipe for Debbie

Banana Bread

1 ¼ c (180g if wholemeal) self raising flour
1tsp cinnamon
1 Tbsp low fat margarine (18g)
½ cup brown sugar (110g)
1 egg
¼ cup skim milk
½ cup banana (120g)

Directions: Just mix well. You could use the creaming method if you were fussy, but I generally just throw it all in together in no particular order and mix it well (no lumps of banana should be visible).
Cook for 30mins at 220ºC if doing loaves. Watch the oven if you’re doing muffins (10 or 12 mins, don’t quote me).

Comments: This recipe is great for loaves or muffins. It freezes well. Muffins are good in lunchboxes or as after-school snack. Loaves can be sliced, frozen and then enjoyed by toasting and buttering straight from the freezer. We like to split the hot muffins and butter them.

Single batch (with white flour) 12 slice loaf has 1.5g fat/465kJ per slice.

I tend to quadruple the recipe because 120g banana doesn’t usually make much of a dent in my dead banana collection. The 4x batch makes 12 regular muffins and 2 slim loaves, or 2 really fat loaves.

Variations:
• Sprinkle with cinnamon sugar before baking
• Substitute half the sugar with sugar substitute
• Ice muffins when cold.
• You could add chopped dates or choc chips if you wanted.
• Split reheated muffins, fill with ice cream and drizzle with maple syrup.

Firefly in my bathroom

Just a cute moment from the life of Leila:

No photo unfortunately because it was bed time and I was a bit too busy.

Leila came into the bathrooom in her black long thermals with a headlamp slung low around her hips, doing a bottom dance and claiming to be a firefly...

It reminded me of that mosquito incident.

Dentistry, Literacy and Currency

I took all the girls to the dentist today for a check.

We actually managed to get there on time despite the girls delaying our departure time. We are still doing a fabulous job of the mornings, but unfortunately the after school pick-up is repeatedly not going as planned. Hopefully being sent to bed 1 hour early tonight will fix the problem!

After “checking in” at the dentist I took all 3 to the bathroom to brush lunch out of their teeth. Leila looked at a sign on the inside of the door and asked “does that say please keep door shut?” It did!

I am so proud!

Leila got to wear the golden cape at school recently because she had learned all the “golden words”. These weren’t even golden words! I love it.

Bethany led the way in the Dentist’s chair, and happily let them clean and polish her teeth, getting a bit giggly in the process. Leila was a bit miffed that her teeth didn’t need cleaning, and (as usual) just about climbed on top of the Dentist to try to get a good look at all the action when her sisters were in the chair. I love how she is interested in that sort of stuff.

And Hannah, well what can I say? She was a total champion. I'm sure the good example of her big sisters made all the difference.  They were very happy to get their “free” toothbrushes on the way out the door. They only cost me $240… (you'd think I'd get toothpaste too).

After the Dentist we picked up some very pretty notebooks to use as bank cards/check books for the girls. I am changing the way I manage the girls savings and personal money, so that it is easier for me (and the girls) to keep track. One problem we have is that the girls lose their money and don’t remember how much they actually had. Also Damien leaves his pocket change lying around all over the house, so it gets a bit confusing. I’ve been worried on occasion that Beth may have eaten from the school canteen rather than her lunch box, and I’m not sure whose money she was spending!

The basic idea is that instead of having a large amount of cash in a jar, carrying too much money around, or having an inaccessible bank account, each child keeps a tally of savings and gift money in their notebook. The book gets taken along when we go shopping. If they want to buy something, they check to see if they have enough money, and then deduct the purchase price from the total (parent to initial the transaction details in the notebook, help work out the new tally if needed, and make the actual physical payment). In the future, I plan to have a jobs-for-credit system instead of pocket money, but not yet. There is a good description of this type of method at a website I like (values parenting).

I think Bethany understood what I was trying to achieve. Later this evening (while I got dinner underway and briefly skyped with Damien) I had the girls hunt around the house for stray coins and notes. Bethany found quite a lot! She wanted to sit down and count it all up, but her rotten mother wanted to serve her dinner, wash her hair and send her to bed early…

Oh, how I love these girls.

