laurasaur

Its been a long long time since I have updated. I’m so slack. I don’t even have a good excuse.

I’m still a long way from the lovely country I call home, New Zealand. While everyone there enjoys stunning summer days and long evenings, we have rain, sleet, snow, and darkness at 4pm.  The last 6 months have brought an entirely new way of life for me, and one major unexpected change.

You know that saying about plans going astray, well, yeah, I can verify that is true Still, my life is very nice right now, just a bit different from our plans of just a few months ago. We always had planned on coming to London for a few years to work. We planned on having a baby at some stage and coming back to NZ to settle. Little did we know that I was already pregnant when we left glorious New Zealand! So that was one small spanner in the works. I looked for work solidly for a few months once we arrived, but there was just no software development jobs going. In hindsight I should have given up looking a lot earlier and worked in a cafe, but I didn’t, and well, then it became too late because I sprouted a somewhat huge baby bump. Thankfully my husband landed a sweet job very soon after we arrived (and they love him, he has just had a promotion!), otherwise we would have been on the next plane home.

on the tube, blissfully unaware of the baby growing in there

So, here I am, jobless, and growing a baby in my belly. People ask me what I do and I have a hard time answering – what on earth do I do? Well, I spend a lot of time on eBay, that’s for sure. Having a baby has increased my addiction even further and opened my eyes to the designer baby second hand clothing market. Thankfully we also bought a car that turned out to be a piece of crap, because I spend lots of time fixing it or visiting our mechanic, who I am getting to be quite good friends with haha. I go for walks, I go shopping and have hot chocolates, I cook and sometimes I even clean.

Yeah. My life is pretty sweet. And on top of this I seem to have been blessed with the worlds easiest pregnancy. I haven’t had any morning sickness, or anything weird like that, and I’m only just getting to the uncomfortable stage where I walk the poor baby into door frames and stuff.

31 weeks pregnant!

What else is going on….

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Because we don’t have our own place or any jobs yet I’ve been thrifting it up a bit in the kitchen. Otherwise known as cooking like a povo/1940s housewife. The food I have been making is weird to me and to be honest I’m a terrible cook so a lot of it has been very average. I wish you could just bake everything.

I made the weirdest sauce ever to go with this roast chicken last night. All I have is wholemeal flour, rice, pasta, tiny bit of butter, milk and some vegetables and meat. So I did the roast with some roast carrots, haha, and it was looking pretty disturbingly bland. So I thought I would make gravy, but I couldn’t because a) I hadn’t made the chicken stock yet and b) wholemeal flour does not a good gravy make. So I did white sauce with wholemeal flour lol – I liked it, tastes like a mix between bread sauce and white sauce haha both of which I love but have never made myself.

What other weird things have I done… oh yeah.. hot chocolate with wholemeal flour – HAHA – do not recomend, rice pudding with evaporated milk, porridge with evaporated milk, and washed so many freaking saucepans because there is no dishwasher and no microwave, ahhh, so not used to having to actually do this stuff myself lol.

Anyway most people would probably be a bit disturbed at what I have been cooking but Jonnos pretty good and takes it in his stride although I do wonder what he is thinking haha. I have done some baking and did a batch of cocoa brownies with a layer of ganache which were proclaimed the best ever, made with wholemeal too although you couldn’t tell.

Oh yeah I have been epicly sick so been in bed all day, browsing ASOS.com, learning ASP.NET, reading food forums, deafening myself with dance music, you know the usual. I really need to find a wallet and I am scared of how cold it is going to get and how little warm clothes I have. Never fear. I will survive.

xx L L

I don’t really have anything new to post but I just thought I would share how super cool and cute this JellyBelly dispenser is!!

My hubby put one in my bag to surprise me (yeah, I know, so awesome) and it is super cute. I have always loved Jelly Belly’s (especially the flavour that most people hate: buttered popcorn) ever since my trip to America when I was about 10.

So no new baking for now, I spent a few hours on Sunday making a huge brownie platter for an event we went too, 2 batches of regular brownies, 1 batch of caramel brownies, whipped cream and a rich chocolate sauce.

There was less than 10 people at the event and about 2/3rds of the brownies got eaten so definately a success, pretty much my backup plan when I need to bring something sweet and I don’t have much time or energy.

Ok so this is a little embarrasing because I have to admit that I have only just discovered Mountain bread. I can’t express my love for it in a non creepy way but it really is one of the greatest things to happen to me food wise in a long time ha ha. I lovvvvve wraps/tortilas all that kind of stuff, but I always restrict myself from eating them because most of the brands you buy have around 200 calories and 20-30g of carbs.

These have 60-70 calories (depending on which type you get) and around 10-13g of carbs. ZOMG. So good. So my stand by dinner is:

1 piece of mountain bread
100g (approx) of chicken or 2 tenderloins
Iceberg lettuce shredded
Carrot grated
Shallot grated
Fresh herbs (parsley, corriander)
Capsicum or tomato

add mustard, shredded cheese (tiny amount) or sour cream and roll up. OM NOM NOM. Bring on healthy dinners/lunches/whatevs.

found proof that this is what happens when you make 2 sets of cupcakes and a salad in one go in my tiny kitchen.

most awesome collosal mess. link to full size pics here