ANZAC day

ANZAC day was always important.
Mum (Granny) used to always take us along to the service at Lenah Valley RSL.  We kids especially loved eating the scones in the hall after the march and service.  Granny would also try to get to the Dawn service at the Hobart Cenotaph whenever she could.
It became more important to me when I started serving as a musician in the reserve Navy band.  The last ANZAC march I did in uniform, I was pregnant with Bethany, playing side-drum.  I was fine until the marching stopped, and I had to stand at attention.  Whoa, some blood pressure please!  I had to make the "fall out or fall down" choice.  I was worried that landing on the drum might hurt the baby, so I neatly excused myself and went a little way off to sit down.

ANZAC day marks Bethany's half-birthday.  So Happy seven and a half gorgeous girl.  The photo shows Beth in her new dress having ice-cream after church.  I had to drag them all away from the ice cream and race home to watch Damien on television: the ABC broadcast the ANZAC cove dawn service live.  We only caught the last half, but there was heaps of footage of Damien (conveniently seated near the wreath laying area) and also some good shots of other people who have served locally.  Shorty (an old Bandmaster) played the last post.  I wish I had recorded the whole thing.

I imagine that ANZAC day will be even more important to our family now that Damien has participated in such a profound way.  Apparently many people stayed all night on site in preparation for the dawn service, so the band pulled an all-nighter playing appropriate music to the crowd.  With 2 major performances today, following little or no sleep I am sure Damien must be completely exhausted. We were able to watch (and record) all of the broadcast of the later Lone Pine service, but didn't see very much of Damien in that one.

After watching the first ceremony (while Hannah napped) I whipped up a batch of ANZAC biscuit dough, gave the big girls an empty tray each and had them shape the biscuit balls.  I didn't burn them this year (Hooray!) but they were a little closely spaced (my fault probably, for putting a few extra ones on Leila's tray).  They will go into lunches this week.  Yum!  It is still kind of weird not having to double or triple the recipe like I did for my brothers and sisters back when I was a kid.

We are really looking forward to having Damien home again on Saturday.  I miss him most of all when I see him on Skype or read his text messages on my mobile phone.  Three weeks is a long time.

Snails and Caterpillars

A couple of weeks ago Granny made a few notes about the time she spent with my kids while I was at work, and left her written remarks on my kitchen desk. It was a student-free day, so she was busy with 3 girls instead of 1. Granny didn’t actually ask, but I think she might have secretly wanted me to blog her comments, so here we go:

When I came home from work, Granny got Leila to show me her snail routine. She was actually coaxing them out of their shells and stroking them, getting them to lift their heads etc. I felt it was all a bit rough on the snail though (the demonstration specimen was being quite seriously man-handled) so we sent it back to the garden.

Today Granny did some gardening with Hannah. Hannah was very wide-eyed (and also quite timid) about the green caterpillar and the fuzzy caterpillar that they found.  I let those go too.

Almost too good to be true!

Applause please!

We have been on time for 6 days in a row.

Reading that you probably don’t realise quite how major our breakthrough has been. I would write more about our past history, but it would be a bit embarrassing. Most exitingly, the new leaf we have turned over totally rocks. Yesterday morning the big girls each cleaned a toilet before breakfast. The day before that, Leila shone the hall mirror and watered the garden while Bethany prepared scrambled eggs. Today we even managed to pack up the breakfast stuff immediately after breakfast.

They are brushing their own hair, using sunscreen without having to be told, packing their own bags and dancing and singing while they do it. We are out the door EARLY and they like it.

Applause is not enough, I need a standing ovation.

To celebrate our achievement, we watched some of “Bed Knobs and Broom Sticks” after school and then had dinner at McDonalds (a rare event). Best of all, I feel like we can easily keep being on time now. Can you believe that? It will take some time to get used too.

By the way, I’ve been house-fairying the big girls for a while, and recently they decided to be house fairies too. We leave surprise notes and gifts to each other to compliment jobs well done, and to celebrate places that are being looked after properly. Look what one of our house fairies recently did to let me know how well I’d made my bed!

Things the girls did this week

The teachers at our school organized an alphabet day: for a gold coin donation, the children could dress up as something beginning with the letter assigned to their individual class.  As chance would have it (the letters were drawn randomly) Beth's class got the letter B and Leila's class got the letter L.

Theoretically that meant I didn't have to make costumes, but dressing Beth up as Bat Girl and Leila as Licorice (she insisted on the head scarf) was worth the effort.  We bought new long polypropylene tops and bottoms for the costumes, and can use them under uniforms when the weather cools down further.  I wish that I hadn't had to look after a sick Leila (tummy pains) and finish the costumes on the same night though.  Need sleep.

Of course the exercise required a visit to Spotlight for cloak, skirt and belt fabric.  That day I also got an new inner-tube for our pedal-less toddler "walking" bike, and took Hannah to Drew Point Park to play with some other kids and Mums from church.  While waiting for the tube I also bought Bethany a new dress in a boutique, so she is thoroughly spoiled.  I have to keep explaining to Leila that if I buy her a new dress every time Beth gets one, she will end up with twice as many dresses, and that wouldn't be fair.

Busy Working Mum

This blog is usually more about whole-family stuff, but I thought I'd make a more personal entry.

This last fortnight for me has been particularly crazy:  Craig (our chief pacemaker guy)  has left for 3+ months for back surgery.  Our other part time pacemaker person just resigned because of chronic lung problems.  Little old me is the only pacemaker employee the Royal has:  I only work 1 ½ days a week, and it takes about 1.8 full time positions to get things done.  Consequently I am now the only one on the on-call roster.  It’s a good thing I hardly went out anyway!

I am grateful to the Head of Department for organising one of the pacemaker companies to provide locum support and take over most of the operating theater responsibilities.  Even with locum support, there is an enormous amount of paperwork.  I have made a checklist for the reps so that I don’t have to tackle all the leftover paperwork myself, and found a few appropriate ways to make the process more efficient.

The boss has instructed the secretaries to look after all the appointment bookings and Medicare claim paperwork, which has cut my clinic work load significantly.  Additionally I now have a secretary coming for ½ day each week to file, photocopy, mail-out, log stock etc.  I can't believe how efficient she is.  Maybe I was slow, but then again it would be nice to just streamline the paperwork and not keep having to see patients!  She makes one trip to the photocopier with multiple files, while I was trying to do them as I went, in between patients.  I think that I’ll be able to just manage if this support continues.  I have been pulled out of the echo clinic sessions of course.

Over the last couple of years the pacing clinic has only needed me for device implants (I very rarely assisted with out patient clinics) so a lot of the clinic management and stock management stuff hasn’t been my responsibility.  I'm making a lot of notes for myself to make the processes easier.

Craig also asked me to do a lecture for him in Cambell town last week, and then I offered to cover echo as well (silly me) so I only got 4 hours sleep on Friday night trying to get my Powerpoint movie slides to work.  Not a lot of sleep over the next couple of nights and then a tummy bug Tuesday evening (vomiting between 11pm and 3 am) so I’m a little run down.  I do love teaching though, it is worth the time and effort.

Tonight (Thursday) I’m also finishing costumes for the alphabet day tomorrow at Lauderdale Primary.

Because Damien is in Turkey, Mum is my backup person when I get called in (I was in the hospital for about 9 hours on Sunday for example).

So there you have it.  The brief version of my currently stressful (but usually satisfying) work life.

I

Morning Music

We are continually late. The other day I had a bad morning trying to keep the girls on task, made a few parenting mistakes, was given ATTITUDE. It was an all round unhappy failure of a morning. I finally decided enough was enough and spent 2 days really focusing HEAPS on finding alternative morning management strategies. I just can't cope with kids taking 40+ mins to put their clothes on and then still being shoeless at departure time. I wasn't born with a terribly good internal time-management clock myself, so I've been trying to dream up a BIG solution to help all of us.

There are so many good ideas online: I looked, and I thought, and I wrote down tasks and estimated times, and then I cooked myself up a revolution.

Now all that sounds simple, but along the way I also crashed a hard drive with my Powerpoint presentations for that weekend on it, lost my internet capability (including emails), and had to get Damien (my computer hero) to on his mobile from Sydney to talk me through actually opening up the computer for the first time in my life and (gasp!) unplugging and replugging a few bits of hardware to access the backup hard-drive.

Libby wanted more details about my strategy, so here you go Libby: First I worked out an order of events (there are 12 tasks to get out the door in the morning!). I then generously estimated the times they would each take, and went looking for music that matched. Of course this meant badgering the ABC shop website about putting MP3 files online, searching the entire house for music CDs, and spending half a day ripping them onto my lonely, singular hard drive. (By the way hard drive, please don't die before Damien get's back, and kindly stop giving me threatening error info when I boot-up).

Wake Up (2) Up kind of Day - Flylady
Make bed/straighten room (4)- Hello Hello Hello - The Fairies
Visit loo (3)- I want "wee oh wee oh wee oh wimerway", but am currently using drip drip drop from Bambi.
Get Dressed(5)- Do you put your hat on your head? - Playschool (x2), New Shoelaces - Playschool
Act of service (15)- A spoonfull of sugar - Mary Poppins, - The Bare Necessities - Jungle Book, - Lets get to work - Hi 5, Fly kid - fly lady, Keep on the go - Julia Donaldson, 2 min clean up - fly lady
Eat Breakfast (12)- Fruit salad - Wiggles, Peanut Butter and Jelly - Inside out, Cruncy munchy honey cakes - The wiggles, My Heavenly Father loves me - CSB, Little purple pansies - CSB, Singing in the kitchen - Playschool
Finish Cleaning Up Breakfast (5)- 2 min cleanup - Flylady
Teeth, face and sunscreen(5) - Ch…Ch…Ch… the toothbrush song - Playschool (x2), In the bathroom - Hi 5, Suncream Hi-5
Brush your hair (15)- Mirror Mirror - Hi-5, There was a princess long ago – Playschool, Respect - Aretha Franklin, Mirror Mirror (again)
Pack your bag (5)- Round 'em Up - Hi-5 (x2)
Happy dance I got you (I feel good) - James Brown

Now, obviously this is kind of ridiculous and total overkill, but I'm going for an all-out change of culture, and I need all the help I can get. Some of the times are probably too long, but they suit for now while we get used to the routine. They love the happy dance. I'm sure there will be plenty of editing and song substitution over the next few weeks.

Too cute for words.

Hannah likes to paint. Curiously, she also likes to sandwich her paintings together face-to-face. The flowers in her hair get comments wherever we go: they are just fake flowers from chickenfeed stuck on a boring hair band using a hot glue gut. I think they look happy, and you gotta love the pigtails.

This 2 ½ year old girl can do buttons, cut with scissors, races independently up and down ladders, and sew (yes, sew!).

My friend Bron kindly looked after Hannah on Friday while I worked. Hannah was very upset saying goodbye, but was cross with me when I reappeared to take her home (“go way mummy”) which is always a good sign. Bron told me that when she sat down with a needle and thread to repair up a few ruptured seams on a toy snake Hannah had brought along, Hannah insisted on helping and was surprisingly capable. The crazy thing is that she seems to acquire all these skills without me actually consciously teaching her. Tonight’s new skill is climbing out of her cot. Sigh. Still, she wasn’t exactly early on that one, it’s just about on schedule.

Daddy's off for 3 weeks of military service

Monday was a very big day. Damien has left us for three weeks to perform with the Navy band in Turkey for Anzac day. We said our goodbyes at about 5:30 at the Hobart airport. He will be in Sydney for most of the week rehearsing and recording a CD. Then he will be “briefed” in Canberra, before traveling back to Sydney to catch a plane to Istanbul via Dubai.
Here you can see our little girls looking out the window as Damien’s plane prepares for takeoff. They enjoyed having a fruit box and (expensive) hot breakfast items from the airport cafe. 

It was a long day: we were all up before 5am.  Beth and Leila danced for 1 ½ hours after school, and then the three girls didn’t get to bed until about 10pm (mind you, Leila rather cleverly fell asleep on the couch before then). Why so late? well, we had Granny and Grandpa and Liz and Matthew visit for Dinner and family home evening, followed by some talking and telly and it all went on a bit longer than planned.
I was quite proud of myself for figuring out how to get the oven to turn itself on and off so I could transport the girls to the dance school: I put a corned beef roast in the slow cooker at about 1pm and did the veggies in my clever oven. We even had white sauce (bought) and a table cloth. My kids totally aren’t used to table cloths and the closest any of them have gotten to white sauce has only been on very occasional lasagnas.
I had also made chocolate cup cakes the night before (a chocolate-apple cake recipe, but I used cooked quince instead of apple).
I’ve been reading Sally Wise’s books about preserving food, and her descriptions of quince really stirred my imagination. Unfortunately, despite Sally’s enchanting tales of family traditions and decadent deserts based on this fruit, for me it turned out to be, well, just quince. Differently nice, but not a favourite, and my kids didn’t really like it. The leftover stewed fruit hid really well in the cup cakes though, and gave them a mysterious fruity tang.
Can you believe that my kids don't like cookies'n cream ice cream?  We discovered this when Matthew left a carton in our freezer.  Fortunately they did all like the cupcakes.
Hey, reading this it sounds like we had a party suspiciously timed with Damien’s departure! I'm innocent!
We did not hold a “he’s gone, hurrah!” but we do love our visitors, and it felt good to provide. I felt like I was paying Matt and Liz back a little for all the outdoor pizza sessions we've enjoyed at their home.
I am very very happy that Damien actually made it onto this international trip. He worked so consistently hard against serious difficulties to manage it, and I feel very proud. I only realised on Monday that his 2 weeks in turkey actually adds up to 3 weeks away (I forgot to count the time in Sydney). It sounds like a very long time. Fortunately Damien has promised to share the experience - he's been SMS'ing me text and photos, so I’ll be bloging more about it soon.

Something fun

Click to listen to an item of Chick Heritage.
The other one we chick kiddies used to love is here

Enjoy!

I promise that one day I'll make some chicken muppets up and then we'll really do some damage at somebody's talent night.  : )

Beach with Sharlet and Nina

The day was grey, but it actually felt quite warm at the beach on Saturday.  Nina and Sharlet were with Granny this weekend, and visited for a couple of hours.
On the way to the beach we saw quite a large number of very groovy bugs crawling all over a rock.  They had run away instincts if anything overshadowed them, so it was very difficult to actually get a good camera shot.  This one is on Leila's wrist.

We also met a couple of dogs on the way to the beach, which Sharlet was not very happy about.  Later on at the beach Granny did a super-granny maneuver when a dog came very close, and managed to shield/distract Sharlet so that she didn't even notice it was there.  Go Granny.
It was too cold to swim, but that didn't stop people getting wet of course.  We used our bilibo to dig, scoop and carry.  The usual sandcastles, moats, sand cannon balls and leg covering sculptures were enjoyed, and we had a bit of trouble convincing everyone that it was time to go home at the end of it all.  There is nothing like a beach to get kids happy and busy.  We are so lucky to live where we do (lets just hope that the sea level doesn't change too much any time soon).

Did you notice Sharlet's front teeth are missing?  She's growing up.  Mum had lots of encouraging things to say about her speech, reading and motor skill development.  I particularly enjoyed how she chats with us now.
Nina got a bit itchy with the sand and salt water.  She was uncomfortable in her wet clothes, but we managed to keep most of them on her most of the time! 

Easter at Dover Slideshow

Easter Holiday activities in Dover

On Friday I took Mum and the girls down to Dover for an overnight stay at the Chick-Burton household, along with Matthew and Liz and their kids.  There were quite a few memorable events, including:

• Amazing work ethic demonstrated by the older kids and many of the adults who built garden beds, organised stuff off to the tip, mowed and trimmed, burned off garden rubbish etc.
• A family home evening about Easter led by Liz and involving a treasure hunt for items that related to the Easter story
• Noodle fights in the front yard (Sam and Lewis were scary, but didn't seem to actually hurt each other)
• Face painting - seriously hindered by Hannah who wanted to hang off my elbow - most children wanted to be Easter Bunnies in various pastel shades, sorry to those who didn't get painted this time.  No photos of fresh painted faces in my collection I'm afraid
• Bike rides, beach visits and playing at the park
• Tears over who got to travel by what method and with whom (little cousins wanted to be with big cousins)
• Kids decorating and eating Easter biscuits
• Kids learning how to hand-make chocolates
• Bethany's amazing blackened feet after she helped out with the bonfire wearing her crocs
• Trying to get 17 people to sleep in a shed with no walls, a mosquito zapper that kept noisily executing bugs, a printer that self cleaned noisily and Granny sneaking in and out in the middle of the night
• Pillow fighting with Granny
• Leila and Beth harassing Liz and Matt (who were in bed) and getting tickled 
• Forcibly removing the mattress from under Liz and Matt to get them out of bed on Saturday Morning
• Teaching Hannah to wee on the grass, when she wouldn't use the environmentally friendly (waterless) loos on the premises
• Driving Hannah to the local park toilet (she did offer to poo on the grass too but that wasn't quite as acceptable)
• Hannah admiring (and chasing!) the chickens
• Sophie admiring and patting the white horses across the street
• Making and eating mexican food for dinner
• The Biggest Pavlova I have ever seen, decorated with cream, cherries, blueberries, frozen raspberries, chopped up fruit bars and shredded coconut
• Leaf weaving by Liz and Mariah
• Leila hiding under the table so she could play Bethany's DS without being detected
• Matthew having to lie under his car and manually fiddle around with the starting mechanism every time he wanted to go anywhere
• The long, late night drive home

Thanks Libby and Tony.  I'm putting together a web album to link to this blog, so check your e-mail for the link: you can add your own photos to it if you like.

Granny Soup

Debbie asked for this recipe, and I thought it was blog-able. Hope you like it (and I hope I don't get into trouble from Mum!).

Granny makes a few soups, but my favourite is definitely the chunky one with lamb shanks. I especially love stealing the bones out of the pot and eating the meat off them. Mmm.

When I try to make this particular Granny soup, a few ingredients are essential (in bold below), the rest is just what needs using up from the fridge/pantry. One problem is that by the time you have put in a little bit of all the veggies you’d like, you find that you have accidentally made enough for about 20 people. Use a BIG pot: I learned the hard way. Divide it up and freeze it if you don’t happen to have 20 people handy.

Ingredients:

• About half a packet of dried bean/pea/barley/lentil soup mix.
• 1 or 2 lamb shanks
• Roughly chopped up assorted veggies (e.g. Onion, Potato, Sweet Potato, Pumpkin, Turnip, Parsnip, Carrot, Cauliflower, Zucchini, Celery (leaves and all), leftover stuff such as canned corn/frozen peas etc.).
• The secret ingredient (Mum wouldn’t tell me, but I managed to guess it) is a sachet of French Onion Soup mix. Any brand will do, I often use home brand.

This recipe also works well with a ham bone, but I like lamb shanks the best. You could also use a leftover chicken carcass. I LOVE to serve it with that strange herby salt that Mum and Dad use (A.Vogel Herbamare®)

The basic method I follow is to boil the bone and pulses up together first. Sometimes the bone I drop into the hot water is still frozen. I then chop everything else up and add it in a roughly logical order (items that take longer to cook go in first) and then I add the French onion soup mix last. Let it boil a bit till it is all cooked.

Once finished, you will need to look after it: either boil it up for 10 mins once a day (you can even add to it as you do this) or keep it in the fridge/freezer. It doesn’t last much more than 24 hours at room temperature (Granny says this is because of the pulses) and it is HORRIBLE when it ‘turns’. These days I’m in the habit of dividing and freezing the same day (keeping some in the fridge too of course) because I got sick of feeding my beautiful soup to the compost heap.

It is a great meal soup and really homey.  In our house, Bethany and I could just about live off it, but the others are not so partial (too many vegetables?).

Hannah's friends

Here are a few photos from recent activities Hannah has attended:

Firstly, a birthday party for 2 year old Minol.  He is mad about Batman, so the party had a superhero theme.  We could have gone all out, and used a super-girl costume from the dress-up box, or put Hannah in her wrist-to-ankle stinger proof lycra sun suit, but we kept things really simple with a vinyl mask and cape.  She played superheros at home that week though.  Our gift to Minol was a bump-buddy cold pack and a tin of band-aids, plus a really cool batman card that had a recorded message in Batman's voice.  I'm pretty sure the card was his favorite.  We also provided masks for all the party guests: they are really easy to cut from vinyl and the elastic is just stapled on.
The next photo is from an Easter-egg hunt held at the Botanical Gardens for the pre-kinder mums.  It was a lovely day, and Hannah had a great time.